Maria's Life in Guatemala and USA

By Maria M. Torres

Maria's story begins in Guatemala, a country in Central America. It describes the hardships, mischievousness, and happiness of her childhood, along with her parents, five brothers, and four sisters. At an early age and being the oldest child, she assumes the responsibility to take care of her younger siblings. Despite their poverty and austere life, Maria and her family enjoy the best they can with their scarce resources.

Destiny takes Maria to Los Angeles, California, a place where she settles and starts a new family. She meets her future husband, Cree, and has two children who are her world. It also depicts the sacrifices, challenging experiences, and the long hours of hard work she endures to begin building the foundation for a better future not only for herself but for her family as well.

Maria's story is an ordinary but a unique story given her humble beginnings, her adaptation to a new society, and her successful achievements. This is a story of a simple and brave woman, an inspiration to emulate!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781647018641

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Maria's Life in Guatemala and USA

Maria M. Torres

Copyright © 2022 Maria M. Torres

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

The information in this book is true and complete to the best of my knowledge. The author disclaims any liability in connection with the use of the information contained in this book.

ISBN 978-1-64701-863-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-64701-864-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Early Life in Guatemala

My Journey to the United States

Lorenzo's Oil

The Brain Trust

Vacations

About Maria

I want to express my gratitude to Page Publishing, Inc. for reviewing, accepting, editing, and printing my manuscript. Especially to the Publication Coordinator Ms. Lana Beers and the Editing Team for their understanding and efforts to make it readable given my English limitations. My dream was only realized because of their patience and hard work. Thank you so much, muchas gracias!"

Life certainly has its challenges. There have been many times when I had experienced moments of hopelessness and despair, but something gave me the courage and strength to keep going. It's called faith in God.

Early Life in Guatemala

I had a wonderful life growing up in Guatemala, with my parents, five brothers, four sisters, and my niece Lily. We were very poor, but in our house, there was love and understanding. My mother's name was Catalina. She was a beautiful and special lady. She was petite and slender, with fair skin and a pointed nose and long wavy black hair. She was a saint. She was always concerned about others. She was born in a small picturesque town named Palencia. It sits in a small green valley surrounded by beautiful mountains and wildflowers. She once told me after all those years that Palencia never changed that much. It kept its natural beauty. From there, her family moved 150 miles away to Mataquescuintla, where she met my father, Romulo, and they fell in love. They were both very young. She was only fifteen, and my dad, twenty. My father was slender and tall with a dark complexion; he was a wonderful, very honest, and hardworking man.

My grandmother, Mama Luz, fell in love with a handsome man named Mariano, who came from a wealthy family, but they never married. At that time, it was the custom that no decent girl should have premarital relationships. However, Mama Luz had gotten pregnant by my grandfather Mariano and had baby Romulo (my father), who was born out of wedlock. Subsequently, she had three more children from another man—my uncle Faustino Tino and my aunts Guicha and Anna. She struggled to support her four children. Grandma liked to party so much to the extent that she would lock them in the house and tell them she was going out. They would get so hungry to the point that my father would climb out of a high window and go out to steal food from the stores and take fruits and vegetables from their neighbor's plantation to feed them. One day, my father took some corn from his house to sell it to buy food, and Grandma spanked him and accused him of stealing. I know that my father was wrong, but he was young and brave. At that time, he did what he thought was his only choice to feed his siblings. My grandma, despite all her wrong doings, was a good person and an excellent cook. Her pancakes were special because she made them with syrup from sugar and cinnamon. I love my grandma.

My father had to work hard from age ten to help Mama Luz to support his siblings. After he returned from work sometimes, Grandma would tell him she would go buy food for his dinner, but she wouldn't return until the next day. When my father was thirteen, he wasn't happy living with his mother, so he went to live with his father and his stepmother, Maria. He worked hard in my grandfather's coffee plantation. My father was very smart even though he never had a formal education and couldn't write his own name. His half sister, Aunt Chavelita, taught him how to read and write. Now he could at least sign his name on important papers. While he was living in his father's house, he learned everything he could about the coffee business, which later led him to have his own business. He lived there until he got married at age twenty. My grandfather was against the marriage because my mother was a daughter of a poor family.

