Woman Hollering Creek (19 page)

Exvoto Donated as Promised

On the 20th of December of 1988 we suffered a terrible disaster on the road to Corpus Christi. The bus we were riding skidded and overturned near Robstown and a lady and her little girl were killed. Thanks to La Virgen de Guadalupe we are alive, all of us miraculously unharmed, and with no visible scars, except we are afraid to ride buses. We dedicate this retablo to La Virgencita with our affection and gratitude and our everlasting faith.

Blessed Santo Niño de Atocha,

Thank you for helping us when Chapa’s truck got stolen. We didn’t know how we was going to make it. He needs it to get to work, and this job, well, he’s been on probation since we got him to quit drinking. Raquel and the kids are hardly ever afraid of him anymore, and we are proud parents. We don’t know how we can repay you for everything you have done
for our family. We will light a candle to you every Sunday and never forget you.

Dear San Martín de Porres,

Please send us clothes, furniture, shoes, dishes. We need anything that don’t eat. Since the fire we have to start all over again and Lalo’s disability check ain’t much and don’t go far. Zulema would like to finish school but I says she can just forget about it now. She’s our oldest and her place is at home helping us out I told her. Please make her see some sense. She’s all we got.

Dear San Antonio de Padua,

Can you please help me find a man who isn’t a pain in the nalgas. There aren’t any in Texas, I swear. Especially not in San Antonio.

Can you do something about all the educated Chicanos who have to go to California to find a job. I guess what my sister Irma says is true: “If you didn’t get a husband when you were in college, you don’t get one.”

I would appreciate it very much if you sent me a man who speaks Spanish, who at least can pronounce his name the way it’s supposed to be pronounced. Someone please who never calls himself “Hispanic” unless he’s applying for a grant from Washington, D.C.

Can you send me a man man. I mean someone who’s not ashamed to be seen cooking or cleaning or looking after himself. In other words, a man who acts like an adult. Not one who’s never lived alone, never bought his own underwear, never ironed his own shirts, never even heated his own tortillas. In other words, don’t send me someone like my brothers who my
mother ruined with too much chichi, or I’ll throw him back.

I’ll turn your statue upside down until you send him to me. I’ve put up with too much too long, and now I’m just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.

Dear Niño Fidencio,

I would like for you to help me get a job with good pay, benefits, and retirement plan. I promise you if you help me I will make a pilgrimage to your tomb in Espinazo and bring you flowers. Many thanks.

DEAR DON PEDRITO JARAMILLO HEALER OF LOS OLMOS

MY NAME IS ENRIQUETA ANTONIA SANDOVAL I LIVE IN SAN MARCOS TX I AM SICK THEY OPERATED ME FROM A KIDNEY AND A TUMOR OF CANCER BUT THANKS TO GOD I AM ALIVE BUT I HAVE TO GET TREATMENTS FOR A YEAR THE KIMO I AM 2½ YEARS OLD BUT MY GRANDMA BROUGHT ME THAT YOU AND OUR LORD WHO IS IN THE HEAVENS WILL CURE ME WITH THIS LETTER THAT I AM DEPOSITING HERE ITS MY GRANDMA WHO IS WRITING THIS I HOPE EVERYBODY WHO SEES THIS LETTER WILL TAKE A MINUTE TO ASK FOR MY HEALTH

I LEOCADIA DIMAS VDA. DE CORDERO OF SAN MARCOS TX HAVE COME TO PAY THIS REQUEST TO DON PEDRITO THAT MY GRANDDAUGHTER WILL COME OUT FINE FROM HER OPERATION
THANKS TO GOD AND THOSE WHO HELPED SUCH GOOD DOCTORS THAT DID THEIR JOB WELL THE REST IS IN GODS HANDS THAT HE DO HIS WILL MANY THANKS WITH ALL MY HEART.

