TIA PETRA
by Andrea Theisen
 Petra Rodriguez, age unknown |
She was like a birthmark upon the countenance of my family: visible yet unobtrusive; attractive to the onlooker, yet a blemish to the owner. Her devoutness and innocence were traits I accepted as a child, bemoaned as a teen, and now recall fondly as an adult.
For as long as I can remember, Tia Petra, my mother's oldest sister, was part of our family, albeit on the fringe, never quite belonging. Born under the stigma of epilepsy, she never married. Her entire life seemed to consist of helping raise countless nieces and nephews, rolling out hundreds of tortillas, and supervising our religious studies.
My Tia Petra was a slender, dark-haired woman with sad, doleful eyes. She wore her hair in a bun at the back of her neck; she never wore shoes around the house (even outside) and always wore an apron. My Tia Petra always kept busy, but her main duties seemed to be washing dishes and making tortillas. When she washed dishes, she would stand at the kitchen sink, one bare foot over the other, a dishtowel thrown carelessly over her shoulder.
Tia Petra didn't smile much, perhaps due to life in general, but probably because of the sad state of her teeth. At that time, dental care was practically nonexistent and besides, she had a proclivity for smoking! She would hoard her nickels and periodically send her nieces and nephews running to ConchaÕs, the neighborhood store just past the railroad tracks, where we would purchase Kite or Bugle tobacco for her. (She would roll her own.) I now wonder at her audacity to dare smoke at that particular time, (early fifties) given the strictness and customs of the day, especially in the Mexican community!
Tia Petra was a humble and devout woman, who was constantly being asked to pray the rosary for recently departed souls. She never refused and because it seemed that people were constantly dying and needing to be prayed for, this took up a lot of her time. Never having attended school, she could not read nor write and had learned all the prayers and responses by rote, so she marveled at our reading ability. She loved to hear us read aloud, even in English, a language she never learned. She especially liked to hear us study for our catechism; placing a palm upon her cheek, she would gaze at us with wonder and admiration as we lurched our way through the Apostle's Creed.
Due to Tia Petra's admonishments about proper religious decorum, I was a picture of angelic behavior in church during most of my childhood. I was always quiet and never looked around or behind me, even when I heard noises, or saw children craning their necks here and there. My eyes always remained dutifully fixed upon the altar, concentrating on my prayers, as I had always been taught. This changed, however, when I was about 10 years old and finally dared to peek over my shoulder during Mass.
Instead of the devil pouncing gleefully upon my lost soul, I was dumbfounded to discover that it was NOT the angels who were singing, as my grandma and Tia Petra had always told me, but my Tia Carmen and assorted neighborhood ladies! There they were, perched on the balcony, eyes lifted to the heavens, singing their hearts out. They looked like soft, saintly, veiled pigeons, sans, of course, their everyday aprons.
In spite of this momentous discovery, it still took me another year to gather up enough courage to bite the communion wafer rather than allowing it to dissolve, where it ALWAYS stuck to the roof of my mouth. When I was not immediately struck down, a phase of my life ended. Tia Petra's teachings were relegated to the same dusty, dilapidated shelf in my mind, where the tooth fairy and Santa Claus had already been deposited.
As I entered my teens, I became convinced that all adults were incredibly obtuse and of course, Tia Petra became the epitome of this very obvious conclusion. My worldly sophistication simply could not cope with this burden, but regardless of my wishes to disassociate myself from her, she was there to stay and there was nothing I could do about it.
It would embarrass me no end to see how she greeted her brothers. When one of them came to visit, she would actually humbly KISS his hand! And, to top it off, they would actually stand there and let her do it, as if it were their due! My mother would try to explain that this was the way they had been raised; that respect was an important, fast-vanishing trait of our culture, but I would roll my eyes and sigh in disgust. Adults! It smacked too much of Old Mexico to a young, silly girl, desperate to impress her peers with her own modern Americanization.
Tia Petra would continuously do things that embarrassed me, but my family, being unfortunately very thick-skinned and extremely less cultured than myself, was never affected by anything she did. One particular incident stands out that caused me intense mortification: One year, on our way to the sugar beet fields of North Dakota, we experienced car trouble and had to stop at a service station. We all clustered together while the car was being fixed, except for Tia Petra, who was simply flabbergasted to see the car being hoisted up by means of a hydraulic lift. To my chagrin, she immediately dug into her bodice, took out her (huge) crucifix and frantically commenced to make the sign of the cross over the car and the young mechanic. Tia Petra began praying to the Blessed Virgin Mary (in SPANISH!) to intercede for the mechanic as he worked underneath the car. The cute young Gringo's alarmed, quizzical expression over this baffling ritual did nothing to alleviate my consternation. Needless to say, I was completely embarrassed and just knew that I would never live this down. Near tears, I turned to my family for support, but they were laughing too hard at me to see the situation from my perspective.
In retrospect, I can now appreciate the unique experience of knowing and living with Tia Petra. I regret that my own children never knew her nor were blessed by feeling her very special love. I believe that she must indeed be blessing them as each one struggles to survive in his or her own way, and so far, they have managed to survive with me as their mother. Today and always, I applaud the memory of my aunt and salute her ability to remain simply, in spite of anything, what she always was: my Tia Petra.