Latino Fiction: Short Stories, Poems, Flash Fiction, Novellas

"Flurry" by Marilyn Urena

noreply@blogger.com (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:59:00 +0000

"Flurry"
by Marilyn Urena

“Your skirt is bunching up,” she said as she quickly pulled her daughter’s skirt down. “You were showing everyone your behind!” she exclaimed.

The last thing she wanted was for anyone to call her daughter a whore, especially the meddlesome, elder women that lived around the corner. She saw them at every 7am Sunday mass, with their colossal golden and lavender sun-hats and their sanctified rosaries. These widowed women seemed innocuous. Their spirit and minds were on the Lord, but she knew the truth.

She knew that when Señor Luis lined up for holy communion, for that perfectly circular bread and tasty wine, the elderly ladies sneered and rolled their eyes. Señor Luis had been caught going down on the nanny just a few days ago.
When Doña Ana dipped her small, stiff, wrinkled index finger in the holy water at the entrance of the church and made the sign of the cross, the ladies giggled. Doña Ana almost certainly also made the sign of the cross as she left the local supermarket from where she stole.

When Maria’s daughter, Sofia, shook others’ hands and said “Peace be with you,” the ladies bowed and shook their heads. They knew—thanks to that loyal, juicy grapevine—that she was in anger management classes and on house arrest for violating her probation.

Of course, there was also Jezebel, who was rightfully named by her adulterous mother. Setting one toenail in the cathedral was already blasphemous for Jezebel. The ladies knew what she was up to, and it was the worse kind of sin: she was having wild, unprotected sex with the leader of a local band of drug dealers and, yes, she was pregnant with a devil bastard child. They wondered if he seduced her into smoking crack. Even if she never smoked crack, the thought of it made things scandalous, and so they looked for frog eyes, hallowed cheeks, dry, cracked, white lips, fine hair, a receding hairline, and anything else on her small, fragile body.

Soledad thought she would die if her daughter were the center of the latest gossip coming from the church ladies’ large mouths. She worried about this as her three year old daughter, Pilar, dragged her toward a mountain of clean, untouched snow one gray Christmas Eve.

The snow was a bright white. Soledad squinted. It looked cotton candy, the kind children imagined God ate in Heaven: an open, soft texture that slowly—sweetly—melted on your raspy tongue as you gently pressed it against the roof of your mouth. Each snowflake fell slowly and lightly so as not to hurt a fellow snow flake. This created the best environment for snow angels.

Pilar quickened her wobbly steps toward the mountain of snow. Soledad tried to stop her, but she didn’t want to hurt her. Pilar tried to toss herself into the snow. Soledad was holding her wrist, which caused Pilar to end up with her right palm and knee in the cool snow. She giggled, but whined at the same time. It was pleasing to feel the snow on her panty hose (it took away that awful itchy feeling that panty hose gave her), but her mother’s hindering hand and scolding voice annoyed her. She didn’t straighten up as her mother repeatedly demanded that she do. Instead, she let her body weaken so that her arms and knees were like wet noodles and she was dangling from her mother’s increasingly tight grasp.

“Get up!” Soledad squealed as she grabbed her daughter’s wrist tightly and yanked. “Get off the snow now! You’re embarrassing me!” Soledad didn’t want to jerk Pilar’s short, stubby arm out of its socket, but the idea of having to change her daughter’s outfit shortly before the arrival of the night’s guests made her cringe; there were many other things to do. She couldn’t waste her time finding a new outfit for Pilar.

Even worse, Pilar would want to choose her own outfit.

She’d kick the bedpost, and scream loud enough to cause Soledad to stick her fingers in her ears, and then Soledad would have to let her choose her own outfit. She’d choose an ugly one: green tights and a pink shirt with a large, red Elmo on the front. Then, Soledad would have to say no firmly and brace herself for the kicks and screams as she found her daughter a suitable outfit. She didn’t want to go through the hassle, especially since, sometimes, Pilar kicked Soledad, and Soledad’s outfit was too new and too pretty for kicks.

“Get up, get up!” Soledad’s tone was firm and her voice was low. There was a sense of urgency, but Pilar didn’t care.

She’s such a headstrong girl, Soledad thought, a headstrong girl with a poor sense of fashion. At least poor fashion translated into “no boys”, which meant that Soledad wouldn’t have to worry about the church ladies and their gossip or about waiting up for her party-girl daughter. After all, that’s the first sign of rebellion for a mother that has a daughter: fashion sense or interest at an early age.
At four years old, Soledad had refused to go to school because her shoes did not match her book bag, or so her mother tells everyone. “Pink shoes and a green book bag, Mamá?” Soledad had posed the rhetorical question with both hands on her shapeless hips. “No, I’m not going to do it,” she had finished and returned to her room. When Soledad had been 17, her mother had waited up until four in the morning, until Soledad had stumbled to her bedroom window and futilely tried to climb in.

Her mother had sat on her bed.

