Juan of Words

Un Buen Padre Vale Cien Maestros

A Good Father Is Worth One Hundred Teachers  

Art by Anton Refregier

There was something about the way my father’s clothes looked after he came home from work that commanded respect.  His shirts dark and sweaty from burning sun, splattered with large, small and extra large specs of hardened black tar, his pants the same, only layered in dirt from kneeling on roofs all day, his shoes, usually boots, massive and heavy.  The smell when he walked in our living room was musky and masculine, what a real man’s should be, that’s what I’d think at 10, safe and protected when he was around, we all felt.  Quiteme las botas, he’d say.  One of us would straddle his boot like a horse and tug as hard as we could, first at the heel, then at the tip, finally, after a great deal of force, both hands at the shaft, one firm last pull and both boot and kid would fall on the floor.

He was never one for many words.  When my mother would start es que tu nunca me haces caso, hay este hombre…, no te dije que dejaras los zapatos afuera…, he’d say nothing, just sit there, quietly, trying not to aggravate the situation.

Sometimes things would escalate and his rage would become untamable.  Those were the times we were afraid of him, when we’d wish we could do something to calm him down, but we were all just kids and much too little to do anything.  A true macho in every sense of the Mexican meaning: heavy handed, roaring voice, scared not of a single soul, ready to loosen his belt and yank it out from around his waist at any moment.  We knew if my mother’s chanclazos burned, his manotazos and cintarazos would leave marks, for days.  My mother knew this too, so a lot of times, unless we were extremely bad, dad would never find out about what we did.  That’s not to say he wasn’t tender and kind. He was.  And still is.  Some Saturdays he’d just hand us a five dollar bill and tell us to spend it on whatever we wanted, even when we knew he didn’t have the money.  When we were alone, he’d tell me about his childhood, the scorching heat against his back everyday, the loneliness of losing his mother at the age of five, and why we were prohibited from following in his footsteps.

He never missed any of our birthdays.  He wouldn’t dare let us suffer.  If mom sent us to work with him, he’d leave us behind at the warehouse, away from the sun, where we wouldn’t have to endure what he did.

We just never told her about it.

Dad’s skin was toasted a deep brown.  From years of quebrandose el lomo para sacarlos a ustedes adelante, mom would say (from years of breaking his back to make sure you all have everything you need).  In the pictures of decades past he was guero, no wrinkles, dark black hair, lots of it, slim, clean shaven, happy, youthful.  Not tired.  A different person almost from the father we knew, but then his laughter would fill the room and there, behind the leathered skin and graying hair, the same young man staring at the camera, smiling through time, too young and clueless to know what was waiting for him just a few years ahead.  He wasn’t so scary after all.  He was just dad.

Más Sabe El Diablo Por Viejo Que Por Diablo

The Devil Knows More From Old Age Than From Being The Devil

The devil: El diablo

One day I’d be somebody. One day I’d make enough money to stop wanting what everyone else had.  One day my day would come, and it’d be shiny and new, expensive, cherry red, big, with lots of rooms, a pool in the backyard, flashy, classy, the works, like those people in the telenovelas, just like the two and three story mansions in River Oaks we’d go trick or treating at every Halloween.  Racing to beat each other to the next house, grabbing handfuls of entire candy bars of chocolate, throwing them in our plastic bags of grocery stores like Fiesta and Krogers, pushing each other, fighting, laughing, and finally racing back to Pera and her van to hold our bags up in the air, measuring to see who had gotten the most candies.  On the drive back my brothers and I would stuff ourselves with as many sweets as we could before my father would make us sit on the dining room table, sifting out even the most partially-opened candies.

You see, every year the noticias would report that kids were dying, or at risk of dying, from eating sweets layered or injected with poison.  For my parents that meant anyone of us could drop to the floor and become unconscious, maybe even die, at any given moment: Ay Dios mio! Socorro! Auxilio! Alguien ayudenos por favor!  They’d tell us that we might not be able to go trick or treating this year, but we’d beg and plead until they conceded, under the strict condition that we not place any of the candy in our mouths until we made it back and let them make sure it was okay to eat.  We weren’t kids anymore – we were in middle school now, my youngest brother about to finish his elementary education – and we had never heard of any kids dying from eating Halloween candy, so what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them, we thought.  That became our excuse for everything: hurry up, we’re almost there; let me have one of those; I’ll trade you for this one; hurry up before we get home! 

Money was the only way to make it to the other side of poor.  That’s what I’d always seen, and it did appear the grass was much greener on the other side, at least from my perspective as a guerco tonto too big-mouthed and closed-minded for my own good. 

