The only familiar part of the ceremony was the wedding march music. It was piped in from some fuzzy recording. It began when Maria and her father stood at the back of the church ready to walk down the aisle. Everyone turned to look at Maria’s dress, which was a series of bright white ruffles from her neck down to her ankles. Lupe thought she resembled a flocked Christmas tree. David looked his cousin over as she wobbled down the aisle. Lupe knew what David was thinking. “She’s a knocked-up high school dropout,” he had assured her. Despite the plain church and the unflattering dress, Mama dabbed her eyes with a tissue and continued to whisper in Spanish.
“Fijate mija—think, Lupe.” She smiled in spite of herself. “Someday it will be your turn, and I will be so proud.”
This was one of Mama’s dreams. Her maternal wishes came out in small ways. She was not bossy or outspoken like some mothers. Lupe heard other women ragging on their daughters in public. Sometimes she heard mother/daughter arguments on the bus or in a department store. Her mama was much more subtle but she had the same traditional ideas of how Lupe’s future should unfold.
When Mom said, “You really have nice eyes,” she was actually telling Lupe to highlight them with makeup. If she said, “Mona Vasquez has a handsome son,” she was sending the message: “You ought to be going out with him.”
Most often her comments were about housekeeping or Lupe’s lack thereof. She’d say, “Someday you’ll know how important it is to sweep the kitchen floor each night, to fry an egg without breaking the yolk, to separate the laundry into white and dark loads.”
Lupe imagined her mama envisioning her “someday” as a housekeeper—an orderly, tidy wife and mother who made her husband and maybe a mother-in-law—Oh, God help me!—proud and happy. That was the furthest thing from Lupe’s dreams.
Lupe forced herself to pay attention to the wedding service. All she could think of was the bride, committing herself for a lifetime. Mama did it, and so had every other woman in the family. It seemed to be such a huge gamble. Lupe had no idea what was coming next in her life. Maybe sports camp would open up new possibilities. If not, how else was she ever going to make Mama proud?
The reception was equally plain. The barbecues made the area smoky. The folding tables and chairs were hot as blazes and unstable on the lawn, which was full of gopher holes. Since Lupe, David, and Mama were dressed in Papa’s white shirts and black pants, the other guests kept turning to them with their empty plates and glasses, mistaking them for hired servers. Mama complied, as a member of the family would, until David held her down to one spot.
“Can’t we go now?” David whined. They were strangers among all the church attendees.
“Not yet,” Mama said. “We’ll wait until after the toast. Then Maria and her papa will have the first dance. That will be nice.”
But there was no champagne toast or alcohol of any type. No live music or dancing. Instead, a series of balding men gave long prayers for the newlyweds, holding plastic cups of lemonade aloft. The groom’s father, Pastor Hamilton, made the longest remarks, welcoming everyone to attend his church services the following morning and recognizing every member of the family except Mama, David, and Lupe.
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