My mother got pregnant with me when she was fifteen years old, and because my father loved my mother very much, he married her when I was five months old. When I was seven years old, my aunt Victoria told me the circumstances of my parents' marriage. (It hurt and saddened me to learn that I was born before they got married.) My grandfather Mariano was opposed to the wedding, but my great-grandfather Papa Tin organized a big celebration in the hall of the mayor's office. My mother told me that a lot of rich people, relatives, and friends came to the wedding celebration, but only one person, my aunt Tina, brought a gift—it was a coffeepot and two mugs made of clay. For my mother, it was the most wonderful gift because they were so poor. They used it for years until they could afford a better one.

After the wedding, they rented a room, and my father went to pick up his bed and other belongings to start a new life with his wife and their five-month-old baby, me. When he got to Grandfather's house, his bed was outside under a lemon tree. The beddings were on the floor in the corner of his bedroom. He asked his stepmother, Maria, why his bed was outside under the tree, and she answered that he could not take the bed because it belonged to her family. My mother told me that throughout the years, the bed gradually disintegrated because of the elements. My mother was gracious and smart and told my father not to worry because they still love each other very much. She said that they would sleep on the floor, and together, they would work hard and would save enough money to buy a bed someday. They bought a petate—a mattress made of palm leaves—and used it to sleep on the floor, and they used their clothes as pillows. My father continued to work and receive salary from his father.

My mother's parents, Mama Chayo (grandmother) and Papa Miguel (grandfather), were poor but very honest people. My grandfather grew vegetables and avocados. He had a wooden box, about ten by ten, to ripen the avocados. On some occasions, my aunts Esperanza and Lila, my uncle Tin, my brother Teto, and I went up in a ladder and ate the avocados that weren't ripe yet; and we left the marks of our teeth on them. I didn't know whether my grandpa knew it was us or not, but he said he would buy traps to kill the rats. We were little devils when he said that and kept our silence. My grandmother sewed clothes to help support their sixteen children. When I grew up, my grandma and my aunt Delfina taught me how to sew. I used to make my mom's, my sister's, and my own clothes.

My grandparents lived and took care of a beautiful villa. It had a large, wide hall entrance, with high arches that led to the kitchen and many bedrooms to accommodate all the children. It sat on a small hill that required a few steps to reach it. It had exotic plants hanging in the hall and a big kitchen with a large tiled running water basin (pila) where my grandmother, mom, and aunts washed dishes and clothes. In the garden bloomed calla lilies; white, yellow, and purple daisies; and palm trees, and it was surrounded by bougainvillea. There was a water fountain in the center of the patio and a small fishpond. I was born in that amazing place.

We lived in that villa for many years until the owner sold it to Adolfo and his wife, Chila. They brought their son Chanjo to live with them. He wasn't very friendly, and he always looked preoccupied. He married a beautiful girl named Lolita from a small town and had many children. They owned a small ranch with cows and produced cheese and sour cream that they sold in the villa. My mom used to send me there to buy cheese or cream. I was so happy to have an excuse to see the villa again, where I once felt like a princess. I had always wished my mom would send me more often because I really loved it there.

Later, we moved into my grandfather's land. On the land, my parents built a one-room house made of sticks and hay as a kitchen and bedroom to live in. We didn't have furniture. We sat and put our plates on the floor. They built a bed without nails and tied sticks with dried stems from the banana trees to secure it. They were happy to finally have a bed. By then, they had two more children, my brothers Teto and Camilo. This was a beautiful area, and the house was surrounded by yellow-colored flowers. It looked like a yellow oasis to me. The ranch was called Flor Amarillo (yellow flower). My father managed to buy a cow that gave us milk every day, and we made cheese from the leftover. By then, my uncle Abel built a house for his daughter and her husband. Medarda was my godmother, and Tino, my godfather. They had five children and were our neighbors.

One day, my mother asked me to take milk to my godmother, who was my father's cousin. I was so happy to visit her, and she had a Chihuahua. After I knocked and called my madrina (godmother), she opened the door, and the little dog barked and barked at me. I motioned my hand to quiet him, but he jumped at me and made me fall on the floor and bit my back. My madrina put lemon on the bite and said it wouldn't get infected, but it really hurt! I screamed so loud that my mother heard me and came over running to see what happened to me. I was surprised that this little dog could make me fall on the floor and drop the milk. I laugh so much whenever I think about this incident.

