Josefa Lopez

Josefa Lopez was born on July 17, 1908,the 12th child in my granfather's family with his first wife, and the last one of the surviving ones, since the 13th died at birth. Being the mother's namesake, she inherited her mother's gold earrings. The gold earrings were part of an elegant troussau, bought in the Mexican city of Mier, including a big trunk with rounded top which looked similar to a pirate's chest. (At least it looked like that to me when I was a child.)
My mother talks about seeing the contents of this trunk when she was grown up. According to her description, the dress was magnificent and the tiny shoes were exquisite, although falling apart with age when she saw them. In fact, my mother ended up inheriting that trunk, and upon her death, passed it on to me. When I was raising my children on my own and moving frequently, I sold the trunk to a cousin, feeling it would be better preserved by her. The money was also needed or I would have just given it to her.
When my grandmother died in childbirth, her gold earrings were taken off and put immediately in my aunt Josefa's ears, even though she was just a toddler. They remained in her ears until the day she died in 1992. She kept them on even when she bathed. They were a part of her all her life.
Josefa went to the same school with Petra in Roma, Texas. She too left school in the fifth grade and worked in the fields and in people's homes as a maid. When her father died she moved to Weslaco to live with Petra until she married in 1944, six months after I was born. There she worked for white people cleaning their homes accross the tracks. She usually walked all the way to their homes, although sometimes they would come to pick her up at home and sometimes brought her back.
While in her 30's she had to have cataracts removed from her eyes and later in her 60s again.
She married Manuel Gracia in 1944. I remember they looked kind of odd together, because she was about 4'11" and he must have been 6'5". She had two children, a boy, Ramon, who died at birth in 1945, and a girl, Idolina, who lived until six months old.
When I was growing up my aunt Josefa, or Fita, as we called her, became a very inportant part of my life. Her help and support shaped my life. She would carry in her tote bag things for me every day from work.
When she saw all the books, comic books, magazines and newspapers those white people threw away, she asked if she could have them and she would bring them to me each day. I grew up with all of these information at my disposal and it awakened in me a deep hunger for learning that still remains in me to this day.
She once worked for a lady that had a prekindergarten school and sometimes my aunt would ask her for some of the projects the children did so that I could do them too. One project I still remember was one using wallpaper to make dollhouse furniture. She brought me the materials and the instructions and I had so much fun making the paper furniture that i have done dollhouse furniture all my life, as it became a hobby as I grew up. When I finished the project, the lady stopped one day to see how well I had done it on my own and she was pleasantly surprised and continued to send me projects to do just as if I had been in her little class.