A una anciana

Venga, madre— 
         su rebozo arrastra telaraña negra
         y sus enaguas le enredan los tobillos;
apoya el peso de sus años
en trémulo bastón y sus manos temblorosas
empujan sobre el mostrador centavos sudados.
¿Aún todavía ve, viejecita,
la jara de su aguja arrastrando colores?
         Las flores que borda
         con hilazas de a tres-por-diez
no se marchitan tan pronto como las hojas del tiempo.
         ¿Qué cosas recuerda?
Su boca parece constantemente saborear
los restos de años rellenos de miel.
         ¿Dónde están los hijos que parió?
¿Hablan ahora solamente inglés
y dicen que son hispanos?
         Sé que un día no vendrá
         a pedirme que le que escoja
         los matices que ya no puede ver.
Sé que esperaré en vano
         su bendición desdentada.
Miraré hacia la calle polvorienta
refrescada por alas de paloma
hasta que un chiquillo mugroso me jale de la manga
y me pregunte:
                                    — Señor, jau mach is dis? --

To an Old Woman

Come, mother— 
         your rebozo trails a black web
         and your hem catches on your heels,
you lean the burden of your years
on shaky cane, and palsied hand pushes
sweat-grimed pennies on the counter.
Can you still see, old woman,
the darting color-trailed needle of your trade?
         The flowers you embroider
         with three-for-a-dime threads
cannot fade as quickly as the leaves of time.
         What things do you remember?
Your mouth seems to be forever tasting
the residue of nectar hearted years.
Where are the sons you bore?
         Do they speak only English now
         and say they’re Spanish?
One day I know you will not come
and ask for me to pick
the colors you can no longer see.
         I know I’ll wait in vain
for your toothless benediction.
         I’ll look into the dusty street
         made cool by pigeons’ wings
until a dirty kid will nudge me and say:
                  “Señor, how mach ees thees?”
 
 — RAFAEL JESÚS GONZÁLEZ
© 2022 BY RAFAEL JESÚS GONZÁLEZ

Nací y me creé en El Paso, Texas con familia a través del Río Bravo en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua y la identidad se convertía cada vez más en un problema. El español era mi primera lengua y hasta los mediados de los 1960s cuando me convertí en chicano, era simplemente mexicano aunque sabía que era ciudadano de los Estados Unidos de América. Aun hoy en día cuando se me pregunta, “¿Qué eres?” mi respuesta inmediata es “mexicano” aunque cuando estoy más alerta digo, “Chicano.” Aunque cuando se me pregunta, “Cual es tu ciudadanía” no titubeo en absoluto.
 
No aprendí inglés hasta los siete en la escuela pública Lamar y a principio no fue fácil. Ya leía y escribía básicamente en español y el sonido impredecible de las mismas letras en inglés me confundía. Estuve en la oscuridad la mayor parte del tiempo. Un día mi madre con mi hermanito me acompañó a la escuela y se fueron a casa de mis abuelos a unas cuadras de distancia. Me encontré en un patio de recreo totalmente vacío, las puertas de la escuela cerradas. Estuve aterrorizado. Caminé de regreso a una casa vacía. Me senté en el portal confundido, asustado, sólo hasta que mi madre y abuela vinieron con mi hermanito y me cubrieron de abrazos y besos. La maestra había anunciado un día de fiesta pero yo no había entendido.
 
No ayudaba que fuéramos castigados si se nos escuchaba hablar español en la aula, los corredores o el patio de recreo. Si le preguntábamos a un compañero de clase, “¿Qué dijo la maestra?” se nos hacía pararnos en un rincón o nos mantenían después de clase. Tengo la distinción de haber reprobado el primer grado. Sobresalía en dibujo y pintura y recuerdo a una amable maestra, la Sra. Hall en cuarto grado, que me elogió y animó. Pero el director recomendó que mis padres nos llevaran a mí y a mi hermano Arturo (dos años menor que yo) a la Escuela Bailey para niños “retrasados.”
 
Mi padre lo hizo y el director de la Escuela Bailey que no pudo habernos tenido allí más de treinta minutos, le dijo a mi padre que no pertenecíamos allí y recomendó que nos cambiara de escuela. Mis padres se endeudaron y compraron su primera y única casa para que pudiéramos cambiar de distritos e ir a la escuela pública Morehead donde nuestros problemas desaparecieron. (Dos maestras se destacan: la Sra. Patricia Robinson, maestra de arte que hablaba excelente español e invitaba a algunos estudiantes a su casa para dibujar y pintar. Y la Srta. Mary Hignett, maestra de inglés, con quien hice amigos en mis años universitarios hasta su muerte.)

