The Story of Esperanza

Grandmama

Esperanza Carpenter, formerly Esperanza Perez, is the matriarch of our family, hailing from a small town near Guadalajara, Mexico. She has three sons, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren and counting. She’s small, with short black hair featuring a white skunk stripe. A native Spanish speaker, she learned English when she came to the United States for work and dabbles in Italian here and there. Grandmama is tough, brazen, and unabashed, and she makes killer carne asada, guacamole, and any other Mexican dish you can think of. These bits and pieces of her are what most of my family know about her, but I ask more. I ask about the love she’s had in her life, her travels, her regrets. This is the story of Grandmama.

In Guadalajara, Espe was just another daughter among seven siblings. Her mother never liked her—putting out cigarettes on her arms, calling her worthless, tossing her out while favoring her other siblings. These emotional and physical scars are still there as she approaches 85. She’s cried to me, “Caiyita, why did my mother not love me? How did she look at her daughter and choose to hate her?”

Espe always loved her siblings. Her earliest memory was when her sister died at 18, right as she was about to marry. Her sister was adorned in her wedding dress, her coffin freshly painted in pure white. Five-year-old Esperanza remembers touching that white paint, moving it between her fingers so that she always has a piece of her sister with her. She recalls her sister’s fiancé riding in on horseback, seeing the coffin, and dropping from the horse to his knees, sobbing.

Espe recalls playing with her siblings outside by the river and getting home before dark to cozy up in bed as she hears the shrieks of La Llorona mourning her children. She remembers taking care of her siblings and cousins in their sicknesses, doing the best she could with the limited apothecary in town, praying over them.

But the biggest event of her young life in Mexico involved falling in love. She was newly 19 and smitten. She loved him dearly, and he said that if she really loved him, she’d sleep with him. She did. On her first time being with the man she loved and who she thought loved her too, she fell pregnant. The man immediately rejected her, claimed her child was not his, and ran off to tell the whole village of her promiscuity. She was shunned by her family, her friends, and her entire community. But Grandmama had always been tough—she named her son Alfonso so that the whole town would know that he was undoubtedly the father.

Her child was young, and there were not many job prospects in Mexico, least of all for a young, uneducated woman and her young son. She immigrated to America and married an Italian man with his own child who was so unbelievably smitten with her. But they had an arrangement—he loved her, but Grandmama just wanted the papers, so he knowingly gave her a green card marriage. Grandmama got a job as a receptionist and began her life in America, learning English and working hard for her little family of her and her son.

Grandmama dated here and there, with her young son Al seeing them come in and out of their lives. One day, Al was five and in school, and there was another man who was smitten with Esperanza Perez. It was Al’s teacher, and he was Black. Grandmama told me, as she was telling me this story, that she never cared for los morenos, the Black men, but it was her son that had her giving him a chance.

“Mommy,” young Al said, “you date all these men, and they never like me. Finally, there’s one who likes me, and you won’t even date him, for me!”

Espe, above all, cared for her son. So she dated him. She then married Charles Carpenter II in a small, intimate wedding. She went on to have two sons, my father, Charles Carpenter III, and my other uncle, Eric. They traveled together and had a simple, traditional life—Grandpapa worked as a teacher and provided for his family, and Espe stayed home and took care of the kids and the home.

Grandmama shared with me that she felt he was not the best husband to her, as she wanted more education but felt she never let him. Grandpapa was a great person—caring, witty, intelligent, charming, an amazing singer, and a fantastic father to his three sons. But they slept apart and had separate lives, joined together for their kids.

But she made a vow in their wedding and pledged to be by his side and be a good, caring wife and a great mother to their children. And she was and she did. In sickness and in health, till death did they part. And in sickness it was when Grandpapa fell ill with Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s took the wit, the intelligence, the ability to be a father, and finally the ability to eat and breathe. But Espe took care of him, wiping his mouth, keeping him clean, and making sure he had his dignity till the end.

A month after Grandpapa passed, my dad got married to my mom. Espe celebrated with them and celebrated when her other son got married as well. She celebrated when she got her grandchildren from Al, who got married well before my parents did. She celebrated when she got my brother and me, and she celebrated when she got my cousins as well. She celebrates now as she sees her new great-grandchildren. She is now Grandmama, the matriarch.

Grandmama never dated after her husband passed, but she still wears the ring. Most people's great loves in their lives are their partners, but Espe's has and always will be her children.

Esperanza Carpenter is a tough woman who went through her life tough and strong as she needed to be. She’s traveled with her family and alone, learning cultures and languages and trying new food in all parts of the world. We try sushi, ramen, burgers and fries, and any other food Southern California has to offer (we refuse to go to other Mexican places—she cooks it best). And when we dine, I ask her about her life. Here is her life.