By this time, my godmother and godfather had eight children, but Tino didn't like to work. Every Sunday, he would go to town where my uncle Abel and his wife, Chenta, supplied enough food to feed his eight children. Eventually, my godmother separated from him because she got tired of her husband not working. She stayed in the house with six children, and he took two to live in the city of Guatemala. Once, my father saw him with one of his daughters, begging for money in the street. He had his eyes closed, pretending to be blind. My father was ashamed for Tino's daughters and felt Tino behaved disgracefully as a son of the Albizures, a prominent and hardworking family. My godmother moved to Mataquescuintla, and there she had an affair with a married man and had two children with him. This really hurt his wife, Clemencia. Godmother, I still love you.

My father bought a two-month-old dog and named him Tiger. It was a Dalmatian, with black and gray spots. When he was a puppy, Tiger would chew on my father's socks and eat our chickens' eggs. After we told him No, no, no, he stopped doing it. He lived to be eighteen years old, and I felt like we grew up together. When he passed away, we buried him and planted beautiful flowers, and we cried because we lost part of our family.

At Flor Amarillo, my father befriended a couple. They had a daughter named Stefani, who became my friend. We played in a dollhouse that we built with blankets and sticks. She was my only best friend in this beautiful place. After my family moved, I wish I had kept in touch because I loved her so much. From Flor Amarillo, we moved to Casa de Tabla (house of wood). This house was also on my grandfather's property. The house was on the main road, and a lot of merchants passed by to sell their goods. This house was large and only had a little walk to enter it.

My aunt Maruca came to visit us for one month. She and my mother decided to build a wider entrance. On Sundays, when my father went to Mataquescuintla to sell his vegetables, I helped my mother and aunt to begin construction of the new entrance. It was about two hundred feet long and ten feet wide. I was about six years old at the time. I was so dirty; my whole body was covered with mud. My mother and aunt were so funny. When they saw the merchants coming, we would laugh and run into the house to hide. We didn't want anybody to see our dirty appearance. After the merchants passed, we went back to work. We would run back and forth all day long. It was so much fun for me to see them dirty. When my father returned, he was surprised to see how hard we worked. It took us about five Sundays, from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., to complete the project. At that time, my mother was young and beautiful. My mother and aunt looked very different then. My mother had fair skin, and my aunt had a darker complexion and was a bit on the heavy side with a round face. She had short hair, which never grew, but my aunt was the best person in the world.

Once, my aunt Victoria came to stay with us. We used to play hide-and-seek behind the bushes. During this time, my aunt told me once while I was lying in bed—it was time for lunch, and they tried to wake me up—that they couldn't find my pulse and my heartbeat. My mother was so worried, and she sent my aunt to find my father. My parents were so sad; they thought I had died because I stopped breathing for two whole hours. I must have fallen in a deep sleep. They were crying, and some neighbors came over. My aunt said they put me on a table to get me ready for the viewing, and suddenly, I woke up. My parents were so happy. They got on their knees to thank God. To this day, I wonder if this was a dream of hers. I wish I could ask my parents if this really happened to me. Off and on, she used to tell me I was lucky to be alive because I was dead for two hours.

We had a neighbor named Anita, who had a few daughters. I befriended with the younger daughter Antonia. She would come over to play with me. Antonia's family lived on my grandpa's land. I remember a big wooden gate that her mother, Anita, was charged to open and close whenever someone wanted to visit my grandfather's land.

Eventually, my grandfather learned to like my mother. When he went to visit the Black Christ in Esquipulas, he brought me a wooden doll. This doll had rubber bands to join the legs and arms. I began rolling the legs and arms, and when I put the doll on the floor, the doll started jumping all over the room, and it scared me. I thought I was going to die. My mother was in the other room, making tortillas. She laughed but very soon realized that I was really scared. She came running to hug me so tight, saying everything was okay. I was the only lucky grandchild who received a gift from my grandfather, because my nine brothers and sisters never got anything from him. This was the first memory in my early years.