Para entonces en 1950 me había ajustado, aculturado si quiere; no fui asimilado (lo que para mí tiene la connotación de ser masticado, tragado y digerido). Para mí, el lenguaje ha sido una piedra de toque de asimilación. El indio mexicano yo había sido asimilado hacía mucho tiempo; mi abuelo materno Papanito, don Diego González Sosa a excepción por su color y facciones y su decir que éramos indio no hablaba lengua indígena para indicarlo sino solo un castellano formal. El mexicano mestizo yo, no así. Fui bendecido con padres, Jesús Fidel González de Coahuila y Carmen González Prieto de Durango, (traídos a los EE.UU. a los 13 y 12 años respetivamente) quienes siempre insistieron en que habláramos y escribiéramos tanto en español como en inglés. Tomé cursos en español durante la escuela secundaria y me gradué de la universidad con un bachillerato en literatura inglesa con suficientes horas en literatura española para una doble especialización. En una ironía del destino, he pasado la mayor parte de mi vida como profesor de inglés en universidades y colegios.
 
Resistir la asimilación es una lucha, especialmente en un imperio que impone su hegemonía (militar, económica, política, lingüística, cultural) en el mundo. Toda mi vida he tenido que defender aun mi nombre. Personas que deberían saber más insisten en escribir Rafael, Raphael (la ph no existe en español), omitir los acentos en Jesús y González y escribir González con S. Y algunos han tenido el descaro de dirigirse a mí como Ralph, entre ellos S. I. Hayakawa, un lingüista japonés-canadiense, firme oponente a la educación bilingüe y fundador del movimiento “Solo Inglés” para hacer el inglés el idioma oficial de los Estados Unidos.
 
Por supuesto que la asimilación implica mucho más que el nombre y la lengua materna de uno. Las presiones para asimilarse son grandes en los EE.UU. y se logra grado a grado por lo que sea que uno emprenda: educación, profesión, activismo político, participación social. Pero, como con la conquista de las Américas, se debe resistir. La pregunta es, ¿en que medida? Para mí una línea de identidad que se debe respetar es mi nombre y mi lengua materna aunque reconozco que algunos de mis compatriotas chicanos que más se resisten a la asimilación se les dieron nombres en inglés al nacer y se les enseñó sólo inglés por padres ansiosos por asimilarse para tratar de salvar a sus hijos de la discriminación virulenta, el racismo, endémico de los EE.UU.
 
Dos razones principales por las que vine a la Bahía de San Francisco fueron su sistema de colegios comunitarios. En el Colegio Laney, Oakland donde enseñe durante treinta años, muchos de mis estudiantes hablaban español, ebonics (dialecto africano-estadounidense), cantonés, japonés, tagalo, pachuco, náhuatl, quechua, un idioma maya y otras lenguas demasiadas para listar. En mis clases siempre enfaticé que enseñaría inglés estándar, no como un sustituto del idioma o idiomas que ya conocían sino simplemente como uno más para agregar. En muchos lugares y situaciones, como en su hogar, barrios, iglesia, su lengua materna serviría excelentemente bien. Al mismo tiempo, en otros lugares como la academia, el trabajo, la política, el banco, el inglés estándar sería un instrumento para abrir puertas que de otro modo estarían cerradas para ell@s. Cuídense y eviten los falso dilemas, les decía a mis alumn@s. Cuando se me pregunta si quiero helado de vainilla o de chocolate, respondo que sí, por favor, tomaré de los dos.
 
La resistencia terca, a veces vehemente, a la educación bilingüe en los EE.UU. solía desconcertarme. Cada idioma es un mundo en una Tierra compartida, una forma particular de formar una realidad, una aventura de la consciencia humana. ¿Por qué negar a l@s niñ@s un segundo idioma a una edad en la que pueden aprenderlo tan fácilmente? ¿Por qué insistir en la ignorancia?
 
Ahora me desconcierta menos. El excepcionalismo, como el narcisismo, es una identidad frágil que no tolera la variedad, las comparaciones. Prefiere un mundo en su imagen, su propia marca de realidad, su hegemonía. El excepcionalismo insiste en la “pureza” de raza, de política, de religión, de cultura, de idioma, etc. Celoso de sus propias fronteras, el excepcionalismo no vacila en violar las de los demás. Insiste en la asimilación, o si no . . . Se podría decir que el idioma es el aspecto más importante de la identidad, no solo de la nación, sino a menudo de la clase social. El objetivo de impartir clases sólo en inglés estándar en las escuelas públicas es, por supuesto, la estandarización, la homogeneización y la asimilación que son requisitos del estado nación en el que el angloamericano se considera el estándar étnico.
 
No soy partidario del estado nación; prefiero mucho más el estado multinacional, y por mucho que haya resistencia a él, históricamente violenta y genocida, los Estados Unidos es en hecho tal. No soy nacionalista. Cuando se me pregunta mi ciudadanía, lo más probable es que ahora responda, “del mundo”. O Berkeley (destinado a fronteras, la línea divisora entre la ciudad de Berkeley y la ciudad de Oakland pasa justo por el medio de mi casa así que preparo el desayuno en Berkeley y lo como en Oakland.)
 
