Frayed Edges, Loose Thread (Short Story) by Amelia M.L. Montes

Frayed Edges, Loose Thread

A Short Story by Amelia M.L. Montes

(originally published in “Saguaro Journal”)

There was diabetes all over my house while I was growing up. There was diabetes in some of the old clothes Mamá wore after my sister Nina died of it. There was diabetes in some of the rags we used to dust the house with because when tío Tan lost his arm, he always gave Mamá the sleeves for us to use on the furniture. There was diabetes in our family photos.

Tía Concha had died long before I was born but I knew her through the yellowed pictures in the green shoe box—the box on the shelf above the hanging clothes in the closet. Tía Concha had no legs and sat in a long chaise lounge with many blankets on top of her so no one could tell, “but of course we all knew,” Mamá would say. Tía Concha posed in her chair, smiling toward the camera, her crooked fingers waving hello, or arranged carefully one on top of the other over the blankets. The close-up of tía Concha didn’t really focus on her long gray braid or front silver teeth. Instead, the camera caught her looking down at her fingers extended over a book. Her fingers reminded me of the twisted trees I saw on the coast of Monterrey—the ones that line the cliffs on the 17 mile drive—the trunks that look like they’re going straight but then curve off, now right, now left, leaning into each other, leaning out toward the sea.

Tía Concha lived by the sea but it wasn’t on the Monterrey coast of California. She lived in Mazatlán, where the trees are long lean palms. Mamá said that she and her cousins would take large palm branches and fan her on hot days. In one of the pictures, Abuela is holding a tray of drinks next to her while Mamá (about 7 years old) and tío Tan have little silk fans, avanicos, in one hand and palm branches in the other. Mamá looks like she’s trying to be a fashion model, her small abanico coyly poised under her chin. Tío Tan looks like a teen-ager in the picture, holding an extra large palm branch above his head and laughing.

In the next picture they look more serious, standing on either side of the chair, fanning tía Concha while she’s holding the rosary, looking up to heaven. Mamá said tía Concha thanked the Virgen very day for her sight, speech and hearing. Mamá told me how she held a prayerbook in front of tía Concha so she could pray:

Dulce Madre, no te alejes

Tu vista de mi no apartes.

Ven conmigo a todas partes

y sola nunca me dejes.

When I was little, this is the prayer Mamá made me say. But I said it differently than tía Concha. She said it with her hands clasped together in front of her face. I’m sure that holding her hands—one right next to the other—was all she could do. I learned from las hermanas Ruiz Esparza that you’re really supposed to hold your right hand up to your face and make three signs of the cross for each sentence of the prayer. “Dulce Madre” starts at the forehead . . . “Tu Vista” is right in front of the eyes . . . and “Ven conmigo” is on the mouth. At first I did it just like las hermanas Ruiz Esparza told me to, but after remembering tía Concha’s pictures, I didn’t follow their instructions either. No matter how hard I tried to make it serious and keep my hands rigid and in place, I couldn’t. I’d wriggle my fingers around—like exercising them. Mamá didn’t like that and las hermanas Ruiz Esparza told me I was being sacrilegious. But I wasn’t. I was only thinking of tía Concha. I was only thinking that if she had exercised her fingers, they wouldn’t have looked like twisted tree trunks. The more I looked at pictures of tía Concha, or saw Mamá dressing in Nina’s oversized blouses, the more I’d want to do everything I could not to get diabetes.

When tío Tan had to go into the hospital, Mamá told me he was worried that he’d be just like his great aunt, tía Concha, “glued to a lounge chair like a statue,” he had said. But around me, he never showed his worries. He always seemed happy. The day he left, I watched him pack two little suitcases. In one, he placed rows and rows of pills on the bottom. Then he put a little plastic shelf on top of them and filled that shelf up with more pills. It was a hard little suitcase like the one Mamá uses for her make-up. Then he took one of his good black pants, folded it twice and laid it inside the other suitcase. He placed it on one side of the suitcase, a white shirt on top of the pants, and black shoes right next to the pants and shirt. I watched everything that he did. He always folded everything but he wasn’t careful about not getting his cigarette ashes in the suitcase.

“Is that what you’ll wear when you get out?” I had asked him, feeling the shirt’s soft fabric and wiping away the tiny gray ash.

“Yes, you like it?”

“Uh-huh.”

