{"id":1851,"date":"2016-08-02T13:58:39","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T17:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/?p=1851"},"modified":"2016-08-02T13:58:39","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T17:58:39","slug":"portrait-of-chayo-as-saint-jude-thaddeus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/portrait-of-chayo-as-saint-jude-thaddeus\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of Chayo as Saint Jude Thaddeus"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Susan Miller
\nLook for her upcoming book <\/em>Communion of Saints from Paraclete Press<\/p>\n

<\/em>I never set out to write a book about the saints. I was a Catholic convert at 37, after a long struggle with discernment which began in my early twenties. I had never been baptised, never belonged to groups, religious or otherwise\u2014even my friends often didn\u2019t know each other. Over the years it seemed more and more important to be part of something bigger, and the Catholic church, as I grew to understand it, drew me in. I traveled a fair amount\u2014to Mexico, India, the Czech Republic, and then in a period of very few years, to Canada, Peru, Spain, Morocco, and repeatedly, back to Mexico, sometimes several times a year. I usually began and ended my travels in Mexico City, the Districto Federal, which its citizens refer to as D.F.<\/p>\n

I usually stayed with friends there, and these friends had a remarkable cook named Chayo. During my first visit, when I was 28, Chayo was introduced to me by Clementina, the matriarch of the family. She told me that Chayo had given her own kidney to her son when he was in dire medical condition. When I met her, Chayo was a little reserved, but soon she opened up, usually with some surprising statement out of nowhere. When I was growing up, I was taught that only criminals get tattoos, but I thought for a long time about getting a stem of flowers right here behind my ear. <\/em>Or Ugh. That picture of me is terrible. Give it to the robbers. <\/em>She\u2019d tell me horrific cautionary stories about babies who got their toes chewed by rats in the slums of Mexico City, or she could repeat a gruesome joke about the earthquake, its punchline a phrase from a children\u2019s song: A hand here, a foot there\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n

I can feel already that I\u2019m giving you some of the wrong details. Her toughness was real, but she wasn\u2019t hardened\u2014Chayo radiated gratitude. She was always singing, with the radio, by herself, sweeping up the living room. She wasn\u2019t just cheerful; she seemed\"Mexican deeply contented. It surprised me when she admitted that, as a girl, she had been very talented at drawing and drafting and had wanted to be an architect. Instead, she had chosen a life of work in the homes of wealthier people. She never appeared dissatisfied or regretful. She had to work hard, coming to work from the North on the bus in the early morning chill, wrapped in a crocheted shawl, cooking and cleaning before most people had woken up.\u00a0\u00a0 She was good at her job, proud of her food, loved and respected by the people she worked for, and she always made time to teach me how to make one thing or another. And she shared with me her devotion to Saint Jude Thaddeus, who had helped her when her son\u2019s health was failing.<\/p>\n

One day, near the end of my trip, Clementina announced that Chayo was to take the day off from cooking and spend it with me at the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She navigated our trip to the North of the city by communal van, subway, and a brief walk through one of the city markets that springs up at every corner in D.F. She told me that I\u2019d recognize the Basilica from a distance: it\u2019s the one that looks like a big stupid circus tent, <\/em>she said. She was right\u2014it wasn\u2019t exactly an architectural triumph\u2014but we rode the conveyer belt under the miraculous tilma of Juan Diego together, and visited the old cathedral, now sinking into the ground and filled with ex voto paintings by cured postulants. It seemed silly, though somehow quaint, to get a photo taken on a donkey, as people were doing on the hillside leading up to the smallest chapel. We walked up the hill to that chapel, and there both Chayo and I stopped to pray.<\/p>\n

Praying can be such a private thing\u2014and for each of us, it was\u2014but somehow, I felt that the barriers between us, of language, nationality, religious upbringing, had somehow softened a little\u2014that Chayo recognized in me the rootless quality that made some kind of home so important to me, and that I understood more about her solitary experience of belief. I don\u2019t know if that day affected her feelings about me, but by the end of the trip, she was referring to me as her \u201cAmerican daughter.\u201d It took another decade before I committed to my conversion, but I have always remembered her own example of faith as a model for me.<\/p>\n

It was only later that I started to think of Chayo as a version of her favorite saint: the patron saint of impossible causes.<\/p>\n

Portrait of Chayo as Saint Jude Thaddeus<\/em><\/p>\n

In a green apron, Chayo stirs chayote soup,
\nholding her palm taut so she can daub a taste there<\/p>\n

to check the salt. Her skin doesn\u2019t feel the heat
\nthough if I try the same I blister myself. She sings<\/p>\n

while she chops chives into tiny rings
\nthat float on the surface of the liquid.<\/p>\n

When Clementina first told me about her, she taught me
\nin Spanish ri<\/em>\u00f1ones, <\/em>kidneys, because Chayo gave one<\/p>\n

to her son, who almost died when his failed.
\nIn Mexico City she pinned a bean-shaped charm<\/p>\n

to the skirt of a statue. Priests, I don<\/em>\u2019<\/em>t talk to much<\/em>,
\nshe says, but San Judas Tadeo,<\/em> him I trust. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>I prayed to him to intercede, to heal my son. <\/em> She lifts a copper bowl
\ndown from the cabinet and hugs it<\/p>\n

against her chest with both arms. Now he works
\n<\/em>as an engineer, and lives with his girlfriend. <\/em>She sets the bowl<\/p>\n

on the counter, lifts a stack of plates onto
\nthe wheeled cart she uses to set the table.<\/p>\n

She wraps warm tortillas in a cloth, spoons salsa
\ninto a shallow dish, fills the serving bowl<\/p>\n

with pale green soup I watched her form
\nfrom three chayotes, a potato, and bouillon.<\/p>\n

Above her the stove-light burns in its hood,
\nilluminating each loose strand of hair on her head.<\/p>\n

Nothing, <\/em>she tells me, is a lost cause. This soup,
\n<\/em>for example. If you cook it too long, add water and Norsuiza.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>If green beans turn dark, a little baking soda keeps them bright.
\n<\/em>She smoothes her hair and straightens her apron,<\/p>\n

ready to serve. And if you use a pressure cooker
\n<\/em>for frijoles, they<\/em>\u2019<\/em>ll be perfect inside of half an hour.<\/em><\/p>\n

This poem was originally published in Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion, and Spirituality, <\/em>edited by Kevin Simmonds (Sibling Rivalry Press).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Susan Miller Look for her upcoming book Communion of Saints from Paraclete Press I never set out to write a book about the saints. I was a Catholic convert at 37, after a long struggle with discernment which began … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}