"What I'll remember most is the mother's face, so aged but beautiful it was," Chencho says when they get back in the van to return to the city.
The mother, Angela, lives in the small village of Teotitlan del Valle, just thirty minutes outside of the city of Oaxaca. She's lived there her whole life. She grew up speaking not Spanish but Zapotec. Only in the last four years has she begun to understand and speak the national language with her grown children and her growing grandchildren. Angela is not even close to five feet tall. She is round in the middle with muscular legs and arms from her years of labor on the land. Her skin is the deep color of cafe, dotted with freckles. In her skin are the lines of her time in Teotitlan. These are lines that tell stories. She cannot be old, but must be in her forties. But her forty years are wiser, softer, and less rushed than forty years in a city.
Angela sits on the small chair, small enough for an infant, and cleans the lamb's wool. She uses two brushes made of wide wooden pallets with metal bristles. They make contact like velcro but are more stubborn. Pulling one across the other with the wool in the middle pulls out the gnats and dirt and debris that collect in the wool of a lamb. Angela is fierce in her technique. She drags the giant velcro across the other with ease and within just a few strokes she has a perfect square of airborne lint. It is ready to be made into woolen thread.
At the spindle, Angela threads the new tuft of clean wool around the wheel. She balances like a dancer. Her right arm outstretched behind her, cranking the wheel clockwise while her left arm is extended in front of her pulling the raw wool across the needle and feeding it into the wheel and into a spool while she keeps cranking the wheel. The tap tapping of the metal handle against the wooden stand gives her a rhythm to follow. Her lips closed, she looks peaceful. She is happy to share this art with Chenco and Isa.
Luis and Maricela, her son and daughter-in-law, bring their guests a drink to cool off under the hot valley sun. Angelita, the daughter of six years kicks a pelota around the yard. Sometimes she stops to talk to her grandmother. Other times she just leans her head onto Angela's hip. Either way, it is adoration in Angelita's young eyes. When she gets shy from the company, she scampers off with the puppy, a goofy Saint Bernard famously named Bethoven.
The afternoon sun is low and the family should be taking leave of their work at the looms and spindles to eat dinner together. Instead, they show Isa and Chenco the giant looms. There are three, each with a tapeta (tapestry) in progress. Luis makes his blues with a pattern while Maricela's intricate geometric design is kept completely in her mind. They work quickly, threading the wool under and over the guides and then pulling the wooden stop to hammer the new fabric into the exisiting tapestry. The colors are brighter and more brilliant than the coming sunset. Ground into color from nuts (brown), from insects (red, purple, or maroon), from coastal rock (blue), these minerals are set into the threads of wool with potassium mineral also collected from the earth. It takes no less than three weeks to complete one tapestry from beginning to end, considering entire days of work. But no one complains. No one asks for money. No one seems to resent this work they do. Luis shows off the finished product and teaches Isa and Chencho how to know a well-crafted tapestry from a novice. A well-crafted tapestry lies straight and cannot be perforated with a finger. The weave is strong to withhold time.
Angela brings plates full of tamales wrapped in banana leafs and offers them up to her tall guests. She asks Isa and Chencho to eat them and relax a bit, and they do. But a moment doesn't pass that they aren't thinking of that one tapestry with colors of green and cafe con leche, subtle shades of color and comfort. They know they don't deserve this hospitality. They assume they can't afford the tapestry, but Isa would like to take with her the memory of these hours, of this family. Chencho looks at Isa, and as if adpoting the cutest puppy from the pound, they know they will take this one without having to say it.The price is lower than the value of the Mendoza family's time, but they won't accept more.
Luis Lazo Mendoza in his house and place of business, photo by Curt Douglas.
It's the pink hour of evening now. They walk down the hill through an empty mobile carnival. Some children mingle with one another in front of the big white church. Some other children in the courtyard of their school prepare for a parade. One is the band leader, while the others play trumpet, drums, and tuba. A long cachorrito (puppy), a mix of hot dog and basset, gallops along to the van and jumps in. He prefers the driver's seat but when pushed out of that seat, he leaps from seat to seat to seat. He is chaotic in his movements but friendly. His big wet tongue lapping anything it comes in contact with. Isa tries to get into the van and push him out, but all he does is sit on her lap. They laugh until crying, happy for this day and all of its suprises. The dog is finally lured to the street with a snack and doors are closed.
As the van starts up, Chenco and Isa peek into the bag that holds the new tapestry -- their first purchase together, neither one of them claiming the rug as their own. Chencho says he'll remember the mother's face for its aged beauty while Isa silently wishes for more days like this with Chencho. She admires their purchase once more and hopes they will remain strong, withstanding time, like a well-crafted tapestry.
For more information on the Mendoza family's tapestries please visit: http://www.luislazomendoza.com
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