Then he laughed loudly and placed his left hand under his right underarm. I could hear the sizzle of his cigarette as he breathed it in. Then he took the cigarette out of his mouth with his right hand and smashed it into the ash tray on the dresser by the bed. He kept staring at the open suitcase with the clothes. I watched his forehead gather up into a worried look. Then he took out another cigarette from the pack by the ash tray and lighted it.

“Mijita, I either wear these clothes in this suticase out of the hospital or wear them into my grave.”

“Tío! You scare me,” and I backed away.

He just kept laughing. Before he shut the suitcase with the clothes, he covered the top with a silky brown robe and looked back at me to see if I was looking. He held up part of the robe. “This is just in case I need to escort a nurse down the hall for a drink,” he told me and winked through his square-rimmed glasses.

I didn’t see him after that for a long time until one day Mamá brought him home. The right sleeve where his arm was supposed to be was folded over many times, like when you take toilet paper and wrap it around your hand, over and over. Just like that.

“The new me,” he said, slapping his left hand over his chest. Then he took out the right shirt sleeve from his pocket and offered it to me.

I spread it out on the floor, long and flat. It was an untidy cut at the elbow, a crisscrossed cut that left frayed edges, loose thread—tiny pelusa all over the rug.

“We’ll use that for dusting,” Mamá had said. “Just take out the buttons.”

Tío Tan loved to have nice dress shirts and went shopping often so that in one month I’d have at least two new sleeves for dusting. I would take out the buttons, cut the sleeve down the middle and spread out the cloth. Then I’d cut animal shapes out of the material—elephants and butterflies so that I’d forget that I was dusting with a sleeve. My mother thought it was cute, my uncle thought I was imaginative, and las hermanas Ruiz Esparza thought I was just being like a little nine-year old girl should be. But they just didn’t know. They didn’t know that by cutting the sleeve and making it into something different, I was magically cutting the diabetes out of the sleeve altogether. I had willed the thing away and it could not touch me. My tío Hector had taught me that trick.

Tío Hector lived in Guadalajara. I knew this because we visited him every summer almost. When we’d go and visit, Tío Hector had a magic party for all of us—my cousins Maricela, Flaco, Refugio, Chata, me, and the neighbor kids Catriona and Luz. He’d come out in a big suit and a “capa” my Mamá called it. It was a black silky material that wrapped all around him. When he stood in front of all of us, he introduced himself as “El Gran Hector” and then he opened the “capa” and a beautiful white bird flew out.

He also made money. He’d make a tight fist and he’d tell me to put his fist in my hand. When I’d do that, he’d slowly open the fist and a big gold peso would drop into my hand every time. At the end of every show, he’d lean down close to us, change his voice low and quiet, and he’d say, “And now for my final trick--I’m going to make you disappear.” Then he’d lift his cape up and yell, “¡Ahora desaparézcanse!” And we’d all get scared and run! He knew how to do it. He could make everything into a different shape or he could make it go away. He’d eat one whole garlic clove a day, he’d tell me, to keep away the heart attack. I thought to myself, when I’m my tío Hector’s age, I’m going to eat a garlic clove every day too. Last summer I asked him, “Tío dime, dime how you make something go away,” and he told me to concentrate real hard. But concentrating on the diabetes to go away was the hardest of all.

When tío Tan came in one day on one crutch, with his black pant leg cut down the middle so I could see every single stitch sewn into his leg to keep the skin together, I thought I wouldn’t be able to do much more to keep it away. He came right in and sat himself down in my chair by the fireplace. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t belong there, that of all the chairs in the house to sit, why did he choose mine. But I knew if I said anything, Mamá would say I was being disrespectful and who knew how long tío Tan would be in this world what with an arm gone and maybe the legs next. He stayed all afternoon, telling us how the operation had lasted six hours and that he had been awake for all of it.

“Why would you want to be awake?” Mamá had asked.

“Why, to flirt with the nurses, Carmen!” he said, laughing real loud.

He told us that they decided to cut from the thigh to just above the ankle because the circulation had stopped and he couldn’t feel it anymore. They had to go in or else the leg would’ve been gone for good.

“Like Concha, Carmen,” he sighed. “Just like la Concha,” and he took out a newly cut sleeve from his pocket and wiped his eyes with it.

After he left, I ran to get a rag to wipe my chair. There were dry flecks of blood on the footstool where he had placed his leg. There were little specks of ash on the arm rest from his smoking. That day, I not only dusted but took out the Lemon Pledge and sprayed down the chair so that the wooden parts shone smooth. I also took the vacuum cleaner, attached the hose to it, and scrunched the nozzle down into every upholstered crevice and corner of the chair.

