Penelopeby Elena Dolores Solano My mama, Rosa Castillo-Diaz, was born in central Texas, in a small town called Penelope, nestled in Hill County, squarely between Waco and Dallas. Although she lived in Detroit most of her adult life, her heart belonged to Texas. She spoke of it in endearing terms, and proudly called herself a Tejana—a native Texan of Mexican descent. She visited family there regularly. When we shared a cup of coffee or went on long drives, she described Texas in great detail, the curves of the land, the scorching sun and the fields that stretched on forever. I visited Penelope many times in my dreams. I flew there con mi mamasita. Hand in hand we went over rivers and streams, when the sun was shining and the moon was beaming. We never stopped flying, even when the wind blew, and rain came down hard and lightning bolts flashed around us. Our hands became one, and all the while she told me cuentitos, little stories of her motherland, stories of her childhood. We finally arrived at the ranchito where she was born. We hovered over it, we were still in time and space, taking in the land that held her heart. She pointed out the details she talked about over the years. There was the church where she was baptized, but it had been rebuilt since she was a child. There was the one road that ran through the center of town. Offshoots of the main road led to dirt roads that ran in various directions. There were fields and farms and row upon row of neatly planted crops. Gentle hills that were more like slopes rose from the earth, as if they were mountains that forgot to keep growing. And all around us was an endless blue sky and a sun that burned forever. But this was all in my mind’s eye, in my heart, where I kept it hidden for years. I made a vow I would go to Penelope someday. Someday. I visited Penelope several years ago. But I didn’t fly there as I had in my dreams. I was visiting friends in Austin and decided to take a daytrip to make this long awaited pilgrimage. My heart fluttered as I got into the rental car and studied a map of the area. I felt solemn. I didn’t know what I would find or what I was looking for; I only knew I needed to see this storied place. I headed north on the freeway, and eventually passed Waco. We visited Waco regularly when I was a child. My parents packed us tight into a station wagon and made the trip to see my abuelo and tías and tios, and myriad of cousins. My abuelos took their children and settled there after leaving Mexico. I remember the thick heat of the air and old, clapboard houses, running in the sun and walking down to the river. As I drove past Waco, I felt my heart lurch, I wanted to stop and visit my cousins, but I was on a mission that day. I followed the map and finally turned off the freeway. I drove down what felt like an eternity of long, endless roads. After what seemed hours of driving, I noticed a lonely sign on the side of the road that simply said ‘Penelope’, pointing in the direction of the town. Seeing the sign made my heart jump. This place that captured my mother’s heart was suddenly real. I pulled over and looked at that sign long and hard as if it were a message from Diosito or my mother. I continued driving and a few miles later another sign appeared. It simply said, Penelope 2. My heart leapt again. I stopped the car and got out and stepped into what felt like an oven. The heat was suffocating, and my lungs felt like they were on fire. I took picture after picture, as if I were afraid the sign and the stories from my mother would somehow disappear, like fantasmas, ghosts, or a mean trick of my eyes. The two miles stretched on forever. But Penelope suddenly appeared, and it was indeed a ranchito, a small town, a spit town, a blink your eyes and it’s gone town. I drove slowly as I entered the outskirts of town. There appeared to be a main road that made a loop connecting back to the thoroughfare, which led in or out of town. I noticed the casitas, little houses, spread out through meandering streets. The yards were large and dry and spoke of hard work. Cars were propped on bricks and work rags hung on open hoods. Cactus and scrub brush grew everywhere, and just like my mother, everything here was neat and tidy. I drove back around to the main road and out of town, and when I came to the end of it, I turned the car around and drove through it again. I can’t tell you how many times because I stopped counting. My abuela, Nicasia, and my mother, Rosa, left Penelope shortly after her younger sisters died from diphtheria. My mother was six or seven at that time. We have one family photo of my mother’s sisters, my tías. It is a sepia tinted portrait of them in their wooden coffin. Their two small bodies are dressed in white, lace bonnets adorn their heads, tiny bows tied neatly under their chins. They rest side by side. They have the same cherub cheeks as my mother. Their angelic faces appear asleep when I look at them. There was little to hold my abuela in Penelope after her daughters died. Other voices called her south and west. There was too much grief here, and the land too hard. There was cotton to be picked, fields to be harvested and pecans to be shelled, all outside of this ranchito. The main pecan shelling factories were in or around San Antonio, and fields of cotton and farm work waited in the Waco area. But I still looked with hunger for any sign of her and my mama. I took countless pictures of the roads, and as I headed out of town for the umpteenth time, I noticed several lonely abandoned buildings. I parked my car and stared at them, even after years of being forgotten, they were still tidy and impossibly sweet. I held my breath as I got out of the car and crossed the road. The hot air still took me by surprise. There were two buildings and in between them was what might have been a courtyard, or another building. It was hard to know. The space now held a wild array of scrub brush and pines, reaching up between the buildings for the blue sky above. An old picket fence, long worn of any paint, held up a massive trumpet flower vine. Their orange color popped against the faded fence. One of the buildings was made from red brick, its bones still strong and in place. A large white sign painted on the facade gave away its lineage. It said, “Penelope Grocery.” Another building, short and squat, bustled up to the lot, it was whitewashed and padlocked, layers of white paint made for thick flakes from the bright sun. A wooden bench sat forlorn in front of the buildings, as if it was waiting for company. The head of a lion decorated the cast iron arms of each end. Clay flower pots full of cactus sat at attention in the mid-day heat. I walked up and down the swatch of sidewalk in front of the buildings, searching for my mama and abuela. Tenacious prickly pear cactus grew out of the concrete, bright yellow blossoms adorned them like golden crowns. The intense color of the flowers added to this already surreal scene. My mother was always a surprise, while other parts of her were a mystery. Walking on the sidewalk where she may have walked with