“Let me see,” she said, grabbing it from my hand and looking at me straight in the eye. She cleaned it up and rinsed it with water.
“Let’s see if it’s real gold,” she said, smiling. She brought it to her mouth and sank her teeth in it.
“It’s gold!” she assured me. The ring was as thin as the thread she used to sew. It was flexible; it easily bent when I pressed with my two fingers.
Mamá placed the ring on my middle finger and said, “You’re so lucky to find such a treasure in our backyard, huh?”
I immediately went back outside the apartments to see if Johnny was still hanging out with Waldino. Waldino was riding his bike while Johnny rode behind him standing, balancing on the back tire rods.
I smiled at them from a distance and lifted my hand to show them the ring on my finger. I enunciated a quiet thank-you with my lips. Johnny understood and smiled. I never saw him again.
District Six
Mamá had always been strict with all three of us throughout our school years. She never allowed us to go on any school field trips near or far. I never bothered to ask her to sign my permission slips during my fourth or fifth grade years at Park Avenue Elementary School. Fifth grade was a blur; all I remember is that I went to school every day and played kickball like a boy. But during sixth grade, I couldn’t fool my teacher. She liked me, and she cared for me.
I remember how I couldn’t explain to Mrs. Gray that, once again, Mamá hadn’t granted me permission to go on the end-of-year school field trip. I was one of the few “blessed” girls in my sixth grade class to have such a strict mother. Mamá didn’t allow me to go by myself to the corner bakery to fetch pan dulce, much less go on a field trip that was sixteen miles away.
Her reasons were illogical, according to my classmates and to Mrs. Gray. I can’t even recall what bribe she used that morning to convince me to stay home and forget about the infamous field trip to the Griffith Observatory.
The only words I remember coming out of her mouth were “We’re in the middle of a war! Who came up with the brilliant idea to go on a field trip during these critical times?” Her lips trembled as she gasped for air to mutter her last word, críticos.
The Gulf War didn’t allow me to go to Griffith Park. Mamá was petrified; she imagined the worst possible scenarios while my classmates and I rode on the bus. I don’t know—maybe she thought a stray bomb would fall from the sky and kill us all.
Mrs. Gray didn’t understand why some parents wouldn’t allow their children to participate in educational field trips. Sadly, my English wasn’t good enough to give her a detailed explanation. Mrs. Gray tried several times to get it out of me during class, and since I had no words to explain Mamá’s way of thinking, she kept me in during recess to try and find out more.
I remember her confused stare, her eyes filled with concern. I was still considered a newcomer from a foreign country, and she needed to expose me to the American world in order to broaden my horizons.
“Why won’t your mother let you go on the field trip, Claudia?” she asked.
I detected pain in her voice. My answer was simple and thick with an accent.
“Because of the war,” I responded.
With a perplexed look, she questioned me again, “Because of the what?”
I replied with a conflicted tone of rage and shame, “Because of the war, Mrs. Gray!”
Of course, my war, the one that my mouth sang that day, did not sound like the war that I spell and pronounce today. It was more like a whar: Becose ouf da whar.
She continued to question me. I felt desperate. I didn’t know how to weave words together in this foreign language. I almost threw myself on the floor to act out a battle scene. Using my own arms, I would pretend to be a soldier shooting at the enemy with a machine gun. The image of me in my mind, crawling on the rug, pretending to be a fallen soldier, was hilarious.
The truth is, I finished growing up in the middle of a silent battlefield in southeast LA. This was a war where the poor lost every day. There was ignorance everywhere. Our enemies were invisible, but they were there. I felt them when I was ten, living in the city of Cudahy.
Ironically, a year before, in 1989, Mamá was forced to accept that I would have to ride on a school bus every day. Park Avenue Elementary became famous from one day to the next.
I saw my neighbors and school friends on Fox News. Some parents were crying, others were enraged. I didn’t understand why. Some kids I knew came out on TV stating that they were suffering from headaches, stomachaches, and how they felt nauseous and weak after getting home from school.
