Tiny, Tiny - Big Heart.
Watering memories at the lavanderia.
Every weekend my sister’s Emily, Connie, and I would go to the laundry mat with Mamá. We grew up with well water, the same water that Papá has to dump bags of salt to purify with to this day. This year the city decided to expand clean city water to the outer reaches of their house. A street that once was surrounded by walnut and peach orchards in the 80’s to mid 2000’s.
I can hear the memory - the kitchen cupboards rattling as the sun rose when the machines came to shake the protein off its trees. I can smell the memory - forgotten peaches feeding the earth with a rot that picked up my pace while traveling through. I can feel the memory - mud swelling our tiny tiny feet from running through irrigation sprinklers in the orchard. Mamá would hit us with that well water that smelled of hard boiled eggs to wash us off. A kind of well water that stained my underwear yellow when I was tiny - yellow enough for a teacher to come to the house for a wellness check. ‘Todo bien?’ - Si - ‘To an extent.’ A Mamá who masked with a kind of charm that disarmed any and all intruders.
Excitement was short-lived. Oh how systems like to taunt with dangling carrots - of clean water finally running through, until notice comes in. You’ve got mail: The extension of clean city water is for the new school they had built just down the street from our parents. Those who wanted to be plugged into that pipe line would need to shell out $20,000+, that’s if you’re approved when filling out an application. ¿Que? That school is barely a mile away from the house. Have we not paid out dues, since 1983? That’s for another story.
They pump a silent kind of psychological warfare that feeds fascism’s parasite. We’re told to stuff the inequality down our throats - Stop playing the victim, says the abuser. More often than not, the abuser’s blind spot has yet to reveal to them how they are being abused too. Pitted against one another when either person tries to shine the light on our collective shadow. Ego is the gatekeeper to every blindspot - the refusal to look, reflect, and address the reflection turns the host into said parasite too. Does it not?
Spirit: So they just learned how to play chess with our underdeveloped egos? Tell me how you really feel about it…
I wish I could go back in time when my sister’s and I could reach our tiny tiny arms through the candy machine - Not quite long enough to reach anything. A time when our child-like dilution had us believe imaginary candy could fill our tummies. A time when we didn’t know we were salivating for sugar to numb the inequality our family was surviving. A time when we ran into those orchards as if it was our own magical kingdom, just like our sister tried to show us, but we were at each other’s throat to really listen.
I wish I could drop in that tiny body with the consciousness that I have now. I’d tell Mamá y Papa: Ustedes pertenecen tambien. Están haciendo lo mejor que pueden para cirarnos en un sistema que trabaja incansablemente para aprovecharse y explotarnos. Do you understand what I’m trying to say - These systems have us stabbing each other in the back kind of psychological warfare. Tell me, how are you just barely surviving? We’re supposed to be thriving. Every single one of us.
Spirit: Go on…
As we tried to reach for candy the laundry mat attendant was reaching for Mamá’s unattended wallet. Hard earned money from el Azadón and mowing lawns this lady collected from Mamá over time. Mamá was convinced it was one of her five daughters, until she caught the laundromat lady in action. “How could you, I thought you were my friend” in broken English Mamá shed. She did not report her for fear. Laundromat Lady - Caucasian/A shade of snow kind of Caucasian White. Mamá - Mexican, Green Card Holder, stamped illegal alien. Who has the upper hand in a fascist system?
Our tiny hands huddled around Mamá as she tried her best to fold each tear down her throat. I’m most certain Connie said something funny that got us all out of our heads, the smartest comedian to make the most of our circumstances. Each one of us eventually folded how we really felt into every article of clothing.
Picture: Mamá /2025
Spirit: Can you say a little more?
About what? Assimilation is birthed from genocide. We’re truly all pitted against each other, incluso nuestros familias until the day comes when a sorry might come too late. Tu familia, tu comunidad is dying at higher rates. Genocide happens from within the body and spawns out. My English is nearly perfect - but it’s a mask of assimilation. My Spanish is mocha, fragmented like my memory. My Indigenous roots ride a current through my veins that whisper, Yolía need say nothing. The Indigenous gaze says everything, it’s just that most all choose to look away. Very few are able to hold a gaze without trying to manipulate what they’re truly feeling.
Humanity is hardened. Hardening happens when one does not feel safe, when one doesn’t feel they belong, when there is a loss of self worth. Humanity is at its most vulnerable. We are not protecting our most vulnerable - we’re exploiting them. Fascism plays with every single one of humanity’s emotions so one is not rooted in their sovereignty. So that one feels unstable without the “help” these systems give out, only they’re scraps to nothing. Monetizing off water when it should be free. Psychological warfare, do you feel me? Or has the hardening permanently set in?
I was conversing with a dear friend over Pho yesterday. They just started a job at one of the most impoverished schools in deep East Oakland. He went to fill his water bottle up from the faucet and a teacher quickly stopped him. “Have you not read the signs? The water is filled with lead.” They were informed to use the Flowwater purification machines that were placed all over the school instead. I really saw and felt the genuine concern in his body, not just for himself but for the children. The children. Aren’t the children from all over the world our children, just as Baldwin expressed.
“Oakland Unified School District had discovered dangerous levels of lead at dozens of its schools the previous spring - Spanning elementary, middle, and high school in East and West Oakland, from the flatlands to the hills. Some schools had levels over 100 times that of policy limits. “Students and staff were drinking water, water that was known to be contaminated in April until August, including throughout summer school. The delay on the part of OUSD is negligent, it’s careless, and it will impact the health of our children for years to come.” expressed Ella Every-Wortman, Frick Teacher.”
Spirit: Is that child not within you too?
That child is me too, absolutely. “Same, same, different.” And right now they’re mining for lithium to power yet another new iPhone. They are trafficked for the elite to power up their egos, they are left to starve out on the street, they’re slaving away, ethnically cleansed, those with special abilities deemed unimportant. It’s not just a new phone every year, it’s every season now. I’d love to write about marshmallows but I’m sure it would take a turn towards the collective shadow, it’s where I’m meant to cast the greatest of light.
If you’re oblivious to what’s happening to Palestinian’s, to what’s happening in Sudan, in the Congo, the U.S border, to your families being snatched off the streets and from their own homes, to you…I’m not sure what else to say other than despiértate. That led is slipping through the cracks for the purposes of inducing a kind of sleep walking. What you thought didn’t affect you has been accumulating far much longer than one thought. Reach down and help tip the scale because right now Facism is leading us straight off the cliff.
Three core human needs: Safety, Belonging, Self-Worth which is your dignity. I have learned from Somatic Coaching, roots in Indigenous teachings. Root these three deep into the earth every single day until you feel it embodied, you will then know how to walk this slippery earth with integrity. Learn from your Indigenous communities. Volunteer. Respect your elders. Listen deeply. Balance yourself. Every moment in life truly can feel so meaningful. The depth of your shadow is the brightest of light, and I just want people to know, to feel the depth of this.
Spirit: What does Integrity mean to you?
I’m sleep deprived I’ll spare my perspective on that later. I just got back from cheering my dear friend in their Ironman marathon. Can’t wait to share that story as well. Peace. Be well.
Citation:
https://oaklandside.org/2025/07/28/oakland-schools-lead-contamination-emails/
By: Ashley McBride, Callie Rhoades|Year:2025|Container:The Oaklandside