Page 84 of And Still Her Voice
Teddie shook her head. “Papá’s been a hold out, pushing his luck as if he can just dig deeper roots into the ground he doesn’t even own. Like, he thinks he can fly an American flag from the porch and they’ll just let us stay. Thank them for their service. The flag they gave Mamá at Freddy’s funeral. As if some big excavator won’t just come up and sever the house from its roots. Or, like some big bad white American wolf won’t just come huff and puff and blow the house down.”
“And then where will you all go?” I asked, noticing the American flag fluttering in the Santa Anas.
She blew smoke into the wind. “I don’t know. Maybe, I’ll hit the road like you did. Let them figure it out. This ain’t my problem. Anyway, I’m sorry you’re losing your home.”
“I’m more sad that we lost Freddy.”
“Yeah, he was going to buy my parents their own castle someday. Get a GI loan, finish school. He had big plans.”
I inhaled and held it in a few seconds. We sat in the dark in awkward silence and then a crow squawked from the telephone wire strung along the street.
“Whatever happened to Grandma Antonia’s parrot?” I asked. “I heard they can live up to fifty years.”
“We buried Pauline with her up at Rose Hills.” I stared at my cousin. “Freddy and I snuck into the cemetery and dug a little hole. Had a little parrot ceremony.” She inhaled, and then started laughing and coughing at the same time. “He died the same week she did. I guess no one paid attention to him.”
I thought about my dad. And how the family had moved out leaving him in that big, fancy house, all alone.
Aunt Othelia stepped out onto the porch with two plates full of apple pie à la mode. “We need to fatten you up, Anna.”
“And me?” Teddie asked.
“You’re already perfect. We can just let the seams out a bit in the wedding dress.”
“In your dreams, Mamá.”
Aunt Othelia walked back inside.
“You’re getting married?” I asked.
“No! You heard what I said. After my first year, I dropped out of college and then she started bugging me again. Getting married is what all the good Mexican girls do.” Teddie laughed. “I got news for her, I ain’t that good and marriage ain’t part of any plan of mine. I was her only hope that her daughter would wear her dress. So, what have you been up to?”
“Oh, not too much.”
“That’s not what Mamá tells me.”
“Oh yeah?”
Mexican mothers love the chisme, especially when it comes to their kids. Whether it’s good or bad. To brag, complain, it doesn’t matter.
“So, you ran away with a band.”
I laughed out loud. “Yeah, I’m still running.”
“Good for you. I’m so jealous. Like I said, maybe I’ll run away with you. I want to travel the world. Starting in Mexico. I hardly know anything about my own roots. I don’t know anything about my ancestors.”
I wondered how Teddie might do if we traded places. If she had her abuela taking up space in her head. Oh, there would be hell!
“My parents insisted I assimilate. It wasn’t until I joined the Brown Berets that I knew anything about the history or culture of my people. Like, what did I care about the past?”
“I’ve heard of the Berets. It was started by a bunch of young Chicano students, right?”
“Right.” She gave me a little more of the history of the Berets and how she’d been learning to reject assimilation into European American society and to stand against the Vietnam War and police brutality. Just last year, they helped lead massive walkouts at high schools on the Eastside and sit-ins that went on for days as part of the demands for better education, including Mexican American studies and relevant bilingual education and college prep. Before the Berets, she had no idea about her family’s journey to the Eastside of Los Angeles. She, much less her brothers, never dreamed of college.
“So, yeah, that’s why I’m fired up about it. Anyway, I know my father’s family is from Mexico and my mom was born here. Her family is also native Gabrielinos (Tongvas), the people that were first here hundreds of years ago. But that’s about all I know.”
“Did you know the family lived up on La Cañada in Glendale?”
“Yeah, you and your LeMar family.”