her mother, I should not have been surprised by the bright orange trumpet vines, the yellow flowers of the prickly pear cactus, the faded sign that said Penelope Grocery, and the lion’s head adorned bench—but I was. Somehow, all these details were her. The day wore on. I spoke with the church secretary where my mother was baptized. She answered so many questions I had, as if she had the keys I had been looking for to open the doors of my mother’s past. She helped me to see my mother’s truth, and she told me where to look for the past. I have a habit of taking rocks, large and small from trips I take. I picked up a rock as I left the church and put it in my pocket. It was late afternoon, and I decided to visit the cemetery the secretary talked about in detail. I got in the car and began to drive again. In front of me was another endless road, but just as I got to what felt like the edge of town, there on a cerrito, a gentle hill, was the cemetery. I pulled in and sat in the car. I thought about how I had dreamed about this moment for so long. I closed my eyes and remembered the stories she told me about this place. I listened for her voice. Finally I got out slowly and walked to the edge of the cemetery, and the sun swallowed me whole. I stood there and looked around me. There was sun everywhere, but this was not the kind, gentle Michigan sun that bows down and kisses the north during the summer months. This sun knew no kindness. It scorched the land around it. The blinding light and a cloudless baby blue sky went on for eternity. Light gusts of wind came and went, but they too were filled with what I can only call an inferno. When I took a breath, I felt there was more fire than oxygen in the air. The burning heat penetrated my clothing, my skin, my soul. I thought surely this light must purge all sin, all darkness, all wrongness, and nothing can live here that is not true, or pure, because everything else has burned away. A deep truth settled in my soul as I stood there looking out at this land that claimed my mother’s heart. I realized that every story, every word she ever told me was true, and that realization filled my bones, my marrow, my being. That truth felt like a convergence of angels, all meeting at the same time, in this ranchito where she was born. This was the land she longed for, the quiet and stillness she craved filled the air around me. En la tierra que ella no puede olvidar. In the land she could not forget. I found her. Stories swirled at my feet. There was no bitterness in her stories. There was only her truth. She and her mother and her sisters and brother ate lard, sprinkled with sugar or a pinch of salt to make it more palatable. Her mother spread the concoction on tortillas, there was no other food to eat. Her mother, Nicasia, loved coffee. She sweetened it with a little sugar and watered down milk. Nicasia deliberately spilled it onto her saucer, so my mother could have a sip of that watered down, sweetened coffee. Together they shelled pecans to perfection, because the pecans that were whole and unbroken sold for a higher price. They burned the shells to heat their one room shack. They boiled vats of water to do other people’s laundry. My abuela was a skilled artisan, she tatted and crocheted complex patterns from sight, it was one more way to earn money. But it was the indignities or racism and poverty that hurt my mother the most. She was slapped for speaking Spanish, her mother tongue. She learned to swallow her voice. She never yelled or spoke loudly and she spoke English without a trace of Spanish. She never, ever, sang above a whisper. She was left handed, but that was also not allowed. There was the teacher who would not touch her hair, but used a stick off the ground to look for piojos, the dreaded lice on her head. She longed for her sisters who died from diphtheria. Their small bodies dressed in white, were laid in a simple wood casket. But the Mexicans were not allowed to be buried in the cemetery, according to the church secretary. The Mexicans buried their dead in fields, close to their homes, alone and unmarked, on the rancho. As I stood there and looked at that sky and felt that harsh sun, I could see all the stories come down at once to where I stood, like a communion of saints. All those ghosts and echoes from the past were all there in town, going about their lives as best they could. I could see them, cooking and cleaning, picking cotton, going to la misa, mass, boiling water for laundry and sewing, and looking for a way to stave off the hunger that haunted them at times. It was all there. Standing in the scorching air that seemed void of any oxygen, I felt a mixture of emotions. Parts of me felt gears that had been missing were suddenly in place, while other parts felt devastated by the truths of my mother’s words. I felt a loss for my tías and abuela, but also I felt whole and filled up. I felt anger for the shame my mother carried for being Mejicana and poor. But I also felt an incredible pride to be the daughter of a Tejana, that odd breed of toughness, hard-work, and sweetness. I felt proud of this little ranchito where prickly pear cactus and trumpet vines blossomed in the most random places, and the neatness of a community prevailed. I felt a deep gratitude for my abuela y mama. Adversity was a given, but tenacity and grace were a gift. My mother loved flowers and anything that was beautiful. My abuela was an artisan whose incredible tatting and lace-work were worthy of being framed. Both of these women were smart and resourceful. They didn’t just make do, they made beauty where there was none. They brought life to the darkest of corners, and created a legacy that continues to grow and blossom. I come from strong Mejicana-Tejana women. We are drawn to our pasts planted by our antepasados, our ancestors. Their words and stories are passed on generation after generation. Our abuelos and abuelas call out to us over time and space to listen to stories told and untold. Their stories become our story, embedded in who we are, their traits become our traits. What draws us home are those people who didn’t give up, their ghosts follow us now, cheering us on. I looked at that cloudless baby blue sky and knew every word mi mamacita told me was true and I smiled. My heart was glad with a bittersweetness that tasted of her cafecito--con un tantito de leche, y un poquito de azúcar--her strong coffee, softened with a drop of milk and sweetened with a bit of sugar. Elena Dolores Solano was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She is one of fifteen children. Her parents were migrant workers who moved north in the 1940s. She is a certified school counselor and works with Latino/a students in the public school system of Detroit. She is also a Licensed Professional Counselor. Ms. Solano has written for many years of her experience growing up in a large Mexican American family in Detroit. In her spare time Ms. Solano enjoys collecting anything old, a Solano family tradition, cooking Mexican food and spending time with her children, her family and friends.
