by Carmen Baca

​When it reached the community of Pendaries Village, it swooped down over the pine-covered mountains on either side, enveloping them in its fiery, destructive embrace. The plumes rose in billows of black; then they turned white, and finally brown as they covered the sky. The velocity of the winds gave breath to the fire-head on that day. As though a giant blew out a candle, the flames exploded before they whooshed between the mountains on both sides. Out of control, the inferno fed on the ancient pines and spruces, the fir, conifer, and the wild oak. All disappeared into towers of flames, entire mountain tops of trees glowing red, inspiring terror in all who saw them. Those woodland creatures which could escape fled. The sun glared in a fiery orange ball behind the yellow-brown haze, day after day, enveloping everything in a smothering, poisonous fog. Ash fell and embers glowed. Day turned to night for those closest to the danger.
 
And the now enormous enemy continued to fill its belly with everything in its path, devouring one house here and leaving the neighbor’s over there untouched. The monster didn’t choose its food; its wind-driven route determined which structure it ate and how many of them fed its hunger. The people from the hamlets, the villages, and the rural communities obeyed the orders to evacuate: San Ignacio, Las Dispensas, and Las Tusas first, followed by Rociada and Gascón, our closest vecinos in Tierra Monte several miles away, and us.

As the now enormous monster terrorized so many communities, TV news reporters interviewed those who lost everything, and from their helicopters, cameras panned out to show the world how our landscape went from pastoral meadows and verdant mountain forestlands to miles of blackened, limbless trees standing like tall arrows pointed at the skies, the ground beneath a mix of gray ash and black soot. Homes, barns, and outbuildings which had been in families for decades turned into piles of rubble, many topped with the bent and curled-up tin which had been their roofs.
 
The red beast played a game of Russian roulette with the land, ingesting one section of forest and leaving another over the next hill alive, devouring an entire rural community while bypassing the one beside it. Like Death, the beast was indiscriminate. It felt no empathy for those whose lives it afflicted, feeding itself with their priceless treasures, heirlooms, and family inheritances. It bore no sympathy for the flora or the fauna it consumed.
 
Close to 80 days passed as the monster fed itself, terrorizing the people and the animals in its path. In early June, with over 341 thousand acres of destruction in its wake, it slowed in consumption. Some days it held in containment; other days it grew by several hundred acres. We hoped the end of the nightmare was close.
 
But we also knew it could revive in any location where hot spots remained, those smoldering trunks or burning utility poles, dense material not easily extinguished. The beast, even in pieces, could threaten us once more. It wasn’t likely to return over the already destroyed areas since it sought fuel to reanimate. Our forestlands were burned or badly singed, but our Cañoncito, the valley between the mountains, remained mostly intact the night the fire head swooped over us and left our vecinos in Tierra Monte with nothing. A shift of the winds could bring the flames back upon us. We prayed for the beast to become more subdued by the day until we could draw deep breaths and let the anxiety fall off our bodies. We longed for blue skies and days without rising plumes.

​“This is the forest where my stories take place. The green growth is something we’ve never had before. The ground is gray from the ash, soot, and flood water debris.”
​Photo and caption by Carmen Baca. 

Carmen Baca taught high school and college for thirty-six years before retiring in 2014. Her 2017 debut novel, El Hermano was a New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards Finalist in 2018. Her third book, Cuentos del Cañón, received first place for short story fiction anthology from the same program in 2020. Her latest novel, Bella Collector of Cuentos, was published by Somos en escrito Literary Foundation Press in November 2022 (order a copy here). She has published five books and over fifty short works in online literary magazines and anthologies. She and her husband live a quiet country life in the mountains near Las Vegas, New Mexico, caring for their animals and any stray cat that happens to come by. 

by José Antonio López

In addition to sharing our early Texas history with others through my Rio Grande Guardian online newspaper articles, I also wrote about growing up in El Barrio Azteca in Laredo, TX, such as the example below, first published on December 24, 2013.  It describes the time when I first learned of the special Gift of Giving during the Christmas season, and whose message still applies today. Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas (Feliz Navidad) 2022.

For most people, childhood Christmas memories serve as imaginary gold nuggets treasured for a lifetime.

One of these gems is also my earliest recollection of when I first learned the true meaning of Christmas giving.

It was 1953; I was about nine years old and in Third Grade at Central School in Laredo, Texas. Mrs. Reed was my teacher. Authoritative, yet warm and friendly, Mrs. Reed was a classic elementary school teacher. Effective and practical in her no-nonsense approach to teaching, she constantly challenged us to learn. In her classroom, “Eyes and ears on the teacher” was the rule.

A few days before the Christmas holidays vacation, she would purchase a small Christmas tree and placed it in the middle of one of the classroom work tables. She also bought the tinsel and garland. Then, each student in class was asked to donate one ornament. They could either make it in class or bring one from home. Trimming the tree was an extra treat for us students. As a reward for good behavior, she allowed us to help her adorn the tree, which was done a little each day. By the time we had our class Christmas Party on the last day of school, the tree was finished. Not all teachers went the extra mile. So, after lunch on that special Friday, teachers formed a line outside our classroom and brought their students to view and admire our creation.