Soy habitante de frontera; crecí sin creer en las fronteras. Me gustan las diferencias, soy tolerante con la contradicción, cómodo con la paradoja. Me gustan las distinciones pero también me gusta la mezcla, la difusión, las sombras y los matices. Entendí cuando mi cliente la viejita me pedía hilaza matizada para sus bordados.
 
En cuanto a mi escritura, negarme a sacrificar mi español no menos que mi nombre, me hace heredero de dos musas, hermanas congeniales, y no abandonaré la una por la otra. Nunca sé cual me hablará primero pero en cuanto una me da un verso, una frase, la otra inmediatamente me da su equivalente en la otra lengua, un diálogo, una discusión que afecta a cada versión tal que casi todos mis poemas son piezas únicas en dos lenguas, ninguna versión de la otra. Los editores a menudo no entienden el bilingüismo y preguntan que versión es la traducción de la otra, cual debe estar en cursiva. Parece desconcertarlos cuando digo que ni la una o la otra. Y aun más cuando insisto en que tampoco las palabras solas en el cuerpo del texto.
 
También podría notar que aunque respeto la mezcla, también me gustan las distinciones y que escribo tanto en inglés estadounidense bastante estándar como en español mexicano bastante estándar, cada uno por separado y distinto. Temo que esto no solo habla de mi identidad sino también de mi enseñanza y quizás de mi clase. Así sea el chicano que soy.
 
Pero hay que responderle a la pregunta del chiquillo en mi poema: Demasiado mijo, mucho muy demasiado; too much, much, much too much. ​

by Rafael Jesús González

From my experience working there came my poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman” in 1959. I had formed a bond with a regular customer, a very elderly woman who often consulted me about embroidery floss to match or complement the colors of her exquisite embroidery. Beyond that, the poem is a work of my imagination. She did not trail a rebozo nor trip on her hems, nor did she pay for her purchases with “sweat-grimed pennies.” She could see well enough and our discussions of colors were purely aesthetic. I embellished her image for my own purposes as a writer and imagined a situation which might or might not have been hers to present a problem that had (has) always concerned me: assimilation.
 
I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, with family across the Río Bravo in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and identity increasingly became a problem. Spanish was my first language and, until about the mid 1960s when I became Chicano, I was simply Mexican though I knew that I was a citizen of the United States of America. Even today, when I am asked, “What are you?” my immediate response is “Mexican” though when I am more alert, I will say, “Chicano.” Though when I am asked, “What is your citizenship?” I do not hesitate at all.
 
I did not learn English until I was seven at Lamar Public School and at first it was not easy. I was already doing some basic reading and writing in Spanish and the unpredictable sound of the same letters in English confused me. I was in the dark most of the time. One day my mother with my little brother walked me to school and went on to my grandparents’ house a few blocks away. I found myself in a totally empty playground, doors of the school closed. I was terrified. I walked back home to an empty house. I sat on the porch confused, afraid, lonely until my mother and grandmother came with my little brother and covered me with abrazos and kisses. A holiday had been announced by the teacher, but I had not understood.
 
It did not help that we were punished if we were heard speaking Spanish in the classroom, the halls, or the playground. If we asked a classmate, “¿Qué dijo la maestra?” we were made to stand in a corner or kept after school. I have the distinction of having failed first grade. I did excel in drawing and coloring and I recall a kind teacher Mrs. Hall in fourth grade who praised and encouraged me. But the principal recommended that my parents take me and my brother Arturo (two years younger that I) to Bailey School for “retarded” children.
 
My father did so and the principal at Bailey School who could not have kept us there more than thirty minutes or so, told my father that we did not belong there, and recommended that we change schools. My parents went into debt and bought their first and only house so that we could change districts and go to Morehead Public School where our problems vanished. (Two teachers stand out: Mrs. Patricia Robinson, art teacher, who spoke excellent Spanish and would invite a few students to her home on weekends to draw and paint. And Miss Mary Hignett, English teacher, with whom I became friends in my college years until her death.)

By then in 1950 I was adjusted, acculturated if you will; I was not assimilated (which to me has connoted being chewed, swallowed, and digested). For me, language has been a touchstone of assimilation. Mexican Indian me had long been assimilated; my maternal grandfather Papanito, don Diego González Sosa except for his color and features and his saying that we were indio spoke no indigenous language to indicate it, but only a formal castellano. Mexican mestizo me not so. I was blessed with parents, Jesús Fidel González of Coahuila and Carmen González Prieto of Durango (brought to the U.S. at 13 and 12, respectively), who always insisted that we speak and write both Spanish and English. I took Spanish courses throughout high school and graduated from college with a degree in English literature with enough hours in Spanish literature for a double major. In an irony of fate, I have spent most of my life as a professor of English in universities and colleges.
 