“I wish you could clean the whole house like that,” Mamá said later, while she heated water for coffee. “The house could use a good cleaning.”

Well I ended up getting very good at cleaning. When tío Tan had to come and live with us two weeks after his leg operation, that’s when I started cleaning most all the time. Tío Tan’s operation didn’t work after all, and they not only cut the leg off, they also cut off the foot from the other leg. He couldn’t live by himself anymore, so he had to live in the sewing room which was right next to mine.

I made sure his bed was on the opposite wall. I rearranged my room so that my bed was against Mamá’s bedroom wall instead of the sewing room wall where I could easily hear tío Tan snoring at night. I hoped that he would be taken away to die in peace in a hospital. After all, he liked the nurses. He especially liked the one who came to the house once a week to check on him. He’d laugh and tell her jokes in a soft voice so that she had to lean down close to him. I think she liked him too because she would tell Mamá, “That man must’ve been somethin’ awful with the ladies when he was young.” My mother would just nod and smile. Mamá didn’t know English very well so after the nurse left, I’d have to tell my mother what she had said.

Then Mamá would go into tío Tan’s room and tell him to quit flirting with the women. “At your age, Tan. It’s not right.”

“At my age, and in my condition, I can do whatever I damn well please!”

“Ay, Tan!” my mother would sigh.

Tío Tan stopped flirting very soon after that. He wasn’t even moving very much. He just slept a lot. One morning when Mamá walked in the room, she took one look at him and called for me.

“Ya se fue Tan, mijita. He’s gone,” she said and pointed to his half opened mouth, his half-closed eyes magnified under the square-rimmed glasses.

I had heard someone on television once say, “it gives me tingles down my spine.” That’s what I felt when I saw him dead in the sewing room. I had been asleep when it happened—never even had a bad dream or woke up in the middle of the night feeling that anything was different in the house. And Mamá was so calm letting me know that right in the next room, tío Tan had gone, leaving his body here for us. And there the body was, just like if tío Tan was still inside it. Tío Tan lying there in the same position I saw him the night before, his one hand at his side in a little fist.

“He’s not staying overnight like that here, is he?” I asked Mamá.

“No. We’ll have to call the hospital and ask what’s to be done.”

That week I helped Mamá gather the sheets from the sofa bed in the sewing room to be washed in hot, hot water. We took all his clothes and put them in large paper bags to give to the Salvation Army. I also stuffed the bed sheets in the bag when Mamá wasn’t looking.

A few days later, we dressed in black for the funeral. Mamá sewed what looked like old fashioned dresses. I kept telling her the high collars and frilly black lace on the edges of the sleeves and hem were all wrong, but she insisted I wear it because this is what they wore in Mexico. This is what we had to do for Tan, she said. The funeral was a very small one. The parish priest, Father McCormack, said a few words about meeting with the Creator when we die and how there’s no more suffering. Las hermanas Ruiz Esparza recited “Dulce Madre” and the nurse who had come to visit tío Tan took Mamá’s hand and whispered in her ear. I finally told the nurse that Mamá didn’t understand English, but she only patted my shoulder and said, “It’s okay. I’m just whispering soothing words. She knows.”

The only thing Mamá kept after the funeral was tío Tan’s glasses and a picture he had kept in his wallet of tía Concha. It was a picture of tía Concha standing up when she had her two legs, holding the hand of a very young Tan. I watched Mamá place the picture in the green shoebox that she put on the shelf above the hanging clothes in the closet. She stretched her legs and arms, leaning up against the rack of clothes in our little closet. Her leg and arm muscles showed whenever she put something up there. Mamá looked twice as long. She also looked strong. I wondered if I stretched like that, would I be strong, would I look different from tía Concha standing beside tío Tan in the picture? When Mamá finished putting tío Tan’s picture away, I sat next to her on the sofa while she sewed a little red felt case for tío Tan’s glasses.

“Why are you sewing a bag for his glasses? He’s not going to use them anymore.”

“I’m doing it for me,” Mamá said quietly.

I thought about that for a little, but still didn’t understand. Then she said, “I always told Tan. Oyes, you need a case for those glasses. They’ll get scratched.”

“And he didn’t listen to you?”

“No he didn’t,” she took the glasses and showed me one side of them. They were scratched on the very left hand corner.

Mamá sighed and placed her finger over the scratches. “So now I’m going to give them some protection.”

