“What a blessed day, thank you, Lucy.” Before my mother got her job, we’d been on welfare, food stamps, and received commodities. Commodity day was a day of celebration. We picked up the box of government-issued food: blocks of orange processed cheese and Spam-like meat, a large can of honey and peanut butter, a ten-pound bag of rice, and boxes of powdered milk, and oatmeal.
She rounded out meals by purchasing a hundred-pound bag of frijoles–beans, and a hundred-pound bags of papas–potatoes, and flour. She kept a freezer full of roasted Pueblo and New Mexico green chili, bought by the bushel. Solid staples in poor Chicano families’ pantries and the Holy Trinity of Mexican cuisine: hot green chili, pinto beans, and tortillas. Blaze and his two brothers hunted and provided deer and elk meat.
Mom’s efficient with every cent and paid her bills on time. She taught her children frugality and responsibility in living within your means and to never owe anything to anyone. Her motto, “If you can’t pay for it in cash, you don’t need it.”
Thanks to Aunt Lucy’s string pulling we all had after school part-time CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) jobs, a government student work program for low-income families.
A bank held a contest to win the installation and yearlong cost of a residential telephone. My sister Rae opened a savings account and filled out the entry slip. She mentioned it to Mom and forgot about it, till they sent a letter that she’d won.
Mom ran through the house shouting and genuflecting, “Thank you, Mother Mary, Santo Niño, and Holy Family for performing this small but powerful miracle!” It opened new doors for us, and we never go without a phone again. It became the main source of my mother’s solace, entertainment, and primary social outlet. She had the misfortune of Loving a man who cared only for his next drink, but her children, each in their small way made efforts to compensate.
4
Little Mama Cha Cha
A single rose can be my garden a single friend my world. –Leo Buscaglia
Chavela, a.k.a. Cha Cha is a wild girl with colossal cojones. Full of fire and sass, “a live wire” who carries Tortilla Flats, the projects and the rez in her veins, and poetry in her heart. Her mind snaps like a whip with clever cuentos that spark wisdom and wit. Her brilliance burns too bright for the simpletons in this town. I’m frightened by her fearlessness. She never gives a flying fart–pedo what others think of her, I envy that.
We grow up inseparable, in this small, all-white conservative town. Flash forward to the summer before our freshman year of high school, Cha Cha’s already fifteen precisely six months older and will forever celebrate the big birthdays first.
She’s at my house on a hot and sticky August afternoon. We watch four, good-looking Chicano boys, play catch football in the next-door neighbor’s backyard. Later we find out they’re from San Francisco, California, on a family visit with their Uncle George.
“Who do you think they are?” I ponder while peering through the lace curtains. We joked that we couldn’t date Chicano boys because they were either relatives or scuzzy lowlifes our parents wouldn’t approve of.
“What the hell–let’s go introduce ourselves.” Cha Cha blurts, jaw set with dauntless nerve as she dashes out the door. A seminal moment that changes her life forever. The oldest one Sam latches like a leech onto her from that instant. Sexually active for over a year and not using birth control she naïvely believes she can’t get pregnant. In the backseat of a green metallic, 1969, Ford Thunderbird at the Skyview Drive-In while Clint Eastwood shoots up San Francisco—a son’s conceived, and her childhood ends.
¡Que pinche lástima!
She moves to San Francisco with Sam. On a bright shimmery spring day, Cha Cha comes to say goodbye. Mom cries, and Rae takes a pitiful Polaroid of the three of us standing outside in front of the brick house. Cha Cha wears a flowery hippie shift that hides her protruding belly.
Summer begins, and Now I have no one, nada. I devise a routine to compete in the cheerleading try-outs for Red Cañon High School. I pick Steely Dan’s song Reeling in the Years for the audition. I start the first week in June working on my routine with try-outs in August. I practiced diligently every day until I could do the routine in my sleep, so no matter the outcome, it wouldn’t be from lack of effort.
I am stunned when I don’t make the squad but proud of myself. I receive a telephone call from Ms. Frey, the cheerleading sponsor. “Rose, I want to offer you a position on the cheerleading squad. The totals were so close after the judges left, I re-tallied them and found an error in your favor. Congratulations, I hope you’ll accept my offer, and I sincerely apologize for the mix-up.” She said in her measured, stiff tone.
Score one for the boss-ass brown girls–Boo-yah!
5
Bonfire
Love is the fire that breathes life into matter and unifies the elements. –Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
I’m chatting on the phone with Paul Rosas; we’re discussing the upcoming 40-year high school reunion at Sacred Heart School in Red Cañon, Colorado. I’m scheduling a time to interview him for my book about mutual high school friends and experiences that happened in the early 1970s.
“Hey, comadre, how did you meet that pendejo, Jack Dillon?” Paul, a District Attorney from New Mexico, and my high school boyfriend, Jack Dillon attended the private, parochial Catholic college prep high school in my hometown. Paul was a super shy, Spanish speaking, wiry pipsqueak from Santa Fe. The last guy in his senior class to get stoned.
“You got that much time, vato? It’s a Long and Winding Road.” I trilled. “It’s taken two months of emailing and texting to connect I don’t want to waste time with the nonessentials.”
“Yeah Rosie, for you I’ll make the time. Tell me how you met Jack,” he pleads.
Just hearing his name sent a stab through my heart. I spent a lifetime chasing a ghost memory and haunted by this Old Love. Finally, I’m free of years of sad illusions, truth born out of pain, beauty spawned by neglect. The Great Spirit’s quivering arrows guided my life in the right direction and saved me from myself. If only he’d been a better man.
Infinite Love draws us toward the fullness of our being; it’s at our core—don’t fight, resist or deny it. Love will always win. I aimed for reason, but no matter what my brain thinks, the heart is its own master. Peering back on the road not taken is a seesaw of senseless misery. A constant battle—a war between remembering and forgetting.
“Ready to shoot the nostalgic whitewater rapids of Lost Love?” I quip.
“I’m buckled up Buttercup.” Paul laughs.
“It was Homecoming weekend in the fall of 1972; excitement riffled through the crowd. Many new faces: the incoming, “fresh meat” freshmen, attend the festivities for the first time. I was a cheerleader; the squad marched in front of the Lions High School band at the beginning of the Homecoming parade.” The faces sling past my mind’s eye.
Starting on Main Street, the entire town attended the parade of the marching band, a busload of the junior and varsity football teams and the Homecoming Royalty. The King and Queen glide by on top of a sporty red convertible. The high school students clasp hands and “snake dance” down Main Street. Boys tugged at the girls, some refusing to hold hands, jumping, herky-jerky, going too fast, and others holding back.
We convene at the high school for an old-fashioned bonfire, every year it’s built too roaring big and hot. Gray smoke billowed from the giant fire. The cheerleaders cough and frantically fan through the thick haze.
The squad of six line up in front of the