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Gringasby Ainhoa Palacios Each stop sign’s location was known to her. There was no need to switch lanes or deal with bad traffic, which is why it was the only road my mother felt safe driving on. One long winding road — Grand Regency Ln. It snaked past an AMC theater and a T.J.Maxx, before crossing a large intersection and keeping on past a Target and Barnes & Noble, finally and gently leaving us at Wal-Mart's doorstep, where we now got our groceries from. Before Wal-Mart, there was Dollar Tree. We'd walk there every Wednesday evening, my mother’s only fleeting time off. We took an hour skimming the two food aisles as if our shopping list wasn’t the same as last week. Elena routinely dumped ten cans of Vienna sausages in the shopping cart, the metal tins making a loud clank that had become so sweet and familiar. A tradition almost. She then immediately disappeared and came with a box of ramen which she stuck on the bottom rack of the cart. Baked beans, tuna, Nissin Cup Noodles, Uncle Ben’s instant rice, a 60-count bag of silver-dollar pancakes, a loaf of white bread, ham, suspiciously-gold-and-individually-wrapped-slices-of-cheese—that was our cart. During the 45-minute walk home, we each carried as many bags as we could stand, stopping often to readjust and shake our hands out. We played I Spy—better known to us as Veo Veo. Those Wednesday-dollar-store-veo-veo grocery trips only lasted a few months, stopping when my mother finally bought a car. The car was red. The seats inside, a tan suede with random stains of unknown origins. One of the back passenger doors was imprinted with a bowling ball-sized dent. It had a working radio and A/C, something I only learned to appreciate months later when a teenage girl rear-ended us, and the following car my mother purchased for $2,000 didn’t have the luxury of a working radio and A/C. The little red car had good gas-milage and airbags too, though those details I learned from my mother's praising of the car. “It is such a blessing, this little car. It serves us well,” she would say in response to Elena who complained that it made a sputtering sound so loud you couldn't hear ambulances behind. “It is embarrassingggg,” Elena whined, drawing out the last word with the sarcastic tone of an almost-teenage-girl. I can’t remember when Wal-Mart became synonymous with ghetto. When all I saw were other brown people in much too small shirts, their bellies draping over jeans. Men with greasy ponytails and lightly stained ‘wife beaters’. I can’t remember the moment I started to say to my friends, "I only shop at Target", where every aisle was brightly lit and organized and the bathrooms didn't smell like shit. Where there wasn’t a McDonalds but a Starbucks, and the employees were white teenage girls instead of chubby worn-out single moms. But before there was "I only shop at Target", there was me, 3’ 8” with unruly curls, holding my mom’s hand and asking question after question about the first day of school. “¿Cómo se llama mi professora? ¿A qué hora viene el bus? ¿Qué voy a almorzar?” It was our very first back-to-school shopping trip for our very first day of school in America. America. Each time I heard the word America I was filled with a sense of wonder. America. The land of opportunity. America. The land of English. America. The land of blue-eyed children. But before I could dive into 'America', we needed uniforms. I asked my mom what they looked like. “No se,” she said. They’d told her to go to a Wal-Mart. “You’ll see them there,” they assured. This confused me. How would we magically know which ones they were? Why didn’t they show her a photo? But it didn’t matter. I was six and a lot of things confused me, and I knew if I asked, I wouldn’t understand any better, and Elena would roll her eyes and tell me to stop being so pesada. The uniforms were there. Right in between the girl’s section and the boy’s section. There were choices. The general idea was a polo shirt, and any linen bottom so long as the colors were bleach-white, hunter green, navy blue, khaki, or maroon. “Algo más que planchar,” my mother said with a grunt. She hated ironing. She hated all things housework. The day we walked into our new American apartment, she couldn't stop talking about the washing machine. How grateful she was she would no longer have to wash clothes by hand, how it would save hours of her life, how this was all she’d ever wanted in life, how she felt like she could breathe again. Elena called her dramatic. Mom told us we could each get two bottoms and five shirts. Seeing Elena’s face of outrage, she followed her statement with “Yes, Elena. You’re going to have to wear the bottoms twice. But now, you can wash them with our new washer and dryerrrrrr!” she drew out her last word as if she was mocking Elena… “Maybe later we will buy more.” My mother never used the word “afford”, but even at six, I knew that’s what she meant. My mother held onto two papers, each a list of the supplies Elena and I would need. “¡Quiero ver! ¡Quiero ver!” I jumped by her side trying to peek. My mother handed me my paper, and Elena’s hers. There was thick bold font at the top. From later syllabuses, I imagine this one must have said something like, Mrs. Ramlow’s 2nd Grade Class. Below the fat black font was a bulleted list of yet more words I could not read. My mother’s handwriting beside each item was useless to me. I could read some cursive, but not hers. Hers was far too harsh and edgy. I must have looked defeated when I handed her back the paper because she smiled, winked, and blew me a kiss. “I’ll read it to you and you go get it, okay?” Oh, how excited I was to run around the aisles, be on my own, free to look for new mechanical pencils and three-ring binders. I knew exactly which to grab, the generic brand, the things that sat above the lowest number. The night before school started, I couldn't sleep. “¡Estoy muy emocionada!” I shouted while I bounced on my mother’s bed. “¿Quieres té?” she took out a mug and pulled out a lilac box with a picture of a snoring-pajama-wearing-bear sat in a rocking chair. She made this tea for herself every night. And every night, she also reached for the clear bottle of Agua de Azar from the medicine cabinet. I never did know what Agua de Azar was, other than what she gave me when I had a stomachache, or felt like throwing up, or couldn’t sleep, or cried so hard my eyes swelled. We pulled up to a brick circular building in our sputtering red car and parked. A thin white woman and a plump brown woman were waiting for us in the lobby. The white woman shook my mom’s hand, while the plump brown woman knelt without actually letting her knees touch the carpet.