My father told my mother he had been thinking that we needed a better life. He asked my uncle Abel if he could cut down some trees, and after he sold the wood, he could pay him back. My uncle Abel agreed. He did that many times. He started making money in this way. My uncle knew my father was a good worker because he used to work for him, milking cows and making cheese and sour cream. Sometimes my father cut twenty to thirty trees and sold them, paying my uncle back. Because my uncle helped him so much, my father was able to start his own business. They sold truckloads of wood and took them to the city. I remember one afternoon about 5:00 p.m. Horacio came with his truck to pick up wood and brought a young man to help him. I was so young, but I noticed him as I sat on our porch in this beautiful valley. I never saw him again until years later. I never thought I would be engaged to him.

My father used to plant all kinds of vegetables (potatoes and corn), and we had chickens. By then, my parents managed to save enough money to buy a house in the town of Mataquescuintla (my birthplace). The new house had four bedrooms and a long, wide hall. In the center of the kitchen, there was a badly built tub for washing clothes that didn't work. The water never filled it. My parents opened a grocery store in this house. Later, they started selling liquor. That was a bad idea. Lots of men came and got drunk. One night, someone shot a drunk man. My father told the injured man to go home because he didn't want to be responsible for the incident. My father thought the man left, but he died on the side of the store. People thought he was asleep because he was sitting, but he was dead. My father should have called the police, but he didn't. A lot of people were talking in the town, saying the person who owned the gun was my father, but he didn't own one. The police put my father in jail. I don't know why my mother's father and brother-in-law were accused too, because they were not even there, but they too were put in jail. They transferred them on mules to a bigger jail four hours away. They were in jail for about a year. My mother, aunt Delfina, and grandmother went to visit them. They left at Saturday at 4:00 a.m. and returned Sunday night. They rode mules because in my town, there was no other transportation.

I loved my father so much that when people would ask me how he was, I'd start crying. My grandmother Mama Luz came to live with us from the city. She used to work as a housekeeper. Her boss (Beatrice) came to live with us also. She was a Romanian and was called Princess Romania. She was tall and sophisticated, with shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes. She used to wear large earrings. Mama Luz and Beatrice helped my mother a lot when my father was in jail. By this time, my mother had six children altogether. After a year in jail, they went to trial. The judge dismissed the case because there wasn't enough evidence. After they came home, my father was sad and disappointed with the people and his friends in town. He wondered how anyone could accuse him about something he didn't do, and he never even owned a gun. The case was never solved; only God knows who killed the poor man.

For a while, my father worked in a mine that they were excavating in town, but later, he got sick with mumps. He had a high fever, and both sides of his jaw were swollen. As sick as he was, he went to work. After he returned, he told my mother, I'm so sick. I think I'm dying because my private parts are swelling. At that time, we didn't have a doctor in our town. My mother told me to fetch Tona, the midwife, and tell her to please hurry because we needed her help. After she arrived, she examined my father and said the mumps went into his testicles. She needed a man's help to suspend him upside down from the ceiling, then she would massage his private parts with a special oil. My mother would ask me and my siblings to go outside to play. We could hear him screaming with excruciating pain while she massaged him. She continued to do this daily for three days, and he soon got better. I was very young, but I was amazed with home remedies. I was glad Tona knew what to do. Thank you, Tona, for healing my father. Soon after that, he went back to work in the mines like nothing ever happened.

In Mataquescuintla, my parents enrolled me in a school. On my first day of class, a policeman brought some girls to school. He picked them up when they were selling vegetables and fruits in the street to help their parents support their siblings. Today I think it was a wonderful idea for the mayor of our town to force the parents to send their children to school. If it were not for that, they never would have had the opportunity to learn. Some of the girls were ten to twelve years old. I remember seeing their baskets full of fruits and vegetables at the corner of our classroom. I became friends with Juana, Tona, and Martha. They were beautiful girls, and I love them.