When we’d go to The Galleria, people with money, even those from Mexico who barely spoke a lick of English, blonde and blue eyed, not brown and dark, even a few dark ones who were wealthy, were treated with respect, waited on, hand and foot, greeted at the entrance of boutiques, showered with compliments, spoken to with dignity.  No dirty looks, no being chased around stores, no feeling less than equal.  My clothes by comparison were ratty and old.  Whitewashed jeans, Payless shoes, scruffy hair, shirts and pants too tight for my growing body, both up and sideways.  After three years in our new lives, we still had nothing.  Our apartment number was different, but the furniture and everything else inside it, including our family, was still the same, the only thing that had changed was our view of our world.  The innocent kid who’d lie in bed promising my mother a shiny new dress and house to go along with it was gone, in his place a shoplifting son who everyday became more a criminal.  I’d tired of seeing them struggle, depending on faith to see us through, angry at the world, I’d decided the things I wanted would be mine.  And they were!  Only I hadn’t realized what the cost of them would be, or how just being me would get in the way of taking stuff.   

One day I just couldn’t do it anymore.  My day never came, it still hasn’t, but we did make it out of Bali Hai Apartments.  By then, I’d seen enough, lived enough, struggled enough, to know whatever I had, or did not have, was not enough to change who I am.

Madre No Hay Mas Que Una

A Mother, There Is Only One

The days my mom would make fried chicken were extra special.  For me, they meant racing in and out of the kitchen, predatorily circling, slamming the barely-there screen door, over and over, it creaking, slowly, even when I carefully tried to close it, until my mother would give me the look, which we all knew meant cut it out, ya basta!  It wasn’t so much the eyes that were scary, as much as the brows, the way one would furl up while the other slouched down, almost touching the flour-stained red cheek on my mother’s light complexion.  No words were necessary when we got that stare.

Our kitchen was long and simple, a tiny stove on one side, a small fridge on the other side, white cabinets, just big enough to fit our food, at the entrance a screen door that might as well have been a revolving door as much as my two brothers and I jumped through it, onto the cement block right below, just before the sandy, sometimes snake-infested, ground.  At the other end a handmade, wooden picnic table which we used as a dining table surrounded by tree stumps for chairs.  Behind it a single window with a solid maroon, pink and blue polka-dotted curtain; this is where we celebrated birthdays every couple of months, or in some cases every couple of days, with homemade, marmalade-sandwiched, double-layered cakes covered in egg-beaten, color-dyed frosting .  My brother was born in March.  My sister in June – ten days before me.  My other sister in July.  My youngest brother in August – nineteen days before my father.  And my mother in December.   We were all under 13.  My two youngest sisters had not been born yet in these, our early days in the Rio Grande Valley.

Raw chicken dipped in egg whites, rolled over loose flour spread on a bare counter, tossed in a scorching hot, grease-jumping frying pan full of melted lard.  Hay, every once in a while my mother would yell when the grease popped onto her arm while making her McCook-famous fried chicken.  She knew this was my favorite meal so every time I’d threaten to run away and go hide in the bushes outside she’d start frying and sooner or later I’d come running back to the jumbo bottle of ketchup already waiting for me on the table.  When we weren’t mad I’d make sure to stay close at any cost to make sure I got to the fried chicken before anyone else did.

Grease and ketchup running down my arms as I hungrily raced to stuff as many crunchy drumsticks into my mouth as possible, then I’d take my tongue and lick the flavor off my arms and fingers until I couldn’t eat anymore.  Cochino!  Gross!  Nasty!  Cochino, marrano del monte!, my brothers and sister s would yell at me for doing this, but my mother would say nothing, she’d just warmly smile, her eyes sparkling at me in approval.  After I was done, everyone else would sit down to eat.  This was her way of spoiling me and I knew it.  Even with the look I knew the fried chicken was for me.

En Boca Cerrada No Entran Moscas

A Closed Mouth Gathers No Flies

Possibly not, but sometimes the temptation of participating in some juicy gossip is much stronger than the will to avoid those friendly individuals with such loose, almost venomous, tongues.  Especially when the subject matter at hand deals with a particular person of whom we are not very fond.  But who is more enamored with the art of gossiping, really: men or women?

According to my wife, us men are much more addicted to the sport of unmeasured words, sharing many more indiscretions with each other than our supposed more fragile female partners.  In fact, in her opinion, we tend to gossip a hell of a lot more, we just don’t do it right!  A woman knows how to share only what she wants to, and measures her words very carefully before saying them.  A man, on the other hand, just gets brave after a couple of beers…and later laments what he let slip out.  The truth is, and guys let me apologize now for letting this cat out of the bag, as much as I hate to admit it, the more I think about it, I realize she is actually right.  Personally, I’ve uttered so many of my own truths during inebriated stupors that I don’t even know anymore how many of my secrets my buddies actually do know.  As an adult, embarrassing as it is to admit, I’ve even cried in front of grown men, something I would have never, ever done without the encouragement of a few beers.

