Honest Critiques

Chapter 1

Juan Nakai's black Yaqui eyes flashed in anger as he watched his mother mixing the tortilla dough in the shade of her guamuchil tree. It wasn't exactly clear why he said, "How'd we get this casa, mama?"

Not a great opening paragraph. Eyes flashing in anger is cliche, and 'It wasn't exactly clear why' is weak and fuzzy. (If you're going to have someone do something for no apparent reason, don't draw attention to it!)

Rosa looked like the kind of woman who had four kids to raise. She was plump and brown from the Sonoran Desert sun, with arms strong enough to embrace or cuff a
cranky child, her long dark hair tied in back with a piece of sisal string. She glanced at the house of upright mesquite poles tied together with jute.

"This casita? Your father built it." She frowned. "You want to know about your father?"

Something she had never said before.

Juan hadn't said anything about his father.

"I like to know where is he now."

Rosa picked up the lump of wheat-flour dough with both hands and slapped it down hard on the rickety plywood table. She said, "He went to Mexico City to make some money right after you was born. He said when he made enough money he's coming back and build us a big house."

"I'm going to be fourteen in two months. Did he die--" he didn't want to say it, "or what?"

She sighed. "I don't know. He changed after you was born, started drinking. It took him over."

"Started drinking after I was born?"

"Oh, at first he was proud. I never seen a man as proud as your father the day you was born. When you was three weeks old he took you around the pueblo, showing
everyone his own little Yaqui warrior." Her hands stopped kneading. She looked toward the silent Sierra Madre in the distance but her eyes did not see the mountains.

"You think he's still in Mexico City?"

"I don't know. Maybe, maybe not."

She pinched off a ball of dough and patted it into a tortilla, keeping her thoughts private, and her visions. She had taught Juan to look for signs, that was good, but visions, seeing things that hadn't happened yet--no.

To make money Rosa made tamales with sweet potatoes and chilies from her garden. Rolled them in cornmeal from her plants grown in the hot earth, wrapped each one in the corn husk, tied the ends with a strip torn from the husk, and then steamed them.

For as long as he could remember Juan Nakai went around selling his mother's tamales on the streets and in the cantinas of Alianza. He'd say, "You want to buy tamales? For you--almost free."

On Saturdays he'd drive his uncle Teofilo's pickup truck loaded with fruits and vegetables to the public market to sell them. Then sit on the tailgate drinking coconut juice through a straw and practice reading comics. Capulina the chubby clown was his favorite, always dreaming up new ideas, like selling Pancho Villa's sombrero to the tourists.

Late afternoon Teofilo would put the unsold vegetables in a box and say to Juan, "This's for your mother."

Juan picked up Spanish from his customers. Most of the Yaquis spoke only Cahita. The pueblo isn't much different than it was a hundred years ago. Dogs and pigs and chickens run free. No school. No electric lines or running water or telephones. Cars or trucks parked in front of one out of four houses. A third have a bedroom. Most houses belong to a woman, more than half don't have a husband. But no orphans. Every child is part of the community.