by Lucia Delgado (’24)
Brownsville, Texas
Esperanza Mendoza de Garcia had been making champurrado all afternoon. Her red-tinted hands smelled like the dozen cinnamon sticks she had cracked between them, and dark chocolate stains covered her checkered apron. Esperanza was old, nearing her 84th year. Her eyesight was failing her, her hands swelled with arthritis, her memory was not what it used to be, but she would always remember how to make champurrado for her family.
She stood alone in the kitchen. Soon, the house would be flooded with people. Her seven brothers, their collective twenty-eight children, and their forty-one grandchildren. The halls would be filled with music, laughter, and the scent of decadent holiday food as everyone gathered for La Posada––Esperanza’s most treasured family tradition.
La Posada was an annual party that landed two weeks before Christmas and celebrated the biblical story of Mary and Joseph finding shelter in Bethlehem. The night was one of food, games, piñatas, and a sing-along reenactment put on by the youngest of the grandchildren. It was the only night of the year that all three generations of the family were guaranteed to gather.
All seventy-six loud and loving members of the Mendoza family.
Preparations for the party had started early that morning. Her daughter, Celia, decorated the entire house with twinkling lights and garlands, and her two eldest granddaughters, Xiomara and Sofia, spent the afternoon making tamales. Esperanza had watched them assemble the tamales from the stove, where she carefully stirred the chocolate-cinnamon beverage. The two of them paid her no mind, they were deeply engrossed in their conversation, but it made Esperanza happy to see them together again. Xiomara had gone far away for college––far enough that it made no sense for her to return to Brownsville before now. But now she was home and warm and safe and Esperanza had every intention of filling her up with champurrado and family time before she sent her back to Oregon.
The doorbell rang, and Esperanza made her way toward the front door. She wiped her hands on her stained apron and straightened up as best she could, though her spine creaked with the effort.
“Entren, entren ¡Bienvenidos!” Esperanza greeted the first guests, her brother Romeo and his wife Rocio. She could see their daughter Roxanna struggling to drag a plastic bin across the driveway. Esperanza was about to shout over her shoulder for Xiomara to come help, but then she saw that her grandchild was already on her way over.
“Ahí voy, ahí voy,” Xiomara said under her breath. She stopped to drop a quick kiss on Esperanza’s cheek before greeting her Tíos and going out to help Roxanna.
“Was there no line at the bridge?” asked Esperanza, as she ushered Romeo and Rocio into the living room. They lived five miles south, on the other side of the Rio Grande, and would have had to cross the International Gateway Bridge to come into Brownsville.
“Pos si, it’s always bad this time of year, pero we left Matamoros pretty early.”
“Que bueno, and did you bring the candles pa la Lentanía?” Esperanza asked eagerly.
“Like we do every year? Of course, hermanita.” Romeo reached out and squeezed his sister’s hands. Esperanza barely had enough time to serve them steaming mugs of champurrado before the doorbell rang again.
This time it was Tetito, her brother Humberto’s oldest grandchild. He moved up to Colorado a few months ago, and Esperanza smelled the lingering evidence of that in the acrid scent that clung to his winter coat.
“Ernesto Ivan Mendoza Cantú!” Esperanza admonished him, giving him a little sapo upside the head as he sheepishly tried to move past her.
“Ay Tía it’s not what you think! Fue un zorillo I swear.”
“Uh-huh, seguramente. Tell your Tito what I think of your skunk when you see him.” Esperanza continued to chastise him, but with no real fire behind her words. She was distracted soon enough when she felt someone place an infant into her arms.
“¿Y quien es este chiquitin?” Esperanza asked, gazing down at the baby’s sweet brown eyes.
“That’s Tómas, Tía. You were at his baptism, remember?” said the baby’s mother, Beatrice. Bibi was the youngest daughter of Esperanza’s youngest brother. Though Esperanza was technically Bibi’s aunt, the girl was only a few months older than Xiomara.
“Sí, of course,” she said softly, “little baby Tómas.” Esperanza drew the child close to her chest, breathing in his newborn scent.
She rocked the baby softly as she led Bibi into the living room. Already, the festivities had begun… y también el desmadre. Rocio unpacked and unfolded the costumes that the children would use later in the night. She shook off the dried grass from last year and bemoaned the mud on the hem of the baby-blue Mary costume. Xiomara set out in search of some club soda while Roxanna and Tetito bickered over who got to select the music. Sofia squealed from the top of the stairs when she saw her older cousins and raced down to greet them. The chatter rose above the music (Roxanna won, and put on a cheerful Christmas playlist) and an aura of familial comfort settled over the room.
