Navo, short for Navidad

This is basically a character sketch, the beginnings of a description of one of the most amazing women I know and the way her experiences interact with her personality.  I would love to write something longer about some of the women I knew in Honduras, but I don’t know exactly where to start.  I figured I should just get going though, sooooo…(thoughts welcome, as always).

Listening to Navo tell a story is like watching a movie.  Actually, it’s like crawling into a memory and curling up inside of it.  Somehow, even Navo’s most morbid memories are made comforting in the telling.

She won’t start without first bringing you coffee, in a tiny tea cup sloshing in a puddle in its saucer (Navo’s footsteps are none too smooth).  She’ll place the saucer gingerly in your hand and then back into the plastic patio chair that she has pulled up to face you.  Lean forward and lift your saucer to contain drips, and take a sip of coffee.

Navo will smooth her straight, thick skirt, smeared with corn meal and splashed with water, remnants of the day’s tortillas.  As she sits, she’ll nod at her mother Marcela, who sits vigilantly beside the open front door.  Marcela’s auburn hair seems to have roots at both ends; her glittering eyes squint from above sagging cheeks; and her pink tailored dress has defied all life expectancy predictions.

Navo will sit only briefly.  She’ll beam at you for a moment from behind her thick glasses that curve towards her eye sockets like telescope lenses.  And then, with a flourish of her tiny hand, she’ll begin.

If you’re lucky, Navo will tell you about something that happened in this very living room.  She’ll play all the parts, complete with props and blocking, and she’ll do all the voices.  Once she knows you well enough, she’ll tell you about the time she gallantly wrestled a shotgun away from her father, who had come home drunk again and loomed over Marcela, cowering in the bedroom.  She won’t tell this story while her mother is awake, but if Marcela has fallen asleep in her chair, Navo will incorporate her into the blocking.  She´ll also include Marcela in the story of her own birth, which occurred on December 24th (Navo is short for ¨Navidad¨).

Or, she might tell you about who got who pregnant, and how, and when.  She’ll lean in to explain the intimate details, using slow nods to emphasize the actions that cannot be spoken, sideways twitches of the lips to implicate the parties who cannot be named, and poetic euphemisms that make her memories seem mythical.

The day I went to say goodbye to Navo during my recent visit to San Nicolás, she greeted me with the usual routine.  Once I had received Marcela’s amazonian embrace and we all had sat down, Navo set in with, “Well you won’t believe that Karla had her baby today!”  Karla is the orphaned daughter of Navo’s daughter Graciela, who died of cancer several years ago.

“Ahh! That’s great!  Girl or boy?”  I was glad to see Navo’s celebratory attitude, since Karla’s pregnancy was not exactly pre-approved.

“A little girl,” Navo said, clasping her hands together at her chest.

“Oh and what have they named her?” I asked, wishing I could catch the words as they flew out of my mouth.  I consider this to be a futile question within two weeks of a Honduran baby’s birth.

Navo surprised me with a quick reply:  “Graciela,” she said, elongating the penultimate syllable and beaming proudly.  I followed Navo´s glance to the photo on the wall beside us.  In it were Navo’s daughter and son in law, clad in early ’90s attire and smiling stiffly at the camera.  “It’s that,” she paused, “Today makes 11 years since she died,” and we both fell silent for a moment.

“Oh wow…Well what a blessing, the baby,” I said, at a loss for what to say.

“Yes,” said Navo.  “What a coincidence, right?”

“What a coincidence…”

“But is it a coincidence?” Navo mused, her eyes glassy.  My eye lit on the photo on the wall behind her, of her 28 year old nephew René.  His clear skin, sideways grin, and piercing eyes shocked me, just as they always had.

¨Poor René,¨ Marcela groggled, in her earthy timbre.  ¨Three kids he left behind…”  René had died exactly a year earlier, of complications from a motorcycle accident.