Imagining what might go on in a kid's head

[short story, fiction]

A grain of life for Mami

While Mami’s rushing around the kitchen, I squirm and squiggle in my booster seat and play Coast Guard with my cereal. I yell out in sailor-kid voice, "Capitán, there's a bunch of adultos drowning in the ocean. What should we do?"

I change back to Capitán voice. "Lower the lifeboats. We've got to rescue them!" I push two floating rings into the middle of my bowl and save everybody. I'm a hero!

Mami says, "What a great imagination you have! You're so cute when you pretend." Really, it's a game any kid can invent, but I love her attention when she’s happy.

But then she changes to Worry Mom and says, "Don't make a big mess, Hijo, 'cause we can't be late and…."

I don't hear all her words because when she’s Worry Mom, it changes my brain. It goes deaf because it's heard it all before. I wish I could finish playing and go to the hero's parade to get my medal for saving the people. Mami would've been proud of me.

She doesn't realize I only play this cereal game when she's around because it makes her smile at me a lot. I miss that. A lot.

I remember when I squeezed out of her womb on my birthday. Mami's face glowed bright like a full moon on a clear black noche. That was the day she first saw me, her new bebé.

And the first time she gave me chichi. Even with my eyes open, I can replay it in my head and see her face crinkle up, cradling me to her soft bosom. It makes me suck my tongue over my lips, how warm and delicious that tasted!

I remember we laughed like locos when I teetered like a baby giraffe, taking my first step. And then I fell--Crash! It was great. I didn't even break my head when she kept saying, "Careful. Careful. Careful," like when a song's stuck in a bad spot.

Those memories make my heart beat fast--which is right here. But all that happened too long ago for Mami to remember. That's 'cause she's always busy with stuff.

That reminds me that I should create another great imaginary world. It might help her remember, maybe. I'm so excited and hit the spoon on the bowl, and all by itself it jumps up and splatters soggy cereal on the ceiling, just like the last time. It sticks there. I know what comes next. Mami gets angry with me.

"Don't play with your cereal like that!" She yells, "Look at the mess you made."

I am looking, and it's great. But her words don't make sense because I didn't do it, the spoon did. No matter what I try, it never jumps up like I think it should. Plus, she's never shown me a better way to do it.

"Think of all the starving children who have no food."

I can't understand that, either. If kids don't have food, then they can't play with it. And how could a child starve, anyway? There's always chichi. Or what--their frig and microwave both broke?

That's how I figure it. But if I tried explaining it to her, the way she gets sometimes, it wouldn't impress her.

Now I try to think of something else in my head, the way I plan my imaginary places. I ask myself, "What if I made a special mundo to help Mami remember how our hearts, our corazones used to connect? Like when I was in her womb. How fantástico would I have to make that mundo?"

Then I let my mind fly in the loco way it loves to take me, to where I use all my senses and feelings for my special powers.

She thinks I'm not doing anything. "Good, you're done. I've to get you ready. You're gonna love your new Easter outfit."

She always expects me to love stuff, but I hardly do. When we've gone to the store, Mami pries my fingers off clothes that cry out to me, "Take me home, put me on." But I never get to pick my clothes; somebody picks them for me. When I get older, I'll pick out and buy and keep my favorite shirts until they rot.

Then she orders me to, "Keep still," like I’m a magician. I hate standing like a big doll because I'm no Barbi. And I've never seen any adulto stand still. It's impossible. Anyway she'll tries clothes on me like I'm a baby. New ones itch my skin, and Mami pulls them on so fast and rough I suffocate, something my body hates. I can never run away, so I fight for air like my body tells me to.

She got me all dressed now, so we head outside and I remember. I'm a Creator.

Mami doesn't know I love something else mountains and montones more than any game. Something that's not a game. Something real.

"Stay in your spot back there and leave the seatbelt alone."

