At this point our telephone correspondence ceased ~ she had to go to the prison again to sign some papers on behalf of her son, and I had to trek on to the state of Guerrero. The bus stopped in the capital in fact, Chilpancingo, and more of that hot and humid weather greeted us along with unseasonable rains. But it was tolerable enough, and I could muck around there before heading back to Puebla, or even Veracruz; with a people comprised of a varied mix of Mexican types, mostly Criollos, along with some of the best-looking, physically attractive (and desirable) Mestizos I had yet seen, Guerrero is a state of low valleys, green hills, lush tropical coasts, typical-Mediterranean type architecture with red tiled roofs, along with many a modern hotel or government building. There existed a calm that certainly soothed my nerves during my stay. I thought to go on straight for the sensuous beaches of Acapulco or Zihuatanejo and give myself a much needed rest in their enchanting resorts, but time was against me, and I had to wait around in Chilpancingo till I had recovered from the brutal bus-ride. Emails between Becky and me resumed, which is just as well because our telephone conversations were growing a bit awkward. We both express ourselves better with the written word. Apparently, I had provoked her usually phlegmatic curiosity, for no sooner had I informed her of my experience in jail when she sent me the following note:
~ Forgive me for making a stink about this, Freddy, but when you were in jail, where were you, in San Fernando? Did anyone come to see you? Did you have to go to court? And about the other bullshit that Louis caused, how did you convince the cops it wasn’t you?
Becky ~
I suppose she struck the right chord (or perhaps the wrong one), but I had to divulge all the ugly facts surrounding my clouded past, if only to re-affirm that empathetic connection with her. After all, I might need her help a lot more than I figured, and getting by in this land of suspicion and distrust might require me to trust in someone who has the means to get me out of trouble; Billy and wife weren’t exactly in a position to get involved, and other relatives and friends weren’t exactly forthcoming. Hence, in a spat of eloquence and passion atypical of our friendship, I replied:
~ You know, Becky, even after all these years (23 years since I went to jail due to that delinquent Jorge, and about 13 or so years since Louie pulled the fast one on me), it still feels expiatory to talk about such awful memories. Weighing things in retrospect truly reveals the relativity of all things, forcing me to realize that I’m all grown up. So, don’t worry about my feelings, my dear friend, I honestly appreciate your inquiry because no one else in the world gave a shit about my pain ~ a pain that has never been cured, only repressed. There are moments, especially during a full moon, when it threatens to break its boundaries in a torrent of rage, violence and destruction. Only my intellect, my greater sense of reason, holds me back during which times I realized I still have it and am grateful I do, whilst others I could name clearly do not, and has thus far held me back from giving in to the anger and violence during all these years past.
But, strangely enough, even though I am far from the place where it happened, and am free of the negative presence and influence of the people who perpetrated these crimes against me, I am all alone, without one person I may need to help me. I didn’t know what to do, and others I trusted ended up betraying me for no good purpose. Hence, even after all these years, here in the quiet of Chilpancingo and other Mexican towns, all those repressed memories and feelings are haunting my dreams. I wake up in the morning sweating, not from the heat, but from the terror of those dreams, and feel the anger surging within me. Then, suddenly, I get a rush of the images of those incidents, and I end up screaming something insulting.
Most of the time I think my feelings will overtake my reason, and it scares me. I try to ignore the sensations, which suddenly grip me. During other times, the whole trap of memory scares or irritates me enough that I have to question the very purpose of my quest, of reconciling myself with my past, my origins, and the prospects for the future. Why didn’t I just die that day they hauled me off to prison, I ask myself during those moments of unintended introspection. Then I just succumbed to the feeling of helplessness, and exclaimed, ‘Damned be the day when I was born into that miserable environment! Damned be the hour!’
Of course, I am just fooling myself because I know very well that the sullied past will never be requited to the confusion of the present. But, it all stems from those terrible memories. With my coming here, remaining indefinitely against my will, and dealing with the results of the latest betrayal I’ve endured from my colleagues, well, as you can imagine, I feel so lost ~ worse than if I were in prison, abandoned, hating myself more than I hate my enemies because I feel that I have lost control over my life.
These are feelings, of course, and must use every ounce of my lingering reason to control them ... sometimes I feel it is a losing battle.
Your Primo ~
Oddly enough, I felt like I was being manipulated with my own past. Becky’s precipitous concern for my background caused me to unleash the store of hoary ghosts, which have been troubling my half-forgotten memory during all these years past. What could I do? Suddenly I felt like ripping my heart out and presenting it to her, if only to effectuate that catharsis I have been praying for, but was afraid to realize. I went ahead and sent her another e-mail without waiting for her to reply:
~ In any case, Becky, to answer your questions now: First, it was not San Fernando, but was all the way in the L.A County Jail because the crimes they accused the assailant and me of involved “attempted manslaughter.” They were deemed as felonies of the worst kind. Second: No one went to see me, and when my father finally bailed me out 5 days later, it was not to reproach the bigoted police for doing this to me and giving the aggressor equal justice, since he had a police record of more than 15 years; various felonies and misdemeanors, was on probation, and had just been let out for an attempted rape charge. No! My darling dad, Fernando, instead screamed at me, demanding to know what demon had possessed ME. What had possessed me to be so sanguinary, such a “criminal!”
