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Four months after returning to New York, it was time for me to grow up. I needed to finish high school and get my life in order. I couldn’t be a high school dropout. What reason would I have for ending up as a stock boy at Duane Reade or at the local Key Food? Why lose out on all the opportunities that would be become available to me with an education in my back pocket? Those were just some of the questions I pondered in the months following my departure from Florida to the day I found myself being introduced to the black, baldheaded representative of an unorthodox school catering to older individuals who attended classes during the day and at night, depending on their knowledge and comprehension of the English language.

Continue reading “I’m Tired – MCNDHS (Segment 4)”

I hated it in New York. There was nothing that made me happier than staying home to watch TV. I even mastered the skill of pretending to go to school while staying in the comfort of my bed with the covers over my head all day, every day. “It’s cold,” I’d say when coming out of the shower during the winter months in a house that didn’t have central air to even out the cold and the heat. “It’s too hot,” I’d say as I’d sweat even as I had nothing on and a fan blasting on my inner parts to keep me cool. Excuse after excuse, after excuse. That’s what I had for much of the time I spent in New York from the moment we moved back in 1997 to my second year at Transit Tech High School, located on the outer edges of Brooklyn and the beginning of the Ozone Park section of Queens. What a terrible decision it was to go to that school.

Continue reading “I’m Tired – Moving Back to Florida (Segment 3)”

He lay on top of her. Kissing his way down from her neck to her chest. Imagining two voluptuous globes. Caressing her in ways that a man would touch a wife, girlfriend or lover. Sadly, as romantic as the act may sound the female involved is his 9-year-old daughter. As my sister, Jaime, and I bear witness to our father’s disgusting act – violating a helpless young girl – we ran to our mother, Veronica, who was in the kitchen preparing dinner. We told her what is happening in her daughter’s bedroom. What the man she promised to love, honor, cherish and obey for the rest of her days was doing to her eldest child. Would she believe it? Would she ignore it? Not my mother. Immediately, she acted and ran to the room. Whatever he was doing as we ran away, he had stopped. Did he know he had seen? My mother may not have seen what we saw, but she still did what any mother should. The police came, took him in and unfortunately let him go shortly thereafter. “There’s not enough evidence,” they said. What evidence could there be except the word of her children, ages 9, 7 and 3? Times were different, especially in the south, well as much as Florida could be considered part of the south in the traditional sense. After he was let go, my father returned home and things returned to normal, or as normal as things could be.

Continue reading “I’m Tired – The Early Years (Segment 1)”

Fred’s Alley was the world to me, even now. Quite a few people helped with my upbringing. That dusty dirt road in South Carolina had everything and everybody I would ever need, friends, family and fun. The first house belonged to Miss Galena White. The very pretty widowed mother of two sons and two daughters had frequent visits from a married man, so they whispered. The sons moved to Maryland. She had a lot of chickens that lay a lot of eggs.  My time at her house taught me the importance of using cold cream on your face. Sometimes they wanted to buy a chicken.  She would either ring its neck or chop its head off.  The headless chicken would hop around; even fly for a few minutes before reaching its permanent end.  Then it would be dunked into a big pot of boiling hot water.  That made it easier to pluck the feathers off.  During Easter time she sold lots of eggs.

My family owned the second house on Fred’s Alley. My mother left me with my grandmomma and my granddaddy so they could raise me. I was a few months old when she left.  I called them momma and daddy.  I knew she was my mother only because they told me and her name was on my birth certificate. As far as I was concerned, momma’s and daddy’s name should have been on the birth certificate. My youngest aunt ended up helping daddy take care of me when momma left.  There was a better job waiting for her in a place called Long Island, New York. She worked there so that we could have a better life.

The house was surrounded by pecan trees.  We had a garden with peas, beans, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet and white potatoes, chickens and pigs.  Before the garden was planted, I had to use a hoe to make rows, plant seeds and cover them up.  I had to pick the vegetables and help preserve the vegetables.  I had to feed the chickens and take the eggs out of their nests.  I had to shuck corn to put in the pig’s slop.  I had to feed the pigs their slop.

