Notes from Zacatecas: La Família de Edelmira Rosas

The photograph of Edelmira’s husband, fading yellow and white with age, sits in a place of honor beside the kitchen door. Below it a shelf holds a few burning candles, fake tattered flowers in yellow and white, an icon of La Virgen made of sparkly colored thread. Beneath the shelf stands Edelmira, the proud abuela — grandmother — in the family. She wears a pastel yellow apron, smiles at one of her granddaughters.

Edelmira is 50 years old; if her husband were still alive, he would be 80. Edelmira lives with her only son Oscar in the basement level of a residential block near downtown Zacatecas. Her kids are all grown up; the daughters live above her, one to the left, the other to the right.

“Somos pobres,” Edelmira tells me several times. “We are poor.” When I ask her if it’s difficult to provide for the family, she defers. One of her daughters works as a street vendor; both are married. Edelmira owns this house, and although she calls it a poor woman’s house, ownership means she doesn’t have to pay rent. Edelmira does have to provide for Ocscar, who is unmarried and out of work. When I first met her she jokingly told me to take him back to the United States, so he could find work there.

Edelmira herself works as a housekeeper for a nearby family. She wakes up before sunrise to prepare breakfast for Oscar, then goes to the house where she works to prepare breakfast for another family. Getting off in the afternoon, she dons her apron and cooks for the horde of grandchildren getting out of school. She says it feels as though she’s working all the time.

We dropped in on Edelmira in the afternoon, just as she was making a soup of nopalitos, or cactus, for the kids. She invited us in, served us a bowl and a few tortillas.

Not a lot had changed since our last visit in January; the children all looked the same. Marisela’s older daughter had learned some new English words.

“Tenemos un cat, un dog, y un chicken,” she said proudly.

The story of Edelmira’s family is the story of many families. Long ago she moved from the ranch to the city, grew roots and bore a family. There they live, along the same block, piled into the same building: Edelmira, the chicken, the cat, the dog, three children and six grandchildren.

And above it all, that fading image of Edelmira’s late husband. She told me his name, but I search and search through my notes, and I cannot find it. Still, the name of the man in the photograph isn’t the thing strikes me. It’s those candles on the shelf below. The shelf has the feeling of a small shrine, helped along by the flowers and shimmering image of La Virgen.

I imagine the candles dark and dormant. I imagine Edelmira, alone before sunrise. Too short to reach the shelf, she climbs a chair and strikes a match. I imagine the bright phosphorus flare, lighting up the face in the photograph every morning, every day.