PROLOGUE
It is November. The dirt road leading into the village is slick and icy from the snow, which will turn into mud once the snow melts, making this road almost impossible to travel by car. At the bottom of this dirt road, the century-old cottonwoods encircle the plaza, bringing shade in the summer and pageantry during the fall. Today, they stand bare branched like witches hair standing toward the vast gray sky while a convent of ravens sit, black specks on brown bark against grey sky, calling us from tiny windowless adobe houses into the plaza where dirty snow sticks to our boot as we trudge forward. We wait for Esperanza.
THE MAILMAN
For ten years, I delivered mail in the small communities of northern New Mexico through winter blizzards, summer monsoons, and golden cottonwood Indian summers. I drove my little rickety mail truck from town to town, delivering mail every day, rain or shine. I remember the small town of Truchas. It smelled like earth, not the sanitized earth of California or the rich manure fields of Texas but the stringent smell of pine needles decomposing into dark earth and piñon wood burning in little brown fireplaces in little brown adobes in this little brown town.
This is where I met her - Esperanza.
At ten years old, she was taller than most with thin, wild black hair that everyone tried to tame - first by brushing to the kinky roots out to the straight ends. After her mother bore three more children, one after another, the brushing stopped and gave way to braids that would tangle like the giant roots of the cottonwoods, flat in some spots, puffy and rising from her head in others, giving the impression that this child rose from the tangled and stringent earth roots of Truchas. Her hair finally turned toward her African roots, a strange and wondrous sight, like a wild orchid nourished in a contrary climate.
This exotic flower moved me. I began watching her, looking for excuses to be with her. Church, where we all congregated on Sundays, was the ideal place. I would sit in the back, while her family sat in front of me. I waited and watched her like a hungry coyote, waiting for a scrap of food. She loved church not for the message about “God” but for the singing. She would fling herself at the songs like a drowning swimmer flaying around the melody, and sinking into the harmony.
It is November. The dirt road leading into the village is slick and icy from the snow, which will turn into mud once the snow melts, making this road almost impossible to travel by car. At the bottom of this dirt road, the century-old cottonwoods encircle the plaza, bringing shade in the summer and pageantry during the fall. Today, they stand bare branched like witches hair standing toward the vast gray sky while a convent of ravens sit, black specks on brown bark against grey sky, calling us from tiny windowless adobe houses into the plaza where dirty snow sticks to our boot as we trudge forward. We wait for Esperanza.
THE MAILMAN
For ten years, I delivered mail in the small communities of northern New Mexico through winter blizzards, summer monsoons, and golden cottonwood Indian summers. I drove my little rickety mail truck from town to town, delivering mail every day, rain or shine. I remember the small town of Truchas. It smelled like earth, not the sanitized earth of California or the rich manure fields of Texas but the stringent smell of pine needles decomposing into dark earth and piñon wood burning in little brown fireplaces in little brown adobes in this little brown town.
This is where I met her - Esperanza.
At ten years old, she was taller than most with thin, wild black hair that everyone tried to tame - first by brushing to the kinky roots out to the straight ends. After her mother bore three more children, one after another, the brushing stopped and gave way to braids that would tangle like the giant roots of the cottonwoods, flat in some spots, puffy and rising from her head in others, giving the impression that this child rose from the tangled and stringent earth roots of Truchas. Her hair finally turned toward her African roots, a strange and wondrous sight, like a wild orchid nourished in a contrary climate.
This exotic flower moved me. I began watching her, looking for excuses to be with her. Church, where we all congregated on Sundays, was the ideal place. I would sit in the back, while her family sat in front of me. I waited and watched her like a hungry coyote, waiting for a scrap of food. She loved church not for the message about “God” but for the singing. She would fling herself at the songs like a drowning swimmer flaying around the melody, and sinking into the harmony.