Page 82 of And Still Her Voice
Except for an excruciating headache, Ruben had delivered me home safe and sound. I ended up hanging around with the family a few more weeks while I decided my next course of action. In the meanwhile, Grandma and Mom got into it about whose fault it was that Dad’s life had ended the way it did. And whose fault it was that I’d ended up the way I was. I mean, how was I?
I felt overwhelmed, yet excited about getting to celebrate Thanksgiving with my Marquez family. With the fading distraction of Dad, Grandma’s power over me weakening, I felt this could be my opportunity to connect with my Mexican roots, at least that half of me. I wore a simple mid-length orange dress and my fringe boots. The moisture in the air had frizzed my hair, so I wore braids.
Uncle Teodoro had stayed in Mexico so as not to get drafted into the gringo guerra. Later, when my uncle did arrive in the States, he settled in Los Angeles and ended up working in a walnut factory in the eastern part of LA where he met my Aunt Othelia. They married and moved into a little bunkhouse next to her family in a section of Monte Vista called “Campo Corona.” And there they raised their family.
The neighborhood, so different than the manicured one where I grew up, had changed since I’d been there last and not in a goodway. The Campo looked like an old man’s open mouth missing most of his teeth and what were left were rotting and ready to fall out. The dusty red tongue of a road was now paved over in asphalt. Only a few of the houses, more like sheds for large families, remained. The others had been razed and bulldozed to be redeveloped into industrial areas and more modern suburban houses that could be sold to families that would be part of the first generation of the Mexican-American middle class. But most families here couldn’t afford to stay and just moved away.
The tiny home, originally one shoebox-sized bedroom, had a tiny kitchen and a small living room to house their family of eight. My aunt and uncle slept behind a curtain in the living room while the five children—four boys and one girl—were stuffed into a room with no window, literally like sardines in a can. Even though there was running water inside the house, there was still no local fire department, so if there’d ever been a fire, no one would have survived. Eventually, my uncle added a back bedroom made of cast-off railway wood. He’d knocked out a back wall extending the kitchen out onto the back porch and finally added an indoor bathroom, the plumbing having been salvaged before the destruction of one of the neighboring properties. He painted the home a cheery American peach pie color, as if he needed to prove some sort of patriotism in order to stay.
Even now, looking onto the postage stamp patch of grass bordered by a chain-link fence, there was still dirt all around and shriveled plants left over from when Abuela Antonia also lived with my cousins after my grandfather died. Before Abuela died, also of diabetes, she’d gotten along pretty well with her assimilated daughter-in-law who couldn’t roll out a tortilla to save her life—much to my uncle’s chagrin—but she knew how to roll out a good time.
“Come in, come in,” I heard Aunt Othelia say from the other side of the front door. We stepped into the room, my eyesadjusting to the dark. An outside picnic table had been dragged into the small kitchen and adjoined to the dining table, part of it hanging in the living room, so that we could all fit.
“Everything looks so pretty,” I said, noticing the same set of dessert rose and apple Franciscan ware we had at home.
“Your Abuela Antonia gave us two settings as a wedding gift. Same as your mother. I added to them.”
I remembered Mom saving S & H Green stamps from the market and then me licking the backs and pasting them into the little book in order to save enough to add to her set. Mom preferred those dishes to the French Haviland Chinaware we inherited from Grandma Phoebe. She said Phoebe’s dishes were too fancy to use even on special occasions, which had become fewer and further in between as the years went by.
I asked how I could help and when my aunt set me to heating the rolls, I recalled my time at Diggers and suddenly I missed Mary and the others, most especially River. I wondered if he was celebrating with his newfound family in New Orleans. I’d try to catch up with him soon.
And then after some catching up and pleasantries, my uncle took his place at the head of the table. My mother was next to him and then to her right sat my little brother. I sat to the right of him with Maggie to my right and then Josie. Across from Mom and my brother were my three teenaged boy cousins. Directly across from me sat Teddie. If memory served me, she had always sat at the grown-up table, even before her quinceañera, the celebration of her transition into womanhood, before she tweezed her eyebrows thinner than frown lines. Maybe it had been just because of her size, always a big-boned girl, that she never fit at the kid’s table with the rest of us, or because she was the only girl in her family.