Barrio El Azteca was mostly poor blue-collar. Most of our neighbors were hard-working day-labor folks and migrants. They arose before day-break and returned home at nightfall; dead tired after their day at a building site in town or working at one of the area’s ranches and farms. The next day, they did it all over again. Their pay was dismal; and employment for day laborers was erratic. Knowing that Christmas trees were a luxury in some children’s homes, Mrs. Reed responded with her own style of kindness. During the last day of school, she put all our names in a bag. She then asked a fellow teacher to pick a name from the bag. The student whose name was drawn won the Christmas tree.

More than anything that particular Christmas, I prayed that I would be the lucky winner. Having overheard my parents a few days earlier, I knew money was tight in our monthly budget. It seemed that they might not be able to buy a Christmas tree for us that year. That’s not to say that our house wouldn’t be decorated for the season. Mother always did a great job decorating our home with very limited resources. Too, the center point inside the house was a small Nativity set in the living room. Yet, the spot reserved for the tree was empty.

So, it was with great anticipation that I welcomed the last day of school before our Christmas break. The Christmas Party was well underway that afternoon, when all of a sudden, I heard my name called. I couldn’t believe it. I had won the prize. When the dismissal bell rang, I asked Bernardo, a classmate, to assist me in carrying it home. He agreed.

Mrs. Reed helped us remove some of the breakable ornaments and she put them in a small box. As soon as we reached the outside of the school building, every step of the way became difficult. First, we had to maneuver a steep stairway in front of the school entry. In one arm, Bernardo carried our notebooks and in the other, the small box with the ornaments. I carried the tree still sporting the tinsel and garland. Second, balancing the tree upright in front of me, my view was very limited. Walking on the unpaved, gravel, street was tricky. So I walked on level ground, avoiding any large rocks that might make me fall. A slight wind was blowing and small bits of tinsel were dropping off the tree, marking our way. We were a sight to behold!

Our house was about six blocks from Central School. Bernardo’s house was half-way to mine. So, before we knew it, we had already walked the three blocks to his home. I placed the tree on the ground and waited for him to drop off his school books and tell his mom he was helping me get home. After a moment, his mother walked out to admire the tree and went back inside. It was then that I realized Bernardo’s home didn’t have a Christmas tree.

Suddenly, a hard-to-explain powerful feeling overcame me. I asked Bernardo to open his front door. Before he had a chance to ask why, I carried the tree inside and placed it by the front window. Hearing the commotion, his mother walked out of the kitchen and I asked her if she would like to keep the tree. She was stunned, and began to weep. She gave me a big hug, nodded “yes”, and thanked me. Then, I helped Bernardo put the ornaments back on the tree. It immediately brightened up the room. As I left, the two of them were quietly standing admiring their beautiful Christmas tree.

When I got home, other kids had told my mother of my winning Mrs. Reed’s Christmas tree. As soon as I entered our home, Mother asked me where it was. When I told her what had happened on my way home, she began to cry just like Bernardo’s mom. Mother gave me my second big hug of the day. She then called Dad at work and told him what I had done. My father, a stern man of few words, but possessing a big heart himself, approved of my charity. That evening, he returned from work with a Christmas tree strapped to the top of his car.

In summary, I tell this story to focus on the plight of today’s needy. Having lived the experience, I am in a position to say that poor people don’t enjoy being poor. Nor are they lazy. That is why they don’t deserve the unkind treatment they receive almost daily from politicians and some news commentators. The fact is the poor are in a never-ending struggle to improve their quality of life. They only ask for a compassionate helping hand to grab onto the next rung in the ladder of success. This Christmas let’s all be part of the solution by helping them do it.

by Daniel Acosta, Jr.

The Hardin House
 
I should talk more about my job at the Hardin House—that exclusive dorm for co-eds that parents paid big bucks to have their daughters fed and protected while they attended the mostly white University of Texas. There were a few Black students at UT in the 1960s. The percentages for Hispanics, mostly of Mexican heritage, were in the low teens. It is now around 23%.
 
I was hired by the head cook, a wonderful Black woman who deeply cared for her student workers and treated us with respect. I looked forward to working each night to hear stories about her life, and she really liked to joke around and laugh with us.
 
However, a few months later a dining room manager was hired to run the entire dining experience at the Hardin House, including the kitchen and the fancy dining room for the girls and their guests. When she was in the kitchen, there was less talking and laughing. I eventually had a run-in with her.
 
Working in the kitchen was sometimes hard and dirty work. The other student workers were at the Hardin House because, like me, we needed the money to attend the great University of Texas, or as stated in the Texas Constitution—a World-Class University! I was the only Mexican student in the kitchen, and the other workers were white and came from small towns in Texas—they did not receive much financial support from their families to make it through college.
 
As a joke, my roommate, Jim, gave me a copy of George Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris, with its classic description of what a kitchen “plongeur” did in the bowels of an expensive hotel restaurant in Paris. My kitchen job at the Hardin House did not compare to Orwell’s experiences, but there were several times I was down on my knees cleaning out the grease trap under the sink and removing clogged food from the disposal so it could start working again. Unlike the “plongeurs,” we Hardin House kitchen workers had a fancy dish washer to help us with washing the many dirty pots and pans and dishes. Mopping up the kitchen floors was somewhat enjoyable because we knew that a delicious meal would be waiting for us after our work was done. The head cook prepared marvelous meals for the girls and staff. I can honestly say that the kitchen was relatively clean and hygienic and did not compare to the filth described by Orwell at the hotel restaurant kitchen.
 