Teachers had detected bubbling puddles of oil on my school’s playground. I didn’t know what to think anymore. I loved my school. I never felt sick with nausea or suffered from headaches. The news lady on channel eleven continued to explain: “Park Avenue Elementary School was built in 1968 on top of an old landfill, into which industrial wastes had been dumped in the 1930s …”
“No wonder kids feel sick,” said Mamá.
“I think I’m starting to feel sick after hearing what they’re saying on the news,” I said, holding my stomach.
“Oh stop it. Do you really?” Mamá wanted to know.
“No way!” I said, trying to contain my laughter.
Parents and teachers protested in front of the school every day until a few meetings were finally arranged. The school auditorium couldn’t hold the multitude of parents who showed up for the meetings. Mamá never liked attending any school meeting. She only met with our teachers for parent conferences.
Our playground was invaded for a couple of weeks by strangers wearing expensive suits, others wearing orange uniforms with masks and special equipment to dig and test the dirt.
After a few days, my friends and I stopped paying attention to them. We continued to get muddy wallowing in the puddles every day—during recess, during lunch, and after school. Those puddles were fun to splash around in. We didn’t know they were toxic. For weeks, we saw the strangers running tests on our playground, but we continued to play, pretending they didn’t exist.
District Six eventually took charge of the case. Students were transferred to another school in South-Central Los Angeles, seven miles away. It took the school bus an hour to get us there every morning. Mamá had trouble getting used to this routine. She would drop me off at Park Avenue at seven in the morning, waiting there until I boarded the bus. As soon as I found a seat, she would wave goodbye to me from the window. She would then leave to drop off Consuelo at her middle school, Nimitz.
I rode on that bus for nine months until District Six finally covered the playground surface with a new layer of asphalt—a thicker blacktop. According to some teachers and parents, “They didn’t dig deep enough.”
A year later, we were back at our school, playing on a greentop. The asphalt was no longer grayish black; District Six had painted it green, a pale green. From afar, it resembled buffalo grass, fine and soft, but we knew all too well that if we stumbled and fell, we would scrape our limbs. I still have the scars.
We Had Our Childhood—Xqab’an cho qaha’lak’uniil
I had already turned thirteen, but still had the mentality of a little girl. I looked, felt, and acted like a ten-year-old. I didn’t feel like a teenager; no one saw me like one either, especially not my sisters or Mamá. I didn’t get my first period until I was almost sixteen years old.
I loved my two older sisters dearly, but I was obsessed with Consuelo. Whenever I had the chance, I unburied her diary from her bunk-bed mattress. This was the only time I fancied being her age. I secretly wore her shiny bracelets and earrings whenever she wasn’t around.
Consuelo was already a señorita at fifteen years old, liking boys and ignoring me more and more every day. I didn’t like her snobby friends either. All they cared about was their long, permed hair, and showing off their scrawny legs in pleated miniskirts. I was forever known as Claudia the Tomboy.
Sindy was twenty-one years old goin
g on forty. She thought she’d finally found her way out of Mamá’s unrelenting sight by marrying someone twice her age: a paisano, a Guatemalan. He was a grumpy man the same age as Mamá. It was easy for him to steal my sister’s heart. Sindy’s back had been stamped with Mamá’s burning hand too many times, more than Consuelo’s or mine. It was the only way Mamá knew how to discipline us, with painful love, as she defined it. People from Mayuelas didn’t believe in talking to their children; they believed in belts and shoes and iron whips, whatever object was within their reach.
Mamá’s temper escalated every time Sindy snuck out of the house to go on a date with this animal—that’s how Mamá referred to him. I didn’t want to be in the house when Mamá let it out. Thunder came out of her mouth.
Playing with Cynthia and Lizette, my next-door neighbors, distracted me while Consuelo continued to leave her childhood behind and Sindy forced herself to embrace the early symptoms of menopause, as Mamá would also say. I never understood Sindy. While still living with us at home, she slept all the time. She didn’t have friends and didn’t socialize much. At the time, I had no idea she was suffering from chronic depression. Mamá didn’t understand either, and she beat Sindy constantly, trying to shake some sense into her.