The lights had been off. It had been silent. Her mother had heard her heels tearing holes in the dry, brown leaves on the concrete just outside the bedroom window. Soledad hadn’t heard anything except the constant, nagging ringing in her ears. She had cocked her head to one side and banged on one of her ears, as if a large whistle would suddenly fly out and relieve her discomfort. Her mother had been expecting her to climb in through the window, but it had still shocked her when she had seen Soledad’s hand grab the bottom of the open window. Her mother had jumped and the old bed had creaked a little, but the ringing had been so loud in Soledad’s ears that she hadn’t heard it. Her second hand had reached over and grabbed the bottom of the open window, and she had yanked herself up using her hands to keep her steady and her feet to guide her up the side of the house. With her hands still on the window, she had let her feet in. Her heels had banged against the radiator that was right by the window. It had made a loud, hollow noise—as if someone had just had fun with a gong—but Soledad had barely heard it.

“You smell like boys,” her mother had said the instant Soledad had straightened out. This had scared Soledad. It had made her grab the pillow from her bed and place it in front of her as if it had been a tough, metal shield. Her mother had turned on the lights and quickly grabbed Soledad’s right ear. “You smell like you’ve left your legs open for a million men to have their way with you, you smell like a little puta!” she yelled.

“Mamá, I was just with my girlfriends, I’m sorry,” Soledad had pleaded. She had felt hot all over, and wanted to strip herself of her clothing.
“And you’ve been drinking!” her mother had cried out as she had let go of Soledad’s ear in dismay.

“No,” was the only thing that Soledad had managed to say, and with the silence that followed her weak statement came many clear implications: she had had too many shots of Brugal rum, she had opened her legs to a complete sweaty stranger in the bathroom of a smoky, humid club that smelled like incense, and she hadn’t been out with her loquacious, Catholic school girlfriends.

This happened because, at four years of age, Soledad had a sense of style and knew which colors matched, and that pink never went with green. Only children that start out this way—with a strange sense of style at such a young age—turn into uncontrollable, sexually addicted teenagers, into girls that let boys pull out, into girls that lie about their whereabouts, into girls that don’t know how to close their legs. Soledad thought she should be ecstatic that her daughter wouldn’t be able to choose her own pretty outfit for the night’s festivities, that she didn’t have a sense of what the word fashion meant, that she didn’t understand the things that Soledad had understood at her age, and so she let her play in the snow.

Pilar dipped her head further into the snow as she lay on her back.

“Snow angel!” she giggled.

She lay spread-eagled in the middle of a soft mound of snow on the sidewalk across the street from their building.

For a moment, the block looked peaceful, almost like a suburban block. Soledad couldn’t see the old formless pieces of gum that had become one with the jagged concrete ground. She couldn’t see where a homeless man had hacked up spit, or where a lifeless pre-teen had allowed the family dog to loosen its diarrhea, or where a middle-aged, menopausal woman had decided to leave her first used crack pipe.

Everyone was in their home.

No one was outside shoveling snow onto the street for cars to get rid of, or salting the sidewalks so that the snow would melt quickly. People were snoring in lazy boy chairs, leaving the oven on—and open—because the radiator wasn’t working, and they were taking hot baths that made them sweat. They were watching the evening news while eating a large plate of rice, beans, and chicken. They were cooing their babies while they changed a smelly diaper. They were washing dishes while showering their significant other with peck kisses, like a colorful, hungry parakeet searching frantically for food. They were reading the story of the birth of Jesus from The Bible. They were lighting candles that had saints, Jesus, and Mary painted on the outside of the glass candle holder. They were preparing dinner for a Christmas Eve celebration. They were trying to think of a way to make the holiday more America. They were doing anything but ruining the beauty that Soledad saw outside: white snow and a white Pilar.

“You’re getting your hair wet!” Soledad still had her small hands wrapped tightly around her daughter’s wrist, but she was closer to the ground than Pilar was to getting up. She wondered where toddlers got such strength, or was it that adults didn’t use all of their force so as not to hurt them? She thought that perhaps the latter was true for her, but not for her own mother, a woman that, with one yank, could swing a child across the room.

“Snow angel!” Pilar continued repeating in between giggles.

Soledad kneeled on the snow beside Pilar and huffed. A few of her heavy grocery bags were tearing, and she was tired, but kneeling on the snow brought instant relief. Her aching knees relaxed, her arms gave in, and the sharp, stabbing pain near her clenched jaw stopped. She sat on the heels of her feet and watched her daughter incessantly spread open her arms and legs. She thought about how right her mother had been; children do grow up too fast. She remembered the day she had given birth to Pilar and now, suddenly, there she was: three years old, talking, walking, and making snow angels.

Soledad remembered the first day she had seen snow; it had been much later in life, when she had been in her late teens and had only known the strong sun, suffocating humidity, relentless hurricanes, and the occasional breeze of the Caribbean. The snow had perplexed her. Its color and ticklish, yet wet, texture had been foreign to her. It had made her cringe whenever it first landed on her nose or eyelashes or lips or palm, but the feeling afterward—of coolness, of softness, of calmness—was always purely delightful.

Soledad now thought that these must be her daughter’s feelings. Why, then, intrude on her enjoyment of pure delight? Sure, her hair would need to be washed again, and her dress would have to be swapped with another one—which she still wasn’t sure she’d let her choose—but at least she was enjoying herself.

She was being a three year old.

Soledad’s earliest memory was from the age of three and it didn’t involve anything delightful. She had been carried home, asleep on her father’s shoulder, when the sound of gunshots had rung out and, suddenly, her chin had started banging against her father’s bony shoulders and her parents had started running home with one hand on her and the other on their heads, as though their hands were bullet-proof.

Yes, snow was better; creating snow angels in the middle of a New York City sidewalk was better.