I watched as she carefully sewed little stitches around the red material. When she was done, she put the glasses in the bag, made the sign of the cross over them—“que Dios te bendiga”—and placed them in her drawer by her bed. I never saw or wanted to see the glasses again. Every time I thought about the scratched glasses, I would see tío Tan’s half-closed eyes.

Later that day, I opened all the windows in the house, and then went to the sewing room. I took the ironing board, the sewing machine cabinet, Mamá’s little bench with all the needles and threads, and put them all next to each other in the hallway. All that was left in the room was the sofa bed tío Tan had slept in. I took the vacuum cleaner nozzle and guided it over the sides of the arms, the top of the mattress, underneath the mattress where the coils hid little specks of dust. I made sure the nozzle went over every little stitch of the material on the back of the sofa. I folded and pushed the bed slowly into the sofa to make it into a little sitting couch again. The coils made a clinking noise and I imagined tío Tan shrinking down into the dark spaces of coil and brown weaving. Then I pushed the sofa bed to the middle of the room so I could vacuum behind it and around on the floor. I took the bucket underneath the kitchen sink and filled it with hot water and scrubbed the walls. I carried Mamá’s little sewing bench back in the room to climb on top and scrub more. Then I moved the sofa bed back and vacuumed the sewing bench. I vacuumed the floor of the room moving from one side to the other in a long line, making sure I didn’t miss a spot. I dusted the ironing board and sewing cabinet before moving it back in the room. I dusted and scrubbed the walls in my room, Mamá’s room, the kitchen, bathroom, and living room. I vacuumed Mamá’s room and my room. In the kitchen and living room, I mopped the floors and noticed the linoleum tile had cracks so I took the vacuum nozzle and guided it slowly over the cracks. I vacuumed the carpets, took out all the dishes to wash and put all the forks, knives, and spoons in hot water to soak.

In the kitchen, I noticed the long crack between the kitchen cabinet and the wall. That’s where tío Tan liked to stand and lean. The crack was too narrow for the vacuum nozzle to fit or for my hand to guide a rag at least a few inches inside to clean. And the cabinet wasn’t a cabinet I could push away to clean behind. It was built into the wall. I ran to the bathroom and got a Q-Tip, dipped it in alcohol and ran it down the little crevice. Some of the alcohol dripped down and made a little streak on the yellow paint. One drip ran down to another tiny crevice I hadn’t noticed and another. The little Q-Tip fell from my hands. I sat down on the damp linoleum floor and cried. I cried and cried.

My mother thought I was mourning for tío Tan. Las hermanas Ruiz Esparza told my mother I had loved my uncle more than anyone and that’s why I cried. But no one knew. No one knew I was crying because the diabetes would never go away. It would always be right here, somewhere where I had missed a crevice, where tío Tan had breathed and his breath had decided to float to the ceiling and stay forever. No one knew. No one knew. Something remains, something stays. Dust on furniture, pelusa on the rug.

Spending Dia De Los Muertos con “Occupy Lincoln, Nebraska”

(and a short note on Halloween dulces)

By Amelia M.L. Montes

Reporting from Lincoln, Nebraska, “borderlands en medio de Norteamerica,” where yes—Latinos live here—y tambien si, we are involved with “occupying” as are many states in the U.S. y fuera del pais tambien. “Occupy Lincoln” has its own website (replete with video footage) and a Facebook page. Unlike other cities where officials and police are beginning to forcibly move people and tents out, Lincoln’s occupation at the capitol mall continues without harassment.

Occupy Lincoln

The “Occupy Wall Street” discussions on La Bloga (thank you Rudy Ch. Garcia, etc.) and on various other sites, newspapers, media outlets in the U.S., Mexico, España, etc. are invigorating. In last week’s Guardian (October 26), the Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist, Slavoj Zizek wrote: “The true test of their [the protesters’] worth is what remains the day after, how our normal daily life will be changed. The protesters should fall in love with hard and patient work—they are the beginning, not the end. Their basic message is: the taboo is broken; we do not live in the best possible world; we are allowed, obliged even, to think about alternatives.”

For Zizek to say “the taboo is broken,” he ignores the fact that working gente from the moment of Spanish colonization (and other) occupations throughout latinoamerica and the U.S., have continually proclaimed that the world placed on them by powerful agents of government creates less than liveable worlds. Chicana/Chicanos and Latinas/Latinos have changed “daily life,” have loudly protested, marched, and offered alternatives in a world which resists encouraging imaginative possibilities for inclusiveness, for equity, for a sane and ethical world. “Occupy Wall Street” is another manifestation and hopefully, as Zizek states, this renewed proclamation regarding a less than best possible world will indeed bring about imaginative alternatives.