When it became very busy at mealtime, I was sometimes asked to serve portions of the meal to the girls.
 
“Good evening, which entrée would you like—the roast beef or the Chicken Parmesan,” I asked with a goofy smile or at least it was a fake smile.
 
One evening, the manager caustically remarked that these girls did not know how good they have it:
 
“Here is one girl who asked for a full dinner plate of food, and she barely touched any of the food. What a waste.”
 
Not realizing it was a rhetorical remark, I replied: “her parents paid good money to have their daughter live at the Hardin House and she can really do anything she wants with the food.”
 
She glared at me and walked away.
 
The manager often stood behind us servers, making sure that equal portions were correctly given to each girl. When all of the girls had been served and had finished their meals, the kitchen crew picked up remaining plates, cleaned the tables, and swept up any food scraps under the chairs and tables. Then we feasted on our meals at a table in the back of the kitchen. I tried secretly to sneak out a second dessert to eat later at my apartment, but I was caught by you-know-who. I was instantly fired on the spot; she got her revenge.
 
My favorite singer, Frank Sinatra, was singing his hit song about the time of my firing:
 
“That’s Life: You’re riding high in April, shot down in May…”
 
After I was fired by the manager, I found another job at another rich girl’s dorm; did you really think that I would now have trouble buying my car? The kitchen student workers were allowed to sit in the main dining room at a table reserved for us lucky dishwashers, bus boys, and servers. We had to be more careful with our conduct in front of all those very attractive co-eds.

My First Real Date
 
Lest I forget, let me tell you about one more episode I had at the Hardin House before I was fired. Mrs. Stella Hardin allowed only sophomores and juniors to reside in her house. The parents knew that she treated their daughters as if they were her own children, and she had strict rules on their behavior while they lived in her house.
 
A Hardin brochure stated very clearly her rules:
 
This is my house with my rules; if you are to live here, you are to follow my rules.
 
Mrs. Hardin was a gracious woman, a refined Southern lady. I would see her one last time near my graduation date.
 
This last incident involved the breaking of one of Mrs. Hardin’s cardinal rules about no dating of kitchen student workers. One evening, I was able to catch the eye of a cute sophomore as she waited in the serving line to get her meal. One thing led to another, and we exchanged names. She was a much younger sophomore than the other girls, having just turned 18. Starting my fourth year of college I was the proverbial older man—I was 21. Perhaps it was due to my age and my Latin good looks (?) that she finally accepted a date with me.
 
I think she accepted my date offer because every time I called to ask her for a date, her roommates answered the phone and made it clear that she was not in and to stop calling. She was nice to me when I saw her in the serving line, and she finally agreed to talk on the phone when I gave her my phone number. I believe her roommates dared her to go out with that unknown Mexican guy who worked in the kitchen.
 
We agreed I would not go into the lobby of the Hardin House and ask for her to come down from her room. She suggested that we meet me outside at a specified time as if she were going alone to the library.
 
The date was no big thing. We went to a movie at the Varsity Theater on the main drag across the street from the Texas Union. It was the Audrey Hepburn movie, Wait Until Dark, about a blind girl and drug dealers. The only time we really touched was when she jumped out of her seat and grabbed me during the classic scene when the dealers had no lights to find Hepburn in the darkness of her apartment until they opened the refrigerator door, and the room turned all bright. The whole audience screamed.
 
We left the movie laughing and talking, and she complimented me on my new Mustang. She was waiting all evening to show me one last thing. When we arrived at the Hardin House, I walked around the car to open the door. She got out and unloosened the strap on the trench coat that she never took off during the movie and quickly flashed me that she was only wearing a shortie nightgown. She grabbed me and abruptly gave me a brief French kiss, daringly darting her tongue into my mouth for a nanosecond, and then ran to the front door. I never saw her again because it was close to finals, and I was fired shortly thereafter. I guess she won the dare with her roommates to go out with a Mexican.
 
For some of those girls at the Hardin House, but not my particular date, I am reminded of a Beatles’ song.
 
“Baby You’re a Rich Man: How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”
 
Marking Time: My Final Year
 
Now that I had my Mustang, I was able to have more dates after my first encounter with the Hardin girl. Actually, the first time I took out a girl in my Mustang was within a few weeks of buying the car. It was with a girl I had met at Ward’s when she came in as a customer. I would not call it an actual date because when I asked her out after work for burgers at McDonald’s, she brought her younger brother without telling me; he was in his teens and had a developmental disability. Unwisely, I let her drive my Mustang up I-35 to Round Rock and then back to Austin. We were lucky that we were not caught for speeding. Later that same night we returned to my apartment complex, which had a swimming pool; not having any swim trunks we jumped into the pool with our jeans on and sat there talking for a couple of hours. After that episode, I knew that I had to be more careful in the selection of my dates.
 