It was the night of the Posada, and Esperanza was content.
…
Xiomara Gonzalez Mendoza was one tamale away from committing a murder.
She should have stayed on campus for Christmas break. She knew she should have. And she would have, if not for her mother’s insistence that she come home for the Posada.
“Como te atrevas a romperle el corazón a tu Tita?” her mother had asked her, as though her grandmother didn’t have nine other grandchildren to keep her busy.
She tried to resist, but Xiomara was easily guilted––it came with the fact that she had already devastated her family by deciding to move out of state for college. Her parents wanted her to come home, so she did. But she should have known better. If she had given it an ounce of critical thought, she would have realized that her mother, Celia, simply wanted to cast off some of the pressure that came with organizing the biggest Mendoza family gathering of the year.
As the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter, Celia was expected to host the Posada at her house every year. As her eldest daughter, Xiomara had to do all the grunt work that the party entailed. Already, she had been asked to put up the Christmas lights in the backyard, sweep the front porch, pick up trays of desserts from the panadería downtown, and get a pot of pozole going on the stove. With the help of her younger sister, Sofia, Xiomara had spent the better part of her afternoon assembling and steaming dozens upon dozens of tamales. She knew it would be weeks before she stopped smelling masa every time she washed her hair.
It wasn’t the act of making the tamales that bothered her. In fact, she quite enjoyed spending a few hours in the kitchen with her sister. She called Sofia often while she was at college, but it was always better to hear her stories in person, to hear of her homecoming dance fiascos and friend group conflicts. Sofia had always had a flair for the dramatic, and she regaled her high school escapades with a slew of exaggerated impersonations and dramatic pauses. The time passed quickly once the two of them got their little tamalada going.
The problem didn’t start until a good two hours into the party. Once the bulk of the Mendoza family had come through the front door––scores and scores of Tías, Tíos, primas, and primos––the time came to serve the food. Celia was busy sorting through the props and costumes that would be needed later in the night and Sofia was off wrangling the little cousins, so it fell on Xiomara to start putting together the plates.
It was fine, at first. Xiomara started as tradition dictated, by serving the oldest members of the family: her grandmother, her great-uncles, and all their respective spouses. All of them thanked her graciously and took a few moments to ask her about her time at college or comment on how delicious the food looked. It was the second generation of Mendozas that grated her.
Xiomara had always enjoyed the presence of her Tíos, her mother’s brothers and cousins, when she was a kid. They drank plenty of beer and danced to Tejano music and always hoisted the little ones up on their shoulders when it came time to hit the piñata. Their jokes were a bit ill-timed on occasion, but their laughter was booming and contagious. However, now that Xiomara was a lot older and a little more educated, she found it difficult to ignore some of their more distasteful habits.
None of the Tíos thanked her when she brought them their plates of food, they just continued in their conversations. They snapped their fingers when they wanted more Miller Lite and didn’t even look at her as they took the beer bottles. Xiomara gritted her teeth, but continued serving them. She figured her mother would at least want her to wait until after the little ones got to sing La Letanía before she picked a fight.
Xiomara was in the kitchen, fetching Tío Chento’s fourth beer, when Sofia barreled into her. She almost dropped the amber bottle in her hand when she tried to catch the edge of the counter for balance.
“Mom’s on a rampage. Avoid the dining room if you can,” said Sofia, in a loud conspiratorial whisper.
“Chin, what happened this time?” Xiomara asked, already trying to spot an obvious problem she could take care of before their mother got too frantic.
“Güey, what do I know? I’m avoiding the dining room. I think I heard something about a cake?” Sofia shrugged unceremoniously and left out the patio door into the backyard.
Xiomara rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t blame Sofia for wanting to get the hell out of dodge. This party, as fun as it was supposed to be, stressed their mother out within an inch of her life no matter how well it went. There would be no shortage of calamities before the end of the night.
Besides, Xiomara had her own battles to fight––the ones that came in the form of middle-aged Mexican-American men.
She reached her boiling point when she saw what the Tíos were doing with the hojas. Xiomara’s mother had left a bin on the back porch where everyone could leave the discarded corn husks from their tamales so that they could be composted later. Even though the bin was clearly labeled and Xiomara had been calling out reminders all night, the Tíos proceeded to just toss their hojas away with the rest of their trash. When Xiomara chided them, they waved her off with a dismissive, “No hagas tanto guato, mija, es una fiesta!”
Right when Xiomara was about to bite back with a scathing retort, she felt a warm hand press down on her shoulder. She turned and saw her Tío Abel, her grandmother’s youngest brother and her favorite of the great uncles.