I have to pull at the seatbelt to get out. I'm too far from Mami, alone back here, and I can't see her face. What would I do if there was an accident, and I can't reach her? I hear her voice and see the back of her head, but that's not enough. I need her touch. I thrive near her aura. This far, I can barely feel it.

I'll forever hate the back seat. I hope it doesn't give me another complex, like the one they say I got from Papi hardly ever being around.

I use two gnarled fingernails for the gravel stuck in the seat. I drop one bit of gravel next to another one. I aim them so they won't hit anything else. This is a great game. But it's more than that. I make planets out of sand and dirt and whatever I can find. A Creator like me loves forming new worlds, even if it takes all day.

"Now, what are you doing?"

"Na--da," I answer, using my special voice that usually makes adultos giggle, hoping that talking to people that way won't give them a complex. This time it doesn't work on her. I wipe sweat from my lip. It's always tough coming up with answers Mami can understand.

How do I explain the miraculous things I can do, so she won't interrupt my work? Like one world I made that had a blue moon. The tiny worlds are the most difficult to construct, even for me. Today, nothing's going to stop me. Maybe I'm stubborn, like she is about nagging.

She uses Serious Adults Know Everything Voice. "You should try to appreciate this more, 'specially 'cause I had to take the day off from work."

Sometimes Mami demands mucho mucho. Like expecting me to know what work is--except that it takes her away from me. Or what happens if she misses work, why it's important, how it’s about making money that I have no use for. But especially, why spending a day together is a "sacrifice." I remember when I was worth a sacrifice, the day she screamed a lot in the delivery room.

"Make sure you don't get the Easter outfit Abuela gave you all dirty."

The Creator in me doesn't understand this now, so I can't respond. It makes no sense. Clothes aren't my responsibility. Plus, I can't protect them with my powers. Clothes get dirty, especially new ones on important days. Nobody controls that. I'm just a Creator, not one of those gods that have superpowers.

"How’s Abuela's gonna feel if you ruin them?"

I'm worrying how Mami can't comprehend that someone young as me can't imagine how somebody a hundred years older like Abuela feels about anything. She's almost from another planeta; it's hard enough understanding the dog who's fifteen. What Mami said doesn't bother me. My brain's used to it.

Then I get an idea and in my head I say, "Why not make a new world to pay Mami back for loving and caring for me." Maybe she'll remember how happy we were together. When we were connected.

"Pay attention! We're almost there." Mami assumes I don’t know what's going on or what she just said and she's right, but not for the reason she thinks. I do pay attention. It's just that there's too much wonderful stuff happening for me to keep everything separated.

Here's where the parade will be. The adultos crane their necks or raise their bebés to watch something that's not there. Many my size stare at me, cause I'm the only one lucky enough to sit on the curb. They're looking at my work, in awe, knowing, expecting, hoping.

I don't care about the parade coming because I'm busy. I started a new special world that's approaching a critical stage they call gestation, like I did years ago. Already, rivers of drool flow down my mountains and into grand canyons. But something is missing. I spot some white crumbs someone left on the sidewalk for me and grab them.

She sees me and turns on her Worry Mom voice, sounding like a TV comedy. "I've told you a thousand times--"

As Creator, I never pay attention to whatever words come after "a thousand times." It would endanger my world-building and interfere with my responsibilities. So, my brain tunes it out. Plus, it was only about 345 times. Mami doesn't know my brain approximates better than hers.

"Okay, it's time to stop that. The parade's starting."

Just when she grabs my hand, I drip saliva so its moisture will begin life.

"That's disgusting! Who taught you that?"

I don't answer. No one taught me. I was born knowing how, and whenever I try to make her understand, she can't understand. She might go loca if she knew about all my powers. That's something I wouldn't want to cause.

She tries to drag me, but I dig in my new heels, lean away from her, stretch far back, watching for my fluid to take.

My saliva river stops and soaks in, my world transforms and glistens with growth. It makes me feel new, powerful, big-time.

