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ary leaders like Emiliano Zapata. The continued chaos left the
country in ruins, and soldiers had been a constant sight in the
little girl’s life. She had heard about many of them being killed
and buried in the coffins her father made. One day he too died
in the confusion of war and was buried in one of his own
caskets.
The guards in the wide hats spoke with the man and
arranged some paperwork that was signed and stamped. They
shook hands, and the friendly guard bent down and said some-
thing to the little girl and smiled. She liked the acorn band
around his hat; it seemed to resemble something, maybe an
accent, on a dress she used to wear when her parents were still
alive.
The man who walked her into the new country said some-
thing in a language she didn’t understand, then folded up the
papers and put them in his jacket pocket. He reached down to
grab her hand and pull her forward as he tipped his hat to the
guards.
That was how my grandmother always told the story of
coming to America. My twin brother and I called her Mamo,
and she was a constant in our lives, always making us deli-
cious meals and telling us Mexican fairy tales about misbe-
having kids being eaten. She also drank forty-ounce beers,
escorted my brother and me to see Friday the 13th when we
were ten, had a child out of wedlock with a man almost half
her age, suffered from depression and diabetes, made the best
fideo I ever ate in my life, was pulled from school in the third
grade and still taught herself to read in two languages, and
once tried to kill herself. She was one of the most amazing
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people in my life, and the reason I know one of the most fun-
damental truths about myself: where I came from.
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Mamo would laugh, then tell us that she got off lightly.
“Some of the kids at the other houses had their heads held
under water until they thought they were going to drown.”
Stories like that would put Joaquin and me on our best
behavior for a solid twenty minutes.
Discipline or not, life didn’t get any easier for Mamo. She
was taken out of school in the third grade to help around the
house, and just as she was becoming a teenager, Tomasa, who
had become like a second mother to her, passed away. Then
the Garcías’ daughter Herlinda died in childbirth, leaving
Mamo to help care for the new baby, who was also named Her-
linda and who would become Mamo’s enduring best friend. By
age fourteen, Mamo had begun a lifelong cycle of cooking,
babysitting, and cleaning homes for others to make a living.
When Mamo talked about her childhood, it seemed like she
was walking through a minefield of anger and sorrow. She
could be laughing or talking about her sister one minute, then
grow deeply sad the next as she thought about the loss of her
parents or the social restrictions she experienced as she grew
up in Texas.
I’ve always felt conflicted about how my grandmother’s life
played out. On one hand, the García family took her in, pro-
viding her a new life in America. On the other hand, Mamo
was never allowed to thrive and explore opportunities to live
her own life.
Mamo was forbidden from socializing with or dating boys
when she was growing up, and it wasn’t until the age of t hirty-
two that she had her first boyfriend. His name was Eddie
Perez, a young man from the neighborhood. Details are fuzzy,
but it was clear that Eddie was eighteen and Mamo was
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personality was almost fully formed. “One day the whole fam-
ily was out walking, and this pesky dog starts barking at us,”
Mamo said. “We went to church every Sunday, and your mom
kicks at the dog and yells, ‘Dammit to hell!’ ” A family mem-
ber reached down, pulled on my mom’s ear, and swatted her
hard on the backside. Mamo could not help but laugh now, but
her daughter resented how she never stood up to the Garcías’
overzealous discipline.
This rebellion was not without cause. My mom was creating
distance, letting everybody know that she would not conform
out of simple obedience. She saw that while the house was full
of love and caring, it was very controlling. She was also aware
of the different levels of racism in society and felt the subtle
social pressure of the times holding her back. It was difficult
for Mexican Americans to succeed, and Mom felt an obliga-
tion to push back and not kowtow to anybody, family or not.
In a town where Mexican American residents faced con-
stant discrimination, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the
Little Flower was a cultural refuge. Opened in 1931, the church
had been founded by friars from Mexico and stood as a point
of pride for immigrants, its impressive facade marked by wide
white archways and s tained-glass windows. A welcoming and
beautiful place of peace and worship, it was also a source of
employment for the Garcías when cash was tight. Mamo
García answered phones in the rectory during the day while
Mamo cleaned the office.
Mamo always had a lot of pride in working at the basilica,
but she also hoped that the job provided more than just a pay-
check. One time, Mamo and I were making a cake when I was
a child, and we ran out of milk. Mom joked about praying for
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some milk, and they both laughed. “When I was your age and
we had no food in our house,” Mom said, “Mamo García, Her-
linda, Mamo, and I would light candles and start kneeling to
beg God that the money they’d made serving his ministries
would help.”
“And we always made it through,” Mamo said, making the
sign of the cross.
“Somehow, we did.” Mom nodded in agreement.
Mamo may have deferred to her guardian in some matters,
but she held her own when it came to her daughter’s education.
She somehow managed to save ten dollars every month to
cover tuition for her daughter at Little Flower Catholic School.
The strictness of her home life prepared my mom well for
the Irish nuns who taught at her school. The Sisters of the Holy
Spirit and Mary Immaculate wielded wooden rulers like w orld-
class fencers. Classes were small, and it was hard for Mom to
avoid attention, so she learned to toughen up when the rulers
came out.
Even as a child, I had to wonder about the point of Mom’s
story as she told Joaquin and me about the sting of the rulers.
“Oh, I cried at first,” she said. “Then I learned how to grit
my teeth when they smacked me. By my fourth month I wasn’t
even crying when they hit me.”
“They hit you with rulers?” I asked, incredulous.
Mom spread her hands out wide. “Long ones!”
But in many ways, my mom’s situation lacked the con-
straints experienced by other Mexican American children
attending public school at the time. They were often punished
for simply speaking Spanish at school. Many immigrant par-
ents, who were treated dismissively, made sure their children
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for five dollars a day, and there was one disgusting job my
mom had to do that she never forgot. A family’s cocker spaniel
was infested with ticks, and my mom was instructed to take it
to the backyard and pick off as many ticks as possible. Later,
taking a break on an elevated area of the property, she saw
some rocks and began throwing them down at the parked cars
in anger.
I still remember Mom nodding at the dinner table as she told
that story, inhaling from her cigarette. Throwing rocks “was
wrong,” she said, “but I was just frustrated and barely older
than you guys. That family was a bunch of jerks.
“They even made Mamo work Christmas once,” she added.
“They weren’t aware of her as a mom with a family, even when
I was there with her.”
As a young girl, Mom’s frustration at the differences between
her world and the one inhabited by the employers was under-
standable. The rock throwing, though, was something differ-
ent. The people who owned the house Mamo was cleaning,
and those who owned the cars, likely were not bad people, but
to my mom, as a little girl, the contrast couldn’t have been
more stark. I hope she had really bad aim that day, but some-
thing tells me she was pretty focused.
That contrast was also vital in appreciating Mom, who was
already trying to broaden her horizons in as many ways as
possible. She did recognize that she had to channel her anger
away from damaging cars and into a more constructive path.
Mom’s consciousness was awakening at school too, thanks
largely to the civil rights movement. One time, she raised her
hand and said, “This school is in a mostly black neighborhood,
so how come there are almost no black students in our school?”
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