Mamá Coco is the only person who truly understands Miguel. That's why he loves spending time with her.
"Hola, Mamá Coco," he says as he steps into his great-grandmother's
room.
She's in a wicker wheelchair with her shawl and furry slippers. Her skin is as wrinkled as a wadded paper bag and her face is framed by two white trenzas, braids.
"How are you, Julio?" she says. Mamá Coco is very old, and sometimes she gets confused.
"Actually, my name is Miguel." He leans forward so she can get a good look at him. She lost her teeth long ago, but that doesn't stop her from
smiling. "Heh, heh," she chuckles as she reaches for his cheeks.
Miguel tells her everything—how he likes to run with his hands open and palms flat because it's faster; how he has a dimple on one side of his
face but not on the other; who his favorite luchador is. Mamá Coco nods and smiles, while the scraggly cat at the window yawns and stretches.
When he runs out of things to say, Miguel starts humming
absentmindedly as he straightens things around the room. He catches Mamá Coco's foot moving, but he can't tell if she's trying to tap the rhythm or
scratching an itch on her heel.
Without realizing it, Miguel stops humming and starts to sing out loud.
He can't help it. The music just takes over.
He's about to hit a high note when his abuelita storms in.
"How many times do I have to tell you?" she says, pointing at him. "No music!"
She startles the cat at the window, and it runs off. She startles Mamá
Coco and Miguel, too. Noticing this, Abuelita softens a bit and comes over to give Mamá Coco, her mother, a kiss on the forehead.
"Sorry I yelled," she says, and turning to Miguel, she adds, "but you know the rule—no music."
Miguel does know the rule. He's reminded every day. Once he blew into a glass soda bottle, and when Abuelita heard the whistle, she snatched the bottle away. Another time Miguel rushed to the window when he heard a truck with its radio blaring, but before he could catch the tune, Abuelita
angrily slammed the window shut. A few nights before, a trio of gentlemen had serenaded as they strolled by the family hacienda, and instead of letting them fill the air with beautiful songs, Abuelita burst out the door and chased them off. "No music!" she'd shouted after them.
And here she is again, telling him about the ban on music. "I know the rule," Miguel says, "but—"
Abuelita shushes him. Then she sits on the edge of Mamá Coco's bed and pats the space beside her so Miguel can sit, too.
"Let me tell you why we have this rule," she begins. Miguel sighs. He's heard the story a million times. He can recite it by memory, and he says the words in his mind as Abuelita speaks. "A long time ago, there was a family. A mamá, a papá, and their little girl. The man, he was a musician. He loved to play the guitar while his wife and daughter danced. Every day, he and his wife would sing, dance, and count their blessings." Abuelita pauses and takes a deep breath before going on. "But this man had a dream. He wanted to play his music for the world. And one day, that man left with his guitar… and never returned." She shakes her head with shame, and her voice
hardens a bit. "Now imagine a man holding a guitar and walking away as his poor wife and child stand in the doorway and watch. But do you think that woman wasted one tear on that walk-away musician? Tch—¡Claro que no!"
Miguel decides to finish the story. "She banished all music from her life because she had a daughter to provide for," he says, and Abuelita nods. "So she rolled up her sleeves and she learned to make shoes. Then she taught her daughter to make shoes. And later, she taught her son-in-law. Then her grandkids got roped in. As the business grew, so did her family."
Abuelita puts a hand on Miguel's shoulder. "And who was that woman?"
"My great-great-grandmother, Mamá Imelda." "And the little girl?"
"Mamá Coco," Miguel answers, glancing at his great-grandmother as she sits in the wheelchair, nearly asleep.
Abuelita gets up and adjusts the shawl on Mamá Coco's shoulders. She beckons Miguel to follow her, and they tiptoe out, making their way to the ofrenda room. It's set up as a memorial to their ancestors, with an altar decorated with embroidered cloth, flowers, and candles illuminating portraits of relatives who have passed away. In the flickering light, the portraits seem to move as if the ancestors were still alive. Abuelita lovingly adjusts a sepia-tinted photo of Mamá Imelda with baby Coco on her lap. A man stands beside her, but his face has been torn away. The only clue that this is the mysterious musician is a charro jacket with fancy trim, the kind that mariachis love to wear.
"Come along," Abuelita says, and she leads Miguel across the courtyard to the shoemaking shop. Cabinets along the walls hold trays of buckles,
shoelaces, brackets, threads, and chisels. Half-finished shoes hang from clotheslines, and different-sized mallets are thrown about. The floor is
scuffed from so many years of the Rivera family hard at work. Even now, they are busy making shoes. Miguel's papá and tía Gloria use rivet guns to make eyelets for shoelaces. His mother and grandfather run fabric through sewing machines. Tío Berto carves into leather with a swivel knife, and Tía Carmen traces patterns on a cutting board. It's very noisy in the shop, but the tapping, punching, and sewing sound nothing like music to Miguel.
Abuelita waves her hand across the room as if showing Miguel a grand kingdom. "Music tore our family apart, but shoes have held it together."
Then she giggles to herself. "In fact," she says, "I captured the heart of your grandfather when he realized that I made the most beautiful and
comfortable cowboy boots in all of Mexico." "I never got blisters," Papá Franco says.
"No one gets blisters when they wear my shoes," Abuelita proudly announces.
"Okay, okay," Miguel says. "Shoes. I get it." He slips a red hoodie over his tank top, grabs a shoeshine box, and heads for the door. "Why don't I make myself useful and go shine some boots in town?"
"Be back by lunch, m'ijo," his mamá says.
"And don't forget to use the brush on suede and the cloth on leather," Abuelita reminds him.
"Got it!" Miguel says, rushing to shine shoes like a proper Rivera boy.
But, and this is the part he's left out, he plans to shine shoes near the musicians in Mariachi Plaza!