“Come on now,” Soledad said softly. “My knees are getting wet now, and Papi is waiting for us to come home with all these refreshments for our guests,”

Pilar lifted her head and cocked it sideways as though this were the only way she could fully understand the words coming out of her mother’s mouth. She lifted herself up onto her elbows and smiled.

“Snow angel!”

“Yes, snow angel … yours is so beautiful!” Soledad said as she got up. She didn’t realize that her hand was still around Pilar’s wrist. She wasn’t holding on tightly anymore—in that menacing yet motherly way—but she was holding on nonetheless.
Soledad had cried when the long-haired nurse—in a yellow top with crooked, painted teddy bears—had told her that she was going to have a little girl. The nurse hadn’t been positive and, after all, she hadn’t been a doctor and couldn’t confirm the news, but, from her experience, the baby growing inside of her had been showing it all, and she surely hadn’t been showing a penis. The doctor had confirmed the news days later and Soledad had cried some more. It was what she had feared, what her own mother had feared when she was pregnant, and, probably, what her grandmother had feared.

It’s what all mothers fear, isn’t it?

It’s the jaw-clenching, palm-sweating, heart-racing fear of having to talk, extensively, about closed legs, cancer-causing birth control pills, and pads versus tampons (the use of tampons was always discouraged as its use could potentially encourage young girls to finger themselves for pleasure or allow a boy to finger them or to stick his penis in this private hole).

Boys were much easier.

All you have to do is tell them to treat women with respect. This happens around puberty. Then, hand them a condom. This happens a few years later.

When Pilar had been born, Soledad had fallen in love and wondered why she had wished that Pilar had been a boy as her head had burst through. Pilar was gorgeous and innocent and could do no harm. This is the way she now felt as she watched Pilar make snow angels. This is the way Soledad now felt as she held Pilar’s tiny hands so that she could get up and wipe the soft, melting snow flakes from the front of her pink coat. She’s gorgeous, Soledad thought, but this daily thought was often followed by the horror that Pilar’s beauty was exactly what would give Soledad a heart attack. Forget the fashion sense. Beauty didn’t need to be accompanied by a sense of fashion in order to be recognized, and with beauty comes boys and late night phone calls and … sex.

As she guided her daughter to the front of the building, Soledad thought that she wanted—no, needed—Pilar to remain like a snow flake: unique in her tenderness, her softness, her openness, her whiteness, and her overall beauty, stemming from the intricate details that were her straight, extra-long eyelashes, which were curled at the very end, her square face that made her look handsome, and her thick, black eyebrows that made her look serious and yet strikingly gorgeous, like a mini-Frida Kahlo, only paler and with a finer nose and no mustache. The last thing Soledad wanted was for her daughter to become merely another suffocated snow flake in a heap of gray snow that got trampled by bitter New Yorkers with heavy boots.

That kind of snow eventually hardens and then melts away into the sewers.

“Slowly,” Soledad told her daughter as she helped her up the three flights of stairs to the apartment.

“I can do it!” Pilar said and continually tried to undo her mother’s firm hold.

--------------------------

by Marilyn Urena

Author Bio

Marilyn Urena was born and raised in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan in New York City. She is currently a Bilingual second grade teacher in the Bronx. She published has published "Guiding Light" with LatinGirl Magazine, “Estrella” in Electric Fire as part of the National Book Foundation, “135th Street” in Voices of the Brotherhood Sister Sol, “The First Quarter” and “We Live in a Beautiful World” in The Tablet at Columbia University, and “Trans-Forming America” in Altar Magazine. She participated in the National Book Foundation’s Summer Writing Camp. Marilyn now lives in the South Bronx, and enjoys writing, reading, and dancing. She is currently working on her first novel.

Desi Arnaz's Father and His Rubber Ranita by Carlos Navarro

noreply@blogger.com (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:12:00 +0000

Desi Arnaz's Father and His Rubber Ranita
by
CARLOS NAVARRO

A doctor by profession, my paternal granduncle, José Navarro, had once held several high-ranking positions in the Cuban army. His closest friend was Desiderio (Desi) Arnaz, Sr., father of Desiderio (Desi) Arnaz, Jr., the Ricky Ricardo of the of the classic I Love Lucy television show. José and Desi, Sr. had fled Cuba in the same private plane at the outbreak of a revolution in 1933 with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and settled in Miami. According to other exiles, José had been accused of ordering the execution of five members of the opposition, while Desi, as former mayor of Santiago, the country's second largest city, and later a member of the Cuban Congress, simply had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of the conflict.

For a year José worked as an orderly at a hospital in Miami, until he learned English well enough to take the Florida Medical Boards, which he passed on his second try, at age 50, and started a private practice. Desi, for his part, an architect by profession, launched a successful career buying run-down houses, remodeling them, and selling them for a handsome profit.

José and Desi maintained a love-hate relationship for many years. Every Sunday they would get together for dinner to reminiscence on their heyday in Cuba. Their reminiscences, however, would invariably turn sour, and the two old Cubans would end up insulting and shouting at each other, while their sweet-tempered American wives—both men having since divorced, or abandoned, their Cuban spouses—did their best to maintain a civil conversation on the side. As the quarreling over the dinner table grew heated, The Arnaz's old Chihuahua, Dandi, a surly little thing in her own right, would scurry about under the table, growling and snapping at any hand that dared reach down to pet her. Fortunately, she had lost all her teeth. Come next Sunday, everybody would meet again for dinner and replay the same scene.