There were a few girls who worked in the cosmetics section at the drugstore, but they had no interest in college. I had a few dates with a couple of them but there was nothing in common that kept our interest to see each other again. There were some female pharmacy students that I was able to know better, but I found out that having dates with two of them created too much gossip to endure and that ended my attempts at romance with fellow classmates. I did not try to get dates with any of those co-eds at my second job. They were older than the Hardin girls, and to be truthful I was somewhat intimidated by their snobbery and arrogance.
 
I know what you are thinking—what about my studies? I would be lying if I said that it did not have an effect on my studies. My going out during the summer and fall semesters of my last year in pharmacy school did reduce my studying time, and for the first time I had to struggle to eke out two B’s and two A’s, after a near perfect two years of A’s in my earlier classes.
 
UT professors posted exam grades on their office doors so everyone could see what you did on a test and what your final grade in the course was. I remember a female student, not a pharmacy student but who was in two of my science classes, asked me just out of the blue why I did not do better on one of my tests. I did not make the highest grade in my physiology class on that one exam. We really had never talked much out of class. But I aced the final exam with a 98. She did not say anything to me then.
 
Not to stereotype people, she was a pleasant, good-looking sorority white girl who I remember dressed very preppy with cute short skirts, stockings, and expensive loafers. I did not wear my Mexican heritage on my sleeves while I was at UT, but anyone born in Texas recognizes who is Mexican and who is not. I am sure that she knew I was a Mexican.
 
In my final semester, I made all A’s in some of the more difficult courses in the curriculum. That made up for that fall semester. I graduated first in my class.
 
Relaxing
 
After putting in a full day and night working and studying, my idea of relaxing and having fun was to listen to two Austin radio stations, KNOW-AM and KAZZ-FM, in the late evenings. KNOW played top 40 songs and KAZZ was the progressive station covering folk, jazz, and blues. I went to sleep listening to these stations.
 
Most Saturday evenings after working at Ward’s, I returned to my garage apartment around 10:30 PM. A fraternity house was near my apartment, and I often heard a rock band playing and frat boys yelling and screaming during one of their Saturday parties after a Texas football game.
 
One night a local band was particularly good, singing Van Morrison’s hit song:
 
“And her name is G… L…O…R…I… A and I’m gonna shout it all night.”
 
It turned out to be a blast of a party with the band singing the lyrics of “Gloria” over and over for about 10 minutes straight. I was tempted to sneak over to the frat house to see the wild orgy scene. But I had to work at Ward’s that weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, and I needed some sleep. A myth spread throughout the Texas fraternity community that the song was sung for more than 45 minutes.
 
As I was drifting to sleep, I heard these lyrics reverberate in my mind throughout the night:
 
“By the time I get to Phoenix she’ll be rising.”
 
I wished that I had had a girlfriend to think about.
 
Closer to the End
 
Late one evening I was listening to a Paul Simon song on the radio. I know what you are thinking, and it was not that song. It was from the album of the movie, The Graduate, Mrs. Robinson. It was my final semester of pharmacy school in 1968. I had seen the movie, and it made me realize I was about to begin my real life after completing my degree at the University of Texas. There was an obnoxious guy sitting behind me at the theater who made wisecracks throughout the movie about how dumb the main character, played by Dustin Hoffman, was, and it sort of ruined the movie for me because I later learned that the asshole was a pharmacy student in one of my classes.
 
For my final two semesters, I got up around 5:45 AM and made it to work by 6:30. KNOW AM played the Top 40 hits and it seemed to play the same hit in the morning when I was driving to work. A particular song that I heard for the last several weeks before I graduated was the one by Dionne Warwick—”Do You Know the Way to San José?” It really got to me because I was getting antsy on where I would live and whether I would work as a pharmacist or go to graduate school to earn a doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology? The Vietnam War was really heating up in 1968. My decision was made for me when the government offered draft deferments for admission into graduate school. I took the GRE, applied for fellowship support, and filled out several applications to four or five universities. Then I waited.
 
For the last several months of the spring semester, I was content to wait it out because several of my professors had written excellent letters of reference for me and told me that I would be accepted into graduate school without any problems. However, the year 1968 was a very traumatic time in American history: the assassinations of MLK and RFK occurred; there were major race riots in several large cities; there was the resignation of LBJ because of the Vietnam War; there was the rise of the Chicano Movement; and there were massive protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago to decide who ran in place of LBJ against Richard Nixon.
 
I began to realize how much power and influence the Democratic Party had lost in Texas by observing those rich co-eds’ reactions to the deaths of MLK and RFK. Early in June after RFK had won the California Democratic primary over Gene McCarthy, the news of his death was being shown on TV in the lounge of the girls’ dorm I was working at. It was next to the dining hall as I walked to a table with my tray of food. I heard loud screams, laughing, and clapping by the girls at the announcement of his death. I was so glad that I was leaving UT, Austin, and Texas right after my graduation.
 
My Future Is Decided
 
A month before graduation, I learned that I had received a prestigious, nationally competitive fellowship from the National Science Foundation, which allowed me to use the fellowship funds to attend a university of my choosing. I soon realized that this award was something big because several of my professors were trying to persuade me to stay at Texas for my graduate work. I chose the University of Kansas on the recommendation of my favorite professor, Dr. Delgado, the only Mexican American on the faculty. I would leave Texas later in June right after I had taken my board exams in pharmacy.
 