Resistance by Barry Lopez

I keep thinking of Barry Lopez’s collection of short stories entitled Resistance. These stories are fictional testimonios of women and men who have fought (in various ways) against mainstream society. In “Flight from Berlin,” one character recalls: “For me, the terrifying part was the ease with which you could lose your imagination—just abandon it, like a gadget. Everything was supplied, even if you had to pay for it all. We were told things would run more smoothly—less crime, less disease, less unhappiness, less trouble—if everyone stuck to the same plan, pursued identical goals. What made me want to run was the ease with which people gave in.

In every quarter of life, it seemed then, we were retreating into fundamentalism. The yes/no of belief, the in/out of fashion, the down/up of pharmaceuticals, the on/off of music, the hot/cold of commitment, the dead/live of electricity, the forward/backward of machinery, the give/take of a deal. Anyone not polarized became an inconvenience for management and its legions of loyal employees. People endorsed the identification of enemies and their eradication, just to be rid of some of the inevitable blurring.

We didn’t hear enough then about making the enemy irrelevant. No one said, loud enough to be heard over the din of pacification, Let’s make something beautiful, so the enemy will have one less place to stand” (149).

No Word For Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy

by Wendy Call

This passage left me shaken regarding what each of us are charged with—our ethical responsibility to speak and protect each other or we can so easily lose our imagination. Last night at Indigo Bridge Books in Lincoln, Nebraska, Wendy Call (writer, translator, and a member of Chicana author Sandra Cisneros’ writing community, Macondo) gave a reading from her book No Word For Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy. In 1997, Call had gone to visit the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a small area of land that connects the Yucatan peninsula with Mexico. At first, she was simply the visitor. Then she became more involved when she discovered small communities in a battle with large corporations threatening to industrialize the way they had been farming, fishing, working in the forests for generations. Call saw oil spills, farmlands being paved over, the burning of forests. She also witnessed the innovative ways these communities came together to fight these corporations. “It’s a story happening everywhere,” Sandra Cisneros writes, “including our own backyard.” Call’s book tells me that communities that have a strong historical and/or cultural bond make it easier to remain unified during fights against industrialization. Individuals who cross the border y se van al norte, end up in communities where it is more difficult to easily unify due to language barriers, housing configurations, diverse cultures, leading toward isolation and fear.

from Columbus to ConAgra: The Globalization of Agriculture and Food

Edited by Allesandro Bonanno, Lourdes Gouveia, etc.

One such “backyard” (as Cisneros described) is Nebraska. In the book, from Columbus to ConAgra: The Globalization of Agriculture and Food, Dr. Lourdes Gouveia (University of Nebraska-Omaha) uses her research of Nebraska meat-packing plants to describe the struggles that happen when communities are threatened by corporations. “Community fragmentation can indirectly contribute to corporate strategies for demobilizing labor and ultimately reducing production costs. Today, a growing number of meatpacking community members [in Nebraska] do not share a common language, history, or cultural connections for survival. They also misdirect their anger and blame each other for their misfortunes, rather than demand a higher degree of social responsibility from the corporate sector.” These are all overwhelming obstacles that frustrate equity in a working environment and keep the wealthy corporations strong. “States like Nebraska, or for that matter countries like Mexico, transfer funds to globalizing firms in the hope of resolving their own fiscal crises. But in today’s global economy, local and central polities are poorly equipped to secure a return on their investments” (143).

At the end of Call’s book, she summarizes the victories of the istmeños’ (in the Isthmus de Tehuantepec) organizing. Their demands were not all fulfilled, but they succeeded in the following ways: Instead of a six-lane superhighway, they were able to reduce it to four lanes. The steel mill was successfully denied and was not built. They also succeeded in preventing plans for a eucalyptus plantation that would seriously impact the environment. However, along with the four-way highway, there is a Wal-Mart. “Village resistance maintains situations that must be considered better, simply because they are no worse. And yet those unseen victories are crucial: evidence of the success of grassroots organizing, of the village economy’s ability to persist in spite of globalization” (293).

As I write this just a few blocks from where “Occupy Lincoln” residents are preparing their next strategy and inviting me and you to their next protest (check out the website here), I think about what we can learn from the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, and from community organizing groups outside the U.S. such as those in Tehuantepec, Mexico.

So much to think about as well as to act on. We cannot just think and talk. Being active contributors (in imaginative ways) is crucial!