Eventually José closed his Miami office and moved with his wife into a coral stone house near Homestead, on a 50-acre scrub pine forest they bought for practically nothing from a retired New York stock broker who, after a year of bucolic boredom, couldn't wait to get back to the exhilarating hustle and bustle of the big city. José, on the other hand, considered himself a man of the land, a true-blood Cuban guajiro. He had 40 acres cleared for mango and avocado groves, planting and nurturing each sapling with his own hands, and reserved the other ten acres for an assortment of farm animals—chickens, geese, ducks, hogs, goats, and a milk cow.

José also fancied himself a humanitarian. Perhaps to atone for his violent past, he converted a cinderblock outbuilding behind the house into a clinic for tenant farmers and migrant workers. If his patients were broke, as was often the case, they could pay him with a few token hours of labor on weekends. José could have easily exploited those poor folk, held them in bondage for months, but to his credit, he never did.

The subject that usually triggered the quarreling arguing between José and Desi was politics, but what really got them fuming was the other man's wardrobe. José's usual attire, even when attending patients, were khaki work clothes, scuffed leather boots and, when outdoors, a broad-rimmed straw hat. By stark contrast, Desi's apparel was that of a grandee fop-- patent leather shoes, tailored gabardine trousers, silk shirts, socks and handkerchiefs, liberally dabbed with expensive French Cologne. When his suits, jackets and ties went out fashion, in whatever small detail, he would give them away and buy new ones. Jose's only suit, which he rarely wore, save to weddings and funerals, was a double-breasted linen job, the kind one sees in silent movies, so stiff from disuse that it could stand up by itself Their hands, too, were a study in contrast: José's sunburned and calloused; Desi's soft and well manicured.

One of the rooms in his the house José had set aside for his collection of firearms, a veritable arsenal, ranging from a pocket-sized Civil War Derringer like the one used by John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Lincoln, to a rifle taken from the corpse of Japanese soldier in Iwo Jima who, rather than surrender, had honorably shot himself in the mouth with it by pulling the trigger with his big toe. Or so the story went from the Marine veteran who sold José the rifle.

Among the firearms in José's collection was an antique double-barrel shotgun that had belonged to the father of his American wife, a New England sea captain who, according to family lore, had once used it to put down a mutiny aboard his ship. That same year, 1902, the captain died of a blood infection caused by a bite on from his pet parrot, the bird having mistaken the thumb from a cookie.

Firing that antique 12-gage was easier said than done. One couldn't miss with it at 50 feet, but so powerful was its kick that it could knock a man flat on his back. For protection against intruders, though none ever showed up, José kept two loaded handguns, a .38 Police Special and a .45 Army Colt, the former by his bedside and the latter in his clinic. The double barrel shotgun, that piece he reserved for something more serious.

Like many otherwise fearless men, José had a phobia. His was a dread of frogs and toads. Other than the occasional killing of a rattlesnake, he used the double-barrel exclusively for blowing away the hordes of frogs and toads that during the rainy season invaded the farm. The powerful buckshot pellets would fairly disintegrate the hapless creatures, leaving nothing but a hole on the ground. The yard between the house and José's office was pockmarked with these holes. The early morning Blam! Blam! of the double-barrel had become a familiar and reassuring sound, a sign that old man was in good health and the rest of the day would get on according to schedule.

Somehow Desi got wind of José's phobia and, naturally, couldn't resist the temptation of using it against him the first chance he got. At a novelty store in Miami, he bought a realistic-looking rubber frog that wiggled when compressed and, grinning devilishly, waited for the right moment.

The moment came one May 20, Cuban Independence Day. José was hosting an outdoor dinner party at the farm for his Cuban acquaintances, regaling them with embellished stories about his military exploits in Cuba (the man was gifted story teller), charming the women, and, of course, casting an occasional dig at Desi's sartorial tastes.

"Pretending he had a cramp in his foot, Desi got up from the table, sneaked behind the chair where José was sitting and, subtly, without anyone noticing it, took the rubber frog out his pocket, compressed so it would wiggle, and plopped it on the table in front of José.

"Hey," he said smiling at the guests "Look at that little green frog. Isn't it cute?"

At the sight of the wiggling frog, José bolted up from the table and screaming,"Coño! Una ranita!," dashed into the house, followed by his wife, the even-tempered Americana afraid that her crazy husband might come out with the shotgun and blow away the ranita as well as any unfortunate invitado who happened to get in the way.

The invitados looked at one another in disbelief. Then one by one they starting smiling, then chuckling, then laughing, then all guffawing as one, with Desi the loudest.

The Arnaz's Chihuahua had meanwhile came out from under the table to sniff the black beans and rice that José in his panic had spilled on the ground, but not liking the smell, she snarled a disapproving snarl, and went back under the table to lay at her master's feet, sulking as usual.

By the time José returned to the party, the green ranita was in Desi's pocket. So José never knew that it was fake, and Desi never told him. From then on, though, when José started in on Desi's wardrobe, Desi would counter with the ranita incident and Uncle José, thoroughly subdued, would back off.

All Rights Reserved. 2008.

"Con Trabajo" Excerpt

noreply@blogger.com (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:26:00 +0000

The river of South Texas was brown and shallow. Federal agents patrolled along the river’s edge, driving green trucks on the lower bank and looking out for swimmers.

