Sabino

As I head to the spring, Sabino comes over to talk with me. “Sabino” he says with a huge smile and twinkling eyes, pointing to the tall trees lining the river, “like the name of these trees”.

Sabino points in another direction to the side of the mountain away from the pueblo, telling me he was born there, raised there. He practices his english and allows me to practice Spanish.

Then he sweeps his arms to this side, behind that mountain, over to the other mountain, that side – pointing out the land his grandfather used to own.

And apparently his grandfather owned him too. He tells me three months before he was born, his father was killed in an attempt to cross the border, hidden, trapped inside the belly of a truck that overturned and caught fire.

His grandfather took him from his daughter-in-law when he was less than a year old and raised him. He doesn’t know his mother but thinks she lives in Hermosillo.

He is 64 and retired. He tells me for many, many years he used to spend 6 months in the u.s., 6 months here – long enough to impregnate Maria and leave again. I wonder if he was here for the birth of any of his children.

All 11 of his children live in the u.s. now – Idaho, Oklahoma, Las Vegas, mostly Las Vegas. He is finally retired and able to stay home.

He has done all kinds of work – farm work, laboring work, factory work, whatever he could find – mostly in Oregon, Oklahoma, and Idaho. He was not part of the brasero crime but he knew of men from the pueblo who were, and who were never paid to this day.

Sabino finally was able to get his green card in 1983 or so. The relief erases years off his face as he tells me he no longer has to work illegally in the u.s.

He tells me he lives in town now, with Maria – she no longer wants to live in the mountains with no children and no electricity.

She raised 11 children without electricity??? And with her husband being gone more than here? Maybe his absence made things easier for her. I wonder if Sabino helped with the children when he was home, or if he saw that as her burden, as he sees her keeping the house clean as her burden.

He tells me Maria works all day now, really hard, cleaning the house. They are building another house for a son, I think, maybe for all the children.

I think he tells me he has 60 grandchildren. I can’t fathom that. But I can’t fathom having 11 children either.

Sabino makes me feel so welcome and tells me I should stay as long as I want.