Lydia Maria Sanchez

Lydia Maria Sanchez       clcronan 2020

I can’t believe it took this long for someone to figure it out. There is definitely a sense of relief to letting go of the burden of this secret, after all, it’s been 70 years. Nearly my entire life. My grandson decides to do his genealogy and, peels the truth out one layer at a time. My father died in a terrible accident, my mother abandoned me, and there’s a headstone in Restful Meadows that shares my name. But that Lydia Maria Sanchez died at birth. He wanted to know who she was so I told him. We sat on the creaky front porch swing, with the smell of jasmine drifting in from the garden, and I told him.

My folks were migrant workers in Florida and Georgia and Alabama. That group of rag-tags was a very tight community. I remember that whenever we ventured into any of the towns we camped near, always being picked on something fierce, but feeling safe and happy when we sat by a fire late into the night singing to each other. I think my earliest memory is from about 5 or 6 years old. I was curled up in my daddy’s lap, and he stroked my hair while I drifted off to sleep to the sound of los cantors and the smell of the burning cedar.

Of course that sense of safety and peacefulness gets really blurry just a few years after that. I was struggling at yet another school and with yet another group of kids when early puberty set in. Of course I was held back a few grades all the time due to my “lack of educational stability.”

An 11 year old in a fourth grade classroom was a classic “programmed for failure” set up. Eyes followed me everywhere. Sad eyes, suspicious eyes, confused eyes, angry eyes, glaring eyes, and then came the lecherous eyes. They burned into me like lasers. Even in my own community, but worst of all, even in my own home. I would grow tense, scared, every time i heard the snickers from the men and the smell of cheap cologne mixed with days old sweat as they passed by too often and too close.

I started to get defensive and surly. I dreamt of returning all those unwanted stares with a hate-fulled glare of my own that would stop them all in their tracks, and of building a safe-zone around me that no-one could enter. Of course those were my dreams, while my reality was that I hardly ever looked up at anyone, and resented my body for changing and making me feel so vulnerable. I withdrew as far as I could from everything and everyone in my ill-formed efforts to stay safe, stay young, stay happy. I believe that men smell pheromones from women the way dogs and bulls know when females are in estrus. I didn’t know all the right words for that but I knew it anyway. Puberty was unkind to me. My head filled with the sounds of my own silent gasps of fear, and screams of frustration.

Then, in spite of all my wishing for the contrary, the boys, and even some of the men, started to speak to me in low voices asking me to follow them behind the barn, or deep into the fields, or out to their truck. I don’t know why, but I just smiled meekly and averted my eyes, and moved away from them. I never spoke up. I never said, “go away,” or “leave me alone,” or anything real. I hated them, and I hated me. They smelled of long days in the fields, and the gravel below their boots sounded like laughter from hell, so I got pretty good knowing when anyone was approaching, and managed to stay a pace or two away from them all.

I looked on whenever one of the older girls had her Quinceanera. Some of them were very flirty and seemed to glow under all the attention, which all the old women would be horrified about. Others were very shy, and looked like they wished it would all be over. The old women would cluck about how ungrateful that girl was being to her family and her whole community. Mine was still a few years off, but I already knew which kind of talk I would cause. I could not shrink small enough now, how could it be any different then? The people who had once doted on me, were going to be disappointed in me on the biggest day of my life. When I tried to tell my mother I did not want a celebration, she just laughed and shooed me away. I’d go hide behind the barns and try to take solace in the smell of the manure and the sound off the cows lowing in their stalls. Cows were docile just like me. So I stayed there, hiding, whenever I could.

My mother was never one to believe in public displays of affection, nor private displays either. I knew she loved me, but not by hugs and kisses and sweet nicknames, but because she always made sure I was fed, and clothed, and got to school as much as possible so I could live a better life someday. That was her favorite thing to talk about, how her Lydia “was going to rise up over the moon and be able to take care of her parents in their old age.” I couldn’t imagine how and I wished she would tell me how, but she’d just laugh and shoo me away. She stood over a cook top every night, mostly making rice and beans. But I’d dream that maybe that was the smell of her home town, and that maybe some part of her could remember being a young girl. But she never said anything like that, she would hum the songs that she would sing at night by the fires, but she would never tell stories about her life.

My father handled my “entering womanhood” about as well as I did. The dad who had called me every sweet nickname in the books, and tossed me in the air and kissed my cheek every time he caught me, and cuddled with me by the fires, was now distant and grouchy, and averted his eyes from me. I felt shame, like I did something wrong, but could not figure out just exactly what I did so wrong as to drive my own Papa away. Whenever he’d catch a glimpse of me, he’d rub his hand across the stubble on his face, then rub his neck, but never say anything sweet, or smile the joyful smile I missed so desperately. When he got home at night he smelled of motor oil from working on the trucks and tractors, and barely speak at all. Dinner was just the sound of plates scraping, and cups clinking, a I don’t think my parents ever noticed my eyes begging them to bring back our happiness.

