Jesus

The Mustard Tree

            We have spent days in the sun, and I have traveled along side my mother and my younger brother. I have held her hand from the beginning of our journey that the sweat of our hands have wrinkled the palm and fingers pf my hand. We have been on the move since the last raid of our pueblo, at the height of the revolucion, the Spanish troops have been moving over the land as death its self. I have been the byproduct of this insurrection. My father was a Spanish man and my mother an indigenous woman, and I was a mixto, the breed between civility and savagery, terms that at no point reflect their characters. Stratified by the three classes no sum of wealth, land, or office can move you. You are differentiated by your skin and your tongue, we both spoke Spanish but my mother spoke Nahuatl, the language of our ancestors, a gift that my father gave us who is now in what the Spanish called heaven and my mother peace.

            We are now two souls roaming for a place to rest, after my mother had been a victim of the lust, and savagery of the Spanish soldiers. The image is vivid and fresh within my memory as she groaned in pain and rebellion, as she fought the hands that pulled her to the floors, and the result of such crime against her nature was the product of life that now beats to the rhythm of her heart, within her. We have come to a stop and my mother threw her body with delicacy in order not to harm the life within her and the my younger brother that was neatly swaddled with a colorful woven sarape made from the cotton that my mother her self grew. Her knees touched the floor.

“Look mija feel the earth its alive” she said as she took the soil near a mustard tree where we took refuge from the sun, as she allowed the soil flow between her fingers over and over again now digging a hole.

“Mija, do you still remember the story of how our ancestors know where to stop”

“Yes, you told me that they walked for centuries until they found an eagle feasting on a snake, on a cactus, on a lake, yes I know the story.”

“Well that is how Tenochtitlan came to be, and this is now our city, just look beyond”

I looked into the clear horizon and encountered a faint image in the distance over the valley, my eyes took time to adjust as the heat drained my vision and heat clouded my sight. That image revealed it self to be a hut followed by many more. After I have gazed beyond I turned back my attention to my mother who mindlessly continued to dig as she looked in my direction. The hole was now deep to the point where I could see the roots of the mustard tree, its intricate work resembled such that of my mother's sarape, that held comfortably my younger brother whom she had carried on her back in our journey. She took him and placed him in the hole she had created with her hands.

“Look mija” she said as I held onto her hands filled with soil, and grasped onto the trunk of the tree.

“Nestra Madre, talks to us in many was, her acts are the words, and she has spoken to us, she brought us here, to the soil that would drink from us and we from it. Let us give thanks to her and she thanks us. She took Juan from us and she gave us a new member.”

            I looked at her but I could not hold the tears that would serve as the water to cool my eyes, the sorrow, and the water that would water the soil of this tree along with my mothers. His death came about that night my mother was raped, he had killed my brother, as he ripped him from my arms, and whom the soldiers made me watch as my mother's dignity broke apart. We covered the soil and stared at the mustard tree. She sang a hymn that had transcended in her language in homage of those who passed, as she reclined. We looked back and moved forward.