Resisting assimilation is a struggle, especially in an empire that imposes its hegemony (military, economic, political, linguistic, cultural) on the world. All my life I’ve had to defend even my name. Folk who should know better insist on spelling Rafael, Raphael (the ph does not exist in Spanish), leaving out the accents in Jesús and González, and spelling González with an S. And some have had the effrontery to address me as Ralph, among them S. I. Hayakawa, a Japanese-Canadian immigrant linguist, adamant opponent of bi-lingual education and founder of the English-only “U.S. English” movement to make English the official language of the United States.
 
Of course, assimilation involves much more than one’s name and one’s native tongue. The pressures to assimilate are great in the U.S. and it is accomplished by and to degrees by whatever one undertakes: schooling, profession, political activism—social involvement. But, as with the conquest of the Americas, it is to be resisted. The question is, to what degree. For me a line of identity to be respected is my name and my mother tongue though I recognize that some of my Chicanx compatriots most resisting assimilation were given English names at birth and taught only English by parents eager to assimilate to try to save their children from the virulent discrimination, racism, endemic to the U.S.
 
Two major reasons for my coming to San Francisco Bay were its community college system and the rich racial and ethnic variety of its people. At Laney College, Oakland where I taught for thirty years, many of my students spoke Spanish, Ebonics, Cantonese, Japanese, Tagalog, Pachuco, Nahuatl, Quechua, a Maya language, and other tongues too many to list. In my classes, I always emphasized that I would teach Standard English, not as a substitute for the language or languages they already knew but simply as another one to be added. In many places and situations such as in their home, ‘hoods, church, their native tongue would serve most excellently well. At the same time, in other places such as academia, work, politics, the bank, Standard English would be a tool to open doors otherwise closed to them. Beware of and avoid false dilemmas, I would say to my students. When asked if I wanted vanilla or chocolate ice-cream, I would reply, yes, please, I will have both.  
 
The mulish, sometimes vehement, resistance to bilingual education in the U.S. used to puzzle me. Each language is a world in a shared Earth, a particular way of shaping a reality, an adventure of human consciousness. Why deny children a second language at an age when they could so easily learn it? Why insist upon ignorance?
 
It now puzzles me less. Exceptionalism, like narcissism, is a fragile identity intolerant of variety, of comparisons. It prefers one world in its image, its own brand of reality, its hegemony. Exceptionalism insists on “purity” of race, politics, religion, culture, language, and so on. Jealous of its own borders, exceptionalism does not hesitate violating those of others. It insists on assimilation—or else. Language is arguably the single most important aspect of identity not only of nation but often of social class. The goal of teaching classes only in Standard English in public schools is of course standardization, homogenization, assimilation which are prerequisites of the nation state in which the Anglo-American is viewed as the ethnic standard.
 
I am not partisan of the nation state; I much prefer the multinational state, and much as there is resistance to it, historically violent and genocidal, the U.S. is in fact such. I am not a nationalist. When asked my citizenship, I would most likely now reply, “of the world.” Or Berkeley (destined to borders, the dividing line between the city of Berkeley and the city of Oakland runs right through the middle of my house so that I fix breakfast in Berkeley and eat it in Oakland).
 
I am a denizen of the border; I grew up disbelieving in borders. I like differences, am tolerant of contradiction, comfortable with paradox. I like distinctions but I also like the blending, the diffusion, shades and hues. I understood when my customer the old lady asked for hilaza matizada (variegated floss) for her embroidery.
 
As to my writing, my refusal to sacrifice my Spanish no less than my name, makes me heir to two muses, congenial sisters, and I will not forsake one for the other. I never know which will speak to me first, but as soon as one gives me a line, a phrase, a verse, the other will immediately give me its equivalent in the other tongue, a dialogue, a discussion that affects each version so that almost all of my poems are unique pieces in two tongues, neither version the translation of the other. Editors most often do not understand bilingualism and ask which version is the translation of the other, which should be set in italics. It seems to disconcert them when I say neither. And even more when I insist that neither should be individual words in the body of the text.
 
I might also note that though I respect blending, I also like distinctions and that I write in both fairly Standard U.S. English and fairly Standard Mexican Spanish, each separate and distinct. I am afraid that this not only speaks to my identity, but also to my schooling, and perhaps my class. Such be the Chicano I am.
 
But the kid in my poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman” must be answered his question: Demasiado mijo, mucho muy demasiado; too much, much, much too much. ​

Previous publication credits:

To an Old Woman, González, Rafael Jesús. “To the Old Woman.” New Mexico Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4, 1961
 
A una Anciana, González, Rafael Jesús, New Poets of the American West; Lowell Jaeger, Ed.; 2010, Many Voices Press.
 