I tried to call home in the hope my own mother, Maribel, would understand and help, but the damned old hag just answered, “This is what you deserve for being so wicked, a violent son of a bitch!”
... Truly, it was a moment when I’d NEVER felt so alone in my life.
take care, Freddy ~
A few days passed before she replied, which caused me some worry; it turned out that she had been going repeatedly to the courthouse to plead her son’s case, and was thus embroiled up to her tear-ducts with the festering situation. Thus, how could I insist upon anything given her personal grief? When she finally replied, I was actually surprised at the tone of her cry for comprehension, for now she felt unleashed of the chain of mistrust, and had to confide intimate secrets about her own past in someone. Little could I surmise from the pleasantries that surrounded our friendship that she had suffered and sacrificed so much to achieve what she has, and, more revealingly, the degradation she’d survived at the hands of her own family before achieving both financial and moral independence from them. Always, though, they blame Mexico for what they are.
In response to my own candor about my nightmarish memories and psychological burden, she confided most forthrightly:
~ You know, Primo, I know where you’re coming from. I know those feelings you described, and don’t feel I am the better for it. I know such experiences are supposed to make of you a better person, and I believe in strengthening the character by challenge and difficulty, but these demeaning traumas we’ve endured just don’t make any sense to me ~ nothing about Mexico makes much sense to me, anymore. My own shame stems from my relationship with my mother, your sweet “auntie” Lydia, who I miss terribly since I moved away. God damn it! she really seemed to despise the very idea of my existence, no matter how much I sacrificed and tried to please her. She was all too glad to think the worst about me, instead of figuring that, because of HER terrible parenting skills, this violence
between my brothers and me was an inevitable outcome. I mean, I realize this must be shocking to you upon reading this for the first time, but the warm relations that seem to exist between us now weren’t always so.
It had first happened, in a way, between myself and Lorenzo (you remember Lorenzo, right?, the second to youngest in our family). He had broken into everybody’s bank account, including mine needless to say, and made out like a bat out of Hell. We found out about it soon enough, and marched over to his apartment to knock some sense into him. But, because Lorenzo turned out to be a closet puto (homosexual), which fact nobody knew about, he wouldn’t or couldn’t defend himself. He just ran away como mariquita sin calzones (like a silly pansy), stayed at his boy-friend’s house, known locally as Eric the Tongue, and no one cared. But, when that shameless Lorenzo tried to do it to Eric, he, after all the years of taking his abuse, was not going to take it from him anymore and unleashed a torrent of anger on him. He did nearly kill him.
Next, we would eventually have to go to court to try and recover our money. Lorenzo played the crazy druggie and even tried to joke with the judge, who’d recognized him from having arraigned him for previous charges and court appointments. Eric, due to the defender’s advice, had to plead to NO LO CONTENDERE, or NO CONTEST, to the charge of assault and battery since, even though he did commit the act of beating the shit out of Lorenzo, he did not actually INTEND or CONSPIRE to kill him. Because his record was mostly clean, they let him off with a warning. But, the damage had been done, my parents betrayed me in a moment of constitutional crisis when, after after all the abuse, the obedience, trying to be the perfect daughter, doing everything they demanded of me, and all the guilt trips they laid on me that “I should not be like Lorenzo,” I have to sacrifice my happiness for the sake of being a good daughter, they just turned around and betrayed me. They accused me of having encouraged Lorenzo’s dissolute comportment, thus proving they were false all along, and their piety was nothing but hypocrisy (and till the day she expired, la pinche vieja--damned old hag-- acted as though it never happened, and it was not a big deal).
They easily forgave Lorenzo’s, and my other siblings’ countless crimes, but when I defended myself against his drugged-out violence then I was suddenly the worst daughter that ever lived.
It is funny, but for the longest time I forgave everything that my sisters and brothers did to me, and they did a lot of shit to me going back many years. I forgave them only because during that most painful, most difficult time in my whole life, they were actually on my side. They even cheered me on for kicking the fuck out of Lorenzo once when he had destroyed my precious imported dolls, and all because he was jealous of my having them. But, alas, those are distant memories, and my brothers and sisters continued to do shit to me. We are no longer friends, but they did help me endure a most risible crisis in my life.
In Lorenzo’s case, just the fact that I never set foot in San Miguel Allende, where he had been stopped by the police in my car, helped my argument because it was only the San Miguel police that were after me, or rather the legal owner of the vehicle, which had not been reported as stolen. And, I failed to mention to you, Lorenzo fucked himself after all because he did go back to San Miguel on several occasions, and yes, he got caught by the chota (police). Then, when they thought he was me because he somehow managed to convince them that my name was his girlie pseudonym, he said “No, no, I am Lorenzo, the chota in your station will recognize me.” So, they took him down to the station where he recognized one cop and started crying, “Hey, you remember me, you can clear this up, right?”