“Oye, cabrones,” Abel scolded the men, “I don’t know who raised you to be tan maleducados, pero seguramente it wasn’t me. Apologize to the girl and do whatever she wants you to do o vamos a tener broncas.” Abel leaned in close. “Keep this up, and the two of us are going to spit in your next round of beers, me entienden?”
The Tíos muttered their apologies, not meeting each other’s eyes. It had been a while since they had been so thoroughly chastised, and they didn’t quite know what to do with themselves. Xiomara, on the other hand, grinned widely as she and Abel walked back to the kitchen.
“Gracias, Tío, you have no idea how much it means to me. I’ve been dealing with them all night and I swear I was about to get violent.” Xiomara said, as she picked up the tongs and started stacking even more tamales on a fresh paper plate.
“Don’t mention it, cariño.” Abel smiled at her kindly and took the plate from her hands. “And give me this. You’ve done enough for tonight, yo me encargo de esto. Go sit down and have a cold cheve for me, I promise not to tell your Mami,” he whispered, winking.
Xiomara didn’t need to be told twice. She grabbed an empanada de cajeta on her way out of the kitchen, dug a beer out of the bottom of an ice chest, and found a seat at a table reasonably far away from her mother. For the first time the whole night, she finally relaxed.
…
Sofia Gonzalez-Mendoza was in over her head. She was running out of ways to entertain the little ones, and they were beginning to mutiny.
For the last five years, Sofia had only one responsibility during the Posada––to keep the little ones, the grandchildren on the younger side of her generation, busy. It used to be a straightforward endeavor. She would either turn on the TV and have them watch old Cartoon Network returns or supply them with puzzles and coloring books from the dollar store. However, the Mendoza family popped out at least two new babies a year, and it wasn’t long before “the little ones” became a group of twenty-plus kids whose ages ranged from toddlers to middle schoolers.
Sofia started the night by leading all of the kids into the yard. She half-hoped that would be enough for them and they would keep themselves busy. Factionalism set in quickly, though, and the kids couldn’t decide on what to do. The girls wanted to play make-believe and had already started coming up with a long and convoluted plotline about being orphaned puppies with superpowers––or something to that extent. The boys couldn’t be bothered, they just wanted to throw sticks at each other until someone caved and started crying. Collectively, they all turned to Sofia and demanded entertainment.
“Do something,” urged Diego. He was twelve years old and the eldest child of Tío Mario. As their self-appointed leader, he was just old enough to question Sofia’s tentative sense of authority. Sofia had liked Diego well enough when he was younger, but the onset of middle school and an addiction to red Gatorade gave the kid an entitled attitude that Sofia wasn’t particularly fond of.
“What do you want me to do?” Sofia asked, crossing her arms.
“Play a game with us or something,” Diego instead, the rasp in his voice dragging out the last syllable.
“What game do you want to play? Tag? We can play tag,” Sofia offered diplomatically, “or hide-and-seek.”
Diego clicked his tongue dismissively, “Nobody plays tag anymore. But, whatever, I guess.”
Sofia suppressed an eye roll. Nothing annoyed her faster than a kid with an attitude who had just learned how to wield the word “whatever.”
“Come on, let’s go.” Sofia walked over to the Anacahuita tree at the edge of the yard. “I’ll be ‘it’; the tree is base; you guys get a five-second start.”
The group of kids all gathered close to the tree. The youngest of them were excited, just happy to be a part of the game. Diego muttered to himself but participated anyway. Sofia counted down slowly, “Five…four…three…two… ONE!”
She sprinted after the nearest kid, Lucas, and ran a circle around him before tapping him lightly on the shoulder. He squealed in delight and ran to tag his younger sister, Susy, who wasted no time in tagging her brother right back, and Lucas managed to tag Michelle when she tripped over a tree root.
The game went on for a while. Any time a little cousin chased Sofia, she tried to make a good show of running away before ultimately letting them catch up to her. As much as she would have rather been inside hanging out with her sister, she tried to keep the fun going for the little ones. By the time everyone made it back to base, she was genuinely winded.
After the second round of tag, Sofia sat them in a circle under the tree and tried to think of games that would require less athleticism on her part. She could tell that the toddlers in the group were getting sleepy, but, if the noise coming from the house was any indication, their parents weren’t likely to take them home any time soon.
Sofia decided to fall back to Xiomara’s usual tactic––nothing settled a group of kids with overactive imaginations quite like storytime. She arranged her little cousins into a loose semi-circle on the grass and settled in front of them.