Riffs on the Poem “A una anciana/To an Old Woman”, English Journal, Vol. III no. 5, May 2022, of the National Council of Teachers of English.
 
Riffs sobre el poema “A una anciana/To an Old Woman”, Uncommon Ground, Seigel, Shizue, Ed.; San Francisco, Pease Press, 2022​​

Rafael Jesús González, profesor de escritura creativa y literatura enseño en varias universidades antes de establecerse en el Colegio Laney en Oakland, California, donde fundó el Departamento de Estudios Mexicanos y Latinoamericanos en 1969. Cuatro veces postulado para el Premio Pushcart, Rafael fue honrado por sus escritos por el Concilio Nacional de Docentes de Inglés en 2003. Recibió un premio por logros de toda una vida César Chávez en 2013 y uno de la ciudad de Berkeley en 2015. Rafael es el primer Poeta Laureado de Berkeley. Visite rjgonzalez@mindspring.com. 

Rafael Jesús González, a professor of creative writing and literature, taught at several universities before he settled at Laney College in Oakland, California, where he founded the Department of Mexican and Latin American Studies in 1969. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Rafael was honored for his writing by NCTE in 2003. He received a César Chávez Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 and one from the city of Berkeley, California, in 2015. Rafael is Berkeley’s first Poet Laureate. Visit rjgonzalez@mindspring.com.

by Henry Suarez

​
This was my first real check. I’d worked a summer job before and been paid for odd jobs, but this was my first steady job. Don’t be fooled though it’s not like I was minting money, at $7 per hour and working part-time hours I was lucky to pull down $150. Nonetheless, I’d never felt so proud, real money earned by my hard work. Stocking reams of paper at Staples wasn’t back-breaking work but I earned this damn check and acquired a vast knowledge of copier paper. You only live once, splurge for that card stock.
 
Soon as my shift let out, I wandered down to the check-cashing place to turn this bad boy into cold hard cash. Maybe head down to Sam Goody or The Wiz, pick up that new Ghostface album. The lyrics are a bit unorthodox but he can put together an album.
 
Waited my turn in line to cash the check and I was floored when the lady said it would be a 5% fee. Get the fuck outta here! She must be crazy, I thought to myself, Uncle Sam already took a third of this thing without doing anything, now these fools want another five on top of that? “Nah I’ll take that back, thank you,” I said.
 
My dad had cashed one of my summer checks for me and he rounded it up to the next dollar when he paid out, why would I settle for less?
 
For anyone that hasn’t had the displeasure of the check-cashing place experience, it’s truly depressing. You’re typically greeted at the door by a drunk or homeless person who graciously opens the door in the hopes that you’ll slip them a few bucks on the way out. After you cross the doors into this palace of dreariness, you’re usually met by the usual band of characters, the local building porter cashing his check and then spending half of it on lotto tickets hoping to hit it big, the much too young couple with a stroller waiting for some money being wired to them so they can buy milk for the baby and on the opposite side of the spectrum is the lady wiring money back home to DR so her family can go food shopping and buy her mother’s medicine. It’s like a diagram box of how crappy life is, especially when you can’t have a bank account. I’ll hop off this soapbox and get back to my story.
 
My father happily agreed to deposit the check for me and said he’d bring me the cash the next day, my CD shopping spree would have to wait another day. The following afternoon I was off from work and so I went straight home after school to catch my dad as soon as he arrived. From the moment he walked through our apartment door my eyes were fixated on him. Watching his every move to see when he would give me my money.
 
After about 10 minutes he finally asked, “¿Qué es lo que pasa?”
 
“What happened to the money?” I replied.
 
Out of his work bag he pulled a small money envelope, he stretched out his arm to hand it to me and as I extended my arm he pulled it back and asked me to have a seat at the table.
 
What could it be? Or worse what have I done? Is he in need of money? Will I have to give him a percentage in return for everything I’ve received over the years?
​
We sat down across from each other at the table and he slid the envelope my way. There’s no telling what he’s about to say, so I figured I’d grab it and open it before I’m talked out of it. As expected he rounded the money up, it was already a win. The excitement was overtaking me, physically I was still in the chair but mentally I was on my way to the record store. And then he started, I could tell he was going to preach.
 
He put his hands together like a Dominican Dr. Evil and stared intently, this is his signature move. I should’ve known a sermon was coming because everything with my dad involved lecturing. Was I better off just giving the 5%?
 
“Son, you’re starting to earn your own money and I’m proud of you. This is a big step in a man’s life. You’re not independent yet but you’re on the way.” he said.
 
“On my way? Fuck is he talking about? Is he kicking me out? This is $130, I can barely get an unlimited metro card. I ain’t paying rent,” I thought.
 
