Woman of Light

Pidre’s grandchildren Luz (the titular “Little Light”) and Diego, as well as their aunt Maria Josie (Josefina) and cousin Lizette, attend the annual Denver chili harvest festival along the South Platte River. Luz reads tea leaves for those who want to hear about their future. Diego is a snake charmer with two six-foot rattlesnakes whom he has trained to rise from a basket, fall down, play dead, and rise up again at his command. Luz and Diego have lived with their aunt, Maria Josie, for almost 10 years since their mother, Sara, could no longer care for them (due to alcoholism) and sent them to Denver, Colorado. Lizette, Luz and Diego’s cousin, comes to her for a reading. Luz sees a vision of Lizette making love to her boyfriend, Alfonso. Maria Josie cautions the girls against getting pregnant.

A young woman named Eleanor Anne seeks out Luz for a reading. She says she knows Diego, to which Luz replies, “He knows lots of girls real well” (10). Though Luz has a vision of a young woman in a traveling carnival, she does not fully share what she sees with Eleanor Anne. Later, she tells Diego that Eleanor Anne came to her, and that the reading gave her a bad feeling.

As Luz gets ready for her day’s work at the laundry, Diego summons her to the room where he does push-ups with one of his snakes on his back. He asks her to put the snake in its cage and hand him the other one. Luz leaves home, a fifth-floor tenement in a building called Hornet Moon, and walks to the Westside, where Lizette and her parents, Teresita and Eduardo, and four brothers live in a small house. Teresita is distantly related to Simodecea Salazar-Smith, Luz’s deceased grandmother whose name she does not know. Luz and Lizette then walk to the laundry together, gathering clothes they are to wash. They walk past the fancy homes of white residents. When Luz mentions their beauty, Lizette says, “Don’t be too impressed…it’s how they trick themselves into thinking they’re better than we are” (21). She wants to take a shortcut by a cemetery. As the cousins pass the graveyard, Luz sees images of how those buried died.

Luz and her aunt Maria Josie—described as a woman in her mid-thirties who “often wore men’s clothing and was sometimes mistaken for one” (27) and prefers the company of women—go to Tikas Market to buy groceries. They encounter Papa Tikas, the Greek owner, who tells them that the police killed another person. He then asks if they will come to the party thrown in honor of his son, David, who has opened a law firm. On their way home, the women discover Papa placed some meat, which they could not afford to buy, in their grocery bags.

Luz and Diego, along with Lizette and her fiancé Alfonso, go to the Rainbow Hall for David’s celebration, were Papa Tikas prepared a Greek feast. David and his date approach the four’s table. David’s girlfriend asks if one of the women will dance with David. He summons Luz to the dance floor and holds her tightly as they dance, which she finds arousing. As they dance, Luz feels a terrible pain in her mouth and sees a vision of Eleanor Anne at the door. She excuses herself and goes outside, where she sees two men holding Diego against the hood of a truck while a third man pummels his face with a brick. One of the men turns to Luz before they leave and asks, “Was this in your tea?” (37). The three men are later revealed to be Eleanor Anne’s father and brothers.

Several men from the party, including Alfonso, Papa Tikas, and David, take the injured Diego to Teresita’s home. They lay him across the kitchen table as she tends to his severe wounds. She insists Luz and Lizette watch and help, saying they will face this again as wives and mothers.

As Diego recovers from his wounds, Maria Josie tells him that he must leave Denver. He moves out and sell some possessions, giving 50 dollars and a bear claw charm to Luz. He kills his two snakes, since they cannot come north with him to find farm work. Luz does a reading for him, but all she sees is an image of their father, who left the family. When Maria Josie returns in the evening, Luz accuses her of hating all men. She replies that, one day, Luz will understand what she had to do.

In the past, a younger Maria Josie visits the mining camp cabin of her sister Sara and tries to persuade her to leave her abusive partner, Benny. Two years later, Diego and Luz leave school early because their teacher is sick, and Diego finds his first rattlesnake. Chased by wasps, the children run home and discover their father Benny with a company car. He hastily packs his possessions, as well as Sara’s turquoise and saved money:

It was the first time it happened, that Luz suddenly understood something unsaid. She knew, sensed it in her hands and heart, a feeling spreading like ice water to her mind. Her father was a liar, and he was leaving and not coming back (59).