I parked my ’82 Dodge van in Hidalgo, and walked towards the bridge. I hated driving in Reynosa; there were too many cops and not enough enforced rules. Plus, I once had a bad experience driving in Mexico. I crashed my cousin’s car into a combi bus when I was thirteen. Since then, I avoided driving in Mexico as much as possible.

I crossed the international bridge, and Los Federales ignored me as I pushed the button on the mini-traffic light. I got a green that said “Pase.”

I knew of a particular music store in Reynosa that sold guitarras, requintos, percussion instruments, and, more importantly, contrabajos. I planned to take advantage of it and buy myself an upright bass.

Long before I moved to New Orleans, I had been mesmerized with jazz—Coltrane, Miles, Monk—but living for the past year in the city that birthed jazz only increased my excitement for the last true American art form. I was especially drawn to the double bass. Its resonance and power propelled everything along, and I had to study it. I knew I could find a cheap contrabajo in Reynosa.

I walked through the turnstile, untouchable and invisible.

There was a foul smell of exhaust and sewage in the air, and a line of cars waiting to cross the bridge backed far into the city. They looked like a line of elephants in a circus parade, tail to tail, bumper to bumper.

Suddenly, a swarm of little kids ran up to me, surrounded me, and demanded that I’d buy their chicles. They shoved packs of gum in my face, and said in broken English, “Sir, you buy some! Yes, buy!” As usual, I kindly refused with a low “No, gracias,” stared straight ahead and walked on. Whenever I came to Reynosa, I made sure I knew exactly where I was headed. I acted like I wasn’t a tourist. But, everyone knew I was: from the street kids selling their packs of gum to las viejitas with their plastic cups begging for money; from the street venders yelling out their special food items to the store owners haggling customers for every pesito. They all knew my kind.

I passed a row of pharmacies and bars before I got to the correct street. The sun dried up my skin, and cracked my lips. I felt the warm wind blow, and saw the dust gather up into little tornadoes.

I walked into the music store. It smelled like plastic and dust. No one was in there except an old man sitting behind an office desk.

“Oiga, ¿de donde son los contrabajos?” I asked the music store’s attendant.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm in the process of printing my first collection of short stories. Please check this blog frequently to be notified of its release.

"The Ghost in My Aunt's Kitchen" by Andres Falcon

noreply@blogger.com (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:10:00 +0000

"The Ghost in My Aunt's Kitchen" by Andres Falcon

When I was child I would travel every year with my parents to León Guanajuato, México from Idaho.

The city of Leon was founded in1576 by the Spaniards and is best known for its shoes, and other leather accessories. At one point the capitol of Guanajuato by the same name was the primary producer of silver in the Americas.

Maria Griever, a famous songwriter from the 50’s whose romantic ballads were translated into many languages was born in Leon. One of her most popular songs of that era was "Cuando vuelva a tu lado" (What a difference a day makes).

The area where my Aunt Sara’s (my mother’s sister) house was located is the oldest part of Leon, and its history goes back to before Leon was even a city. I discovered this when I visited the History Museum of Leon and learned that about a half a block from my grandmother's house and a block away from where my aunt’s house used to be are; "Los pozos del fraile" ( The friar's water holes), two water holes with a circular wall around them.

Legend has it that on this spot a group of Indians captured a Spanish friar and took his eyes out, and shortly afterward two water holes the color of his eyes appeared on the spot and have been there ever since. One has to remember that the padres were not perceived as ambassadors of good will by the indigenous people in those days.

The padres quite often relied on chains, shackles and whips for forcibly converting the Indians to their faith. The "preaching accessories" that Juniperro Serra requested for his travels to the Americas corroborates this fact, and few survived this harsh process of indoctrination.

Who knows if the friar was really a saintly person, but the water holes are still there, and few people know the legend behind them. And just knowing this legend when we were kids was a good reason to be home early for bed and not be outside causing mischief.

Sometimes my friends and I would go to my Tia (aunt) Sara's house to hear her ghost stories and old legends of Leon. Tia (Aunt) Sara's house was very old and it was made entirely of red adobe bricks and clay tiles on her roof. She also had a unique stove that was part of the wall where you could place cow dung (just like in India!), coal or wood to heat up the clay pots.

She would then tell us ghost stories as she toasted serrano chilis and green tomatillos over a wooden fire on a comal (flat pan made of clay). The smoke and aroma would then fill up the house and you could tell that she was making her salsa even if you were outside. She would then mash all of the ingredients in a molcajete (stone mortar), she never used a blender.

She would offer us warm tortillas and beans along with her salsa, which was incredibly good and hot. She would also make cinnamon tea for us and black coffee for her. At times the bare light bulb would flicker, and the lights would go out, adding more suspense to her stories and scaring the wits out of us. Although it frightened us at times we actually loved to hear them, and we did so with fascination.

Tia Sara told us that sometimes late at night she would see what appeared to be a blazing fire in her kitchen. Afraid that the house could burn down she would get up to put it out. However upon entering the kitchen with a pail of water in her hand, the fire would vanish. On other occasions the figure of a man would appear to her; he looked like a Spaniard from the 15th century with stockings, a collar with a frill, and sword dangling by his side. She said that he talked very different from us, an old style of Spanish that she had never heard before, and that it was sometimes difficult to figure out what he was saying.

