And then. . .

My great friend and unofficial editor gave me The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr a couple months ago. In reading it, I found a quote I immediately liked and felt as if she was speaking directly to me. “No matter how self-aware you are, memoir wrenches at your insides precisely because it makes you battle without very self—your neat analyses and tidy excuses.”   No truer words have ever been spoken. It’s been three years since I really began to focus on Por Un Amor and each time I think I’m done there are more questions than answers. I think a part of me wants to be done because I’m tired of having my insides wretched, or to be honest, maybe there are aspects that haven’t been wretched enough. In a novel where I want to focus on my Ita, there is a light that inevitably wants to shine on me because I am as much a character as she. I am just as important even though I want to stay backstage and let her bask in the limelight. I have to learn to be in the light and also be the stage hand...

For the past month, my sister and I have been cleaning out a dusty storage unit my mother had filled with nothing and everything. Painstakingly, we have gotten up early, gone to the unit, and dug through boxes of my mother's life. We've found old photos, jewelry, socks, clothes, out-dated workout equipment, broken glass, and layers upon layers of El Paso desert dust that settled upon things we'd forgotten about. We'd get there clad in workout gear with white rubber gloves and sunscreen ready. I've suffered two sunburns on my back and shoulders, 20 sneezes, one stubbed toe, many sore muscles, and countless memories as we reminisced with the things we found. I took pictures of my favorite navy blue vans with Nirvana lyrics scribbled on the side from high school. I took home a cast iron pan, shish kabob skewers, and a marble cutting board. We donated countless things and threw away many others. Last Saturday, we finally finished. Several family members showed up an...

I was 13 when she fell five steps away from the front door. I slept with my mom in the front bedroom of the red-bricked Craftsman style house. The window was open to let in the cool night breeze when we were awoken by a soft yell, “Leticia!” My mom woke complaining, “’¿’Ora qué?”  I sat up, rubbed the sleep from eyes, and looked at the clock. 2:15am. I jumped out of bed and ran outside when I heard my mom yelling at my Ita though.  As I helped her lift my grandma I saw she was covered in something red. The acidy smell of tomato hit my nose and realized she had fallen carrying a glass bottle of Clamato. The glass had broken against her left breast. Once we got her inside I saw a deep slice close to the top of the soft skin and realized the red stains were Clamato mixed with blood. My mom grunted and yelled as we sat her on the bathroom toilet seat. She stomped down the hallway to her bedroom to get dressed, “Qué estaba haciendo, Amá?” she yelled. My mom always lost...

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...

When I write I don't think about anything else aside from where my story is going. Where will it take me? Do I like where it's going? Does it like where I'm taking it? It's not until much later and many edited drafts past the original that I think about reading it aloud. Last, night I read two pieces I'd never read aloud before. "La Trenza" which I'm excited is about to be published in the latest edition of Cream City Review and "Dimming Lights" which is a small heavy piece I used to divide my memoir into sections of before and after my grandmother Ita's, death. Last night, I read them in front of an author who I read when first figuring out how to write my own work, Rigoberto González. I read his memoir Butterfly Boy: Memoirs of a Chicano Butterfly amongst others when I was still undecided on what shape my book was going to take. It was interesting because I felt as if I knew him, already had a relationship with him, and I wanted to ...