Grandma Toya

Time was slow then. Life went by undisturbed by major events. Every day the same: The birds, the fresh air, the mist, the dew. Get up before the dawn, rubber boots crushing wet grass, dogs playing mica, corn bushes. Tie on her apron, the coffee pot heating up, fire crackling under the hotplate, the stone to grind, the tortillas to the cornfield.

She was a woman hardened by life; she was called grandma Toya by her grandchildren. "The husk keeps the stick" she used to say, and so it was. She had an oak bark. Orphaned at the age of eight, she took care of her younger siblings. When she was a young woman she got married and had six children. Becoming a widow before her younger son was one year old. However, her heart remained undamaged. He was a boy without education or manners. He handled himself like a beast. He followed his instincts and rarely stopped to reason:

- A woman needs to make herself respected. The girl arrived to the cornfield; she said she was in love with me. And you know that I'm a man.

The girl was not much smarter than he was. She got pregnant even knowing that her dad was capable of killing her. For a long time, she tried to hide his condition. But it was impossible to hide it any longer when she was in pain and the baby had to be born.

The villagers said they knew her:

-She's one of those little sluts. She fools around with one and another. For sure she doesn't even know who the father of her child is.

- She's the one to blame for whatever happens to her. Men are men.

- They say that her dad wants to kill her. He threats her with a machete for making her tell the truth of who the father was, and they say that he is nia Toya's son.

He looked like a demon, a whole beast without common sense. As soon as the name came out of his daughter's mouth, he took her from the hair and dragged them all the way with the newborn in her arms.

When they arrived at the house, nia Toya was in the courtyard shelling cobs.

- Here I bring your grandchild- he said.

She only looked at him with those crab eyes, undaunted and silent.

- I don't want my daughter rising children - he continued and gave her the baby girl.

She took it without saying anything, looked at her and accepted its fate with the same peacefulness with which she had accepted everything in her life. She had seen them worse, saving an innocent creature and his mother from death was a consecration. She raised her as her daughter even though she knew that she was not his granddaughter, that she was not his son's daughter. She did not say anything because, as she had said many times before, she could do no less.