“An important part of life is not just making money, but saving it and investing it, so that one day you’ll hopefully see it grow,” he continued.
 
“Papi, I’m sitting on a couple of twenties here. I’m lucky if I can buy lunch with this,” I said hoping to avoid a drawn-out ordeal. Guess I’m lucky he’s talking about saving and not about using it to reimburse him.
 
“That’s where it starts though, sacrifice. You sacrifice buying lunch and you take the leftovers that your mother packs. It’s better for you and you’re not spending unnecessarily,” he rebutted.
 
“There’s no way I’m taking leftovers with me. ¿Usted cree que yo voy a calentar bacalao en el trabajo? Será para que me boten. Plus what chicks are gonna wanna go out with the dude eating leftover locrio?” I pleaded.
 
The raised right eyebrow was a sign he was growing tired of my constant interruptions. It was time to change my game plan, so decided I would entertain it.
 
“Ok, so are you recommending I open a savings account?” I asked, with an inquisitive look.
 
“That’s a good idea or maybe put it into a sociedad (or susu). You get your money together and buy something that will grow in value. Ahora mismo vamos a comprar unas vacas para la finca. You won’t be ready for this round but we’ll be buying continuously. You put some money into cows and it’ll grow exponentially,” he said.
 
All I could give back was a blank stare. Open a savings account to purchase cows. God damn cows! The ridiculousness of it just seemed too much. Here I am born and raised in NYC, the financial capital of the world and my father’s investment advice is to buy some cows in a fucking campo back in DR. Not a bond, nor stocks or even a bank CD, but bovine!
 
“Dad, this sounds like a fantastic idea, it’s a lot for me to process right now but I’ll give it some thought.” It was all I could say, this man was dead serious about this livestock purchase. “I’m going to head out, mind if we continue this another time?” I asked.
 
He nodded in approval, so I grab my $130 and I was off. Heading straight to the record store and after picking up my CDs I stopped off for a burger and fries. It was a sign that I couldn’t be trusted to own cows, I’d eat all the product.
 
I never gave the cows another thought. My father either forgot or just decided I wasn’t a worthy investor.
 
About 6 months later the whole family went to DR for Semana Santa. DR never disappoints: the food, the beaches, the beautiful women, and the ice-cold Presidentes. You haven’t lived until you’ve enjoyed a frosty Presidente in the Dominican sun. “Vestida de novia,” as we say. Even our time in the campo was great. Easter dinner was at my grandmother's house and on the menu was sancocho, which is one of my favs. The one thing I noticed absent from the whole trip was my dad’s prized cows. Where was the investment that would literally change this family’s fortunes?
 
“Papi, what happened with the cows I haven’t seen a single one?” I asked.
 
“Didn’t work out with the cows. They got sick and died,” he said matter of factly.
 
“¡Pero dieron justamente para el sancocho!”

​Henry Suarez is an emerging Dominican-American writer from New York City. Residing in Westchester, NY with his wife and daughters. His writing focuses mainly on the immigrant experience, growing up bicultural/bilingual, and his journey through fatherhood.
https://twitter.com/_suarezhenry

                                         (CW: Bulimia, Mentions of Suicide)
 
          Some things are innate in us: breathing, walking, blinking. Over time, we develop habits that feel instinctual, even though they are learned from mimicking the people around us. Despite my mother never explicitly telling me what bulimia was, I learned from watching her. She taught me how to force my fingers back and tickle punching bags until our stomachs call for a truce, how to let it out, how to etch in my brain that my daughters will learn to do the same too because it’s tradition at this point.
 
The average person takes 66 days to develop a habit,
                       but how long does it take if the habit is already inside you –
                                                                                             waiting for you to cave in?  
 
                When I was in fifth grade, my biology teacher taught a lesson about owls and their pellets. She told my class that pellets are just regurgitated balls of fur and bones and that owls usually swallow their prey whole. So, when they eat, everything that can dissolve does. Everything else stays in their gizzard where it will compress into a tiny brown ball. Then, they cough it up. I didn’t really understand how owls were okay with that: eating then throwing up habitually. It wasn’t until my mother showed me how she did it that I finally understood.
               The first time I heard her throw up, I ran downstairs and tried to help. I pulled her hair back until I realized that she wanted it to happen (and was forcing it). Her fingers kept going down her throat, in and out, and I backed away as she gagged with no release. I remember thinking how I’d never seen that much saliva before as she drooled over the toilet. She never looked up at me or talked to me about it after. My mom never told me how or when she learned to purge (I never asked), but once, I was at my grandparents’ house for dinner, and my grandmother ran to the bathroom after we ate. It was just the two of us at the table, so I followed her in case she needed me. The lock of the bathroom door clicked, silence, then the voiding came. I heard her gagging and the soft plops of chunks hitting the water. That noise sounds like home sometimes. The nerves in my stomach let me know this wasn’t her first time. I realized in that moment that women in my family do nothing more than empty themselves. 
 