A few weeks before graduation, I was working a Saturday shift at Ward’s, which on that particular day there was a sale on many OTC drugs and several cosmetic products. I was working one of the registers and out of my right eye I saw Mrs. Hardin at the next register. I tried not to look at her. I thought to myself that even the rich like to buy things that save them money, even if it’s at a discount pharmacy. The interior of Ward’s was not that fancy, and all types and classes of people came into the store. The prices of each product were placed on the shelf with a piece of masking tape right below the product. This meant I had to memorize the prices of the products because there were no price stickers on the items. Anything to save money and time for Ward’s.
 
“Young man, how are you doing with your classes?” Mrs. Hardin pleasantly smiled at me.
 
“Quite well. I will graduate soon with a degree in pharmacy and plan to go to graduate school in Kansas.”
 
I had only seen Mrs. Hardin in the kitchen a couple of times and never thought she’d recognize me a year later.
 
She looked straight into my eyes and said:
 
“Good for you and best of luck in your new studies.”
 
I was at loss for words and simply replied, “Thank you”! She walked out of the store with her toiletries and drugs and that was the last time I saw her.
 
Epilogue
 
My parents, my older sister’s family with her husband and three kids, and my unmarried younger sister came to Austin to celebrate my graduation and send me off to attend graduate school at the University of Kansas. After the College of Pharmacy graduation ceremony, where I received several pharmacy textbooks for graduating at the top of my class—Summa cum Laude, I took my family back to my apartment to eat. My new roommate, Nick, and I went to Kentucky Fried Chicken and got several family meals. We ate, talked, and laughed.
 
We also planned to attend HemisFair ’68 in San Antonio the next day after graduation. I had set up my family in a small family-run motel near campus on Guadalupe Street, the so-called “Drag.” It was not fancy, but it was inexpensive and easy to get on I-35 to go to the World’s Fair. I was to pick up my parents in my Mustang.
 
Early Sunday morning the next day, I arrived at the motel and my father was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt getting some fresh air in the gravel-dirt parking lot outside his motel room. It was going to be a hot June day in Texas. A truck suddenly did a U-turn in the near empty street and came to a screeching halt in front of the driveway to the motel.
 
The driver yelled from his truck: “Are you looking for work—you can make an easy $25 for a small project at a building site!”
 
The white builder thought this Mexican man would jump to work for him that morning. My father laughed off the offer and told the man he was visiting his son in Austin. I turned my back on the man and angrily said to myself—this is Texas.
 
The next day I said good-bye to my family and took off for Houston to take my board exams. My next stop was Kansas to begin graduate school. But that part of my life was interrupted by the cancellation of my graduate deferment, and I had to serve a two-year stint in the US Army. And then I started my PhD work in 1970 at the University of Kansas. ​

Dan Acosta is a Mexican American born and raised in El Paso. His grandparents emigrated to the US in the early 1900s. His career spanned 45 years as an educator, scientist, and administrator in academia and the federal government. He recently retired at age 74 in 2019 in Austin and plans to write about his experiences with discrimination and bias during his life and career. He received a B.S. degree in Pharmacy at UT-Austin and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the University of Kansas. He has had a few of his stories published in the Sky Island Journal, The Rush, Somos en Escrito, and The Acentos Review.

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

by ​Elena Dolores Solano

Recently I made migas for breakfast.  I ripped the tortillas up and placed them in a cast iron pan of hot olive oil and cooked them until they were golden colored. There are a myriad of ways to make migas, a traditional Mexican dish. While the tortillas fried, I chopped onion, garlic and green pepper on an old cutting board mi mamá bought for me years ago.

After the tortillas were crispy, I added the vegetables. I sautéed them for a minute and then gently folded in the eggs and waited for them to cook, stirring the dish occasionally. The best corn tortillas are made from three ingredients, corn, lime and water, but when the lime is fried it lets off a peculiar smell of bitter tones. Eventually the smells of the green pepper and garlic catch up, and the mezcla, the mixture of flavors fills the air.

My mother taught me to cook that dish and many others. When we made migas, she handed me the bag of corn tortillas wrapped in paper and told me to rip them up. If the pieces were too big, she told me to rip them up smaller. If I cut them into pieces with a knife, she said, “No, no, no,” and shook her head. I eventually figured out what size she wanted for them. For some reason I was always determined to learn how to cook from her, so I let her tell me again and again what to do in the kitchen.

She believed in my ability to become a good cook. For her, being a “buena cocinera,” a “good cook,” as I often teased her, was important for many reasons. It meant you could take care of yourself. You could stock a pantry and fill your kitchen with homemade food.  

But her cooking was also tied to being a traditional Mejicana, where culture, faith, identity and being a woman, were also a mezcla. She was renowned for her cooking in our small barrio in Detroit. She constantly offered food to anyone who walked through her doors or sat on the stoop. I recall her making me take a full plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn to a homeless man who was sitting outside on the stairs to our building. At that moment I learned, not by words but by action, to serve others, to give freely, even when you have a large brood of your own to feed.
 