“¡Hola!" she beamed. "Me llamo Mrs. Lopez. Yo seré la maestra de ESOL para las dos. Es un gusto conocerlas." ESOL, I’d find out later, stood for English for Speakers of Other Languages. Elena and I both nodded with a smile, mine always naively bigger than hers. We walked into the white lady’s office, who I’d already nicknamed La Gringa, though my mother would later remind me to use her name— Principal Kathy. “Okay, bebe. See you later okay?” my mother kissed me goodbye. I held Principal Kathy’s hand though I didn’t particularly want or need to. They felt strange, so boney and pale next to mine. Principal Kathy was both tall and lean. She had stringy blonde hair and a very pointed nose that reminded me of the parrot we once had in Peru. Her face was lined with deep grooves that left me unable to decide if she was pretty or not. All in all, she looked exactly how I’d always pictured a gringa. We walked in silence towards our classrooms. Mine came first. When we got to the door, the white lady inside was also tall, but this time, curvy with hair that reminded me of burnt orange peel. Another gringa. A more eccentric one. As soon as she noticed us, her face erupted into a smile, her eyes looking at me like I was the cutest kitten in the litter. When Principal Kathy left with Elena, I sat in a cubby-holed-desk just like the movies. Burnt-orange-peel-haired-Mrs. Ramlow turned on the television. There was an image of the American flag which for some reason prompted everyone to set their pencils down and stand up, their chairs making a piercing screech as they grated against the tile in unison. They put one hand over their chest. I did the same. The room echoed with voices. I opened and shut my mouth trying to match their pace. Mrs. Ramlow looked at me subtly, a tiny smile peeping as if she were holding back a giggle. As if the kitten was somehow cuter than she expected. We were supposed to write an expository paper. Expository, I learned in ESOL, meant it had to explain something. It had to explain why blue was my favorite color. “Necesitas cinco párrafos. El primer, es una introducción con tres razones por qué te gusta azul. Luego, un párrafo para cada razón. El último párrafo se llama the conclusion. Dices tus razones otra vez. ¿Entiendes?” Mrs. Lopez explained in our classroom trailer. I nodded. I understood. Mrs. Lopez said to work on it for homework. If I had trouble, she would help me. During math the next day, when I was supposed to go to ESOL, Mrs. Lopez didn’t come. She must have been sick. So when Mrs. Ramlow began to collect the writing homework—after math, and before cursive—I handed in what I had. It sounded like a yelp, what she did. It wasn’t quite a shout, but enough that all twenty six-year-olds looked up at her. Her eyes were wide with excitement and aimed straight at me. I froze. She gently waved me over. “Did you write this? All by yourself?” I nodded. “Amazing!” she jumped out of her desk and grabbed the classroom telephone hung on the wall near the whiteboard. When she was finished, she reached for a green piece of paper on her desk the size of a sticky note, wrote my name, and checked a couple of boxes.“Go to Principal Kathy,” she said. I took the paper slowly and backed away the way someone might if they were faced with a rabid dog, afraid Mrs. Ramlow would yelp again. In her office, Principal Kathy gave me candy. She put a stamp on my paper that read ‘Great Job!’ with a blue thumbs-up beside it. She was on the phone, and I was certain it was with my mother because she was opening her mouth wider than normal. I remember her doing the same exaggerated mouth movements the first day we met months ago. She handed me the phone. “¿Bebe?” “Hola mami.” My mother explained, Principal Kathy called to tell her I wrote an amazing paper about the color blue for language arts class. She called to say they were all very proud of me and she should be too. I thought about what happened when I did something good at home. How my mother would say, “¡Chocala!” raising her palm for a high five. With an o-shaped mouth, she mimicked the sound of a stadium full of fans. Then she’d say, “Esa es mi chica.” And that was it. Party over. But now, I was sat in Principal Kathy ’s large Victorian chairs, with the phone pressed to my ear, after the yelping, after the candy, after the stamps, and the only explanation was: the gringas around me were intense. A bit ridiculous. Over the top. Exageradas. As I met more gringas, and more blue-eyed children, my conclusion evolved. America. The land of the underachieving. America. The land of the complacent. That explained why each time I got an A, there was candy, an ice cream party, a pizza party, awards. America's bar was set lower. Nobody had to work as hard to be good. To be recognized. To be special. Maybe that was the privilege I heard everyone talking about. I found that expository paper when I was twenty-five, months after my mother died. It was in a folder she labeled Neve, besides the one labeled Elena. Each one was a collection of everything good we’d ever done. There were crafts, and awards, and drawings, and there was that story. I like the colr blue. I like the colr blue becuse it is colr the ski, the oshen, and ice. Ainhoa Palacios was born in Lima, Peru, and moved to the US at the age of six. She grew up in Florida with her mother and sister, and grandmother who occasionally visited during summers. She graduated from the University of South Florida with a B.A. in journalism, but soon after remembered it was a different kind of storytelling she loved. Since then, she has completed a novel and countless short stories, one of which was recently long-listed in Fish Publishing’s Short Memoir contest. She is currently working on a collection of short stories of which Gringas is part. Ainhoa lives in Shenzhen, China with her dog Mambo. Somos En Escrito is the first to publish her work. Excerpt from Eye from the Edge, A Memoir of West Oakland, California by Ruben Llamas First published on December 24, 2013, in Somos en escrito Magazine …Danny and I both stayed at St. Mary’s School for the rest of our grade school education. Education at the Catholic school was reading, math, and a lot of religion. They had a lot of rules, and boy, they enforced them 100 percent! Our parents supported these rules because they wanted us kids to get the discipline and education that we needed for our futures. The Holy Name Sisters taught at the grammar school that was associated with St. Mary’s Church. The Social Service sisters in gray habits taught catechism. Father Philipps was the pastor beginning in 1936 at this parish. We were active in most events of the school. The classes were small and the Holy Name nuns ran a tight ship. All the basics were taught. I can remember that penmanship was big. We spent a lot of time on cursive writing. English language was important. We didn't do any schoolwork with the Spanish language. The grade school was in a separate building on the lower floor. Above it was the school auditorium. We were active in school plays during the different seasons. All the classes had to participate. It was fun. I can remember starting class by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag and then morning prayer. One of our teachers at St. Mary’s was Sister Mary Frances, a stern taskmaster