           How long does it take to not digest a mouse?  
 
                      How long would it take if the mouse were a whole box of pizza instead?  
 
           My mother has got it down to a science: 30 minutes after eating or immediately after an argument with my father. I have clear memories of her running downstairs with tears in her eyes after hearing them yell for an hour and her being locked in the bathroom for a few minutes. 
         My first time was at Olive Garden. I was 11 years old, and my cousin was having a birthday dinner. I had a soup that was made with kale, potatoes, and spicy sausages, and a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. I don’t remember how, but I finished my food way before everyone else. Maybe I scarfed it down and swallowed it whole like an owl would. I chugged a glass of water and excused myself to the bathroom. Honestly, I didn’t know I was going to do it until I was on my knees and already rolling my sleeves up. I tried pushing my stomach at weird angles to make myself nauseous (that didn’t work; that’s not how stomachs work). So, like my mother, I shoved two fingers down my throat and gagged. My eyes watered, and I made an embarrassing noise, but nothing came out. I did it again. My throat burned, and in front of me sat bright reddish pink slime and little pasta worms, floating. I kept going until there was nothing left in me, and I was cramping over the toilet. As I flushed, I wondered if owls felt pain when they coughed pellets up (they don’t; they’re supposed to make themselves vomit, we aren’t). I ran to the sink to wash my hands and my mouth. Looking in the mirror, I convinced myself that I looked skinnier as I dried my hands off. Dinner went back to normal, and the scent of sour tomatoes hasn’t gone away since.
 
                                       Why does dry heaving smell minty?  
 
           Ask my mother and me; it is a flavor too strong to ignore, but not strong enough to become a mask. At some point, your body stops fighting the heaving. Everything you touch starts smelling like it could burn you: acid, bile disintegrating all that it touches. You’re sour. Pieces of you and remnants of your quick bathroom trips leave a stink that cannot be washed out with detergent. Once, I was sitting in a field with my mom on a picnic. Is it still called a picnic if the only thing brought to consume is water? We picked some flowers to pass time, and I found feathers of a bird scattered across the field. I grabbed them and showed them to my mom, but she told me not to touch them because they were dirty and smacked them out of my hands. She told me once that our touch was permanent, and I didn’t understand what that meant until we rolled the picnic blanket up, and it smelled like fermented tomato sauce. 
              I always wondered if owls notice when their feathers fall off, or if molting was as important to them as getting periods is to us. Out of every girl in my middle school friend group, I was the last to menstruate. My backpack always had 2 pads and some liners in it, even though I didn’t get my period until freshman year of high school. Each of my friends told me about their bloody stories: how and when they noticed that their pants had been stained by womanhood. I didn’t have the courage to tell them that I hadn’t experienced any of that yet (and I wouldn’t for 3 more years). 
                                                          We
                                                                                      are
               what
                                                                                                                we
                                                                   hide.
 
                 Mantling is an instinctual habit that owls have where they use their wings to cover their food in order to survive. They hide smaller birds from hawks above, and mice from snakes below. I watched a documentary once about mantling. As their wings spread and their heads bowed down, I realized that we all mantle at some point in our lives. I used to stuff candy wrappers and empty bags of chips under my bed. Every night, as I laid down to sleep, the sharp scents of expired chocolate and stale Fritos welcomed me back. The crackling sounds of plastic sounded like accomplishment. My mother and I aren’t good at a lot of things but hiding has been a pride of ours for as long as I can remember. We push things away often: why I got my period so late, my appetite loss, my suicide attempts. My mother hides her insecurities with tummy teas that make you shit water and skipping meals with me (only to find bowls of old food in her room once she leaves). I hide my anger in shame and long sleeve shirts when it’s too hot outside and locked doors – even when no one else is home. My grandmother hides her feebleness by baking cakes daily and sharing them with her neighbors and never saving a slice for herself.
 
                                                                                                      Is that mantling too?
If you throw up  
                        and it goes  
                                         down the drain, does the  
                                                                                 shame  
                                                                                            go with it?
               Much like in a pellet, there are things that will not go away. The bones and fur stay solid for a reason. The dissection of an owl pellet can tell a person a lot about an owl’s lifestyle: what it ate, how often, and where it came from. Unlike owls, the food we eat (or don’t eat) is not all there is to know about our lives. You cannot know of my generosity from the clear, syrup-like fluid floating atop the toilet water. You wouldn’t know what loving me is like from the recurring neon-green chunks dripping from my lips or my chin. 
 
                                                Why do we keep flushing pieces of ourselves away?
 
              I think my mother knows the answer, but I am so afraid for her to find out that her habit isn’t a secret anymore, so I stay silent and keep my questions to myself.  