Cynthia and Lizette were two Mexican American siblings, three and two years younger than me. They liked me because I spoke Spanish to them. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t speak English fluently when they both had been born and raised in the US. I didn’t know anything about how the bilingual programs worked because I had been placed in an English-only class upon my arrival from Guatemala. Cynthia and Lisette attended another school where they were placed in a bilingual program. They were mastering their mother tongue so that eventually their English would naturally sink in.
The three of us communicated mainly in Spanish, mixing in English words occasionally. We thought we had created our own language—Mexguatinglish. They spoke “Mexican,” and I spoke “Guatemalan.”
I lied to them when I told them that I spoke five different languages: Spanish, English, Mexguatinglish, Gerigonza, and Poqomchi’. Gerigonza is like the Spanish version of Pig Latin, where you add the consonants p, f, or t after each vowel of a word’s syllable. For example, if I use the letter f, Claudia turns into Clafa-ufu-difi-afa, or if I use the letter p, Consuelo turns into Copon-suepe-lopo.
I tried explaining Gerigonza to both Cynthia and Lizette, but the rules were too complex.
Since Gerigonza was too hard for my friends to learn, I decided to teach them a few words in Poqomchi’ instead. Poqomchi’ is the Mayan language spoken in Tactic. I taught them how to say “little girls” in Poqomchi’. After all, we were k’isa ixq’un playing grown-up games.
Every day we entertained ourselves playing house, tag, hide-and-go-seek, and school, where I was always the k’uh-toom, the teacher at the front of the classroom. And during the hot summers, they always waded in their Intex swimming pool. Mamá didn’t want me getting wet in someone else’s dirty water. According to Mamá, everyone else’s water was always dirty, except ours.
“Mamá,” I said one hot afternoon, “Cynthia and Lizette invited me to swim in their pool.”
She simply responded, “No!” as she continued to step on the sewing machine pedal. It felt like the engine roared louder than a muscle car while her needle punctuated the fabric at what seemed like a thousand miles an hour. Mamá worked from home as a seamstress. This is how she kept track of every move we made.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I said so,” she responded, all the while keeping her hand steady and her eyes on the needle.
“Please!” I begged. “It’s hot out and they’re having fun. I want to swim!”
“No means no, Claudia. Don’t ask me again!” For a second, Mamá lifted her head to look me in the face. Her two eyebrows became one dark frown.
“Fine!” I said, rolling my eyes as I stormed off, and left on my bike.
I rode back and forth as I watched Cynthia and Lizette splash each other, trying to get me wet in the process. They looked like little tz’ikins, little birds, bathing in the water. I rode my bike faster and faster around their pool, convincing myself that I was also having fun. I pretended that the water was a green monster trying to chase me.
“What did your mom say, Claudia?” they asked.
“She doesn’t want me to get wet cause I’m getting sick,” I lied as I continued to circle their pool with my bike. I must have gone around at least fifteen times when I suddenly felt light-headed and fell to the right side, into their pool.
My bike quickly sank, drowning in the water. I immediately pulled it out of the pool and ran back to my house soaked, crying and thinking, Mamá is going to yank the hair out of my head for getting wet in their “dirty” water.
When I got home, Mamá immediately stopped her motor and asked, “What the hell happened to you? Why are you crying?” Her steely tone made my teeth chatter even more.
“I … I … I’m so-sorry! I fell in the pool with the biiiiiiiike!” I howled.
Mamá stood quiet for the first time. She stared at me with a smooth forehead. I couldn’t detect any bitter lines.
“It was an accident!” I cried.
Mamá’s stern face soon cracked with biting laughter. “I wasn’t born yesterday! Go get in that filthy water with those girls. Go on, get out of here!”
I couldn’t hide my smile as she continued her lecture, “But if you get sick, I will prepare the most revolting purgante you’ve ever tasted. I don’t care if you scream, kick, or faint; I will tie you down and hold your nose until you drink it all.” Mamá was capable of doing that and more, all in the name of homemade remedies.