But perhaps the reason we males feel so liberated to vent with one another, especially when alcohol is involved, is because we as men are not as judgmental with each other as our female counterparts.  Rarely do we take into consideration our own feelings, much less the emotions of the other person we are talking to, before words just start coming out of our mouths.  And yes, I see all of you ladies nodding your heads up and down in agreement.  We don’t complain about how much those words hurt our feelings, or obligate our buddies to defend their actions TIME and TIME again.  Neither do we use guilt to deliver our final blow.  If we get mad, we punch each other around until we get exhausted, then we continue as if though nothing ever happened. 

Yes, we do like to gossip, possibly more than our wives and girlfriends, and maybe it’s not right, but we all know damn well that gossiping is one of life’s greatest and guiltiest pleasures.  A good chisme makes us laugh, and sometimes even impacts the decisions we make.  In my humble opinion, if we don’t open our mouths, we don’t have a voice.  And what is the point of having a mouth that gathers no flies, if we can’t use it to express ourselves? 

Unos Nacen Con Estrella, Otros Nacen Estrellados

Some Are Born In A Silver Crib, Others On A Silver Platter

About us they never knew a single thing.  Not the way we woke up every single morning to the scent of huevo con chorizo frying in the kitchen, tortillas freshly made, stacked under a carefully embroidered napkin of white cloth with pink and blue flowers at every corner, both flour and corn.  Not the way an occasional allowance of no more than one dollar made us so happy and grateful.  Not how good it felt to come home with the clothes we’d picked out for the next school year several months earlier, at the end of every summer when we’d pick them up from layaway, racing back and forth, changing from one outfit to the next, until all three had been paraded around our living room.  Or for that matter what the experience of actually shopping for anything new meant to us.  To them we were just another family like thousands of others: poor, uneducated, uncultured, with parents that spoke only Spanish, and worst of all stuck in our pitiful existence. 

We were the Mexicans people talked about so much in those days, before Reagan and his amnesty for immigrants.  The ones with a carload of children popping out of every door every stop we made in our multi-colored vehicle on its last wing; the ones stealing jobs and opportunities from Americans; the very ones that had to be detained and deported to prove a point that this country was not a place to violate laws.

What they failed to realize was that by sending us back they brought us closer together, and made us stronger.  In the arroyos of El Sauz we learned of civility, humility and dignity from the other children who treated us like royalty just because we had come from the other side.  El Norte that everyone talked about so much, where we were dirt poor by all accounts, but rich in comparison to the people living in our parents’ hometown.  With every trip to the nearby pond to gather water for our baths in small galvanized pails carried over our shoulders with a wooden stick, we became more aware of our parents’ sacrifices.  From our grandmother we learned how strong and beautiful the word Mexican actually is – not a term to be used derogatorily or in which any shame should be placed.  She was our matriarch who prayed to the Catholic virgin everyday, who enticed us with chocolate-infused coffee every morning, who constantly reminded us that we were her grandchildren and needed to speak Spanish to communicate with her.          

Upon our return we were no longer the same brood of speechless immigrants too afraid to make any waves for fear of being deported.  We had been there and back as a family, and now we had finally found our voice.  You don’t have a heart, all of you immigration people are heartless, my mother exclaimed at the judge after being told she would be the only one in our family not obtaining a green card, but as long as my kids and their father get legalized I’m happy.  It was a gutsy move, but one that proved quite worth it.  A few weeks later we found out that everyone in our family soliciting green cards would be getting them, including my mother.  Almost as if in that instant, that immigration judge had seen past our illegal status, to the pleading heart of a desperate mother wanting nothing more than to remain with her children.  

Yes, we were poor – uneducated and uncultured, as well.  Our parents did speak mostly Spanish, very little English.  And maybe our existence was pretty pitiful to outsiders, but we were on our way and now we knew that we were worth much more than what we had been told.  We were definitely not stuck, just at a crossroad. 

This post is dedicated to the new wave undocumented immigrants facing hatred and discrimination because of whom they have been told they are in this country.  May you find your true voice and strength, and fear not what the result might be of standing up for what is right.

Un Clavo Saca Otro Clavo

One Nail Take Out Another Nail

There were many things unfamiliar to us in the big city.  For eight years we’d known nothing but the sandy roads where my brothers and I spent countless hours making up imaginary games; long stretches of shrub and snake-infested woods we’d walk through to collect drinkable water from the local well; friendships no further than our own home; the one bedroom whitewashed house with dark brown trimming we all shared; and the harmonious choir-practicing my sisters did in front of the mirror with their hairbrushes.  Our lives in McCook were quite simple.