“Okay, chamacos, who wants to hear the story of La Llorona?” Sofia grinned when she saw twenty hands shoot up into the air. Sure, she might be hearing complaints from the Tías until New Year’s Eve for giving their kids nightmares, but it was tradition. Sofia didn’t sleep with the lights off for a month after Xiomara told her about the chupacabra, but she liked to think that it built character.
“Hundreds of years ago,” Sofia began, speaking in a low voice so that the children would have to sit very still and lean in to hear her, “back when Brownsville and Matamoros were just two little villages on either side of the Río Grande, there was a woman named Maria––”
“Like my mom!” Lucas interrupted her, speaking with alarm.
“Yes, like your mom, but this was a different lady,” Sofia explained patiently. “Maria was married to a man with the name Cortez, a conquistador.”
“What’s a conquistador?” asked Michelle, fidgeting in her spot.
Sofia considered, briefly, explaining the intricacies of Spanish colonialism to her six-year-old cousin, but ultimately decided to give her the abridged version.
“He was a rich but very selfish man. And he probably had a horse,” Sofia said sagely.
“Ah, bueno.” Michelle motioned for her to continue.
“The two of them lived together happily for a time, and she even bore him two children. But, years after marrying Maria, the man left her. Maria was heartbroken. She stopped eating. She ripped at her clothes. She went down to the port every day to see if her husband had returned to her, but he never did.” Sofia paused for dramatic effect, staring off into the distance, “One day, mad with grief and hunger, Maria came up with a plot to get her husband’s attention. She took their little boys down to the Rio Grande, the very river that most of you crossed today to get to Brownsville, and she drowned them…” Sofia whispered sinisterly. She was about to continue when Diego stood up abruptly.
“Ya, stop it. Let’s do something else,” he whined.
“What, are you scared? Sit down.” Sofia snapped.
“I just think the story is boring. I don’t want to listen anymore.”
Sofia considered her younger cousin. She was tired of him giving her a hard time and knew that she could get him to fall in line with a simple dig at his masculinity. His little sisters were sitting in the front row for their macabre story time, after all. It’s what Xiomara or any of the other older cousins might have done. The big kids told scary stories, the little ones slept with nightlights for a couple of weeks and lived to carry on the tradition. It was how they always did things. If anything, as a boy, Diego should be more willing to put on a brave face.
But, as Sofia considered how he may not want to think about ghost children in the river below him as his parents drove him back to Matamoros, she amended that maybe there were some traditions their family could do without.
“Okay, okay, we can do something else. If you guys really want to hear it, I’ll finish the story after we sing La Letanía,” she said to the rest of the little ones, who had already begun to protest. Sofia reached out a hand and let Diego haul her to her feet, “We’ll play tag again. But you start as “it” this time.”
…
Celia Mendoza de Gonzalez really thought she would be better at this by now.
She had started hosting the Posada, taking over for Esperanza, soon after Xiomara was born. She had nearly two decades of experience coordinating this event, and she still felt like she just barely scraped by every time. Celia would swear on her deathbed that it was planning the Posada every year that made her start graying in her early twenties. Regardless of how much time she spent planning and agonizing, something always, inevitably, went wrong. Either the food ran out or the speakers wouldn’t turn on or, like this year, the branch of the family that lived in Monterrey couldn’t make the drive up.
The logical side of Celia understood the situation. The cartel activity wasn’t nearly as bad as when her daughters were in elementary school, but some years were better than others. It just so happened that, this year, the highway was particularly dangerous. It didn’t make sense for Hector, her younger brother, and his wife Gabby to risk making the four-hour drive through northern Mexico. Not with their three sons to think about.
The emotional side of Celia was devastated. If nothing else, the Posada was supposed to ensure that everyone got to see each other at least once a year. Their family might be absurdly large and spread out across two countries, but this night was supposed to bring them together. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair––that she put all of the work in and there would still be five faces missing from the group photo at the end of the night.
The worst part of Celia, the part that hadn’t eaten all day, was also upset to be missing out on Gabby’s tres leches cake.
Celia had just about gotten over the situation when her cousin Adrianna came into the kitchen to inform her of yet another pressing situation. It was time for La Letnía, and they didn’t have a Joseph.
Though guests usually arrived at the Posada most excited about the food, La Letanía was the main event. That was when all the children dressed up as figures from the nativity scene: Mary, Joseph, shepherds, and angels. There was even a little sheep costume for the youngest Mendoza. The children would knock on the front door of the house, reenacting the scene from the bible where Mary and Joseph searched for a place at the inn. Half of the adults followed behind them with candles, while the other half responded from inside the house. Together, everyone helped the children sing La Letanía Para Pedir Posada.