But, the cop, who DID recognize him, remembered him too well, and looked him straight in the face and said, “yes, I remember you, but back then you insisted that you were ‘Miss Becky, the transvestite dancer,’ not this Lorenzo you are now saying you are. Does that mean that you lied about your identity the last time?”
¡Pues, que esperas! Poor little Lorenzo se quedo con el chili pelado and burst into tears, realizing he had just BETRAYED HIMSELF, y acabo chingado ~ he had to go to jail for a few days. He made friends with a lot of gay criminals, and even boasted that most of his time in jail was a big laugh-filled orgy with his fellow SISTERS. I learned of these details while over-hearing his conversations with his friends, especially a certain Regina, who is a terrible loud-mouth of a bitch. But, she had the sweetest and most patient mother who’d actually helped to bail out Lorenzo from prison; and he never paid her back (something like $55,000 Pesos).
The warrant for the owner of the Ford Escort, my car, was still out for a few more years until the statute of limitations ran out, and by then the car had long been gone. I was broke by that time as well, and I never set foot in San Miguel Allende except to clarify the damned legal matter, so that is that.
As I remember, when we finally threw Lorenzo out of the quinta (family manor) back in 2002, he tried to get me in trouble and told the Veracruz chota, who had come over at the behest of our madre, about the warrant for the arrest. I used the occasion to tell them my side of the story, and both my siblings and our madre, who were not my enemies yet back then, swore to the fact that Lorenzo was the criminal all along and had lied to the police. Hence, the chota finally believed us, and told Lorenzo to clear the premises within 24 hours.
So, that is how Lorenzo lost the fight, and had to get the fuck out of the house for good.
But, instead of a victory, it left me alone with our madre, the house- hold problems, and a lot more emotional baggage until 2005, when I moved out with my children and on to the Finca for good.
I had been at the mercy of their plots and scheming, and ultimately I lost the fight and had to accept exile (though a very pleasant one at that). I regret now not having killed a few of them back then like I had dreamed of doing for years ~ and it was all due to my crushing poverty. Things are different now, I am prosperous, relatively, you are among the precious few who have shown me again what hope is, for better or worse, and your suffering, the tears you’ve shed for unrequited justice as well as for my sons, have also helped me to mature, in an odd sort of way. I came to feel for the first time that we are both, along with all the other children of misery, nailed to this wheel of pain called life, charged to pay for the sins of others. I realize this sounds weird, like I have a “Christ-complex,” paying for the sins of the world. However, I deeply feel that there are individuals charged by life to suffer for what others have committed, and yet others expect us to come out of the experience without complaining, resigned to our fate.
Hell No!
Knowing all of this does not, contrary to what others have said, help to deal with the pain, and you have not completely convinced me that killing my own family would be wrong, but you have helped me to forget about that for awhile. Your own suffering does put things into perspective. And now, especially, with Doña Chata, my revered grandmother, passing away, the repercussions have been felt by all; one who has most felt the Tsunami effect has been our madre, who ultimately faced her own mortality FOR THE FIRST TIME in her life (I think). She had actually been in danger in the past (after she had given birth to Lorenzo and me; her 2 car-crashes; and her two heart-attacks), but those things never seemed to bother her. It was only after Doña Chata died that she did finally face the fact of the way of all things.
So, now you know how the plot to the children of misery started, and now this tragic story has, at last, come to an end.
Take care Primo, and hope this answers any questions you may have had lingering in the back of your mind.
Becky ~
Extraordinary! That was certainly some confession she served me. I honestly had no inkling as to the circumstances supporting her family and her personal life. She truly and sincerely divulged the bare facts, and confided her trust in me in the process. Obviously her pain was so deep that she needed to reveal the ugliness undermining her happiness to someone, and I turned out to be the sympathetic ear she needed to requite the wrongs she’d resentfully endured for so ma
ny years. Now that I had struck a sympathetic chord with her, I could not contain my curiosity for very long, and answered her as soon as I could drag myself from the Cafe’ Nopal, and the delicious Kahlua laced iced-coffees to which I’d quickly grown addicted.
Hereinafter, I began, as tactful and understanding as I could be under the circumstances:
~ Becky, little by little I understand more and more why you have the feelings you have towards the whole family. It is awful because if I still love them the way I do, it is because I never knew this tragic side to the story. I found the support in your family that I hardly got from my family about anything. I am aware that when my mother trashed me, your mother supported her and helped light the fire. I could not blame her because my mother, on the other hand, did the same to me all the time with everyone.
What you wrote actually made me cry. Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done. I even feel some anger for what they did to you. This is a typical trait of our mothers: we can be saints, and even though they see it, they will never give us the love and protection we deserve. I hear other mothers (especially Mexican mothers) will tell their kids that they will love them even if they were murderers. This is how, I am sure, you feel for your own sons, and I have seen mothers of real murderers defend their children with their claws and fangs.
I am sorry if I caused you to summon up some dreadful memories that had better remained repressed or forgotten. Therewithal, I can understand you so much better now, and I am glad that, at least a little bit, I have been of some help to you. I really don’t think I have done anything, but if you think so, thank you for seeing it.
You take care for now. Hope to see you soon in Veracruz.
Your Primo,
Freddy ~
A Wetback in Reverse Page 11