She cooked with her comadres, making menudo to sell after mass. They sold the menudo to raise money for flowers for the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. To her, cooking was second nature.  When I use her recipes, I sometimes look around the kitchen, as if she is here, waiting with a toalla, a kitchen towel, draped over her shoulder, waiting to eat. Cooking was a gift of love you gave to yourself and others.
 
I am eternally grateful that I learned to cook from her—and that she had the patience to put up with me. I remember being five years old, making tortillas with her. She let me roll small tortillas on her wooden board. She put them on the comal for me. I always let them burn. I loved the smell of the burnt masa. But more so, I loved her turning to me, saying, “You're fired, vayase.” I feigned resignation.

When I was in my twenties, she gave me several of her molcajetes, a tool made of smoothened volcanic stone. In English it is called a mortar and pestle, but there is so much more. It is a touchstone, a memory stone, a portal to the past. When I grind garlic, tomatoes or peppino in the heavy bowl, I feel deep calls to tradition and culture. 

I feel my mamá, her comadres, my abuela and tías when I use those molcajetes.  I am filled with memories that cause me to yearn for arms that are no longer here, to dial a phone number that no longer exists. I strain to hear a voice that has passed to the other side.  I yearn for the smell of her comal, fire—hot, ready for tortillas.

This longing is the hardest to bear. It is the call from the deep that causes such surprise. I know it well. I have seen it in the face of friends as they talk about husbands and wives, abuelos and abuelas, and friends now gone. I have heard that yearning in the voice of my siblings.

​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.  

                                         (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.  

by Daniel Acosta, Jr.
  
                                               
Prologue

I grew up calling my grandmother—Cuca-- and my aunt--Babe--by their first names; I don't know why but Louie (Babe’s son) and I always did.  Babe was my mother's younger sister and Cuca was their mother.  Babe, Cuca, and my mother were very close.  They seemed like sisters.  Louie was named after our grandfather, Luís.  Louie was five years older than me and was the one who taught me about life.  My maternal grandparents did not have any sons; Louie and I were the boys in the family.  A good part of my early childhood was split between my parents' run-down rental home and Cuca's house, which seemed like a palace to me because it had a bathroom with a tub.  My parent's home finally got a stand-up shower when I started first grade because there was not enough room for a tub with a shower.  When I started first grade in the fall of 1951and until I completed the 4th grade, I remember spending many days and nights with Babe, Louie, and Cuca.  Papa Luís had died when I was very young, and I do not remember him. 

 
Cuca’s House

I really liked staying over at Cuca's house on Piedras Street.  From her front door we could see the dirt-brown Franklin Mountains looming in the distance.  Her house had a small front yard with a white picket fence and vines growing on the enclosed screen of the front porch.  There was an unpaved driveway to park the car and further down the driveway was a detached garage, which was used mainly for storage of old furniture.  Next to the garage was a wobbly gate that led to a tiny backyard with a peach tree and some scrubby bushes. The backyard was mostly dirt with a few, scattered patches of grass.  The house next to hers had a large backyard; a rickety wooden fence separated Cuca's house from the neighbor's yard. 
 
Over the fence I could see my parents' rental home on Hamilton Street, which was essentially two houses away if I wanted to take a shortcut by jumping over two fences.  Instead, I ran up the rocky alley between Hamilton and Idalia, which dead-ended on Piedras.  One could enter the house from the back by entering a half-door that that connected the unfinished part of the basement to another area with a locked door that was finished into a bedroom for Babe.  Outside of Babe's bedroom door was a small area where an old-time washer was located.  It had a wringer attached to the washer and once the clothes were washed, they were placed through the wringer and were wrung dry by physically rotating the handle of the wringer.  The clothes were sun-dried in the backyard on a small clothesline.  Right above the washer was a small basement window just small enough for a small boy like me to squeeze through, which I did a couple of times to get into the house.    
 
The other way to get into the house through the back was to walk up some shaky wooden steps to a door that opened into a small breakfast room and then to the kitchen.  At the top of the stairway was a small landing with a window on the side of the house where Cuca's bedroom could be seen.  Next to the breakfast room, off from the kitchen, was the bathroom, directly opposite Cuca's bedroom.  Leaving the kitchen there was an area I guess one would call the formal dining room, which had a dark mahogany table with six matching chairs.  From the dining area there was an arched opening which immediately became the living room, where there was an upright piano under the north window and a sofa next to the piano.  Later when I was older a large black and white television was purchased by Babe and Cuca.  We spent many nights watching professional wrestling and boxing matches.  I learned to recognize many of the fighters from Babe and one of my favorites was Sugar Ray Robinson.  We would keep the front door opened so a nice breeze from the west came through the screened front porch into the living room.   One could reach Babe's basement bedroom by going down a very narrow staircase which came off from the dining room.
 
During the winter months, Louie and I often slept together on the sofa in the living room; a large gas heater was in the dining area which was turned on in the early morning by Cuca so Louie and I could get warm before we had breakfast.  During the warmer months we slept downstairs with Babe in her large queen-size bed.  In the summer the basement was always much cooler than the rest of the house, and I liked the dampness and darkness of the basement, where I could read my comic books under a small lamp. 
 