On weekends, I used to sell vegetables and fruits in town to help my parents to support my siblings. I used to knock on this lady's door, and one time, she asked me if my parents' names were Catalina and Romulo. I answered yes. She asked me if I was her goddaughter. She remembered she was the godmother of my parents' children. She couldn't remember if it was a boy or girl. When I got home, I told my mom about this lady (Rupa). My mother said, Yes, she is your godmother. I don't know why, but I never stopped at her house again to sell my vegetables. She was my best customer. I said, I'm sorry. I never came to tell you that you are my madrina. I never returned after that. She probably figured out why. She guessed right.

On September 15, the day of our independence, I performed in a play with a group of girls. The name of the play was Soy Carbonera (I Am the Charcoal Lady). Soy carbonera que vengo de las cumbres si señor a vender mi carboncito negro, si señor, which translates to I am the charcoal lady that came from the mountains, yes, sir, to sell my black charcoal, yes, sir. I had a beautiful dress with a lot of colors, like what the Indians wear. I needed a charcoal to put in my basket. I asked my mother to give me a penny or two, but we were so poor my mother couldn't give me any money. We sat there waiting for our turn to sing, but I had no charcoal in my basket. Margot, my schoolmate, the sister of my friend Norma, asked why I didn't have charcoal. I told her my mother didn't have the money. She was so nice and put half of her charcoal in my basket. Now I could sing like a happy charcoal lady. Thank you, Margot, you helped me when I needed it so badly.

While I was attending school, I had a friend named Consuelo who came with her sister every week and stayed in a hotel to attend my school. On weekends, they would return home fifty miles away. One weekend, when she was going home, she told me they were having a fair in her hometown. That Sunday night, I dreamed that Consuelo fell from a Ferris wheel and died. I woke up crying and felt heartbroken. When I returned to school on Monday, I heard news that Consuelo had fallen from a Ferris wheel and died. I couldn't believe my dream became a reality. I wish I told her parents that I was their daughter's best friend and that I loved her very much. It's been about sixty years since Consuelo died, and I still remember her beautiful face.

My father wasn't happy living in the house where the crime occurred. He asked his father if we could move to live on his land in Pino Dulce (Sweet Pine). This house was beautiful. My uncle Miguel Angel and father became partners and managed my grandpa's wood business together. They took my mother with them to the city to sell truckloads of Christmas trees. They made a good profit. My mother loved this season. She would be pretty dressed up. After they returned, they brought many Christmas gifts for us. For us, the candy was the best.

My father wanted me to stay with my grandmother in town to attend school. I didn't want to continue my education because I loved my parents and brothers and sisters too much. I didn't want to be separated from them. I pleaded with my parents to not make me go to school, to take me back with them. After a while, my father got tired of hearing me beg and cry. He told me, Okay, if you want to be a dummy, be a dummy. Let's go. I remember Beatrice saying, Maria is very smart. Someday she will be someone, a teacher or a nurse. I regret that my parents didn't force me to stay in school. I think of myself as a very smart person. Through the years, I'd been humiliated because of my bad penmanship, and I lacked knowledge about things in life as a result of not finishing school. But by being honest and being a hard worker, I achieved a lot, perhaps more than someone with a college degree.

On a cold day in Pino Dulce, close to Christmas, my mother asked my six-year-old brother Chus to take breakfast to our father who was working in the fields. When my brother returned, he was very cold. My mother asked him to come by the stove to get warm. He started playing with a little toy around a pot of cooking beans. He had an accident. All the boiling beans fell on him, and he rubbed off the burned skin with his hand. My brother was so strong that he didn't cry. He just moaned. My parents took him to the doctor on a horse about fifty miles away. The doctor was out, but a midwife was there. Her name was Elena. She used to work in a hospital in the city for many years. She was a kind old lady. When she saw how badly my brother was, she could not believe he was so strong. She asked my father to go to a small town to find a baby duck for its feathers. When my father returned with the feathers, Elena put a kind of oil (aceite of chan) on the burned area. She put feathers on the top of the oil. She gave him pain medicine to drink. There was no antibiotic then. My mother and brother stayed with Elena in town for a month until all the baby feathers fell off. He was healed after the feathers fell off. After all these years, the scars are still there. Elena had performed like a miracle. She knew what to do. When my parents returned home, we children were so happy to see my brother well. Thank you, Elena,