lilvia soto

Dolores

​

I see your signature and start crying,

had not seen it in fifty years,

recognize it 

as if I had seen it yesterday.

 

As a child I saw you sign as widow of Soto 

and thought of you as a grandmother dressed in black,

but here it says Dolores McNerny,    

same handwriting,

unmistakable,

doesn’t say widow.

 

It is your marriage license, 

and I see you dressed in illusion,

in love, 

your whole life ahead of you.

 

Now I know you married at twenty, as I did,

that your mother had already died,

that Abuelo, a year older,

was from Jiménez, 

not from Villa de Santa Rosalía de Camargo,

as I believed,

that your wedding took place in your father’s house.

 

The city’s chronicler tells me it used to be a hotel,

that the building, 

with its large carved wooden gate,

is still intact.

 

I take photographs from different angles,

from the corner, from across the street,

of the pink rain-stained wall,

of the area above the door, its outer layers peeling, 

revealing older times,

of the windows wrought-iron fenced to the sidewalk, 

of the name of the street, Lerdo de Tejada 702,

previously Number 3 Calle Irigoyen.

 

I photograph the cross formed by the names of the streets,

Lerdo de Tejada and Benito Juárez,

of the sign that says 30 kilometers per hour.

 

A young man approaches on Benito Juárez,

a grey-haired woman passes in front of the gate,

clouds gather, darken the afternoon,

an old car goes by 

at 30 kilometers per hour.

 

No one comes out of the gate,

no one peeks through the lace curtains.

Time maintains its integrity,

doesn’t allow a fissure 

to let the echo of your voice escape.

Would I recognize it?

 

Leafing through other archives,

old documents in different handwritings and ink colors

reveal episodes 

my family of silences kept quiet.

 

Still others went up in smoke 

during the Cristero Wars,

or, turning to dust, fall from my fingers 

as the yellowed pages disintegrate

when light reaches them.

 

Your first-born dies at birth,

before my father’s first birthday, 

Villa murders your husband,

you inaugurate your mourning 

in a black maternity tunic, 

your daughter dies at birth.

 

Your father dead, 

you give your younger sister in marriage.

You are twenty-three, 

dress in black the rest of your life.

 

Dolores, why did you choose that name

when they baptized you Genoveva?

Was it your name or the Revolution?

Why didn’t anybody tell me?

Why did they let me learn about 

our glorious Revolution

from novels and text books?