Thinking of Guadalupe

Good evenin'. Late for breakfast.

Today I have been thinking of Guadalupe. I started thinking of her because I have been thinking of doing another painting with the Virgin of Guadalupe in it, but haven't decided what to do.

The Guadalupe I have been thinking of is the Guadalupe who worked for me when I lived up in Mission Hills.  Her brother worked for the old gentleman across the street, and one day the brother, who was kind of a dangerous seeming character and the kind of person you wonder if he was the right person to be caring for an older man--but he was accepted as a neighborhood person. Anyway, he came over and asked me if I'd like to have his sister come over and clean for me every other Saturday, and I thought it over and said I'd give her a try.  Dangerous seeming young Mexican men can have, often do have, very decorous and good sisters, so I felt that I 'd be fine. What's her name? I asked.  Maria, he said.

When she came, she seemed  a very nice, very quiet and rather intimidated person, willing to take orders and also willing to work with simple and inadequate equipment like a pan and a broom, and a string mop, and such. I did not have any fancy stuff.  So she swept away by the hour in that airy house with its bare floors.  I was glad to have her. She was really tickled with my floor polishing machine, and pushed it around happily  till all the floors gleamed.

She was never chatty, very quiet, in fact. But one say, she looked at me with her arresting cock-eyed gaze and said, "You know, I'm called Guadalupe."
I was embarrassed at having called her by the name her brother had told me, and said so. "He told me that your name was Maria, that's all he told me," I said.  She fixed me with her funny look and, smiling, suddenly on very secure ground, said, "Oh, that's all right. After all, we are all Marias, aren't we?"

Her funny little off-kilter gaze was one she employed, I found, on other occasions, when she was telling me the truth.  Such as why her brother could not take a chance on being drafted by the United States: (Gaze) Porque se inyecta.(Gaze. Shamefaced but honest.)  He took drugs...And why she had been under the weather for a few weeks...it was because she had worms, intestinal parasites.
That made me a little nervous but it was soon cleared up, she informed me.

The extent of her poverty at home was slowly made clear to me as we grew closer and would chat together at intervals. Her husband made his living by buying and selling tires, used tires.  It sounded to me as if he worked on a level barely above the criminal life.  Her house was a shack. There was no running water. While she worked for me, they put a pipe into the kitchen so she could have a sink--a great step upward.  And when I offered her some leftover vinyl tiles from a flooring project we had had, she took them and told me that she' d used them to cover a rough board counter that they had put the sink into--and she was so happy to have them.

I have often wondered about what she thought of me and my life.  When I sold my house, she was so impressed.  Looking at me cock-eyed,  sharing what she imagined to be my gratification to  make a big sale,  "Such a big house: I bet you sold it for--ten thousand dollars!!" she said in awe.  I told her a lie, I just said that the house really belonged to my family and I just sold it for them. This is a handy line for any and all Latinos and I wish I'd thought of it also when some other people were a bit too close to me for comfort.

She was a wonderful help to me. I wish I knew where she was now, and what she looks like and if she is in good health after these twenty five years have gone by.  But what I will always remember and love her for is that she gave me that wonderful idea,-- that, after all, we are all Marias, no? YAZZYBEL