Then he started drinking more. My mother would grab me by the sleeve and pull me all the way back to our cabin whenever he started making angry remarks that I didn’t understand. He’d sleep outside whenever that happened. And in the morning, when he’d avert his eyes, I could only think, “I am sorry, Papa.” as if I caused all the trouble to happen. Mama became angrier and she was very short with me, so I could only think, “i am sorry, Mama, I would fix all of this if only I knew how.” All the while the hot sun baked the tin walls of the cabin, until they smelled like they were melting, there was no breeze to lift away the smells from the latrine so everything around me seemed rancid. And the heat bugs whined and clicked at all hours day and night as if to taunt me that there was no escape.

At night, by the fires, the men and the boys would try to stand close to me, or they’d ask me to dance, or they’d bring me a drink, or the’d find a hundred other ways to make me wish I could disappear. Papa would growl at them until they went away, then he would not look at me.

Until September of my 14th year. 14. So young. Even 70 years has not freed me from the pain of that autumn, or all the winters that followed. 

I went out to bring my father a blanket on yet another night he slept outside of our cabin. For years I had nightmares in which all I was doing was putting the blanket back on my bed where it belonged. All I was doing is stopping all that happened next. 

My father must have heard me tiptoeing near to him, because as I stretched to silently drape the blanket over him, he reached up and grabbed my wrist with such force I thought maybe some other man had fallen asleep in his chair. Our eyes met. I was frozen with fear. He looked like a wild animal. He signaled for me to remain quiet. I felt paralyzed, so I’m not sure I could have cried out even if I wanted to. He lifted me like a bride and part of my heart was broken for the longing I had for him to hold me and stroke my hair like when I was his “Princesa.” Part of my heart was frozen in fear of the look on my fathers face. I did not know him now.

He took me to the far, dark corner of the post-harvest field, where the smell of rot from all the fallen and trampled vegetation was repugnant. The animal he had become showed no concern for me. He put me down onto the broken stems and muddy compost, and from there I cannot put any more words together to describe how the world ended that night. That night in September of my 14th year.

He grunted, got up, and began to walk away. My hatred toward him was blinding. My rage was all I knew. The betrayal - he would not simply walk away from this betrayal! 

There, leaning against the tractor, was a scythe. I was sure it was too heavy, and the blade too dull, but I was also sure reality did not factor into anything in this night, or in this new world.

No longer meek, or afraid, or filled with guilt, no now I was claiming my rights to myself. I was my own protector and defender. Judge and jury, and that monster was guilty.

I grabbed the handle of that scythe as if it were my scepter to be claimed. My legs carried me as if they were fueled by a thoroughbred race horse. My father never saw it coming, though his eyes remained open as his head hit the ground. His body, and all that blood, to be compost for the next crop. I think I let out a warriors howl, but I can’t be sure, Nothing was real. Nothing made sense. And I have never spoken of this before.

Seven months later, when all the dust began to settle around the drama and mystery of my fathers death, my mother figured out that I was pregnant. I think I knew, but so desperately wanted it to be anything else that I just ignored all of the signs. My period no longer came because my rage drove it off, I was nauseas all the time because the smell of farmland had soured for me, my clothes didn’t fit because I wasn’t working or playing the way I did last year. 

But my mother would not be swayed by any of those arguments and dragged me to the clinic.

The test was positive. We did not speak on the way home.

When we got in the door to the cabin, she turned and slapped me hard across the face and demanded to know who the father was. I knew there was only one possibility, but I also knew that nothing could ever make me tell her. I wanted that night to die, and the only way to kill it was to never speak of it. She screamed a lot about money, shame, futures, men, boys, sluts, and how she couldn’t be expected to deal with so much. 

When I woke the next morning she was gone.

June third, Lydia Maria Sanchez was born. It was a still birth. I was sure it was punishment for being a young girl who knew no better. I stayed with the community just long enough to bury her. It felt right to see my name on the headstone. Like it would somehow keep us bound together in the space between life and death.

I managed, lord knows how, to live a long time after that day, and the day my mother left, and the day my father died. And I have lived long enough to be found out. That year that ended my childhood somehow started a new life for me. Now as an old woman, I have so much I would like to say to that young girl I used to be. And to that baby I only carried, but never knew. And to all those I have loved since then. But I think we all need to find our own way. 

I wonder now if my life will change again because I told my story. A story that defined everything about me. A story that will change the way people look at me, even my grandson who thought he wanted to know. Well, no matter, I don’t feel like holding that secret anymore. I won’t avert my eyes or feel shame for being both a victim and a survivor. That’s life.