Oh Mighty Poderosos, Blessed Powerful Ones,

You who are crowned in heaven and who are so close to our Divine Savior, I implore your intercession before the Almighty on my behalf. I ask for peace of spirit and prosperity, and that the demons in my path that are the cause of all my woes be removed so that they no longer torment me. Look favorably on this petition and bless me, that I may continue to glorify your deeds with all my heart—santísimo Niño Fidencio, gran General Pancho Villa, bendito Don Pedrito Jaramillo, virtuoso John F. Kennedy, and blessed Pope John Paul. Amen.

Father Almighty,

Teach me to love my husband again. Forgive me.

Seven African Powers that surround our Savior—Obatala, Yemaya, Ochún, Orunla, Ogun, Elegua, and Shango—why don’t you behave and be good to me? Oh Seven African Powers, come on, don’t be bad. Let my Illinois lottery ticket win, and if it does, don’t let my cousin Cirilo in Chicago cheat me out of my winnings, since I’m the one who pays for the ticket and all he does is buy it for me each week—if he does even that. He’s my cousin, but like the Bible says, better to say nothing than to say nothing nice.

Protect me from the evil eye of the envious and don’t let my
enemies do me harm, because I’ve never done a thing wrong to anyone first. Save this good Christian who the wicked have taken advantage of.

Seven Powers, reward my devotion with good luck. Look after me, why don’t you? And don’t forget me because I never forget you.

Virgencita de Guadalupe,

I promise to walk to your shrine on my knees the very first day I get back, I swear, if you will only get the Tortillería la Casa de la Masa to pay me the $253.72 they owe me for two weeks’ work. I put in 67½ hours that first week and 79 hours the second, and I don’t have anything to show for it yet. I calculated with the taxes deducted, I have $253.72 coming to me. That’s all I’m asking for. The $253.72 I have coming to me.

I have asked the proprietors Blanquita and Rudy Mondragón, and they keep telling me next week, next week, next week. And it’s almost the middle of the third week already and I don’t know how I’m going to do it to pay this week’s rent, since I’m already behind, and the other guys have loaned me as much as they’re able, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

My wife and the kids and my in-laws all depend on what I send home. We are humble people, Virgencita. You know I’m not full of vices. That’s how I am. It’s been hard for me to live here so far away without seeing my wife, you know. And sometimes one gets tempted, but no, and no, and no. I’m not like that. Please, Virgencita, all I’m asking for is my $253.72. There is no one else I can turn to here in this country, and well, if you can’t help me, well, I just don’t know.

Saint Sebastian who was persecuted with arrows and then survived, thank you for answering my prayers! All them arrows
that had persecuted me—my brother-in-law Ernie and my sister Alba and their kids—el Junior, la Gloria, and el Skyler—all gone. And now my home sweet home is mine again, and my Dianita bien lovey-dovey, and my kids got something to say to me besides who hit who.

Here is the little gold milagrito I promised you, a little house, see? And it ain’t that cheap gold-plate shit either. So now that I paid you back, we’re even, right? Cause I don’t like for no one to say Victor Lozano don’t pay his debts. I pays cash on the line, bro. And Victor Lozano’s word like his deeds is solid gold.

Dear San Lázaro,

My mother’s comadre Demetria said if I prayed to you that like maybe you could help me because you were raised from the dead and did a lot of miracles and maybe if I lit a candle every night for seven days and prayed, you might maybe could help me with my face breaking out with so many pimples.

Thank you.

Santísima Señora de San Juan de los Lagos,

We came to see you twice when they brought you to San Antonio, my mother and my sister Yolanda and two of my aunts, Tía Enedina and my Tía Perla, and we drove all the way from Beeville just to visit you and make our requests.

I don’t know what my Tía Enedina asked for, she’s always so secretive, but probably it had to do with her son Beto who doesn’t do anything but hang around the house and get into trouble. And my Tía Perla no doubt complained about her ladies’ problems—her ovaries that itch, her tangled fallopians, her uterus that makes her seasick with all its flipping and flopping. And Mami who said she only came along for the ride, lit three candles so you would bless us all and sweep jealousy and bitterness from our hearts because that’s what she says
every day and every night. And my sister Yoli asked that you help her lose weight because
I don’t want to wind up like Tía Perla, embroidering altar cloths and dressing saints
.