Babe and Louie

What I remember most about Babe is the way she treated me, as if I were much older.  Babe, Louie, and I often watched the soap operas on TV during the summer months, and she would explain things to us about why so and so was divorcing her husband and who was stealing money from the company.  We all laughed when Babe got it right and gasped in horror when someone was killed in an accident without any warning.  When there was time in between the shows, I jumped up from the couch and ran down Piedras to Beacon’s grocery store to get her favorite drink--not the stubby Coke bottle but the long, thin Pepsi which was sold cold.  I also remember watching "A Tale of Two Cities" with Babe, and when the novel was required for my ninth-grade English class, I already had a good idea of the plot. Through Babe and TV, I learned much about how white people lived in America. I instinctively knew that we were different from the Anglos, but it was Babe who taught me to be proud of my Mexican heritage. 
 
With Louie’s guidance, I learned to play all the sports, especially baseball.  I was able to play with boys 4 or 5 years older than me and picked up many tricks on how to become a skilled ballplayer.   I became interested in organized Little League and Pony League baseball, playing first string as a centerfielder and shortstop for two different teams.  Babe, Louie, and her long-time boyfriend, Johnny, were the only ones in my family who saw me play baseball during the summer months.  Cuca called Johnny El Árabe; there was a large contingency of Lebanese families (but not really Arabians) living in El Paso.  I was not much of a hitter, but I played first string because I was the best defensive outfielder and shortstop on the team and made several outstanding plays each game.  They would be in the stands each night rooting for me.  After the games, we often walked down Piedras to eat out at two greasy spoons which were near Beacon's.  There were two bars directly opposite each other on Piedras—Jimmy's and Pike's--and both had small kitchens.  When we were in the mood for good tacos we ate at Pike's Bar and when we wanted great hamburgers we ate at Jimmy's.  We leisurely ate and listened to songs on the juke box that the bar customers had selected.  
 


Babe and the Authorities
 
One summer Babe decided to paint the interior of the house and she said let's go, Danny, and get some paint on Paisano Street, the supposedly dividing line between the Mexican and Anglo neighborhoods in El Paso.  Cuca's house was in Manhattan Heights where there were mixed neighborhoods of whites and Chicanos.  We got into her old 1950-something Ford Fairlane and took off.  Along the way she pointed out the differences in the neighborhoods and the types of people.  We both laughed when we saw a man turning left using both his blinking turn signal and sticking his arm straight out with fingers extended; Babe said he wanted us to know where he was really going.  On the way to the paint store, we were pulled over by a cop for not coming to a complete stop at an intersection.  Babe was very polite and smiled nicely at the policeman, who eventually gave her only a warning ticket.  Babe told me that it pays to be always friendly!
 
When my cousin Louie and I were both going to Rusk Elementary School in El Paso during the 1950s, I remember seeing Babe talking fast and excitedly about her son, Louie, to the principal and some teachers after school.  He had been reprimanded for speaking Spanish on school grounds during recess; it was a school rule that only English could be spoken at school.  It is a cliche to say now that Babe was a woman before her time.  I only wished I could have heard her take down the authorities for what they did to Louie.  A few days later she told me what happened, and broadly smiled that Louie would have no demerits on his school record. 
 
One night, when all three of us were sleeping in the basement bedroom of Cuca's house, I heard someone jump over the back gate and look through the bedroom window next to the gate entrance.  I nudged Babe and told her that I saw a man outside.  She jumped out of bed and took Louie and me to Cuca's back bedroom upstairs.  We sat on her bed while Babe called the police and made sure the doors were all locked.  It was fortunate that were two locked doors in the basement which made it difficult for the intruder to get into Babe’s bedroom.  However, while Babe and Cuca were in the front of the house, Louie and I heard steps on the back stairs.  When he reached the back door, we saw his profile against the moon light through the thin curtain of the window.  He banged on the back door to make it open but was unsuccessful.  He then ran down the steps because police sirens were now getting louder.  We heard him yell when he slipped and fell.  It was on that same bed that Cuca would often tell us stories of her life and family in Mexico.  We learned from her that David Siqueiros, the famous Mexican muralist, was a distant relative.  She smiled wickedly that he was a Comunista!
 
The last thing I remembered seeing was Babe in the living room calmly talking to the police about the intruder, who had fled the scene.  A few years later Louie told me that the intruder had recently been paroled from prison and made the mistake to try to break into Cuca's house. He had to go to jail again when he was caught by the police.  I also learned much later in life that he was Babe's former boyfriend. 
 
When I was in my fourth-grade class later that same year, our teacher, Mrs. Shlanta, gave an in-class assignment to write a personal story about our family, all within an hour of class time.  I thought quickly and decided to write about the intruder.  I titled the story, "The Burglar", to make it more interesting and which I could write about without much difficulty in one hour.  I left out the part of seeing the intruder a second time on the back stairs.  She was very impressed and asked if I was scared.  No, I said.  It was because Aunt Babe knew exactly what to do to keep the burglar out of the house.   Louie and I were really scared to see the intruder so close to us and to hear the banging on the door.  I guess we were so lucky that he did not get in. But I couldn't tell Mrs. Shlanta that.  I was given an A for the story.
 