Next door to us were Edward and Mary James.  Their three oldest children moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to find good jobs and the three youngest were still in school. Their youngest daughter was my best friend even though she was a few years older than me.  Mr. James, her father, was a preacher. They used to take me to revivals when sweaty preachers from out of town pitched their tents for about a week. Next door to them were Harley and Lina Brown.  They were momma’s and daddy’s best friends.  Everybody called her Little Momma because she stood about three feet tall.  Besides momma, she was one of the best cooks in town.  She earned money cooking for other people and she was a seamstress.  He worked at the cold storage where they slaughtered and butchered pigs and cows. Their house always smelled like lemon pound cake. She stood on a crate when she cooked. They had two sons. One was nasty and loved to touch little girls in places he shouldn’t. His nasty habits made him ugly. The other was nice and good looking and got stabbed during a fight.  Little Momma knew about this preacher that always preached about the miraculous healing power in his prayer cloths.  She wrote asking him to send her one. He said he would be more than happy to if she sent him some money.  Her faith was not deterred.  I just couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t pray for her for free.  I was taught at a very early age children should be seen and not heard.  I asked no questions.

Next door to them sat the abandoned Joffrey house with tons of weeds surrounding it. Next door to that was the railroad house that belonged to F.D. Joffrey. When the door was opened you could see straight through it. The word in the alley was his wife ran off with another man leaving him to raise their daughter and two sons. One day he sent his three children to live with his sister who lived further down in the alley. He used to come to visit us sometime. He never washed.  He smelled bad. He never changed his clothes, but momma never stopped him from coming to our house or sitting at our dining room table to eat with us.  She said if you were going to mistreat somebody, don’t invite them into your house.  He taught me how to play checkers so good that I could beat most of the old men.

The four houses that led down into the loop of the alley belonged to the Joffreys. Around the corner were the Geralds. They didn’t come out much and their shades were never up.  They didn’t socialize with people often.  Next door to them were Luida and her mean husband, Hammond Davis.  He resembled the bulldog with the smooshed-in face that he treated like a son.  He spent a lot of time parked outside Galena White’s house when his wife went to work in New York too.  While she was working she took classes to become a florist.  When she came back home, she became the first black florist in town.  Some days she let me come to the shop to let me work with her.  Around the corner from them was another Gerald family with about 15 children. Next door to them was the Mullins family, and next door to them was the other Mullins brother with his wife and children. Next door to them was the aunt of the man whose name was on my birth certificate. Her house was filled with her husband and their 14 children. That family loved me because I was family. We spent a lot of time together.  She taught me how to do hair. I could use a curling iron like a real beautician.  Then Fred’s Alley came to a dead end.

Right after he got in from working at the wood mill, daddy would give me my favorite cookies or corn cheese puffs or candy. But the one thing he most looked forward to after work was over on Fridays, was making a trip across Highway 76 to Momma Aileen’s to have shots of stump hole liquor. He’d be sober enough to make his way back across highway without getting hit by a car or one of those long distance trucks. Then he would sit by the pot belly wood burning stove smoking a non- filter Winston cigarette and holding his mason jar half filled with the remainder of his liquor. Every now and then he made repetitive sounds as though he was trying to spit out the tiny bits of tobacco the cigarette left behind every time he took a puff. He would sit there drinking until he fell asleep. He would go to bed after falling off the chair or bumping that head that he had blistered ever-so-often on the stove. But Saturday mornings before sunrise, he and his best friend, Mr. Brown, would go down to the river to catch some fish. They would come back with croakers, perch and spots.  As soon as he got back with the catch of the day, he’d have me come out to the back yard to help him scale and gut the fish.  We would have fish and grits for breakfast.  Sometimes he would have my aunt make him the eggs found inside the fish. Every Sunday morning he would put on his one and only favorite suit and drive to Front Street to listen to the sermon from a pew in the back of the church.

A couple of years after momma left, she returned from Long Island.  She no longer worked for rich Jewish people.  Anytime anyone said that, the only words I understood were worked for rich people, thinking Jewish meant some sort of white people in New York. I was happy momma was home.  She was my protector.  She would let me nestle under her when I was scared to go to sleep after seeing that scary face of the wicked witch of the west on the “Wizard of Oz” or when somebody died and the body would be in a casket at the family’s house in the living room or  after hearing scary stories.   Getting older didn’t stop my fear.