with old-school ways. She taught the essential subjects and praying in class. She would have us hold our hands together with palms facing and our fingers extended. We had to make sure our palms were touching with thumbs crossed over one another in the form of a cross. If you were not complying with her instructions, she would pull your hair or whack you with her twelve-inch wooden ruler, hitting your hand and making it sting! Boy, you had to be alert in school or you got the ruler, no excuses. I remember the spelling bees and how the entire class, thirty or forty kids, stood around the perimeter of the room. One at a time we would be commanded to spell hard words. She would not let you sit down until you learned to spell the word correctly. I believe I learned a lot in her classes. Either she was tough or I got tired of holding my hands out and getting the twelve-inch ruler whack. The priests of the parish would often visit our classrooms. I can remember how she taught us to acknowledge the presence of Father Philipps or Father Duggan when they arrived. Sometimes we expected the priest and other times the priest would just surprise us, knocking and walking in. When he entered we stood in unison immediately and with a loud and enthusiastic voice greeted whoever it was, saying, "Good morning, Father." Sister Mary Frances did provide a quality education to us that helped us to succeed. Being boys, we would spend time talking about Sister. The big thing was the part of her habit she wore on her head. The habit was so tight-fitting on her head we thought she was bald or had a crew cut. We never found out. I remember she prayed a lot. During Lent she was into praying at the Stations of the Cross. Our principal, Sister Mary Guadalupe, was also into using her twelve-inch ruler. She had a large wooden crucifix with metal trim hanging from her neck. She was barely five feet tall but very intimidating in her body motions. She would use either of her weapons if you misbehaved. I remember Father Philipps pulled me up once by my sideburns when I was in the schoolyard doing something stupid. The memories of how they got our attention when we were being lazy and acting up worked. I graduated grade school, and I thank the teachers for my education that made me this person I am. The church was on the same block as the school. We put a lot of time into religion and prayer. Mass was a big thing. I helped out during Mass as an altar boy. This was an experience. I remember one priest who really liked his wine. It was something to pour wine into the gold chalice then see him drink it and get a refill. The wine was a good Napa wine. I did like the taste myself. Another thing I liked was the Latin Masses. I was learning Latin and I liked the High Masses. The funerals were very spiritual events. I liked the large candles and the holders. When I die I want the same type of candles and holders. When you served as altar boy for a funeral you got a cash tip. The school and the church were across from a park. The houses going further west toward the Southern Pacific yard were older and mixed up with smaller homes. These houses must have been built about the 1880s-1890s to accommodate the large immigrant groups. In those days people came from all over. European Americans, Africans, Portuguese, Irish, Italian, Dutch, Mexican, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants all settled in Oakland. The population in 1860 was 1,543. In 1910 it had grown to 66,900, including many folks who moved from San Francisco, especially after the devastating earthquake of 1906. During the 1940s before World War II, there was a theater on Seventh Street West called the Lincoln. We used to go there or to the Rex on Saturdays, mainly because of the double features. It was a fun day. Many African Americans lived in this area where the porters for the Pullman Company owned many of the homes. In this area of Seventh Street, many African Americans owned restaurants, pool halls, liquor stores, storefront churches, and music clubs like Slim Jenkins’, which I remember. The street was busy with people shopping, cars traveling the street, and streetcars and trains running. The west end of Seventh Street had a lot of restaurants with good southern food and music nightclubs such as Esther’s Orbit Room. The place had many southern blues clubs, attracting the young shipyard workers, new people from the South, and locals to these hot clubs of the day. In the 1930s and 1940s Slim Jenkins featured at his club some of the biggest names in jazz and popular music. The club was well-known among locals as a fun place for a night out. Other nightclubs in West Oakland were Sweets Ballroom and the Oakland Auditorium. The old-timers’ businesses in West Oakland saw the impact of the new wartime workforce. The shipyard workers would spend their money in the neighborhood. Years later twelve city blocks of this once-booming area were demolished to make way for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), Interstate 880, and the Oakland Main Post Office. Around 1949 I did a lot of bike riding with all my friends in these neighborhoods. This whole area had a multicultural environment. Riding through the streets was never a problem with the people. The Black kids knew us or knew that we lived in the same neighborhood. We played a lot of hardball - baseball at DeFremery Park and Ernie Raimondi Park. The local kids would hang out at the parks to have a baseball game or just practice. The parks were clean, the grass green, and the juvenile hall was next to DeFremery Park. You could talk with kids who were in confinement there. The exercise yard was just on the border of the park and we knew some of the guys. This north part of Oakland was more residential than Seventh Street. It was a neighborhood with a mixture of people. African Americans who worked for the railroad came from all over. This was especially true for the men who worked as sleeping car porters, dining car waiters, and cooks, and others who had seniority and wanted to have their home closer to their work or where the tips from the passengers were better. When the war broke out and the shipyards needed more workers, you had also African Americans from the Cotton Belt, mainly Texas and Louisiana, as well as the Okies and Arkies, moving into the established section of this area. When an old Victorian house was converted to take in a lot of these people, it was a crowd. I can remember my friend Art’s family in one of these large homes. They lived on the first floor and other families lived on the second floor or basement. Art’s house, as well as other houses east of Market Street near Eighteenth Street, was close to Cathedral of St. Francis de Sales, which was demolished after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Art had about three brothers and three sisters. His older brother was about the same age as my older brother, Mario. All of us would head over to other kids’ homes on our bikes or just hang out in the neighborhood till