Louie and Danny

Two years later our family had moved to another rental house, still on Hamilton Street, directly across from our first house.  Louie was now in high school and was driving a cool, light green Studebaker.  I did not spend as much time at Cuca's house as I used to, but I still went over to see Babe and Cuca after school.  Having a car and being a teenager, I did not see Louie as often.  But one evening around 10 PM my mother and I heard Louie knocking at our front door.  He was out of breath, and he told us that a Mexican gang from Chivas Town (several blocks west of Piedras near Alabama Street) was chasing after him.  He had left his car up the block on the corner of Piedras and Hamilton, next to Mr. Wicks' house.  We called Babe and she said for Louie to sneak over to the back yard, just a few houses from ours.  She would be waiting for him at the small basement half-door.  About an hour later, we heard police sirens and saw police cars parked near Mr. Wicks' side lawn.  My mother and I walked up the street and saw that Louie's old Studebaker front windshield had been completely smashed in with rocks and bricks.  Again, I saw Babe calmly talking to the police and asking them what would have happened to Louie if he had been in the car?  Louie was not at fault; the police had to go after the gang members.  That was my Tía Babe. 
 
The only gangs near my neighborhood were Mexican.  There were two Mexican gangs who fought mainly among themselves over territory and if you did not belong to either gang, you had to be careful about showing any preference for one gang over the other.  There were no white gangs at my school, and I never saw any whites trying to beat up Mexicans in my neighborhood.  Louie taught me to avoid any interactions with the Mexican gangs, unlike his run-ins with some of the gang members.  Seeing his front car window completely smashed on that summer night made a deep impression on me.  I kept a low profile at school and stayed away from gang members. It didn't hurt that I was known for being an A student, who academically outperformed many Anglos in the classroom.  The word in the street was to not hassle Danny.  However, there was a time when I had to intercede when some female Mexican gang members were trying to beat up an Anglo girl, who I knew in one of my classes.  This incident occurred as I was walking home after school down Piedras about a mile from Cuca's house.  Luckily for me none of the male gang members were around and I was able to convince the Mexican girls from hurting the white girl."
 
I was friendly with many of my Mexican classmates, and several of them advised me to not associate with the gringos and to keep my Mexican identity untainted.  But I wanted to be accepted by the more popular whites at school.   I tried out for the 8th grade football team and started as the first-string end, offensively and defensively, which gave me status with some of the white elites.  I began to walk a fine line between my white and Mexican classmates by trying to please both groups.  In the end, I had problems with my ability to accept my Mexican heritage and my desire to be part of the elite whites in school.  It was later in high school that I became proud of my Mexican background.  My deficiency in speaking fluent Spanish, like the rest of my Mexican friends, was beginning to be more difficult to hide from everyone
 
In my 8th grade Spanish class, our Spanish teacher, Mrs. Curry, complimented several of the Mexican students for their excellent pronunciation of Spanish words.  Because I was the straight A student in all my classes and recognized openly by many of my teachers, it became noticeable to several of the Anglo students that I was not highlighted for my proficiency in speaking Spanish.  An Anglo member of the football team in the class jokingly asked Mrs. Curry about my Spanish abilities.  There was dead silence in the class, except for a few giggles.  Mrs. Curry quickly started a new topic, and that started my decision to be less sociable with my classmates. Throughout my years at home and school I refused to speak Spanish.  I thought by being less Mexican I would be more accepted by my white classmates.  Of course, when I spoke in Spanish to my Mexican friends, it was terrible, and I was mocked for trying to be more Anglo.  Still, I had some good Mexican friends.  Many of my Anglo classmates attended Austin High School and were cordial and somewhat friendly, but I knew my secret was out and that I really did not belong entirely to any one group at school. 
 


Epilogue
 
By the time I was three, I had decided on my own to not speak Spanish at home or at school; I thought that I would be more accepted by my white neighborhood friends and classmates and by my teachers.  My parents would talk to me in Spanish and English and did not force me to respond in Spanish.  Babe never made me feel ashamed when she spoke Spanish to me and did not care if I responded in English.  She mainly spoke Spanish with me when she wanted to make an important point about some matter. 
 
I learned a lot from Babe:  she was a forthright woman, who was proud of her Mexican heritage and spoke out when confronted with discrimination and racism.  She had a long and good life, passing away when she was in her late eighties.  Louie became a captain in the El Paso Police Department. and later in his career, Chief of Police at El Paso Community College.  He received a letter of reference from Mr. Wicks when he first joined the department.

Daniel Acosta is a Mexican American born and raised in El Paso.  His grandparents emigrated to the US in the early 1900s. Daniel's parents never completed high school, and he was the first in his family to graduate from college.  He has a professional degree in pharmacy and a doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology.  Daniel's career spanned 45 years as an educator, scientist, and administrator in academia and the federal government.  He recently retired in Austin, and plans to write about his experiences with discrimination and bias during his career.   He hopes that he can help young minorities with their careers by writing about the barriers he encountered in academia, professional societies, and the federal government.  ​

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.

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.