She went back to cooking and cleaning for rich white people at home. Some of them were doctors, business owners and lawyers.  On days when the bosses weren’t home, I was allowed to go with her.  I’d get an up-close view inside those big beautiful houses they called mansions.  Everything inside looked like nothing I had ever seen.  Bathrooms were colorful and fancy.  I had to sneak to use them.   The floors in the kitchens and the bathrooms were tiled. Some of the other rooms had carpet and the others had shiny wood planks.  Everything was shiny and beautiful.  I wasn’t allowed to touch anything except the chair I was sitting on.  It wasn’t my responsibility to help clean anything.  It wasn’t supposed to be my dream to clean up behind lazy white people.  That would be a nightmare.  It fell upon me while I was there to read, write some of what I read and learn something from it. When I finished that, momma would tell me stories that always had some sort of lesson in the end.  She would teach me about people.  She explained how important it was to respect everybody.  She explained how kindness could take me a mighty long way.  She explained to me why she worked her fingers to the bone even though she was tired.  She explained why she smiled when she didn’t feel like it.  She explained to me why she smiled at people even when she knew they cared nothing about her.  She taught me why it was important to have your own, even if you got married and be with him forever, you still needed your own.  Never touch stuff that didn’t belong to me and to stay out of grown folks business and to never repeat stuff I heard grown folks talking about. Bottom line; stay in a child’s place.

My best friend graduated from high school and moved to Philadelphia to work and go to college.  I missed her. My youngest aunt moved to New York to do the same thing.  I became friends with Dianna McFadden.  She and her brother Ervin came to live with their aunt and uncle because their parents had passed away.   Ervin was 17 years old, tall and good looking.  He dropped out of school.  He used to stop at our gate to talk to me and momma would make me come in the house.  I was told more than once to stay away from him.

I’d take a short cut through the soybean field to get to choir practice.  They never painted that barn with that rusted tin top almost at the edge of the field.  I wondered why. The tall yellow poplar trees lined up at the edge of the field made it look real pretty like a picture. That yellow in the trees made up for all the color that was gone from the barn. That whatever wood they used to it build looked old and gray. As it started to pour down rain, I saw Ervin making his way across the field towards me.  I didn’t tell him I was going that way.  He said a lot of nice things to me and made me laugh.  I let him know if I was seen with him, I’d get in trouble. He kissed me in the mouth.  I’d never done that before.  He said the only way he would leave was if I promised to meet him the next day.  As I sloshed my way through the field to get to practice, I wanted to turn back and kiss him some more. The more I saw him, the more he grew on me.  We started sneaking to see each other almost every day.

It was July 3^rd. Mr. F.D. came with his rifle to meet daddy and Mr. James.  I followed the three of them to the pig pen. The pig was shot right between the eyes.  They hung it up to clean out its innards.  After that was done, the pig was washed and cleaned and thrown on the barbecue pit.  Some of the skin was fried to make cracklin.  The fat from the cracklin was used to make soap.  The pig was cooked all night long.  The next day a lot of people would come over for the barbecue.  That gave me the chance to run off to see Ervin.  There was a lot of touching and feeling and kissing.  I had never done anything like that with a boy. It felt good.

It was Ervin’s birthday.  We decided to meet in the unpainted barn in the soy bean field where nobody could see us.  I was ashamed of the way I felt when he looked at me.  His eyes told me that he meant what he said.  His words were sweet like a melody he wrote just for me.  He kissed me on both of my sweaty hands.  He looked at every inch of my face as he touched it. And then, it happened.  I started tingling everywhere.  Especially in that place called Possible.  It was called that because momma said it was possible for that place to take your life up or down in a matter of seconds. She said the only thing that was supposed to come between me and Possible was a wash cloth. I had to leave.  We promised to meet on Wednesday.

I couldn’t get him out of my mind.  On Wednesday, as I approached the barn, I could see him.  I could see his smile.  He was holding a flower in his hand.  When we got in the barn there was a croaker sack made out of burlap on the ground.  He asked me to sit down there with him.  One short kiss, then two long ones.  I almost passed out.  The next thing I knew, he came between me and Possible.  I got home real late and momma wasn’t happy.