Celia had made sure that everything was in order. Rocio and Romeo brought the costumes, she had shoved dozens of white candles through plastic cups to keep the wax from dripping on people’s fingers, and the song lyrics were printed on over a hundred sheets of paper––more than enough to go around. And still, not a single one of the boys in the family wanted to play Joseph.
She appealed to the boys directly, at first. Celia found most of her young nephews outside, chasing each other around with firecrackers. She stopped little Lucas in his tracks, placing both hands on his shoulders, and knelt to meet him at eye level. “Lucas, querido, can you do me a big favor, please? I need you to put on a costume and be Joseph for the Letanía this year. Could you do that for me?” Celia smiled warmly at him.
“No thanks! We’re pretty busy.” Lucas dashed off before Celia could get another word in. She turned to her older nephews, Hector and Diego, but both followed after him, throwing snappers at each other feet.
Celia trudged back to the kitchen to regroup. She took her case to the boys’ mothers, but she could not convince a single one of them to force their kid into the Joseph costume.
“Son niños, Celia, what do you expect? You want them to sit pretty for pictures? Just be happy they’re playing outside and not tearing up your fancy sitting room,” Adrianna said dismissively. Celia’s eyelid twitched with frustration, but she didn’t respond in anger. Instead, she pointedly picked up Adrianna’s sweating beer bottle and placed it on the coaster that her cousin had absentmindedly ignored.
Feeling defeated and attacked on all sides, Celia found comfort in locking herself in the pantry, where she could seeth in private. She listened to the Christmas music that seeped through the closed door and glared at a bag of rice. There she was, once again bending over backward to make sure that this party happened, and none of the malagradecidos in her family could deign to help her with La Lentania. God forbid a ten-year-old boy be forced to put on a costume and sing with the family that raised him.
Celia heard the click of the pantry door and turned to see that her husband, Eduardo, had joined her.
“Que onda?” he asked.
“Ya,” Celia said, “I’m done. I’m never hosting this party again. Please never let me do this again.” Celia hunched forward and leaned her head on Eduardo’s shoulder. He rubbed slow circles on her back.
“It’s okay, amor, it’ll be okay,” he reassured her.
“I don’t know why I do this to myself! I never even enjoy these damn parties, I’m always so stressed. And now we’re not even going to do La Letanía.” Celia sniffed. “What was even the point.”
“The point was that you love your family,” Eduardo reminded her with a smile, even though she couldn’t see it, “you do it because you know how important it is for everyone to get together. You saw Sofia chasing her cousins through the yard, right? And Xo drinking champurrado with her Tita and her Tío Abel? Those things only get to happen once a year, and it’s because of you.”
“Still,” said Celia, still speaking into her hands, “no one ever appreciates it. Not enough to put on the stupid costume.”
Eduardo tucked Celia’s hair behind her ear and leaned down to kiss his wife’s temple, “About that, I think I have an idea.”
…
Esperanza Mendoza watched La Letanía from the middle of the crowd. She didn’t have a role to play, so she got to take her time drinking in the scene. Celia and Eduardo laughed through their lines as Mary and Joseph. The costumes weren’t even close to fitting them, but they still hung them around their necks like ponchos, just to get the idea across. Sofia walked with little Michelle, dressed in the tiny sheep costume, propped up against her hip. Xiomara could be seen through the kitchen window, serving hot mugs of champurrado for everyone to share once they got back inside and needed to warm up from the chilly December night.
Esperanza smiled at her sprawling family. Bien encimosos, the lot of them. But it was the night of the Posada, and all was well.
Author Commentary: “La Posada” is a short story that details the events of a family party from the perspectives of four different characters. It is meant to depict generational differences regarding family values, gender roles, and language. Since the story occurs during a “posada,” a Latine Christmas celebration centered around the nativity, it also highlights facets of Mexican-American culture such as the influence of Catholicism. The story takes place in a border town and is written in “Spanglish,” the regional dialect. The amount of Spanish varies depending on the age of the POV character and it is heavily featured in most instances of dialogue. However, because it was my intention to keep the text accessible to non-Spanish speakers through context and cognates, I made the conscious decision to not include a glossary. Ultimately, “La Posada” is a story about family told in the language of the home.
Lucia Delgado (’24) is a graduate student at the University of Chicago. Having been raised on both sides of the Rio Grande, she has dedicated her academic work to Latine studies and, more specifically, borderlands literature. Her goal is to write stories that are intentional and accurate in their representation of language and to challenge monolingual readers to embrace the linguistic diversity of the U.S.-Mexico border.