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The children were getting restless and starting to fuss. They started to<br />
get up to leave, when Josefina paused and timidly said, “Please tatito, I<br />
have one more question.<br />
“It seems I don’t have enough breast milk to satisfy the baby,” she said.<br />
“Doña Juana, you know the wild Poinsettia plant,” he said. “Doesn’t it<br />
grow right in front of your house?”<br />
“Yes, yes. That one I know for sure, but my grandmother told me never<br />
to use it, because it is poison.”<br />
“True, very true—smart woman,” he said approvingly. “You were wise<br />
to obey her counsel. But in this case, it is safe. I want you to pick nine of<br />
the little plants and braid the branches into a necklace for her to wear all<br />
day. For nine days you should make a fresh necklace every morning. Also<br />
boil a pot of the herb and wash the breasts <strong>with</strong> the warm water before each<br />
feeding. Dry the breasts before giving them to the baby. Then, ha, there will<br />
be quarts of milk.”<br />
Doña Juana looked at Josefina, who was now nursing the infant at her<br />
breast, and said authoritatively, “The old man has very sore and weak eyes.<br />
I think a little bit of mother’s milk dropped in them would be helpful. Are<br />
you willing, child, to give him some?”<br />
Josefina giggled and shifted uncomfortably, turning to the wall to blush.<br />
She covered her mouth <strong>with</strong> her free hand and whispered, “Sí.”<br />
Then there ensued a great debate on how best to squirt the milk into<br />
Panti’s eyes.<br />
I have to see this, I thought.<br />
Finally it was decided that he would remain in his seat and she would<br />
stand up and point her nipple at his eye. It was my job to hold his eyes open<br />
to allow each milky projectile to find its target.<br />
Amidst a great babble of giggles and shifting of feet, Don Elijio gladly<br />
gave himself over to Doña Juana’s prescription. How easily and quickly<br />
they switched roles, I thought, each helping the other <strong>with</strong> their own brand<br />
of expertise. After fifteen children and eighty grandchildren, I guessed<br />
Doña Juana knew everything there was to know about the health benefits of<br />
mother’s milk.<br />
He sat expectantly on his little wooden stool in the corner of his poorly<br />
lit cement hut, beneath his calendar sporting a half-naked woman in a<br />
bathing suit who was guzzling a bottle of Coca-Cola as an ocean wave<br />
broke over her.