Weeks passed before I saw him again.  When I did, we stayed out until everybody in his house was asleep and we snuck in. I ended up falling asleep and stayed all night.  The next morning I was afraid to go home.  I didn’t know what was going to happen when I got there.  When I walked in the door, momma didn’t say a word.  I went in the bathroom to wash up.  Within the next few minutes, my uncle was there.  Momma bought a suitcase into the living room.  She told me I was going to live with my mother in New York.  My who?  I didn’t know her.  I didn’t want to go.  Momma looked like she was tired of worrying about me.  I couldn’t stop crying, but that didn’t change her mind.

I arrived at Port Authority bus terminal.  My mother had to work and her common-law husband met me at the station.  His name was Mr. Benjamin, a soft-spoken man. He was the father of my youngest brother. The twins, Anthony and Antonia had a different father.  I didn’t really know those people.  I cried everyday.  I called down South to beg momma to let me come back home.  A week later she showed up in the Bronx.  I was so happy I didn’t know what to do.  She sent me and my sister to the store to get her some flour so she could make us some homemade biscuits with dinner.  By the time we got back, she was in the bathroom and told us to call the ambulance.  She was sick.  There was blood.  They took her to Harlem Hospital where my mother worked.  As soon as I could visit her, I did so as often as I could.

The weather on this August day was nice and hot.  It was my 16^th birthday.  I decided to walk across the 138^th Street Bridge to visit momma in the hospital.  I got there around 5 o’clock. I let her know that I wanted to return to the South with her. She knew it.  I promised this time I would listen.  I stayed with her as late as they would let me.  When I was leaving, she reached in her pocket-book and gave me all the money she had in there.  She told me she didn’t want me walking home and to get me something for my birthday. I was happy because I knew I was going back to my real home.

The next morning, because I left the window open, so many flies were swarming around my ears and my eyes, they woke me up.  I finally got up.  Shortly after, the telephone rung.  The person on the other end of the phone asked to speak with my mother.  I told her my mother wasn’t home.  She identified herself and asked me my name and age.  I told her.   She told me that momma died.  I dropped the phone and screamed so loud that my brothers and sister ran into the kitchen where I was.  I couldn’t believe it.  It couldn’t be true.  The only love I had couldn’t be gone.  I no longer had a protector.  She looked so healthy and happy the day before.  She didn’t look sick.  I lost the chance to tell her how sorry I was for breaking her heart.

 

Staring off into the Boston skyline with limitless beads of salty perspiration flooding down my face into the faux grass rug underneath my foldable lawn chair; the music blasting, a beer in one hand and a Monica’s Deli Italian sub in the other. Our apartment rooftops were the closest thing we could get to soak up the summer sun in the city. After growing up on the beach this slightly crushed my soul to be sweating on a hot rooftop rather than dipping my toes in the crisp ocean water. But somewhere in mind I decided that living in a city was the way to go. I loved the busyness. Always people coming and going, never knowing who you could meet next. Ever since I was young I dreamt of living in New York City. The idea of it made me eager to grow up as fast as possible so that I could move out and be on my own in the awe inspiring ‘big city’. However, after graduating high school New York didn’t seem like the right place just yet. After visiting and applying to colleges all around the country I decided on Boston. It seemed like a reasonable stepping-stone from Catholic high-school beach life to big city madness. To me Boston felt like a hometown city with enough people to spark your interest but enough consistency to create a life.

As I sipped on my Sam Adams Summer Ale I remembered, my cousin Emily’s birthday. “I have to call her right now!” I alarmingly thought to myself, due to the fact that I almost always forget everyone’s birthday. It was a miracle that it even dawned on me in my dazed state of mind. “Hey Em! Happy Birthday!! I wish I was there to celebrate with you.” Emily responded, “I know I wish you could come out with us tonight! Its going to be so much fun.” In that moment I stopped and thought, “You know what, I will”. Immediately I hung up the phone and booked a train ticket to the big, beautiful New York City. There was something that happened in that moment when I decided to just go. I felt like this was going to be more than a weekend trip. This was going to be something bigger.

It’s an excerpt from my third essay. A memory of my parents’ separation. In the final essay, I will write about their reunion. Just wanted your feedback regarding my writing style. Thank you.