He would plead to her to take out "el tesoro" (the treasure) hidden in her kitchen.
He was very insistent that he wanted her to have this gold treasure, and that the only way he could now have peace was if she dug it out. At first she was really scared of him but as time went by she became annoyed with him. Sometimes when she was not in a good mood she would tell him, "shut up and let me sleep!” Eventually she came to refer to the ghost affectionately as "el tilin tilan" (sound of coins being dropped in Spanish) because whenever he would appear she could hear coins being dropped on the floor.

She would invite us to sleep overnight so that we could see for ourselves and become convinced. We were quite young and never mustered the courage to do so, and we often suggested to her to look for the gold in the kitchen, perhaps she would find it.
"And ruin my kitchen? I don't think so!" She would reply.

She told us that during the Mexican revolution a lot of folks did not trust the banks, so they buried their wealth in the form of gold or silver coins in the walls or floors of their homes. For this reason it was not unusual for people to find buried treasures in old homes whenever they tore down a wall or dug on the ground.

When the main boulevard which traverses the city was being built, many of the old homes had to be torn down in order to construct the new thoroughfare. On that particular day people gathered at the construction site to see their homes for the very last time before they were to be demolished. As the bulldozers approached, spewing black clouds of smoke in the air, some of the women fainted as they saw the homes in which they had been raised in collapse under the weight of the giant shovel. Suddenly, a torrential downpour of centenarios (gold commemorative coins) fell from the bulldozer’s giant scoop!

A paletero (Popsicle seller) emptied the paletas (popsicles) from his cart and filled it with as many gold coins as he could before taking off and was soon joined by others who sifted the centenarios from the dirt and rubble.

They used their pockets, purses, hats or what ever they had, to gather as many coins as they could, before Hacienda, the equivalent of the IRS showed up. Their mood had all of a sudden changed from one of sadness to that of being jubilant.

On one occasion my friend Pedro showed me some silver coins that he had taken from his dad. He told me his father had found them in an old house that belonged to his grandma. They were big coins and along with the date of 1908 they also had the number 0.720, which is a reference to the silver content in them. We polished them with lemon juice and baking soda and made them sparkle like new. One day we decided we would go to town and try and sell them. We dressed ourselves in what we thought would make us look older and more serious so as not to arouse suspicions.

We walked into a store that specialized in old and rare coins and told the man that we wanted to sell a few silver coins. We took the coins out of a sock and put them on the counter. The man looked at them with a magnifying glass and then asked us where we had obtained them. Pedro told him that they had originally belonged to his grandma and that she had given some of them to him as gift. He didn’t seem to believe it so we thought it was best to walk out at that point.

However when we were about to leave and put away the coins he asked; “How much do you want for them?” We had no idea what they were worth so we remained silent. He then offered us twenty pesos for each one. We thought that was a lot of money for some old coins. My friend said “we’ll take it!” The man reached into a drawer and gave us the money, counting the bills as he placed them on the table. Pedro took the bills, smiled and said “gracias”.

With the money from the coins we went straight to the plaza and went on a comic book and candy buying spree. At Nano’s (a comic book shop) we bought rare issues of a comic book called “Kaliman”. They were the adventures of a mystic yogi with supernatural powers who could astral travel to distant places to meet with his masters even if he was being held captive. He sometimes performed the “actus mortis” where he would slow down his heart beat to the point where he appeared dead to foil his enemies.

He had a pen dart gun that immobilized people when they were hit and it allowed him to get away before they woke up.

In the first issue of Kaliman an eagle swoops down from the sky and snatches him from his crib while he’s asleep. The eagle then takes him to his nest in the mountains where a shepherd later finds him and rescues him. He and his wife adopt him as their child because they don’t have any children of their own, and raise him in as their own in the foothills of the Himalayas.

His first bath is in the icy and pure waters of the Ganges River formed from the melted snow of the Himalayas. His adventures were always filled with mystery and intrigue, and always seemed to take place in exotic far away places like India, Egypt or the Far East. They often involved battles with martial arts masters who had mystic powers but had used them to cause distress to other ordinary human beings.
We kept these comic books in a special box like relics from the Vatican, and we combed the comic book stores all over Leon looking for the rarest and oldest issue we could find.

Besides candy we also bought cigarettes to try then out for the first time, and for the next few weeks we went to “El Coliseo” (a cinema) to see movies like “El Santo contra las momias“(The Saint against the mummies) and other favorites. El Santo is probably the originator of wrestling mania; he was a famous wrestler from the 60’s who also made movies that now have a cult following even in Japan.

He was always fighting bad guys; he drove the latest sports cars (he liked convertibles), and was always surrounded by beautiful ladies in distress.

Another friend, Juan Carlos, told me that he his grand father in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco had revealed to him, were there was a cache of gold coins hidden within the walls of his home, and instructed him to one day take them out after he had passed away. As we smoked cigarettes on top of the roof top, coughing a lot, we made plans to some day go to Lagos to find this treasure and buy a ranch with horses. Those were the good ole days.

