But that’s not what I want to write about today. There are two things, and again they are stubbornly intertwined. The first is that my mother drives me crazy. She thinks I am stupid. Not student, school stupid. She knows that I am very smart in that department. Teachers are already talking to us about universities and full scholarships. In fact, my dream is to learn the Tzotzil language of my mother’s indigenous family in Chiapas, so I can study Mayan Tzotzil poetry one day. No, when I say stupid, I mean my mom thinks I don’t know the truth about her life, especially the years before she came to live with Berta. But they all forget that I am good at reading between the lines. I’ve heard enough times from Berta that I don’t know all of my mother’s suffering. When I talk back to my mom in front of Uncle Diego, he gets as close as is possible to something like anger toward me, and I am reminded that my mother deserves my undying love forever. But it’s his pause, his look, and their implications that speak volumes. And then there is the simple fact that I have lived with my mother my whole life and heard the piercing screams in the middle of the night, the cries for Rosa and Manuel, that she always blames on something she ate that evening, too much garlic or too many habaneros. I am no fool.
Sometimes I am angry with her. Why can’t she trust me with the truth? I’m not a child anymore. I am the same age she was when she made her journey. I am the age that her father was when he worked the fields and walked the picket lines with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. There is some dark secret that she doesn’t want to share with me, especially about her sister Rosa. I don’t believe that she died in a car accident on her way home to Oaxaca, though this could explain my mother’s guilt that she continued on with my father to Los Angeles, while Rosa headed back. Still, I can feel it; there is something she does not want me to know. But I have to be honest with myself, and this is where writing helps me see clearer: Do I want her to know everything about my life? Absolutely not.
And yet, twisted up with all of these feelings of anger and frustration are an underlying awe and respect. My mother has accomplished so much with her determination and hard work, mastering English and completing her associate’s degree in math. She now works as an assistant to an accountant, and she tutors kids in math in our community, but she hopes one day, when I am finished with college, to return to school to become a teacher. I know she will.
She has always given me a good life. We have lived in our own apartment ever since Berta started doing foster care and I begged Mom to get our own place, which she did. And then, of course, there’s the way she has persevered on her own, especially after losing my father a second time.
I have fleeting memories of those few months that he was in our life. Though I was only about three or four years old, I remember a sadness about him from the start. He spoke little and coughed a lot. I didn’t like to be held by him. I would fidget and run to Mom. He told me to call him Papá, but I don’t think I did. I don’t think I called him anything. Since then, I’ve always thought of him as Manuel. That’s how Mom refers to him, with a soft, faraway look in her eyes.
At that time, we all took a trip together to the San Diego Zoo and the next day to a cemetery, where we put colorful paper flowers on graves marked John and Jane Doe. I now know that cemetery is in Holtville, where Mom imagines her father is buried with other unidentified souls who died in the desert trying to cross the border. She was both happy and sad that day; it was hard to tell if her tears were from joy or grief. I guess both. I remember being jealous because she kept holding his hand and leaning her head on his shoulder.
A few months later, after he left for a job in Central California, Mom got a call from his brother, and I heard her make a sound like an animal. Apparently, Manuel collapsed while working in the fields and died a few hours later in an emergency room. Cause of death: strep throat and severe pneumonia. My mother sat on the kitchen floor, sobbing and stroking the thick pink scar on her thigh, until Berta got home. I remember sitting there with her as she cried, while Berta’s smiling cows looked down at us. Even now when I see those silly figurines, I feel a deep sadness.
Consequently, every time I get a sore throat, Mom takes me to the clinic to check for strep, that is if I tell her anymore. She hovers so, sometimes makes me feel like I can’t breathe. But then I ask myself, Can you blame her? You’re all she has left. Only now, I am the one who wants to hover. I am terrified I might lose her. With this new president, I
