And then. . .

If scars tell the stories of our lives, my grandma’s body, fair skin loosened by age, held a map of lines disclosing the life my Ita lived. These are their stories. I’ve pieced them together and filled in the rest. Forehead In a fight before I was born, she ended up with a scar at the peak of her forehead, where a widow’s peak would have been. The fight, I imagine from the stories I’ve been told, takes place in the living room. She yells about where he’s been, how much he’s been drinking. He, Gil, tries to walk away from her and she swings.  He ducks, “Mamita, todo esta bien,” he says, but he still wraps his arms around her and holds her to him like he will never let go, and in a way he never did. She struggles trying to pry her arms away from her side. She grunts and yells, "Dejamé carbon,” but he keeps his arms where they are. He knows if he lets go her left hand will come out swinging and instead throws his head forward.   Smack . The sound of two stu...

Javier Solis was born September 1, 1931 four months before my grandma. He dropped out of school after the fifth grade. My grandma dropped out of school after the eighth grade. They both held various jobs. Javier—I feel I can call him this because we are intimately acquainted, at least vocally—was a baker, a carpenter’s helper, and a car washer. He even trained to be a boxer but stopped after a few defeats and persuading. My Ita worked as an elevator operator, ticket taker, in a textile fabric factory, and a bartender among other things. His first hit, “ Lloraras ” was a favorite of hers, but she also liked to change the words to the song and sang, “ Choraras, Choraras mi partida… ” when she wanted to be funny. I think she choraras as much as she lloraras in her life. He sang and acted. She watched all of his movies and owned all of his records, then cassettes, and later CD’s. He was considered the last of Los Tres Gallos Mexicanos along with Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete, oth...

I want to lie in bed for a few days and curl into the sheets until they become arms who embrace me as I sleep.  I want to sleep in until 9am, stretch in the sunlight streaming in through my bedroom window, and just stare with blurry vision at imagined dust motes.  I want to read voraciously,  the way I did when I was younger. I'd read through the night and force myself to shut the dog-eared pages when the sky night broke into indigo.  I want to curl into his arms, not because I'm tired, but because I can't help but breathe in the smell of his his hair even when it's ripe with the scent of last night's run.  I want to write until my book is finished, until the pages I've clung to for the last year finish their fight for freedom and I've nothing left but to begin again with something new.  I want to....

The last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about getting older. This year for some reason I forgot I had a birthday. My mind just skipped over it; kind of like forgetting the milk when you go to the grocery store. But, the last couple weeks several things have happened which have reminded me that I am in fact getting older, and although there is nothing I can do about it, it's been naner- naner haw hawing in my face. (I think age is a bitchy girl who was once pretty and turned into an old hag and wants to make the rest of us miserable.) What's been bogging you down you ask? Well, last week I found a friend from high school passed away. I had not spoken to Javier in a while, but there was a moment my senior year in high school where he and I were part of a happy foursome--with Vanessa and Collete--and we were inseparable. He passed away suddenly, and Facebook and texts were flying trying to figure out what happened. I think many people thought it was just gossip, "O...

When I was a child, between the ages of six and eight, I remember trying to stare at the sun. My mom and  grandma Ita, told me, "Don't stare at the sun, you'll go blind!" But still, I tried to stare. I stared through warm red flesh tinted eyelids. They trembled as I tried not to open them against the sun's heat, knowing if I did I would squint and my eyes would water. I stared on cloudy days as the sun's arms poked in and around light gray puffs of teasing rain clouds. I stared as close as could on cloudless days until my eyes stung and watered from the brightness. The small muscles around my eyes contracted into one another as if hugging my eye in protection. "Mom, I can look at the sun with sunglasses on!" "No you can't! You'll go blind!" she said exasperated. I stared through tinted sunglasses but tried to look in and around the brightest spot, well, because I didn't want to go blind, but I wanted to see the sun. T...