A week later my dad and my little sister came back for me. I had to go with them. Vera was not home. We stayed with some gypsies in an old barrack. Everything seemed dirty and dusty there; constant parties and many little kids surrounded us. We shared a bed with other children. Shortly after, we moved into an old house. It was just three of us. My sister and I needed our mother. The house was on the outskirts of the town. To enter it my dad had to shovel the snow from the doorsteps. Our feet and cheeks were freezing. We finally entered the house, and my dad made a fire. I could not fall asleep; I kept imagining that my mother returned and was now searching for us. I quietly cried. In the morning, because of another snowstorm, we could not open the door for hours. After a few weeks of moving from one place to another, we came back to Vera. She sent my dad into a rehabilitation center.

Spring finally came. Icicles of different sizes and shapes were hanging from every rooftop. They thawed, and a sound of dropping water filled every corner of the town. We loved to suck icicles imagining them to be an ice cream. The town had many firehouses that released dark smoke. The smoke would settle everywhere and turned snow into a gray substance. We were constantly dirty, but we were happy that spring came. It brought us hope that soon we would be with our mother.

During one of the spring afternoons, my sister and I went inside the apartment to have lunch. We run upstairs and suddenly stopped. In front of the apartment door stood the most beautiful woman ever – our mother.

I cannot whole-heartedly love an entertainment system that decides to cast out the people of my color. This may have been a subconscious decision that was made when I was younger, but it is a conscious decision now. When I was younger, I always picked out the Asian character in a TV show, film, etc. as my favorite. I was always interested in the cartoons that were dubbed from Japan, even though when I was younger, I didn’t know that it came from Japan. I just find it interesting that even when I was younger, ignorant to all, I still had a connection to my Asian roots.

I spent good times together with my grandmother. She wore dentures to chew food. The second she removed them off I put my index finger inside her mouth. She took a liking to it plus she looked cute with her wrinkly face and toothless mouth.

We laughed at her because she only knew how to speak two words. She would go “Nick Nick Nick” if she got angry. We couldn’t understand what she meant by “Orange.” Maybe she wanted an orange.

Several months later her health worsened and my mom brought her to Franklin Center in the intensive care unit. My mom revealed little about her condition, but I sensed the tension on her face. I didn’t believe that would be the last time seeing her.

And then on the morning of November 18, 2003, my mom gave the dreaded news. I remembered the anguished look on her face not wanting me to hear those words. She summoned enough courage to say, “Nanay Dig died.” The shock of the news hit me. I didn’t know how to react since I was too young to comprehend death.

HI Class,

Hope you all are well towards the end of this semester, I’d like to share here the first two parts of my three part story on an Salvadoran Performance Artist, titled “Irvin”.  Its a longer version of what I had posted earlier, on the undocumented immigrant Alejandro. For convenience, I will post here the entire piece. Looking forward to hear your thoughts and opinions on it, I greatly appreciate any suggestions form you!

Sincerely,

Xiaoting

 

 

  Irvin

How does one make sense of life? How does one, making sense of the tangible and the surreal, the factual and the fantastical?   To Irvin Morazan, there is a lineage of humanism, however defined, will carry on and through in any form, any life, any individual.  “A healer once told me, if I overcome this (cancer), I will heal my family from seven generations back and beyond.”  To him, cancer is a manifestation of traumatic childhood experiences, a karmic tribulation inherited from the past lives that has very real consequence if left unresolved, clings on.

 

“Volver, Volver”

Life is a dance of reality and dreams, spiritual practices are intuitive like artistic creativity. The sacred rituals of the ancestors can be used to create art that in turn, will heal the spirit.

The second floor space of the Bronx Museum of the Arts is like a chapel reimagined by a cubist. The four panels of wall facing the street, tilted and staggered. Lights pouring through long strips of colored glass, creating blocks of light that will please Mondrian. It is a Sunday afternoon in the Bronx. At 3 pm, the place is filled with curators, art students, friends, volunteers. Mingling people holding cocktails, people serving food. Some already sat down on the concrete floor, forming an organic stage. A noise from the stereo signaled that something is on, the crowd quieted down, anticipating.

A group of twenty people, their faces covered by zebra-print balaclavas. All of them wearing identical white cloaks, each with a white pillow tied to the waist.  One wore a hairy costume like yeti fur. They marched into the stage. Carrying with them, a gigantic out-of-this world headdress made of foam, foil, zebra and mythologies. The oldest man among them, wearing sunglasses and a sombrero, carries a guitar. As the last zebra man came on, they chanted: Aaaaaaaaaa-Eeeeeeeeeeee-Ooooooooo-Uuuuuuuuu.