we had to go home. I would, on Saturday for sure, shine shoes in the barbershop. Saturdays were busy for everybody. The neighborhood was busy. People were around. They came during these times to Seventh Street to shop the local merchants. Remember, the outlying areas weren’t built up with big centers for shopping yet. People from North Oakland, East Oakland, Piedmont, and other areas would come downtown or to Seventh Street. When the barbershop was slow I would go downtown to shine shoes. The sailors and the army guys were always good for a shine. I had a spot on Tenth and Broadway, in front of Crabby Joe’s Big Barn. It was a great spot to shine shoes and sell newspapers. The military people always wanted to have their shoes looking good. They were on leave and most of them came downtown from all the nearby bases and from Alameda. Most of these guys drank a lot and loved the ten-cents-a-dance club above Crabby Joe’s. This group was always a fun group. They spent their money. I enjoyed this corner. It was exciting to see all the action around you. The people all had something going. It was a busy time for everyone, women, men, and kids. As a kid I saw the con men, gamblers, crooks, prostitutes, gypsies, and other people, all looking for a score. You learned to mind your own business, not to know or talk about what you had seen. If they trusted you, they would tell you a story or two of their activities. During this time I also sold papers, namely the Oakland Tribune and Post Enquirer, across the street in front of the liquor and cigar store. From the papers that sold, you received about three cents a paper. To me this was money coming in, plus the shine box money. I was on top of the world. As time passed, Joe, the owner, would have me run errands for him. I had no problems doing that because he would feed me pizza and a cola once in a while. Joe was the pizza maker during the late shift. He had a special window at the front where people would watch him prepare the dough. If he had people looking into the bar, he would show off, flipping the pizza in the air, and just put on a great show. The inside of Crabby Joe’s was something to see. They had a long bar from one end of the wall to the other. The brick pizza oven was toward the front. Across from the bar were tables where you could eat or drink; then came the dance floor. The bandstand was in back and had more light on it than a carnival stand. The big thing was the floor by the entrance and along the bar. Sawdust was all over the floor. This was typical of what I would call a joint. Also Joe had a large back room with tables for private card games. This old building would rock on the weekends. The music was popular country style--Okies and Western music--music you would hear on the radios of the 1930s and 1940s. This was music of the southern culture traditions that were being heard in Oakland with the influx of the newcomers. There was always some fight or something going on. The bands playing at Crabby Joe’s were well-known and played all up and down San Pablo Avenue. They would draw big crowds. It was music to make all people dance and have fun. Joe was a neat dresser. When he was not working he always dressed up. His slacks were sharp and cut well. His shirts fit neatly, and he always wore a neat sharp dress jacket. His shoes were always cleaned, shined, and casual. Joe was what I called in those days a San Francisco Sicilian Italian, with tanned skin and black wavy hair. Joe was well-known in this Broadway area of Oakland since most of the rough and tough bars and businesses were down here. The third floor of the old building had a hotel. I would sometimes run through the third floor trying to sell the last edition of the Oakland Tribune. This was an experience where I learned a lot as I did this selling. At most of the rooms, people would just not answer. The ones who did answer bought a paper and got you out of their way so they could continue their business. I would sell papers till about 5 p.m. or when I knew that the people who read the paper daily had their paper. They would always have the right amount, for they would fold it and put it under their arms like it was worth a hundred-dollar bill. They would tell you about the paper not being in order the next time they came by. The job of the paper-boy was to assemble the paper in sequence and sharply folded. While I was in the area I would go over to Fosters’ Restaurant. I know this place was not like the other places. They made a lot of sandwiches. The cream puffs and pies were great. The food was displayed in small compartments. You selected what you wanted out of these compartments that had doors. It was all self-service. You paid a cashier, then sat down at the round Formica and chrome tables. I sold the later paper here. When I was gone from my corner I would put up a cigar box for customers to drop monies off for their papers. I never had trouble with people taking my money. About 5 to 5:30 p.m., Radio, the newspaper collection man, would come to collect the newspaper money with his REO truck, a green panel truck with two doors, a double door in back, and no seat belts. Radio was about five foot six, maybe a Mexican or Italian. He had small facial features, big eyes, a great sincere smile, and he enjoyed laughing. He would pick up all the corner boys starting at Ninth Street all the way to Grand Avenue North, going up Broadway, next coming south on Washington. He would count your unsold papers and pay you off. While driving, Radio was a talker. He loved baseball. Radio was a good man. Once he gave all the kids a ride in his green REO panel truck to see an Oaks ballgame in Emeryville. The Oaks were Oakland’s minor league baseball team. After we were dropped off I would go home, visit the shop to see what was going on, then go upstairs to see my mom and get something to eat. If the timing were right, I would get my bike and search out my friends in the neighborhood. I would, by this time of day, go to Jefferson Park to see if any kind of game was going on. Across the street from Jefferson Park, St. Mary’s Church and School made a strong presence. Under the grade school they had a basement where they put in pool tables and a boxing ring to keep us boys busy. Father Duggan did this, and he had other programs to keep the young boys busy and away from the neighborhood pachuco gangs that were around our section of West Oakland. If no one was around I would then ride to Danny’s house on Myrtle Street. In the evening the wind really blew the estuary smell throughout the neighborhood. I could hear the ship and train horns on my route to Danny’s house on Third Street. Once in a while I would go down by the railroad tracks and follow them to Myrtle Street since the track went right to the Southern Pacific yard at the Point. Sometimes the guys were outside their houses. If not I just left for home to get ready for school or do some homework. At home about the only thing to do was listen to the radio. We had no TVs at that