I want to share a picture I have of my five year old self sitting with my mother somewhere underneath the fluorescent lights of a JcPenney (or something like it).
Just me and her.
When I find it I will. I had packed it away the day of the fires and have not been able to find it since. Which scares me because that pic in many ways has been a symbol for me of the small thread of belonging and connection that helped me navigate the instability to follow.
I’m leaning against my mother’s bosom, grinning from ear to ear with my gap teeth and my bangs terribly but proudly cut by me.
In it, you can see and I can remember, that I felt loved.
Recently my big hearted sister who has been reading my FB posts about the fire (and how my own childhood displacement sensitized me to the heartbreaking displacement of the migrant/undocumented comunidad) wanted to reassure me, that I was loved.
I let her know I knew I was loved.
My mother loved her children fiercely.
But I explained, there is a deep rejection, abandonment and unlovability that one feels when you are passed around and no one ever takes you in permanently. (Even though I understand all the reasons why and I know everyone had good intentions)
And a deep confusion when the person who loves you and you love so much, is neglecting or trying to harm you.
It’s all complex.
I must begin my story with my mother’s, because her experiences are what led to our unraveling.
And yet, I will keep her history brief because my siblings know her more than I ever did.
The picture I will hopefully share with you when I find it, was taken only a short while before we were separated forever.
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Mi mami was a true Chingona. Not that I ever got to see her in her full rebellious glory because by the time I got to know her she was already descending into psychosis. But her actions tell me.
Born and raised in a rancho in Central Mexico, she was married off at 16. Her first child was a stillborn, and she had two more children by age 18. Having been horribly abused as a child, beaten with a horse whip, she met similar treatment with her husband. She was steeped in generations of colonial trauma and patriarchy. Their life on the land was a struggle. Eventually, after three more children, he sent her to California to earn money for the family.
In a twist, she decided to leave her abusive, controlling husband and bring her children to the US for a better life.
She loved to tell the story that when she went to take her children from their home in Mexico, her husband pulled his shotgun on her.
She’d laugh victoriously while telling us how she turned her back on him and walked out the door with her children.
Chingona.
After many challenges where my siblings had to fend for themselves in grave poverty while she navigated immigrating, they all were making a fairly good transition to the US.
She was happy to have her children back and she married her childhood sweetheart who had been a bracero with her. She still worked hard as an aide in a nursing home, cleaning up messes others didn’t want to, but it was a step up from ranch life and dysfunctional family.
She dearly loved this new husband and they had two more children. It wasn’t easy but they were making it work.
Then one day, they were all piled into a station wagon going somewhere and they were hit by a drunk driver. Most were ejected from the car. Two children, her 3yo daughter and 10yo son were killed instantly. Her new husband died three days later.
The drunk driver got something like 1000 hours of community service.
Suddenly, she was a grieving single mother of five, with few resources, in a foreign country that disdained immigrants. A devastation very few of us would recover from.
However, she loved her children fiercely and she did not give up.
I would be born later as part of that effort….