O'Rourke's magazine
"Sonoran Duende," by Tracey Durgan

Memories from early childhood are such teases, like dreams that leave only a trace behind. An image, a sensation, a hard-to-define mood, or a smell evokes a hint of worlds you could rediscover, if only you knew how. A few days ago, while reading someone's description of getting caught in a gullywasher in Tucson, Arizona, I was amazed to notice the sensation of warm water pushing against my legs. It made me wonder if I'd ever stood in a gullywasher, myself. I think of Hermosillo, where I lived as a small child. I remember fragments of wild stories about the rainy season, and sudden storms, of it pouring on one side of the street while the other side stayed dry. Frogs were part of the stories, too, and what I see in my mind is a carpet of frogs hopping all over the wet roads of the city, invading people's yards, and congregating in Woodstock-style masses around rain pools in the desert beyond. I imagine the thirst in plant and animal membranes finally sated, dust and brittleness all around plumping up with springiness and resilience. Heavy wooden doors on people's houses swelling and sticking in their frames. And, outside the door early mornings, droplets of water sparkling on bottles of pastel fruit-flavored milk. But all I remember clearly of storms, there, are power outages drawing my family close around an oil or kerosene lamp at night, the half-lit strangeness of their familiar faces, and the pleasure of waiting out a small adventure together while the storm pounded and flashed outside.

It was during one of these summer storms in 1968 that my mother went into labor. The next part of the story seems so unlikely I think it can't be true: she drove herself to the hospital through a downpour, the roads running with water. At least one was impassible, forcing her to find another route. The lights were out at the hospital. Did they not have a generator? Where was my father? My mother liked a little excitement, but what was it like for her, giving birth under these circumstances? How was her Spanish? My copper-haired baby brother was born in candlelight, en luz de vela. The nurses, it is said, cried out, "Muy blanco, muy blanco!" (Or was it, "tan blanco!"?)

An expert in early childhood education once told me that I learned Spanish at exactly the wrong time, and maybe this is why I often feel awkward even with my native tongue. When I was two, English became the language I used only with my parents; Spanish was for everything and everyone else. Until we moved again, and then it was for nothing and nobody, and I forgot. Years later, when I was in my teens, Spanish words would pop up into my consciousness: agua, zapato, hermano, leche, gato. I didn't know how to spell them, but I knew what they meant, and I loved the feel of them in my mouth and mind.

As a young woman, I taught myself to make flour tortillas. The taste of the dough, the sight of the thin flat disks swelling with bubbles that often charred a little, the smell of them cooking, all brought back to me just enough of the essence of our Mexico years to leave me yearning. I'd catch a glimpse of Maria beside me, letting me "help" her cook. I'd have the dimmest memory of flitting in front of my parents' cocktail party guests, ecstatic at being allowed to dance for them before having to go to bed. I'd remember the story my dad told about one of these parties, how a man shoved his pistola into the belly of a policeman, and I'd see it so clearly I was sure I was there when it happened. And I'd remember riding my first tricycle outside, yanking the handlebars hard for a daring turn, and it all going wrong, with me falling down in the dust. How it hurt, and how I cried. And how solid and deaf was the heavy wooden door of our house. The footsteps I heard running toward me were Maria's, even though she'd already left for the day and was down the street a ways, and it was she who comforted me and helped me get back up.

I've since learned that more than one woman helped my mother take care of me and my siblings in Mexico. I've seen pictures of one young woman in her teens, who I've been told is Maria, and another woman in her thirties, I think. Maybe I've combined both women into one in my mind? I'm ashamed that I don't know. Nor do I know what their lives were like when they went home, or if either had kids of her own. I don't know what they thought of my parents, or of my siblings and me. What I do know is that these two women strengthened the circle of love that held me, that they filled in the gaps that my parents, out of fatigue or harriedness, left. I hope I wasn't a brat.

After we were back in the States, my father used to ask my brother, every once in a while, what he was going to do about his citizenship. It seemed an odd question to ask a kindergartener, but, then and later, he was curious what my brother would say. I suspect my father also wanted to be reminded of something other than the difficult times we'd fallen into, whether by imagining intriguing future possibilities or reminiscing on those better days in Mexico. Growing up, it seemed my brother was our family's special one, our lucky one, our brilliant one, our funny one. In young adulthood, he was the one with lots of friends, the one so many loved and admired. And then suddenly, when he was twenty-nine, out shopping for furniture with his new wife and mother-in-law, on a beautiful clear January day in Georgia, he was killed by a drunk and drugged driver.

One night later that month, back home in Vermont, I was waiting for sleep when I noticed a woman in my room, rocking by the bed. I recognized my family's rocker, its smooth dark wood and lovely curves. I had rocked in it, myself, many times as a child. The woman's face was tan and a little wrinkled, and her hair was long and thick, black with streaks of grey. She had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, I think, and a thick blanket on her lap. I realized I was dreaming and woke up. I had left the blinds open to let in the moonlight. Somewhere outside, a small group of coyotes were singing. They sounded as close as the picnic table, but I knew they were probably on the next hill over. I didn't get up to see. When I sank under again, I saw she was still rocking beside my bed, speaking to me in Spanish in a low, warm voice. Although I hadn't spoken the language in decades, I knew every word she said, and I was filled with contentment, the spell of her words calling me back to my early life in Mexico and the big innocent love I'd once had for the world around me. But then the oddness of this struck me. As soon as I tried to understand, I lost my ear for Spanish. Worse, I couldn't remember what she'd said before. For a while, I drifted back and forth between these two levels of dreaming and knowing, hoping to bring the mystery up into the light, but it kept slipping away, until it disappeared altogether.

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Tracey Durgan has been a home-school teacher, a single mom, a disability advocate (for one of her children), a bookkeeper, a health food store clerk, a waitress, and a drive-in movie theater popcorn-and-corndog cook. After living in Mexico, Japan, and seven U.S. Atlantic states, she settled in Vermont in 1996. In 2006, she made her two kids proud by graduating with a B.A. in Writing & Literature. She lives in an old farmhouse with her husband and two cats, and a pair of black bantams in the coop out back. Periodically, their home is blessed with the presence of grown children, vegetable seedlings, even baby chicks. She volunteers at the town library and an iguana rescue organization.

Caring for the child: © copyright by Adam Fisher. All rights reserved. His work may be purchased at Fisher Art.

Vermont barn in the rain, 2008. Photo by Alan, found here. Click to enlarge.

Other contributions to O'Rourke's are linked in the column to the right.