time. Friday and Saturday were busy days in the barbershop and music store. I shined a lot of shoes on the busy days. I was growing in these times, and I learned a lot about shoes. Sometimes I would go downtown to watch the Black guys shine shoes. They had a storefront on Broadway and Tenth. The small shop had four guys working it, and four stands with a lot of blues music playing. They would let me watch them and learn how to prepare the shoe for a great shine. They had a special wash for the leather. They applied the smooth-smelling shoe wax with their fingers and snapped the cotton shine rag, all in a rhythm of applying it. With the music blaring, the talking going on, it all flowed with the movement of the shiner’s body. It was an art in itself and great to watch. I would take their style of shine back to the barbershop and do my customers while snapping that rag like the pros. To this day I still have my red shoeshine box and enjoy the smell of the shoe paste we used to make those shoes sparkle. Some Saturdays the men’s discussions shared and compared the history of their countries of origin, such as Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, EI Salvador, Colombia, and Nicaragua. The history and cultures of all these men were interesting. I enjoyed hearing of Mexico and the Aztecs. The men talked of how the Spanish influenced each of these countries. The Spaniards conquered the Aztecs of Mexico in the early sixteenth century. The Aztecs had a great empire in Mexico City with pyramids and palaces, zoos and libraries that were similar to Egypt’s. Montezuma, the ruler at the time, had a large army. Cortés had an army of only 350 men and brought with him new diseases that killed a lot of Indians. The Aztecs had never had these European diseases. The story of the Aztecs is part of the history of the Americas and has always been an interest to me, but I don’t remember learning about them in school. At St. Mary’s School we learned about the history of the United States of America and the Catholic religion. This was basic in these times. And that’s the way it was. The men all had a story of their country and how the Spaniards exploited their country. These men that came in to see and talk with my dad and their friends were locals. They worked at foundries, at the shipyard, and as dockworkers at the local terminals. I would just listen to them and see the excitement in their discussion. I began to understand the conflicts between the Latino and the gringo cultures. The men would drink Four Roses whiskey or beer, then leave for the night. They were always dressed up so I knew that home was not their destination. I am sure of this. Some of the Saturdays before working in my dad’s shop, I would play ball at Jefferson Square Park. Baseball was my favorite sport. I played any position they gave me. I always enjoyed the game. Some of the guys played daily, and they were good. Saturday morning during the summer we played in a city league. The police department organized these games for all the kids in West Oakland. They had an old paddy wagon. They would pick us up at Jefferson Square Park and take us out to the city park in Oakland. We played all the teams. Then at the end of the season you played the City Best. It was fun. We met a lot of kids from the other parts of Oakland, mostly ages twelve and thirteen. We never had any problems with the different multicultural groups. I believe we all understood that we came from different and tough neighborhoods so why get an attitude. We would just fight it out. Some of the boys were good players. They also liked a good fight and that did happen once in a while. If you came from West Oakland Seventh Street, they seemed to leave you alone. Our Seventh Street in West Oakland had a bad reputation during these times. Ruben Llamas, born in Oakland, California, just before WWII broke out and changed all our lives, recalls what it was like to grow up in a bustling time in diverse neighborhoods which urban development wiped out. From shining shoes in front of his dad’s music store, he rose from being a shopping cart boy of a retail company to its vice president. He now lives in Carmichael, California, with his wife, Anita. Editor’s Note: I grew up in East Oakland on the other side from where Ruben grew up and remember well how different the 1940’s and 1950’s were from today; Ruben’s story strikes the ring of truth. Those were the days, my friend. His memoir is available through Earth Patch Press, www.earthpatchpress.com, or online booksellers. Brick-by-Brick: An Ode to My Mexican Mother, Carmen Mejía HuertaBy Álvaro Huerta My late mother, Carmen Mejía Huerta, built her own home, brick by brick, in Mexico. Too poor to secure a piece of the “American Dream” in el norte, during the mid-1980s, while residing in East Los Angeles, she decided to build her own home. When she told my siblings and me—all eight of us—about her ambitious plans, we all thought she had gone mad. “What are you going to do in Tijuana all by herself?” I asked. “No te preocupes demasiado,” she said. “Voy a construir un cuarto para cada uno de ustedes.” Our family, like many Mexicans, has a strong bond with Tijuana, Baja California—a poor, yet vibrant border city where countless immigrants first settle before making their arduous journey to el norte. My Mexican parents first migrated to Tijuana from Zajo Grande, a rancho in Michoacán, during the early 1960s. They fled a bloody family feud that claimed the life of my uncle, Pascual. As a so-called “good wife,” my mother relocated with my father (Salomón, Sr.) and his large family—parents and nine siblings—to el Cañon Otay in la Colonia Libertad. Unlike the U.S., the poor in Latin America mostly live on the hillsides, while the affluent reside in the city core. Once settled in Tijuana, she acquired an American work visa as a doméstica (domestic worker). While toiling for white, middle-class families in San Diego, California, she left us at home with our familia--immediate and extended. In her absence, my older sisters (Catalina, Soledad and Ofelia) took on the “mother” role of cleaning, cooking and caring for the younger kids (Salomón, Rosa and myself). They also worked in their teens, sacrificing their education—a common practice in developing and underdeveloped countries. As a risk-taker, my mother, during her fifth pregnancy, arranged for me to be born in el norte. Accessing her kinship networks in the U.S., my mother delivered me in Sacramento, California. Isn’t San Diego closer to the border? Despite this conundrum, having a child born in the U.S. facilitated the process for my immediate family to successfully apply for micas (green cards) in this country. Once in the U.S., my mother continued to labor tirelessly as a doméstica while my father never surpassed the minimum wage ($3.25 per hour) in dead-end jobs, as a janitor and day laborer. Due to their lack of formal education and limited English skills, accompanied by low-occupational skills, my parents applied for government aid and