Little Rogelio

Esperanza, Muñe to her friends, lives in Guanajuato with her one and a half year old son and her mother, who is also named Esperanza. Muñe’s husband works in Mexico City and only sees his family on the weekends, when he has time for the four-hour drive to Guanajuato. He works in information technology – a good job by Mexican and Canadian standards. But there are no jobs for him in Guanajuato, a city full of government offices and mines.

Muñe doesn’t want to bring up her little son, Rogelio, in Mexico City because she says it is too dangerous. Instead she lives with her widowed mother in the beautiful city she grew up in. The women keep each other company, in a plain white house fenced in by a plain-but-rather-imposing white gate. During the days Senora sews first communion robes and other pieces of clothing, a little business she runs out of her living room full of Rogelio’s toys. Muñe spends her time chasing after Rogelio, a little angel/devil with curly blondish hair and green eyes. His favourite pastime, as far as I can tell, is throwing small objects into the empty water jugs that sit under the kitchen counter. They he makes this desperate little face until someone picks up the jug, turns it upside down and shakes it until the object – usually a bouncy ball or a toy car – falls onto the floor. Then he picks it up and does it all over again. Muñe and Senora don’t seem to mind this game, even at dinnertime.

On Monday evening I sat with Muñe and her mother and we looked at pictures of Canada in a book I’d brought for them. Muñe asked me if it was true that there were people from all over the world living in my country. Si, I said. We have a lot of immigrants, especially in Toronto. I told her that Canadian women don’t have a lot of children, and that some don’t even have any, which makes immigration necessary lest we want our population to start shrinking.

About an hour later, after more pictures and other conversations, Muñe asked me why women in Canada don’t have many children. I could tell she’d been thinking about it for a while.
No se, I said, slowly. Some women do, I clarified. But others…I don’t know, I said. I think they are very focused on their careers and…material things.

Muñe nodded. “We always say, money isn’t everything…but it helps!” she said with a laugh.

That evening at dinner, Rogelio was sitting on his mother’s lap, facing her. He kept placing his tiny hands on either side of her head and pulling it close to his, so their foreheads touched as they looked down towards their laps.