Umbilical Cords Jalando en

120 degrees of assimilated suffering

(Picture: Our Mamá, Consuelo, en el Azadón)

It was hot, Yuba City, summer hot. 120 degrees of assimilated suffering transfixed my hundred yard stare out our living room window. I longed for something I didn’t know how to describe, but could feel in my bones at the time. A pull of an umbilical cord, siempre tugging.

When would Mamá come home from el Azadón?

I didn’t know what suffering was, I didn’t know what sad meant, but I could feel copious amounts of it. I lived in between languages, I was split. I preferred not talking, I preferred to be a mute in those days, when silence was confused as safety.

I thought about Mamá a lot as I stared out the window. I wanted to see her smile more often, not have to work so hard. And so I got to thinking as my gaze landed on Papá’s truck. I stared at all the lawn mowing gear Mamá would have to unload on her own before Papá’s shift ended in the tomato fields.

I got to thinking. . . I thought, maybe I could surprise her by doing it on my own. Normally I’d wait for my parents to get home to tag along and mow lawns around town. It was Thursday though, the lawns were to be mowed around the neighborhood.

I thought even more, about how it might bring her some ease to have a few hours of her own. There was one obstacle that halted my efforts. I didn’t know how I was going to get the lawnmowers down from the truck, I’d only seen how it was done. I was tiny - how could I do it?

I sat there replaying it in my head. Worst case scenario after worst case scenario. Mamá’s smile was my goal and I was willing to try, even if I was scared of the plywood and machine dropping. My goal was to bring ease to her, and so my body moved before my mind could convince me otherwise.

I climbed up the back of the truck and jogged my memory of how Papá and Mamá slid the plywood out and leaned it down the tailgate. I remembered seeing them leave enough lip, so the plywood wouldn’t fall flat once the machine rolled down. I remembered Mamá’s frustration with the blades of the machine always getting caught at the lip. Somehow my tiny body lifted, slightly, back and forth - smoothly rolling the lawn mower down. I felt big, I felt not so tiny.

I didn’t have time to celebrate what might seem like a small achievement. Mamá would get home soon. I had four houses to hit up, I needed to move like a machine the way I saw Mamá move.

I knocked out the biggest yard first. The singular thought of Mamá’s smile carried me through the heat. Knocking out the rest would be easy. Until I got to Mr. Smiley’s house. Our family was not welcome, is what Mr. Smiley had said to Papá when we moved to that street, the year of 1983, my birth year. We were not welcome to this country, but mowing lawns for pennies was most welcome. I walked towards their house with caution.

I mowed their lawn the fastest. I mowed ghostly. I held my breath fully believing it would help lower the volume of my presence. I did not want them to hear the blades clipping into my worth and existence as a Méxican. I didn’t want the prideI felt to be stripped from me, because I felt proud, proud to be mowing lawns for my family.

Sure enough, I got done before Mamá got home. My face, blistering tomato red, and waved at her. I stood in place, proudly waiting for her to come over.

She couldn’t believe I brought the machine down alone, let alone cut all the yards. Her armor slightly slipped and she pulled me into her body. “Gracias Mija.” That hug was everything. Heartfelt hugs were too far and inbetween, practically non-existent in our family. I had been longing for hugs by that window I suppose, I suppose before I knew what safe hugs were.

I wanted that hug to feel like “todo va a estar bien” - “vas a estar bien”. And it did, for the briefest of breaths. And in came the palisa for getting dirty, and not covering my skin from the sun. She spanked me and I bucked off as fast as I mowed those lawns.

I leapt through the rose bushes that our abuelita Paula had planted for her five nietas, and for a moment, in the air, and only while catching air, I allowed myself to smile. Because landing back down on the soil seemed to mean another thing for us - Mexicans - you - are - not - welcome. This was 1994.