Macondo writers: Belinda Acosta, Amelia M.L. Montes, Wendy Call, Joy Castro

And speaking of imaginative ways—I have one more subject to discuss with you, Querida Reader---

Calaveras para Dia de los Muertos

Halloween y Dia de los Muertos--- y los dulces!!

For me, I have been having a difficult time thinking about what I am going to do when my doorbell rings and lovely ghosts, angels, zombies, and ballerinas come to my door asking for candy. How can I, an individual with type 2 Diabetes, hand out candy to a young population facing a health crisis of epidemic proportions: child-onset diabetes.

Halloween Candy

In 2008, U.S. News and World Report published, “10 Things the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know.” The first five “things” on the list are:

(1) Junk food makers spend billions advertising unhealthy foods to kids

(2) The studies that food producers support tend to minimize health concerns associated with their products

(3) Junk food makers donate large sums of money to professional nutrition associations

(4) More processing means more profits, but typically make the food less healthy

(5) Less processed foods are generally more satiating than their highly processed counterparts

How can you counter the onslaught of the food industry cajoling you to give them money so you can place their product in your child’s hands, which in turn will make your child very sick? I asked a number of friends and colleagues for imaginative alternatives and the best answers I received were suggestions to go to the dollar store or craft store where I could either buy or put together a little gift bag of erasers, pens/pencils, small pads of paper, etc.

Gift Bag Ideas

Now here is where we could all come up with amazing and imaginative alternatives than feeding these children sugar which will keep them sleepless, grumpy, colic, even depressed. This does not mean giving up cultural traditions such as having sugar skulls on Dia de Los Muertos Altares—just don’t eat the skulls. Take pictures with them instead!

If you’re not camping out at “Occupy (name your city)” or have a difficult time getting out to protest—thinking of alternative “safe” and easy items to give trick or treaters is a good activist alternative. You are refusing to fund the corporate food giant in this country.

Sending you all safe and healthy energies para esta semana!

Ire'ne Lara Silva on diabetes poetry: An interview by Amelia Montes

Writing, reading, researching diabetes has brought me many surprises. One continual surprise is when friends I have known for many years contact me to let me know they too have the chronic disease. Here is information never relayed, never shared until this moment because I have been writing about diabetes. This is the power of the word: to speak diabetes through words, song, painting, dance.

And so it goes with ire'ne lara silva. I have known ire'ne for many years but until this year, we had not shared our experiences and struggles with this chronic disease. I'm very pleased to bring ire'ne lara silva to this Sunday's Bloga. ire'ne is a fierce poet from Austin, Tejas, whose words instruct me. She has also taught me how to "hechar el grito" and now she is gritando diabetes in her poetry. When ire'ne's first collection of poetry, furia, was published October 2010, it was featured right here on La Bloga. furia received an Honorable Mention from the 2011 International Latino Book Award in poetry.

Now she wants to follow furia with a collection that focuses on diabetes. she has titled it, blood/sugar/canto.

Here is one of the poems from the collection:

"diabetic love song"

understand there are things I will never do with you I will never go to the beach with you in the summer I will never share a stack of pancakes with you I will never stay up all night I will never toss back tequila shots with you or have a beer or a glass of wine I need naps and I need rest and when I get too tired I stop functioning my brain begins its meltdown at 90 degrees I will cancel plans it will all be more than I can bear

and now there are pills in the morning and pills at night and more than one syringe a day there may be three there may be four and everywhere everywhere there are alcohol pads in the house in the restroom on the floor in my purse in my pocket and spent lancets and testing strips with one miniscule drop of blood and I will be pricking my fingers and pricking my fingers and pricking pricking pricking

I can never skip meals I will always need more water I will always have doctors’ appointments looming and sometimes I will rail against all of it and I will howl and gnash my teeth and throw things about and I will despair and there will be nothing you can do and sometimes when I am tired and hungry I will become a screaming monster felled only by exhaustion

given that time is short given that the number of my days are unpredictable I have no patience now for people who put off all their dreams people without dreams people dedicated to accumulation and consumption people who fill their lives with drama and noise because they can think of nothing better to do given that time is short I will cut corners everywhere and preserve energy for what is essential: creating and passion and love and beauty and quiet I will never make beds or iron or clean baseboards I will never go to a mall or a baby shower or any event for the sake of appearances I will never again try to make my family love me

