“Three Men” and a Baby

A few times a week I receive a recording from my grandmother. It comes in a text through an app we are using and says “audio” next to a little tape. I usually save it to my files to listen to at a later time. When I am ready to write the next piece I listen to a few files in a row, writing as she talks, trying to capture every pause, every inflection and every personal reflection as she processes her memories out loud. I have been pretty good at keeping to a “theme”, being able to jump around through the recordings and group together similar stories or phases in her life, but I also like following her natural process. For this one we see a little bit of what came up for her as she shared a few stories in a row over a few different recordings. What I realize is that while these seem to be two separate “themes”, these two stories were happening at the same time in her life. She is 14 years older than her first little sister, Chi Chi, and 17 years older than her youngest sister, Patty. While she was becoming a young woman, going on first dates, giggling over boys and dancing the jitterbug; she was also welcoming a baby sister. To me that is the beauty of telling her story in the order that she does, because we forget life happens simultaneously. A million things are happening at once. 

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One memory brings another memory which makes me think of so many little details that may not seem important to others but were and are very important to me. Going back to my life in Oruro which was very important to me, it shaped who I became. So I want to talk about my boyfriends, I had a lot of “boyfriends”. I was popular in school, I wasn’t the prettiest girl out there but I was nice, I always had a smile on my face. I think that made me very popular with the guys as I was just confident in who I was. 

My first boyfriend, as I said before, was Johnny Horton, which was a strange “relationship” because we barely ever talked to each other. My second was Moro Guzman who was a very serious young man, he always wore a suit, even in high school. My parents were impressed so he was invited to come and visit me after tea in the evenings. So he asked me to be my boyfriend and I said yes but we never went out and did anything. He would come and talk to my dad a lot and help him with different things and that was it. And then I had a couple of other boyfriends for one or two days but nothing serious. 

The way we did it back then was just a group of boys and girls going out together or to the movies, and you would sit next to your boyfriend, or we would write little notes to each other but that was it, it was just the way it was. Until Chuchi came along, he was one of the students that came from Cochabamba, he was a nice kid, very much into North American Culture. He loved to jitterbug, he wore clothes just like he saw in the movies and he was my boyfriend. I really liked him but never in love. All we did was dance together, we didn’t kiss or hold hands but just loved to have fun. We were never romantic, every time he left to go back to Cochabamba I would go out with other boys but every time he came back I would go back out with Cuchi. 

Around the same time there was this guy named Fernando, he was a funny looking guy but very nice. He studied in Argentina but would somehow come back every weekend and bring me records to listen to. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dorris Day… he brought me 3 or 4 records each visit. He would come in for a cup of coffee sometimes but that was it. He never asked me to be his girlfriend or really spent much time with me except to bring me these records. So I don’t know what that was but I was very thankful for him and all the traveling he did to bring me music I loved. 

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There was an addition to our family, we had a baby girl. Chi Chi, my sister, came into the world. She was born in Oruro and I remember the day so clearly. They took our mattresses to the other side of the house where we had the living room away from the bedrooms so we wouldn’t hear anything. They had the midwife come over, we knew her because she had been coming to see my mom. We went to the other side of the house while they were on one side. Fernando and I stayed up and waited and Manuel went to sleep, he didn't want to hear that there was going to be another baby and he would no longer be the baby of the house. After many hours my dad came over and told us that we had a little girl. A tiny little girl and we could see her in the morning. We woke up Manuel to tell him we had a girl and he turned around and said “I don’t care!”

The whole town celebrated her birth. My parents were very well known and everyone knew after a few years my mom was going to have a baby, so the whole town was celebrating. We had a lot of people coming by and sending flowers, everyone was just so happy to welcome her into the world and so were we. We were so excited to have a baby again, except for little Manuel, of course. I remember when my mom would come to the bedrooms to kiss us all goodnight he would insist on being the last one to kiss her. He made her promise that no matter how many babies she had that he always had to be the last. But anyway it really was such a happy joyous time welcoming our sweet Chi Chi.