Song of the Mockingbird: My Journey with Josefina

I tell Josefina I would like to meet Tía Magdalena very much. She smiles, pleased, and Tía Dolores gathers a bunch of dried leaves and stems from her basket. Josefina leads me across the hard-packed plaza, past boys shouting over their stick ball game, shinny, a game she wishes she could have played when she was younger. It looks like field hockey, but it’s for boys only.

Josefina takes me to the doorway of a small adobe house, where Tía Magdalena greets us. She’s gray-haired and wrinkled, with eyes that crinkle when she smiles. Josefina introduces me, and Tía Magdalena gives me a sharp look that makes me drop my eyes, as if she can see inside my head. But she welcomes me into her home. A pungent, dusty smell teases my nose, and through a partly open door I see bunches of dried herbs hanging upside down from the ceiling beams. Tía Magdalena’s house must be like the village pharmacy, and these plants are its medicines.

Josefina offers Tía Magdalena the herbs, but she shakes her head, saying she’ll show Josefina how to put them away herself. Tía Magdalena leads us into the back room, where jars of all shapes and sizes line wooden shelves against the bright white walls. She tells me to take one down. I lift the lid on a small brown jar and peer inside at dark red-brown flakes. Tía Magdalena says it’s deer blood, mixed with water to help regain strength after an injury. My head jerks up, eyes wide, and Josefina grins at me.

I quickly put the jar back on the shelf. Maybe next time. Tía Magdalena shows us how to prepare the herbs we’ve brought. We strip the dry leaves from the stems, crumple them into a bowl, and I scrape them into an empty jar, which Josefina caps with a round wooden plug.

Tía Magdalena invites us to stay for tea. We settle around the scrubbed wooden table in the front room, and the curandera brews a pot of mint tea. She pours it, then takes my hand and asks about the cut on it. I’ve noticed it but haven’t thought much about it. I must have gotten it when I arrived here.

I tell Tía Magdalena it’s nothing, but the skin around it is turning red, and it hurts when she touches it. Tía Magdalena says I must care for it, and asks Josefina if she remembers how to make the vinegar soak. Josefina answers that you mix water and vinegar, soak a cloth in it, and bind the wound with silk. Tía Magdalena smiles, pleased, then turns to me and asks if I think Josefina is becoming a good curandera.

I nod and smile, but Tía Magdalena gives me an intent look again. She says, not asks, that I am sad, and tells me to say what’s troubling me.

I look into Tía Magdalena’s wrinkled face, then at Josefina’s round, rosy one beside it, and suddenly all the tears I’ve held back since we moved well up inside me. My throat aches, and my face goes blotchy the way it always does when I cry. I shake my head, not trusting my voice, and Tía Magdalena reaches out and puts her hand over mine.

I start to weep, telling Tía Magdalena I miss my home. I cradle my head in my arms and sob. Josefina says I must have been a cautiva until quite recently, and the healer strokes my hair, telling me to let the sadness flow out.

After a minute, my tears slow, and I sit up, gulping. Josefina passes me a clean handkerchief, and I mop my cheeks. She puts her arm around me, and I lean against her shoulder, feeling wrung out but peaceful, the way you do after a good cry.

Tía Magdalena dips the handkerchief in a bowl of water and bathes my face, the way Mom used to wipe my face with a cold washcloth after I cried when I was younger. She says it’s a terrible thing to lose one’s home, that it can break your heart apart. Josefina admits she can’t imagine having to leave the rancho and Papá and Tía Dolores and her sisters.

Tía Magdalena nods, saying Josefina, too, knows what it’s like to lose something precious. She asks Josefina if she’s happy again, even though she never forgets her dear Mamá. Josefina looks surprised, then hesitates and says yes. She hadn’t thought about it that way. Tía Magdalena turns to me and adds that I, too, will heal in time, that the healing power of time outweighs any medicine in her store, and that the healing power of tears matters just as much: feelings kept inside fester like a wound.