Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos Page A

northwest of Mexico City. The long history of the Lopez and Velas in south Texas and the borderlands left them with that aloof quality that comes from seeing many nations come and go as would-be masters of the land. The United States of America was only one incarnation. They knew there had been other worlds before this one, even if they might not be able to name all of them.
    When my grandmother Leandra drove her polished ebony Buick through the streets of San Antonio, it felt as if we were on a slow promenade through the shady boulevards of an ancient capital. She drove so slowly, always with her lights on, that a few old Mexicanos would stop along the streets, dip their heads, and wait for us to pass, thinking we were part of a funeral cortege. We were out collecting her rents, stopping at the curbside in front of the little tree-lined houses where her tenants called her Señora Lopez.
    Despite my pleas, Grandmother would honk the horn repeatedly until one of the occupants of the house would come out with an envelope full of cash, or with a sheepish look that led to an elaborate explanation of why the rent would be late again that month. And Grandmother never seemed to mind.
    She had started out in Laredo as a teacher, so she would always want to know if the kids were in school, if they were doing well in their studies, if they were eating well. Never budging from the driver’s seat of the enormous car, with her gloved hands on the steering wheel, she would then shut off the idling engine and ask about other members of the family, if she knew them—a husband whose leg had been badly mangled doing ranchwork, a brother who had been deported to Mexico the week before by the Immigration Service agents, who periodically swept through the neighborhoods looking for “wetbacks.”
    And then there would be a long silence. Grandmother and her tenants would wish each other well, and we would set off.
    On the way home, we drove past Mission San José, the largest of the old churches that date back to the late seventeenth century, when the Franciscan Fray Damian Massanet first offered a Mass in a cotton-wood arbor on the banks of the river the Payaya Indians called Yanaguana. It was after that Mass, which celebrated the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua, that the river was renamed Rio San Antonio.
    From the road, you could see through the massive arched entrance to the mission and see a sprawling open courtyard and the little church in the distance. Grandmother said the church had been there forever, and where she came from in south Texas, missions were a common sight, forming a galaxy of ruins of the empire of Nueva España that stretched southward all the way to Mexico City.
    The trail that links the five old San Antonio missions and their network of aqueducts connects the city to that nearly forgotten past when the first Mestizos were still coming to terms with having been born of a Spanish father who came from one ancient world and an Indian mother who came from quite another. On cliffsides in the woods around San Antonio, there are petroglyphs where the Indians recorded their first impressions of the missions, los padres, and the Spaniard vaqueros on their horses. Drawn in thick lines with dark vegetable inks on stone, churches appear as little arched sanctuaries, crowned by a cross. A stick figure is recognizable as a priest by an exaggerated mitred hat, just as the vaquero can be distinguished by his cocked sombrero.
    But if it hadn’t been for the river, the Yanaguana, the Rio San Antonio, thickly lined for miles with palmettos and yuccas, willows, oak, and huisache, there would have been no missions; and if there had not been missions, there might never have been a city.
    By these threads, we could find our way back to the beginning.
     
     
    I used to sit silently with Grandmother in her bedroom, when she was already nearing her death. She received all of us from her bed with the expression of an exhausted, world-weary