I ran out of the house leaving Mamá’s fading words behind. I jumped in the pool wearing my Lycra shorts and a purple shirt. I didn’t care that the water was a week old, slimy and green. I was hot, and all I wanted to do was dive underneath the water to cool off and open my eyes to see how the sky looked from underneath the water.
But I couldn’t open my eyes. They burned every time I tried. With my eyes shut, I continued to swim, holding my breath like a heavy submarine made out of skin. In the distance I could hear Cynthia and Lisette giggling and proudly speaking Mexiguatinglish.
Middle School
When I finished six grade, I left Park Avenue Elementary behind. I was now in the seventh grade, lost in the elongated dark buildings of my new school—Nimitz Middle School. I was scared. I didn’t know anyone. The school was located in the city of Maywood, thirty minutes away from my house. Mamá would drop me off a block away from the main entrance because the traffic in the mornings was unbearable.
On my first day, I walked that entire block to the main gate by myself, feeling empty and ugly, my bowlegs trembling. I felt lonely, like a kid who still belonged in elementary school. Consuelo was a freshman at Bell High School. Mamá would drop me off first and then take Consuelo to the city of Bell.
Consuelo usually waved goodbye from the inside of the car while I secretly wished we were twins so that we could arrive at school together. Sindy was no longer at home. She had moved in with the paisano, the older man who’d stolen her heart. She began attending night school to learn English. I hardly ever saw her.
Nimitz Middle School had a track system because it was so overcrowded. It had four tracks: A, B, C, and D. All my elementary school friends were placed on B track, while I was placed on C track to be on the same track with Consuelo at Bell High School. We were both in school while my friends on B track were on vacation for six weeks. I was miserable without my friends. I felt like I was in jail Monday through Friday from 7:19 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.
I didn’t know how I was going to survive my first week of middle school with my limited English. How was I going to deal with seven new teachers? I wasn’t placed in ESL classes like Consuelo had been during seventh and eighth grade. How did she survive Nimitz? I wondered. How did she get used to so many different teachers? I
missed Mrs. Gray, my sixth grade teacher.
I had fooled my elementary school teachers into thinking that I was a bright student who had learned how to read and write English even though I had no comprehension of it whatsoever. I had only been in the country for two years. I had even been labeled gifted in the arts by Mrs. Gray. I’d fooled her. I’d fooled my family and friends, everyone, including myself. And now, there I was at a brand-new school where kids were cruel.
In the hallways, I encountered girls who wore lots of makeup. Their lips were smeared with ruby-red lipstick outlined by a purplish lip-liner. Their attitude was bigger than their permed hair, feathered to the side and arched on top with gel or Aqua Net hairspray.
Mamá called them cholitas. Boys who wore baggy pants and had their hair buzzed very short were the cholitos. Everyone was either a cholito or a cholita according to Mamá, whether or not they had short hair or a feathered hairstyle. I stayed away from those girls because they were bossy and brutal.
“To build a tough reputation, they usually shove the quiet girls into the bathroom stalls the first week of school,” Consuelo said to me, trying to scare the hell out of me the night before.
“I’m not quiet,” I responded, pretending to be brave.
But on my first day of school, I was determined to never go to the bathroom. I didn’t even know how to curl my eyelashes at that age. There were no signs of me getting my period any time soon. Some of the girls I saw in the halls looked like they were ready to party at a nightclub. I was terrified to make eye contact with them. I still wore pink shorts and T-shirts. I was thinner than a toothpick and my chest was concave like the underside of a surfboard. Even though I was a seventh grader, I was shorter than most sixth graders. I had to start all over, make new friends and charm the teachers. In every class I sat in the back, unless the teacher had a seating chart.
That first day of school was a nightmare. I got lost several times in the hallways searching for my classes. I couldn’t find my assigned locker until the end of the day. When I finally found it, I couldn’t figure out how to open it. I had no choice but to carry three heavy books in my backpack and a thick binder in my hands. I was embarrassed to ask anyone for help. I was nervous to put together one complete sentence in English. The school was composed of 99 percent Latinos, yet most pretended not to speak Spanish. I felt lonelier than ever.
Knitting the Fog Page 10
