I looked about her cozy living room,
searching for clues as to her being.
The Native art on the wall was impressive,
but no surprise,
and without a story behind it.
but not so the vintage photograph
at the center of an end table,
offering within its simple brass frame
more than the thousand words the cliché presumes.
It was a wedding photo, snapped around 1910,
of a proud Mexican groom in a mariachi-cut suit,
posed beside his much-shorter bride in a towering Spanish headdress.
She held a sparse bouquet of desert blooms,
and wore a scowl on her face that revealed
both the strength of her Jicarilla bloodline
and the sense that this had not been the happiest day of her life.
“There’s a happy couple,” I tossed at my hostess,
baiting her for the tale I knew was there.
“Those are my grandparents,” she began,
“but they were not happy.
My grandmother was full-blood Apache,
and lived in an orphanage
where the Whites had forced her to go
to part her from her culture.
She was very young when my grandfather first saw her,
and he watched her from a distance…wanting her,
until one day, while she was out hanging clothes on the line,
he suddenly appeared from behind a row of sheets
and grabbed her.
He threw her onto his his horse and took her across the river
to be his wife.
My grandmother did not like that.
She was young, but she was Apache,
and she fought to kill him for that.
My grandfather tied her up
to save his own life,
and he kept her tied up
until at last she became pregnant,
and she stopped trying to kill him.
But even though she surrendered then
and became his wife,
because of the child – my mother -
she made him miserable every day of his life.”
Blue Corn paused to take a thoughtful drink of her cerveza.
“I grew to hate my grandmother for that…
for making my Pappi so unhappy.”
I drank more of my beer, as well, seeking the right perspective.
“Well, it’s a shame they ended up so unhappy together,
for so long,” I said,
‘cause that sure was a romantic way to begin.”
Stories of real life and love
never seem to go the right way.