"Look, here comes the Easter Bunny. We got to get closer or we'll miss it."

When she tugs me, she's usually too quick and strong. But this time, I need a few more seconds to bless my brave new planeta on its birthday. I get my chance when a big man pushes between us, and Mami loses my hand. Like a comet, I shoot away and fall on the concrete. On my elbows, I bequeath my world my own blessing.

Mami lifts me to brush off all my ropa. She glances down. Then she looks again and wrinkles her brow like when she's confused about something.

Like I hoped, mi mundo knows that it's time. Its newborn forests flash green, tiny leaves multiply. A miniature volcán erupts with red flames. Oceans spread and shine with azure waves. In its itty-bitty way, it wants to communicate with Mami.

The ear-hurting marching band passes, the crowd goes, "Ooh!" and "Caramba!" But Mami doesn’t hear. Now she's the one not paying attention.

I see that Worry Mom’s busy changing back into Mami. She holds her breath and shakes her head to break out of a trance. Her face turns angelic and softens, like long ago. She stops flicking at my clothes and lets go of my wrist. She clasps my hands in hers.

For one forever moment, her wide eyes twinkle over what she discovered.

Maybe she remembers what we lost. She clears her throat and whispers, "Please, come with me."

She gently takes my hand, and we stroll behind the crowd

side by side

down the sidewalk.

She’s crying and doesn't realize she's cracking my knuckles. Still, I smile on the outside. Inside I giggle loco because I finally got Mami to understand!

I'm pooped. Tired, not the other one.

Tomorrow, I'll have another chansa to create. This time, more than a planeta. I'll make a whole solar system, with lots of moons. Or, maybe The Creator will try something even more magnífico. A sister might be good. To help me build something special. Like….

# # #

This story was originally published by Antique Children, A Mischievous Literary Arts Journal, in 2009.  © Rudy Garcia

Isaiah’s Inauguration: A Children’s Story from Obama’s First Inauguration

Isaiah’s Inauguration

by Deborah Frisch

“Look, you can see your breath,” I puffed at my little sister Sarita. She waved one of the small American flags that the scouts had given us through my steamy cloud. It was just getting light, and we were waiting to show the guards our purple tickets so they would let us through a gate to the inauguration. Dad’s friend had gotten the tickets for us, because we really wanted to see Barack Obama become the President of the United States.

“Isaiah, please ask the security man if this is the purple area,” my mama said to me in Spanish.

The security man was as tall as a basketball player and as wide as a football player. A woman was holding up an orange ticket to show him.

When she finished, I asked him my mama’s question, but he didn’t turn toward me.

“¡No seas del rancho!” my father whispered.  He meant, “Speak up, don’t be shy.”  I asked louder this time, but the huge man still didn’t hear me.

Then Sarita squeaked, “Is this the purple part?” and he turned our way.

“We’re all one color now, darlin,” he grinned down at Sarita.

This was the right place then. From where we stood, the people on the steps of the Capitol Building were no bigger than sprinkles on a cupcake. But we could see the dome very well, with the flags hanging down in front.  As we threaded though the crowd into a little space behind a metal fence, my mother squeezed my arm. “Don’t be shy; just say, ‘Excuse me’,” she told me. As always.

Sarita and I climbed up on the wide base of a lamppost to get a view between people.  We saw a giant TV screen, with kids singing in a choir.

“¿Te levanto?  Want me to pick you up?” Dad asked, and he hoisted me onto his shoulders.  There I was, up above everybody—but staring straight into my face was another boy, on his dad’s shoulders.  He gave me a big smile.  I felt so shy I took my dad’s cap off his head and whispered to him, “¡Bájame! Put me down!”

Back on the ground I asked, “How long before Obama comes out?” and nobody answered me. “I’m freezing,” I complained.  I stamped my feet and waved my little flag.        “Isaiah, be careful you don’t wave that in somebody’s face,” my dad warned.