Across from Josie sat Aunt Othelia next to the silver-framed photo of her dead son Freddy in uniform propped up at the headof the table. Freddy who would have been nineteen, had been killed six months ago over in Vietnam, but right now, no one was allowed to talk about it or him even though he’d finally made it to the grown-up table. As I stared at the picture, I squeezed my brother’s hand unable to fathom the pain of losing him. I remembered back when I sat at the kid’s table with Freddy and the others. I was sorry/not sorry I’d missed his funeral. Missing also was Patty who’d gone to live with the father of her baby due anytime now.
Uncle Teodoro led us in prayer and then stood to carve the turkey, the boys rubbing their hands together as my aunt got up to retrieve bottles of Coca Cola and 7Up. There was already a pitcher of fresh squeezed lemonade which I’d watched her dump tons of sugar into earlier. Vases of roses and sweet-smelling carnations from my aunt’s garden were pulled off the table to make room for the platters of food. I got up to help my aunt, her brow glistening red. I carried over platters of mashed potatoes, green beans, and a yellow Jell-O salad with chunks of pineapple and cottage cheese blended in.
When the casserole dish full of yams was passed to my uncle, he raised his voice. “Te dije que si nunca vi otra nuez en mi vida . . .” He complained about the yams loaded with walnuts, brown sugar and scorched marshmallows on top.
“It’s not like you had to shell them like I did as a little girl,” Aunt Othelia said, turning to the rest of us. “By the time he came along there were machines at the factory.”
“Ni modo, no los como.”
“Suit yourself, hombre. More for me,” Aunt Othelia said, and everyone laughed. She’d obviously been eating more portions than just hers and his.
Pretty soon everyone, except Teddie and me, was chattering and laughing. I’d been gone so long, I’d fallen out of the loop, but did help pass the food. Aunt Othelia wiped the back of herforehead with the edge of her apron before finally sitting down. Pouring herself a glass of lemonade, she looked at me and said, “Bueno, Anna, tell us more about your adventures? Your Mamá, makes it sound so enviable.”
“Sin verguenza. Living like a loose woman,” Mom said.
Before I could answer, my uncle had ripped off another piece of tortilla and told my aunt to go get the chili my mother had made.”
“Why don’t you get up and get it yourself, old man,” Teddie said, raising her voice. I’d never heard her talk back to her father like that.
Red faced, Uncle Teodoro choked, grabbing his throat, his eyes bugging out. I looked back and forth between him and Teddie, who pushed her chair back and rushed over to pound on her father’s back. The boys sat helpless as newborns. Aunt Othelia sat frozen until my uncle finally spit out a slimy piece of turkey. Everyone seemed relieved to see he wasn’t going to die from choking or a stroke. Teddie waited until he drank some 7Up to calm down and then she stepped toward the front door.
“Teddie, sientate.” Uncle Teodoro pounded a fist on the table. “Hay, mira no más!”
“Yeah, just look. Don’t you see it’s a sign? Bunch of hypocrites sitting around celebrating the white man’s holiday while our brothers are being slaughtered like turkeys in Vietnam,” Teddie said. “And when are we going to talk about what happened to Freddy!”
“Mija, don’t talk like that,” Aunt Othelia said. “He was a hero and we are celebrating the freedom he fought for our country. . .”
“And, Mamá, don’t forget that extra dose of insulin after stuffing yourself with the all-American apple pie.”
The front screen door slammed behind Teddie. The scene was similar to others I remembered when something always pissed her off and she wasn’t afraid to let everyone know about it.
“Never mind her. She gets that way,” Aunt Othelia said, walking over to get the spicy salsa from the counter and then stepping over to her husband. She held it over his head and smiled at the rest of us. “Shall I pour it for you, too?” He waved her off and she then returned to her place and reached over for a roll which she proceeded to liberally spread with Parkay out of the plastic tub.
The little house had heated up hotter than Mom’s habanero salsa, so after I helped clear the table, I stepped out for some fresh air and found Teddie seated on the porch stoop smoking. I squeezed in next to her.