I guess all these events played an important role in our lives because we all succumbed to “gold fever” later on. It began with our friend Ricardo telling us he had met a strange man who used a tree branch to find water in ranches, I believe they call this “dousing”. In some parts of the world these individuals are very much respected because they quite often find water where others have failed. This method of finding water goes back to the time of the Romans. Ricardo invited this man to his house to “scope” it out because he was sure there was a treasure hidden somewhere inside because the house was haunted, according to him. This man had also found gold by using a pendulum attached to his arm with a string; it would start swinging if it detected the presence of gold or silver underneath the floor or walls. One day we went to visit him in the old section of the city in an old but very elegant apartment and he showed us some of the coins he had found in old houses. When we saw those old coins we knew he was not making this up and that he had the ability to find water and gold with his peculiar methods.

One afternoon this strange man came over; wearing old hobnail boots, an old hat, and a funny looking bag in which he carried his instruments. He tied a copper pendulum to his arm using a piece of string and started to walk around the house, and wherever it started to swing he would stop. After a long time he stopped, made some notes on his pad and then walked around again asking Ricardo questions about the history of the house. He told us that indeed there was gold buried underneath the storage room of Ricardo’s house. He said it was buried a good 3-5 meters deep and that it was covered with a good deal of rock. We were all delighted to hear such good news.

We started the digging almost immediately and had three shifts so everyone could participate even if they had to work or go to school. Pretty soon it started to look as if a subway station was being constructed with all digging and dirt piling up, and it came to the point where we didn’t know what to do with it. There was so much of it that we ran out of space so we started to dump it in the park late at night.
Well we never found the buried treasure; the strange man died of a heart attack, and we destroyed the floor in Ricardo’s storage room in the process of trying to find gold.

Not long ago I drove from San Francisco to Leon to visit my father before he passed away. Tia Sara’s house is now a flower shop called “El Alcatraz” (white lily).
I looked for my childhood friends but it seems they have all moved elsewhere. Parque Hidalgo, where we used to play soccer is still there although the humming sound of the machines that made shoes in little shops on our street is no longer heard.

Right next door to our house, Don Chema used to make clowns shoes for “Circo Atayde” (A famous traveling circus in Latin America). Kaliman, our favorite comic book is no longer in print, and a department store now stands where Cine Coliseo used to be.
It was in this small movie theatre that we used to wage battles with rotten produce instead of watching movies.

The man that used to yell "agua miel"(Honey water produced by the agave plants from which tequila is also made) no longer comes around. I remember being awakened very early in the morning but I forgave him because the agua miel was like nectar to me. He rode a donkey with red clay jugs strapped to the sides, and you had to provide your own container for the agua miel.

Don Isidoro's, the store where my grandmother used to buy pan dulce (sweet bread) is still there, although he has long passed away.

One day while I was filling up my car's gas tank at the station near the park, an attendant came running up to me.

He looked at me inquisitively and asked, "Are you related to Doña Sarita?" This is how the neighbors affectionately referred to her.
"Yes," I said.

"The one who used to live on Irapuato Street”?

Yes, I said.

"Did you know they found gold in her house?" He said.

"Really, where" I asked, more than curious.

"In the kitchen," he said.

"The new owner was supervising the demolition of the house when told one of the workers to knock down the wall where her stove used to be, and when he hit the wall with his pick they were showered with gold coins. That is how he built such a nice house and flower shop. I have to go now," he said and proceeded to help another customer.

As I enjoyed my mother's lentil soup I thought of how nice it had been to see the closing chapter of Tia Sara's story. I told my mother but she already knew, and was not at all surprised that they found the gold. She said “did you think it was just something she had made up all this time?”

Before I left Leon I passed by the new flower shop and paused outside for a few seconds to look at the place where Tia Sara’s house once stood.

Inside the girls were busy making candles and flower arrangements; how appropriate that these things which bring about beauty and tranquility be made in a place where a troubled ghost once appeared. I have a feeling he finally has found peace.

“Jesús was a Punk Rocker” Excerpt

noreply@blogger.com (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:38:00 +0000

The summer night was unusually silent and dark when Jesús Guerra and his family crossed into Texas for the first time. Music could not be heard from any of the vehicles on the bridge; beggar ladies with their kids wrapped in sarapes around their bodies were absent; and the signs marking the divide between U.S. and México and forbidding certain types of fruit into the States could not be clearly read.

It had been a long trip for the Guerras. For the last twenty-four hours, they had been crammed into their tiny sedan along with blankets and pillows, two bags of sandwiches and fruit, and El Snoopy, a grey English terrier.

Mijo, ¡mira el río! said Doña Guerra.

Eso no puede ser el Río Bravo, said Don Guerra. Es demasiado chico.

Jesús and his older sister Miranda tried to catch a glimpse at the Rio Grande, but they couldn’t see anything through the back door’s dark-tinted window; the bridge’s chain-linked fence reflected the artificial lights from above, and the clouds covered any natural light from illuminating the river. El Snoopy stood up on his hind legs to look through the tinted window, but only saw his own reflection. A feeling of disappointment came over everyone in the car.

Jesús was twelve years old when he made his way over the river that summer night. He was tall, skinny, and brown. Because of his extraordinary height, he stood out when the short, fat Chicano border patrol agent asked everyone to get out of the car.

Entonces, sir, you and your family are moving to McAllen? the agent asked Don Guerra, who had decided that McAllen, Texas, not Puebla, México, was the place in which God wanted his family to work, live, and spread the gospel.

The agent popped the trunk and banged the sides of the car, listening for any strange muffling. He felt over the seat cushions and noticed a bible on top of the dashboard. He kept looking over at Jesús. He gazed at him from top to bottom. Miranda held El Snoopy in her arms, and he growled at the agent briefly. Jesús wore a white polo with dark blue jeans. His penny loafers were brown and worn out.