Michael De Rosa was born in New York City and grew up in Spanish Harlem. His mother was born in Najuabo, Puerto Rico. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the City University of New York. From 1973-1989 he taught organic chemistry (in Spanish) and did research at Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela. From 1989-2020 he was a faculty member at Penn State Brandywine and retired as a professor emeritus of chemistry. This piece is from a memoir he is writing on growing up in Spanish Harlem. He recently published a short story, "The Nuptial Dance in Xs and Ys,” in Academy of the Heart And Mind. 

Home is not always where you hang your hat as it is said. Sometimes home is where you grew up as a child. Other times home is the place you raised your own children. Perhaps home is neither, but a place that you visited during your childhood years. A place where your family roots are embedded in the soil, intertwined with tradition and cultures of those who spread their wings and flew to another land. A small island caught between the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea whose people call to you in your dreams.

Throughout the years, I have had many different homes. I left my mother's apartment at an early age to live with my boyfriend at the time. A year later when it didn't work out, I lived alone, then with a roommate and alone again. Until eventually I married and moved from Chicago to New Jersey. During that time my mother remained in her three-bedroom apartment filled with memories, great food and many plants. I often visited my mother in my childhood home throughout the years especially when I lived only a couple of blocks away.

Now married with a family of my own, we plan a trip to visit the island once called Borinquen. The fear of flying and the expense of the flights make these trips few and far between, however when the decision is made and the time has come, it is greeted with much anticipation. The plans of where we will take the children sightseeing, whom we will visit and what we need for the trip consume the days prior. Calls are made to the extended family on the island and ideas are exchanged, the excitement is palpable. Our kids try to recall the names of their aunts, uncles and cousins based on their prior visits. They never forget Aunt Vicky and Uncle Jorge whom we've stayed with in the past and spoiled the kids during that stay, ensuring that they will not be forgotten. The many cousins become confusing. However they cannot wait to eat the non-traditional spaghetti that my aunt makes. For me, it is the traditional food my Aunt Margarita cooks in her home. Just the thought of her brings back the smell of arroz con gandules and pulled chicken with authentic spices, making my mouth water.

Boarding the plane, I recall the nervous energy my mother used to have and how I inherited her fear of flying. The mornings of those years past when she would spill her café, drop items and lose her temper before a flight, all symptoms of her anxiety. Yet, it was never a deterrent for getting us there every year. As I try to appear brave before my children, I quietly pray the rosary from the moment my feet move me onto the plane until we land with a few distractions in between. Sitting on the plane in those moments of being transported through the air from one home to another, I wonder how things have changed since I was last there. Flying seems to bend the time, in some ways I expect everyone to be as I last left them, but know that isn't so. One year when I visited I was surprised to find one of my cousins was bald. Apparently not something that made the weekly phone conversations.

The kids eagerly watch as the plane ascends into the air and four hours later, clap the moment the wheels touch the ground. While they are being entertained with numerous movies on their electronic devices, I try my best not to focus on the flight itself but the destination. Memories flow of conversations with my cousins when we were teenagers hanging out on the side of my grandmother's house; of sitting with my grandmother on her balcony shelling gandules while she told me stories; watching the mountainous views from the balcony; and going to bed at night listening to the coqui frogs under mosquito netting while my mother, sister and aunts all giggled about the events of the day. When the plane finally lands my tears spill over, as I not only feel relief for arriving safely, but jubilation at having returned.

When the doors open and we step off the plane my hair does what it always does, unforgivably curl no matter how hard I worked that morning to get it straightened. The humidity not only ensnarls my hair it gently kisses my skin. I inhale the scent of the island's indigenous Flamboyan trees and exotic plants, bringing me back to my youth and overwhelming me with emotion.

This trip is different from all others as I carry with me a plant from my mother's house to intern in this soil. A plant that she nurtured and flourished over the years in her home and unfortunately was not doing well in mine. A living reminder of the woman that once nurtured us both, that will take root in this soil and grow for years to come. On this trip I will be greeted by my extended family and will finally grieve with them the loss of my mother, their sister and family matriarch. My aunt and uncle wanted her buried on the island. But selfishly all I brought was a plant. The decision wasn't mine alone but we buried my mother where my siblings and I could visit her grave and where my mother had chosen to call home for 62 years.

Walking out of the airport the heat feels like a cloak over the island and a warm embrace that moves me to want to kiss the ground, because although I was not raised here it is good to be home. Even though, this is not where I reside, this feeling of connection and love will always make it feel like home. That is what my mother wanted for me and what I want for my children.

​We planted my mother's Bird of Paradise in the dirt where my grandfather once grew sugar cane and let his goats roamed free. A sunny spot where my aunt can nurture it, so it can continue to grow and flourish, forever in Puerto Rico’s soil.