public housing assistance at East Los Angeles’ notorious Ramona Gardens public housing project (or Big Hazard projects). Tired of the overcrowding, abject poverty, violence, drugs, gangs, police abuse and bleak prospects that plagued the projects, my mother decided to return to the motherland, Mexico, as a refuge. During my freshman year at UCLA, I received a call from her, informing me that she purchased a small, empty lot in Tijuana to build her dream home. While initially shocked, thinking that she wasted her money, I requested an emergency student loan to support her dream. Given her unconditional love for me (and my siblings), I acted without hesitation. On the loan application, I wrote: “Help Mexican immigrant mother to escape the projects.” Not long after acquiring the plot, my mother gave my siblings and me a tour. Like a recent graduate of UC Berkeley’s architecture program, she presented her design plan and created a visual image for us of her finished home. “Aquí es donde irá la cocina y la sala por ahí,” she said with confidence, as we surveyed the uneven, dirt-filled lot. We listened with deep skepticism. In retrospect, we should’ve never doubted her. This is the same woman who, as a 13-year-old, hit a potential kidnapper in the head with a rock to escape. If he would’ve succeeded—abducting her for several days and returning her home—she would’ve been forced to marry him to “save her honor” or the “family’s honor”—a barbaric practice that continues to the present in many parts of the world. Fortunately for my siblings and I, she married a handsome man, Salomón Chavez Huerta, at the tender age of 14. Moreover, this is the same woman who worked as a doméstica in the U.S. for over 40 years to provide for her family. She’s the one who forced my father to take my older brother, Salomón, and I, as lazy teenagers, to work as day laborers in Malibu so we could appreciate the importance of higher education. “Si no los llevas al trabajo,” she threatened my father, as he watched his Westerns on T.V., “entonces los llevaré.” For many years, my mother—with the help of the family—slowly built her dream home. First came the cement foundation and then the walls. The roof followed. Then came the windows and doors. Not satisfied with one-story, she built a two-story home. My father included a guest house in the back. While she initially protested, she later appreciated having extra units to rent. Defying the odds, she transformed an empty space with rocks, used tires and broken glass into the most beautiful home on the block—probably in the entire colonia. She hired and fired workers, fixed leaky faucets and remodeled, (re)painted the walls and changed the kitchen cabinets like there was no end. For the family, we considered the Tijuana home our mother’s obsession. Yet, for my mother, it represented a Mexican dream come true. This home symbolized the product of a long journey for a woman without formal education and lack of employment opportunities to get ahead. At the end of the day, she wasn’t going to let anyone derail her dream. For the first time in her life, my mother cleaned and improved her own home, instead of the affluent homes of the privileged, white Americans she “served.” I only wish I could see her beautiful face one more time so I could tell how proud I am of her. Álvaro Huerta holds a joint faculty appointment in Urban and Regional Planning and Ethnic & Women’s Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Among other publications, he’s the author of Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond. He holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley and an M.A. in Urban Planning and a B.A. in History from UCLA. He’s been featured in Somos en escrito for his fiction and research publications. Tertullian's Corner"They were the manos blancas in a new reality of the borderlands."Desert Memories |
Mamá me dijo que estaba sentada en el regazo de su madre y que le agárro su trenza pero estaban tan chiquita que no podá pasarle la mano por la trenza. Mother [Juana]told me she was sitting on her mother’s lap and grabbed her braid but that she [Juana] was so little that she couldn’t wrap her hand around the braid. |
Papá nos depertaba en la madurgada. Trabajabmos todo el día, y nunca fui a la escula. Solamente recuerdo una vez cuando jugamos. Father would wake us in the early morning (while it was still dark). We would work all day, and I never went to school. I can remember only one time when we played. |
Carmen se miraba tan bella. Pero Pedro no le hacía pareja. Carmen looked so beautiful. But Pedro didn’t match her looks. |
Mi guelito estaba sentado en la cama. Me dijo, “Tráeme mis zapatos, mi hijita.” Eran los botines del retrato. Y otra vez, cuando hacia mucho calor y mama estaba cocinado en la chimenea para papa y los oberos, mi guelito le compro pan y le dijo, “No hagas tortillas, hija. Darles pan para la comida.”. . . Mi guelito era muy buena persona. My grandpa was sitting on the bed and said to me, “Bring me my shoes, child.” The were the same booties from the picture. Another time, when it was very hot and Mama was cooking lunch for my grandfather and his laborers in the open-hearth, Grandpa [Marcos] bought some bread. “Don’t make tortillas, child. Let the men eat with bread instead.” . . .My grandpa was a very kind-hearted person. |
Salimos muy temprano en la mañana y llegamos en la tarde. Había un jacal de piedra donde nos quedábamos. La casa tenía un techo de paja, pero la mitad del techo estaba caído. En la noche hacia tanto frio que habían carámbanos en las vigas y sobre las ventanas. Yo iba y cojía los carámbanos y se los traía a mamá. We’d leave [the house in Nava] very early in the morning and wouldn’t get there until well into the afternoon. There was a stone hut where we’d stay. It had a straw-thatched roof but half of it was fallen in. The nights were so cold that icicles formed on the rafters and the windows. I used to break them off and take them to mamá. |
“Les voy a contar un cuento medio chistoso,” dijo Ventura. “Una vez cuando estaba trabajando en ----, tenía una mujer. Le dije que le iba dejar algo cuando me fuera. Cuando montante mis cosas en el caballo para irme, le dije, “Ven acá para darte tu regalo.” Cuando se acerco, le corte la cara de los dos lados con mi navaja de resurar.’ Y papá le dijo, ‘Si te atreves hacerle un mal a unos de los mios, te juro que te mato.” “¡O no, jefe!” dijo Ventura. “Nunca haría eso.” “I’m going to tell you a funny story,” said Ventura. “Once when I was working at--- (place name forgotten), I had a woman. I told her I’d give her something when I got ready to move on. When [the day came to leave and] I was done loading my horse, I told her, “Come here so I can give you your gift.” When she got close enough, I slashed both sides of her face with my razor.” Papá then said, “If you ever dare to hurt one of mine, I swear I’ll kill you.” “Oh, no, boss!” said Ventura, “I’d never do anything like that.” |
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