REYNA
“Everyone loved me, just how you see me now,” 86-year-old Reyna tells us. She avoids talking about her life as a sex worker; she would rather say something about her family. She is one of five children her mother had: “Two are already dead: one—my twin—from a heart attack, and the other in an accident from which he almost recovered.” From her father’s “other woman” she has eight more brothers and sisters with whom she gets along well. She doesn’t want to talk about her age either: “I lost count when my twin brother died. They asked me for his records so they could bury him, and my information was with his. They never returned the papers to me.” She is afraid of what might happen when she dies: “I don’t have my documents and I don’t know what I’ll do so they can bury me. I want to be buried, not burned. I want the worms to eat me, so I can go back to where we all came from.”
Reyna claims to have been in the nursing home only three months, but her senile dementia makes her forget she’s been there almost a year. She doesn’t like it in Xochiquetzal. She says she feels “rotten,” and she would rather be with her family: “No matter how bad they are, they should look out for me, I was always good to them.”
Of her adult life she only says: “I was married once—the wedding lasted three days—but my husband died in an accident. He was a fireman. My only son died too.” Then she returns to her childhood: “When I was little my grandparents gave me a lot. They had good hearts. When poor people came to the house they always gave something. They would rather give the corn away than have it fill up with critters or weevils.”
When asked if she would like to say something else, she answers: “No, it’s all over.” Everything is over and she only remembers what she wants to. After the interview she sings a traditional Mexican son huasteco; the song narrates the story of a flower that everybody wants to possess. |