But that was a year ago, Virgencita, and since then my cousin Beto was fined for killing the neighbor’s rooster with a flying Big Red bottle, and my Tía Perla is convinced her uterus has fallen because when she walks something inside her rattles like a maraca, and my mother and my aunts are arguing and yelling at each other same as always. And my stupid sister Yoli is still sending away for even stupider products like the Grasa Fantástica, guaranteed to burn away fat—
It really works, Tere, just rub some on while you’re watching TV
—only she’s fatter than ever and just as sad.

What I realize is that we all made the trip to San Antonio to ask something of you, Virgencita, we all needed you to listen to us. And of all of us, my mama and sister Yoli, and my aunts Enedina and Perla, of all of us, you granted me my petition and sent, just like I asked, a guy who would love only me because I was tired of looking at girls younger than me walking along the street or riding in cars or standing in front of the school with a guy’s arm hooked around their neck.

So what is it I’m asking for? Please, Virgencita. Lift this heavy cross from my shoulders and leave me like I was before, wind on my neck, my arms swinging free, and no one telling me how I ought to be.

Miraculous Black Christ of Esquipulas,

Please make our grandson to be nice to us and stay away from drugs. Save him to find a job and move away from us.

Thank you.

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Milagroso Cristo Negro de Esquipulas,

Te ofrezco este retrato de mis niños. Wáchelos, Dios Santo, y si le quitas el trago a mi hijo te prometo prender velitas. Ayúdanos con nuestras cuentas, Señor, y que el cheque del income tax nos llegue pronto para pagar los biles. Danos una buena vida y que les ayudes a mis hijos a cambiar sus modos. Tú que eres tan bondadoso escucha estas peticiones que te pido con todo mi corazón y con toda la fe de mi alma. Ten piedad, Padre mio. Mi nombre es Adela O.

Milagroso Cristo Negro,

Thank you por el milagro de haber graduado de high school. Aquí le regalo mi retrato de graduation.

Cristo Negro,

Venimos desde muy lejos. Infinitas gracias, Señor. Gracias por habernos escuchado.

Jesus Christ,

Please keep Deborah Abrego and Ralph S. Urrea together forever.

Blessed Virgen de los Remedios,

Señora Dolores Alcalá de Corchado finds herself gravely ill from a complication that resulted after a delicate operation she underwent Thursday last, and from which she was recovering satisfactorily until suffering a hemmorhage Tuesday morning. Please intercede on her behalf. We leave her in the hands of God, that His will be done, now that we have witnessed her suffering and don’t know whether she should die or continue this life. Her husband of forty-eight years offers this request with all his heart.

Madrecita de Dios,

Thank you. Our child is born healthy!

Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes,

Help me pass my English 320, British Restoration Literature class and everything to turn out ok.

Virgencita …

I’ve cut off my hair just like I promised I would and pinned my braid here by your statue. Above a Toys “ᴙ” Us name tag that says
IZAURA
. Along several hospital bracelets. Next to a business card for Sergio’s Casa de la Belleza Beauty College. Domingo Reyna’s driver’s license. Notes printed on the flaps of envelopes. Silk roses, plastic roses, paper roses, roses crocheted out of fluorescent orange yarn. Photo button of a baby in a
charro
hat. Caramel-skinned woman in a white graduation cap and gown. Mean dude in bandanna
and tattoos. Oval black-and-white passport portrait of the sad uncle who never married. A mama in a sleeveless dress watering the porch plants. Sweet boy with new mustache and new soldier uniform. Teenager with a little bit of herself sitting on her lap. Blurred husband and wife leaning one into the other as if joined at the hip. Black-and-white photo of the cousins
la
Josie
y la
Mary Helen, circa 1942. Polaroid of Sylvia Rios, First Holy Communion, age nine years.