I will always be working on letting go of things that hurt me I will always be intent on healing on becoming stronger and sometimes that will make me flint-faced and harsh and sometimes it will make me the compassionate being I want to live my life as and sometimes I won’t know the difference

but if you stay if you stay I will love you always love you fiercely love you as if you were the only one I ever loved love you like my last hope my only hope sing you the moon and the night wind I will give you the light of my eyes and the touch of my lips and the hot of my hands I will be your road going and your road returning and most of all most of all I promise I will never give up

Q&A

Amelia: Tell us about blood/sugar/canto and how you have decided to shape the collection with diabetes in mind.

ire'ne: Not every poem will be about diabetes, but that is the central theme. I want to look at diabetes from many different angles--not just from my own experience but the experiences of my family/ancestors, historically, culturally . . . addressing issues like nutrition and food activism, how socioeconomics are tied to diabetes rates and treatment. And I want to write about fear and despair and doubt and hope. Mostly, I want to talk about healing, self-acceptance, and growing into a new appreciation for our bodies.

Other than Sherman Alexie's pieces, I haven't seen a lot of poetry on diabetes. As with other experiences--some beautiful, some painful, I need to make art out of this. I need to own it. I need to share it. And I hope those future readers will find this collection to be a springboard for discussions. I hope it will help those who feel isolated in their illness feel less so. And I hope it will open a window for non-diabetic people into the lives of others.

Amelia: When were you diagnosed?

ire'ne: April 23, 2008. My doctor put me on insulin the same day.

Amelia: On that day, did the doctor also refer you to education classes?

ire'ne: I was referred to a Diabetes Education class, but not to a series of classes or to a support group. The class I went to covered the basics. Mostly it was oriented for people who 1)had no knowledge whatsoever about diabetes, or 2) who had made no adjustments at all to their diet or lifestyle. I also went to an orientation class when I started taking [the drug] Byetta. I couldn't believe how insensitive the doctor was--she told us she had nightmares about being diabetic and how she wouldn't want to live if she was diagnosed with it. I also couldn't believe how many of my classmates were unwilling to reconsider their current levels of alcohol consumption.

Amelia: How did you get through those first days/weeks after the diagnosis?

ire'ne: I was incredibly depressed. It isn't an exaggeration to say that I wanted to die. It's not that I thought it was an automatic death sentence--after all, my father was diabetic for 24 years before he passed away in 2010. I think it was more that I didn't have the capacity at the time to handle the news or process what it meant for me. When the diagnosis came, I was working two jobs, taking care of my brother who is also dealing with diabetes, and was experiencing a lot of pain on a daily basis--I was overwhelmed. Since then, I've had time to come to terms with being diabetic--at turns fighting it, denying it, accepting it, working around it . . . now trying to work with it.

Amelia: What has been most helpful to you since your diagnosis?

ire'ne: In my case, not "a what" but a "who"--my brother has been the most helpful person. He was diagnosed years before I was. I may be his caregiver, but he's been my teacher and my support group. He was the one who pushed me to see a doctor, the one who got me on track with scheduling meals and snacks, the one who makes me take naps when I'd be inclined to push one, and he's been the one with helpful advice as I've dealt with adapting to my medications.

Amelia: What needs to change in our society--regarding Diabetes?

ire'ne: So many things that I barely know where to start. We need more eduction everywhere, especially about food. So much of what we, as a society, are eating is toxic to our health. It's not just fast-food culture, it's all the processed foods and all the additives. Sadly, the least expensive choices are usually also the worst possible choices. I've heard so many people tell me they can't afford to shop at Whole Foods--but I know it's possible to seek out farmer's markets or grocers that sell local produce. We can value the food we eat above a new car or a big screen TV.

We have to change our attitudes about food--educate and love ourselves enough to choose to eat food that can increase our health instead of diminish it--seeking out organic/unprocessed/natural foods wherever we can. It's possible to take some time every day to plan meals, substituting healthier options in our recipes (olive oil for butter or any other oil, fresh or frozen veggies for canned veggies, brown rice and whole grains instead of white rice/white bread/white flour, and skipping altogether on sugar, cream, etc.)

I think Latinos have a huge advantage when it comes to adapting our diets. People blame tortillas and Tex-Mex food all the time, but if we actually took a closer look at what our home-cooked meals consist of and at the dishes that came from our indigenous ancestors (who didn't have white flour or cow's milk or Micky D's), we'd find so many healthy possibilities. Look at dishes like pollo guisado con calabaza or caldo de repollo. It's all in how you make it, especially the quality of ingredients you use.