Son, you sure are tall for a Mexicanito, said the agent. What’s your date of birth?

Jesús felt humiliated and angry. His first night in gringolandia, and already, he was being treated like a criminal.

March 12, 1977, Jesús said sharply with a heavy accent.

Really? said the agent.

Yes, sir.

No?

There was a long pause. Jesús got nervous, and the sweat on his forehead start to stream more than before. He glanced at his family, and then, at the short, fat agent.

My daughter’s birthday was March 12, 1977, said the agent.

Jesús kept his head down. He didn’t know what to say.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm in the process of printing my first collection of short stories. Please check this blog frequently to be notified of its release.

"Hummingbird Mass" Excerpt

noreply@blogger.com (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:37:00 +0000

“The Hummingbird Mass”

It appears to be a quiet Tuesday night along Japonica Street, near the Hummingbird Theater. Commercial buildings collide with residential ones, and neon lights mixed with soft, yellow lamps stream into one, from point to point. Each of the homes shut their eyes to the buzz and hum growing down the way from the line of concertgoers whereas the commercial sites are in full swing, open for business and pleasure.

702. Carla’s Boutique. 704. Townhouse. 706. Townhouse. 708. Adult Books and Videos. 710. Pizza by the Slice.

The air isn’t too cold, the sidewalks are dry, and the lights dimly light the streets as my mates and I make our way to Phil’s Greek restaurant about two hours before the show. Gyros, hummus, and olives dominate the table, and music conquers the conversation.

“What concert was a religious experience for you?” someone asks.

"On the Corner of 8th & Harvey" Excerpt

noreply@blogger.com (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:51:00 +0000

One hot afternoon on the corner of 8th and Harvey, the south Texan sun beamed down its rays of grace and hope onto my fate as a young half Anglo, half Mexican boy living in McAllen. That day the temperature reached almost 100ºF, like many other days near the beginning of the school year. The desert heat could be seen sizzling in the distance from the tops of asphalt covered streets; parking lots were fiery furnaces for the poor fellows pitching up the shopping carts and reeling them back to the stores in long snake-like fashion; the stretches of palm trees along the streets stood still, grasping for any ounce of moisture or a wisp from a stream of cool breeze in the upper atmosphere.

I walked home from school everyday in these extreme conditions, but the heat, “el calor,” never phased me. I enjoyed el calor and its effects: sweat running down my forehead, cheeks, and back; a hazy, fuzzy feeling vibrating around the outer edges of my hair, like an aura or spiritual tinge; and, of course, the squinting of the eyes as they peered through the bright, blinding light. El calor made me feel like I was being cleansed or purified. My father used to tell me a bible story about a prophet who asks God to place coals on his mouth to purify him of his sin, and mi mamá used to tell me about a saint that would walk on burning rocks in order for the ancient gods to sanitize his body of leprosy. Some guy at school told me that I enjoy el calor because I’m part Mexican; I knew that was a load of bull because mi mamá hated the heat, and she was born and raised in the motherland, in Coahuíla. Either way, I wasn’t known among my friends for being the guy that liked the heat, but more for the guy who was a “half-breed.”

Actually, I wasn’t really “Anglo” per se, but French, according to my father, whose ancestors came from France then moved to Covington, Louisiana, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. None of that matter anyway because I had visited neither France nor Louisiana. Besides, in South Texas, anyone who was white and not Mexican was Anglo. Period.

All that other cultural stuff simply didn’t matter unless it had to do with Latin culture. Like my friend Diego, he hated being called Mexican. Not that he despised Mexicans, but he was one hundred percent Colombian. Calling him Mexican was like kicking him straight in the liver. Diego Hernandez-Rodriguez (de Colombia) wouldn’t have any of that nonsense; he’d set the record straight, right away. He was used to that type of confrontation growing up because his country could be a rough place. In Bogotá, the capital, he had seen a man shot in the street in the head, point blank. Diego said— That kind of stuff either makes you scared, strong, or crazy. I’m stronger now.

In late August, I felt strong because I could withstand the heat. To outsiders, McAllen’s weather was unbearable, like my friend Bobby, who moved to the Rio Grande Valley from Southern California two years ago. When he first moved to the Valley, we would go skating together, and he’d quit only after about twenty minutes. He couldn’t stand el calor. It took him a whole year before he adjusted to it. He’d said— When I got off the plane and stepped outside, it felt like I had walked into an oven.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm in the process of printing my first collection of short stories. Please check this blog frequently to be notified of its release.

"Roy Alberto" by Alberto Cárdenas-Cárdenas

noreply@blogger.com (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:56:00 +0000

Roy Alberto

A mi nieto treinta y uno
le pusieron Roy Alberto,
y es grande como ninguno
y siempre está contento.

Es mi nieto parlanchino
después de que ha comido,
pero se pone mohíno
cuando no lo han atendido.

Lo ponen en su columpio
después de estar satisfecho,
y a los quince minutos
ya está dormido derecho.

Su hermanita Anelisa
lo quiere con gran amor,
y dice que es su niño
que se lo mandó el Señor.

Sus padres y sus abuelos
están muy encariñados
con este nieto tan bueno
que nos tiene entusiasmados.

10 de noviembre de 1977
Alberto C. Cárdenas