The crowd cheered about something on the big screen, but I couldn’t see it. Dad’s belt buckle dug into my ear.

Between my mom’s feet sat Sarita, laughing.  Clap, slap, clap, slap—“he rocks in the treetops all-a day long…” She was playing pattycake with a little kid, probably the brother of the boy who had smiled at me.

From up on his dad’s shoulders, that boy was telling his mom, “Malia and Sasha are coming in now!”

“You want a muffin, Isaiah?” his mom asked him.

My mama’s mouth dropped open.  “He’s your tocayo!” she said.  That means he and I have the same name.

I don’t like to talk to people I don’t know, but I just couldn’t stand it!  “MY NAME IS ISAIAH, TOO!”  I yelled up at him.

“For REAL?” he asked, his eyes open wide.  “I’m the only Isaiah in my school!  We’re probably the only two Isaiahs in this whole crowd!”

“Well, how about a nice sweet potato muffin for you too, Isaiah, and one for your sister down there?  Is that okay with your mama?”  his mom asked me. I looked at my mama.

“Andale, okay, dile ‘gracias’,” my mama told me, and his mom handed around these squishy muffins with yellow napkins for all four of us. They were excellent.

You know how sometimes you eat something good, and it makes you morehungry?  Now my parents took the tamales out of their pockets.  The security guards hadn’t let people in with lunch bags, so mom and dad had tamales in sandwich bags in their inside coat pockets.  They handed them to the other family and to us—the tamales were still warm.

“This is DELICIOUS!”  Isaiah’s dad’s voice boomed out after his first bite.  “I never had ‘em homemade before!” Everybody else loved them too.  I felt proud.

By that time Sarita was teaching Isaiah’s brother to play “al citron.”It’s a game where you sing a song and pass some small thing around—me and Isaiah hunkered down with the little kids and played, passing Obama buttons we got that day.

It was funny to be between so many feet and legs.  My dad was wearing his cowboy boots—my tocayo’s dad had big yellow construction boots.  There were high-heels and sneakers and old lady shoes.

The next time our two dads put us up on their shoulders, I wasn’t shy at all any more.  We gave our moms and dads news of what was on the big screens, and why people were cheering.  We came up with a special way to wave our flags: when people chanted O-BAM-AH, on the AH we bumped our fists together, and the flags flew!

At last the Chief Justice came to swear Obama in.  Michelle was holding the Bible for him.  Isaiah’s mom started to cry.  She was hugging mi tocayo’s dad, but then she turned and hugged mi mama, and she started crying too.

Sarita’s lip trembled. “Why are you crying, mama?” she asked, and mama answered, “Because we’ve all been through so much.”  Mi tocayo’s mom nodded to say “That’s the truth.”  They both had the same look, happy and sad, but more happy.

Isaiah got a pen from his dad, wrote his phone number on the bottom white stripe of his flag, and gave it to me.  I wrote my number on the pole and gave it to him.  Then we both stuck the flagpoles in the backs of our jackets, so the flags were waving over our heads.

I felt so happy with our new president.  And with mi tocayo, my new friend.

Deborah Frisch

A Brooklyn girl, Deborah finished her studies in Teaching English as a Second Language and found that New York City couldn’t afford to employ her during its budget crisis of the mid ‘70’s.  So she took off for Cancún, Mexico.  There everyone she met wanted to study English.  She founded a language school that ran for 24 years and served up to 400 students daily.

But after 13 years in Cancún, Deborah and her young son had many reasons for returning to the U.S.

In California she married and had another son.  For several years she has been teaching ESL to a great crowd of UC Berkeley’s Visiting Scholars and others at Albany Adult School.  She also supports foreign students at Academy of Art U. in SF.

Deborah has developed and published several games and materials for learning English. She presents her work at teachers’ conferences, often with bilingual children’s author Rene Colato Lainez. Then she comes home and writes. Visit her at http://www.deborahsusanfrisch.com/

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.