Amelia: What would you like to tell La Bloga readers and those who have been newly diagnosed about diabetes?

ire'ne: There are just two really important things I want to say to people with diabetes, especially those who are newly diagnosed. One: you have to forgive yourself. You may have done everything in your power for the last twenty years to avoid diabetes or you may have lived in denial or you may not have had a clue. It doesn't matter. What's important is to work on your health from this point on.

And two: in my experience, doctors treat diabetes by making their patients afraid. You can't live your life afraid all the time of everything you eat, everything you do, every medication you take. Only you know what the right pace and the right balance are for you. Talk to other people. Listen to your body. You don't have to be afraid.

Amelia: Thank you ire'ne for your palabras de poesia and your courage.

ire'ne also has her own website and blog. You can find ire'ne at:

website: http://www.irenelarasilva.webs.com

blog: www.irenelarasilva.wordpress.com

e-mail: irenelarasilva@yahoo.com

In addition to ire'ne's work on blood/sugar/canto, ire'ne is currently seeking a publisher for her collection of short stories, The Ocean's Tongue and she is quite busy writing a novel entitled Naci. ire'ne is also the co-coordinator for the Flor de Nopal Literary Festival coming to Austin December 1-3--very soon. If you're in Austin, don't miss the Flor de Nopal Literary Festival!

Saludos and Introductions by Amelia M.L. Montes

Saludos everyone--so glad to be here with La Bloga familia and with you! I am a born and raised Califas, Los Angeles Chicana lesbiana. Born to immigrant parents meant many trips during my childhood crossing borders to visit familia en Jalisco, Michoacan, Guanajuato, y Coahuila. En Califas, my parents created a very Mexican household (which included a "speak Spanish only" rule inside la casa). Leaving my house to walk to school every day was like leaving Mexico to go to the U.S. Perhaps this is why as an undergraduate at Loyola Marymount University I double-majored in English and Spanish literatures-- always making connections among cultures, languages, and many histories. And I loved writing about these complexities at an early age.

Since then I have taught in many schools in the L.A. area and in Colorado and now Nebraska (yes, Nebraska!). I am an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the current Director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies. Check out my website (click here)!

For you-- I'm interested in writing about Chican@ and U.S. Latin@ authors, film-makers, and the craft of writing: fiction and non-fiction. I also intersperse the discussion of creative writing with what could be considered "academic" writing. For example, right now I'm obsessed with a book regarding Diabetes by anthropologist and Chicano/Latino studies professor Michael Montoya. His book, Making the Mexican Diabetic: Race, Science, and the Genetics of Inequality is giving me so many new ideas regarding my creative multi-genre book on Diabetes. Montoya's journey into the maze of the genome diabetes project is an excellent response to the myth that diabetes is simply "in our (Mexican) blood."

"Genes do not cause chronic disease," Montoya writes. "Genes in certain bodies under certain conditions contribute to disease susceptibility" (187). "[C]ertain conditions" can mean that some of our familia are living in socially constructed areas where access to exercise is impossible and/or where the created economy makes hamburgers, french fries, and coke much more affordable than buying organic spinach, broccoli, grain-fed "no hormones" chicken and taking the time to cook these items. This is one reason the rate of individuals being diagnosed with diabetes is alarming. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) predicts that by 2050 the number of Americans with diabetes will triple to 48.3 million).

Oh yes--I write about Diabetes: creatively. I am currently almost finished (really almost done!!) with a multi-genre creative memoir called, _The Diabetes Chronicles_. Its main theme is "inheritance" -- inheritance within the diabetic cellular, genetic, historical, societal, and cultural parameters. I'm interested in what we all do with what we have inherited and in this case the inheritance of diabetes. Why such interest in Diabetes besides the fact that this is so widespread within our Chican@ and Latin@ communities? I am an "out of the closet" diabetic (type 2) and really want to share and talk about this chronic disease that is affecting all of us. I'm offering my type 2 diabetes journey in hopes that I can recruit you to "come out" or to help others.

Another Chicana who is writing about Diabetes is poet, Ir'ene Lara Silva, whose book of poetry "furia" was profiled by another of La Bloga's writers, Olga Garcia Echeverria (October 17). Ire'ne has been in contact with me regarding her poems on Diabetes. More on this in two weeks!

So there is much to talk about! I look forward to being with you. A shout out "Orale y gracias" to tatiana de la tierra for inviting me to La Bloga y tambien to Michael Sedano for your guidance in getting settled into La Bloga. Abrazos a tod@s!