Everyone in our ranch went to the same schools, as well as the same church, grocery stores, retail centers, and park in the town of Edinburg, about an hour away.  For our Christmas shows at McCook Elementary local farm workers, mostly Mexicans, including my parents, and farm owners, mostly white, shared the same cafetorium where their kids normally ate lunch, to watch the simple plays put together by teachers like Ms. Keller and Ms. Valdez.  One year I was a care bear and my only line was to say C is for caring.  After much stuttering and panicked sweating I managed to get the words out of my mouth and nervously knelt on the stage where my teachers had told me to.  For these special occasions my mother would bring sugar cookies as her contribution to the pot luck feastings, but rarely touched any of the offerings set out by any of her neighbors.  We were all much too timid to eat amongst our better off neighbors and bosses, after all these were the ladies that paid my mother $15 a day to clean their homes.

I’d never seen a person of color outside of white and brown in the Valley, not even on television since we mostly watched Little House on the Prairie, The Visitors and cartoons like Thunder Cats and He-Man in those days, as well as my parents’ telenovelas like Rosa Salvaje and Quinceañera.  Songs by Madonna and Whitney Houston are what my teenage sisters would sing around the house, although the rest of us hadn’t a clue who these people were – we just liked listening to them and thought some of the lyrics were catchy.  In a lot of ways they were our connection to the outside world since they were then attending junior high in Edinburg with teens from other little ranches and the town itself.  We looked up to them.  We envied them.  We thought they were so cool, and we waited for the day when we’d have the chance to travel into town everyday, even if it was only for school.

Sometimes semi-trucks full of cantaloupes and watermelons would show up on their way to drop off their cargo to the farmers’ cows and we’ve waive them down until they stopped and let us pick out some of the fruit for ourselves.  My brother would climb the semi and throw down melons for the rest of us to catch and place inside the potato sacks our mother had rushed over.  We’d then have sweets for days.

At the Bali Hai Apartments, though, we had many different kids to play with, lots of channels to watch, this new snack called a sandwich we could easily make ourselves, as many of them as we wanted, a little old lady who lived in apartment number one and sold us Mexican candies as cheap as five cents each, even an Asian neighbor in one of the apartments upstairs.  To get to Pilgrim Elementary, which used a panda as its mascot, my mother would walk my brothers and me almost two miles to the school and wave at us from across the street as the crossing guard safely guided us past the black chain linked fence.  In the afternoons we’d walk ourselves home past several apartment buildings and houses, across the acres of abandoned land, through the makeshift trails made by the people from our own apartments walking back and forth, until we finally met my mother on the other side of the trails.  She was always there without failure.

Where and when I saw a black person for the first time I don’t recall, although it must have been pretty uneventful since no recollection of it comes to mind.  Our concerns were much more focused on adjusting to our new lives and we had learned enough at school to know that people of color, no matter how light or dark, all shared many of the same struggles.  There was much more awe in playing Carmen Sandiego on an actual computer for the first time in my life than anything else, as there was in wondering what people did during the day in those big skyscrapers my mom and sisters would clean in the evenings.  When we’d got to pick them up after work in my dad’s truck I’d run around the buildings pressing my face against the glass windows to see what was inside until he’d yell at me to come back.  Desks, computers, notepads, telephones, and the occasional picture frame and flowers are what I’d mostly find, yet my curiosity was never satisfied.

Eventually to pass the time my brother and I would head to The Galleria with our newfound friends from Bali Hai.  Big shirts and big pants were the style in the early 90’s and that’s what we’d wear to fit in.  This choice of clothing also came very handy when we decided to start taking what we wanted from the mall without paying for it.  We’d grab a handful of shirts from the rack, head into the dressing room, rip off their tags, put on as many shirts as we could under own shirts, and walk out of the store nonchalantly hoping not to get caught.  It was a rush unlike anything we’d ever felt playing in the sand in McCook, and it made us feel all grown up.

We were poor and we knew it.  Even though we weren’t living in McCook anymore and our parents could afford to buy us more of the things we wanted, our family was still the type of family people handed down clothes and food to and felt sorry for.  All those mouths to feed, pobrecitos…people would say and think. You could see it in their eyes even if they never vocalized it.  The funny thing is it was the same look we’d gotten in Edinburg when we’d go shopping, a trail of kids behind my mother, only here it hurt and made us feel less adequate.  Shoplifting was our way of fighting back against the stigma of being poor!  It wasn’t right, but in the moment it felt great.