This is Irvin’s dream, in this dream he is omniscient. White smoke was blown onto the yeti man, waking him. Irvin walks to the center stage and started playing a harmonica. Thin strands of sound glides through the room, revitalizing. The old man whispered in response, “Volver,……. Volver……”

He puts on the headdress, transformed into a living sculpture. Then he grinds a small slab of granite with a pestle, creating bird call as he started to unwind time. Or was it the sound of an winding tape? As he count the hours, the zebra people went about their daily activities.

Twelve O’Clock! He announced,

Happy New Year! The group cheered as they hugged one another, someone hugged a baby in the audience.

He continued to count the hours, another twelve hours passed in seconds. The yeti waltzed to the center, overtaking the dream. The group untied the pillow from their backs, gently embraces it. The old man started to sing.

Este amor apasionado, anda todo alborotado, por volver…

The group danced with their pillows, lovingly and tenderly. Dancing with their lovers, their mothers, their brothers.

Voy camino a la locura y aunque todo me tortura, see querer…

Unperturbed by the events, a couple sitting on both side of the musician, conversing in sign language. Two masked figures massaging the couple’s backs, as if to console this silent chatter.

…Y volver volver, volver a tus brazos otra vez, llegare hasta donde estés, …

Our melancholy baritone sings: Yo se perder, yo se perder, quiero volver, volver….

“Volver.”

As the song finishes, Irvin took off his headdress. He lied it down as six people carried it off stage, followed by the rest of the group. The audience cheered as old man exited last.

Performance art is shamanism, it’s theater too. In this interconnected reality, even the whimsical possess significance.

Conny

In museum’s third floor conference room, performers chattered in excitement. Elated it was over, surprised of how short it felt, ranting about the sound guy. Wrapping up with their props, tucking equipments away.

Irvin is surrounded by his students, who came all the way from Richmond to see he perform. These twenty year olds have a pious adoration for their eccentric art professor. For the very first assignment of the school year, Irvin asked them to write their own obituaries. They made Donald Trump-shaped piñatas filled with bacon in their sculpture classes.

The one left alone in the hallway was the old man. Still wearing a hat, he changed into black suits and dress shoes as if just came from a wedding. Clearly an outsider from the loud-mouthed, multi-colored youth. I walked out to congratulate him on the performance, he smiled but didn’t say a word. Alejandro doesn’t speak english. This stocky, grizzly bearded man looks in good shape, but heaves painfully when he walks.

Hiring Alejandro to sing “Volver Volver” wasn’t Irvin’s initial thought. Irvin’s first choice, a Mexican and a friend collaborator who recently moved to Florida because his son just got a job there. As an undocumented immigrant he feels a lot safer in the south given the uncertainties of the political situation.  So to make it up to Irvin, he referred Alejandro of Bed Stuy who came from Nicaragua. He has a voice full of stories and plays a beautiful hand of guitar.

As the project started coming together, Irvin has gotten to know a little about Alejandro. He learnt that they came to the States roughly around the same time and crossed the border in similar ways. Although Alejandro came as an adult at the age of twenty six while Irvin was just eight years old. He also learnt that as himself became naturalized due to young age, Alejandro remained undocumented. One of his sons who lives in Costa Rica haven’t seen him for over twenty years, he never get to hold his grandchildren.

He also learnt that he initially came to this country for a girl named Conny. A girl that he wrote a famous song for, his first love. He was sixteen and she was fifteen when they fell for each other. Her military officer father didn’t like him because he is from a lower class. To break off this relationship, the father moved the family to another city. Leaving no means of contact,  his first love is thus gone. Like other Latin American countries, Nicaragua was divided by race and class which often went together. It perhaps explains how the daughter of a Nicaraguan military man was given an Irish-German name Conny.

The story did not just end there. Heartbroken, Alejandro picked up music. He was taught to play guitar by his musician father but never pursued it. His first song was named after her. He sang “Conny” to himself at first; then to families and friends, to strangers. To anyone who will sympathize with his sorrow. He sang and sang until the whole town knew about the song. It became so popular that some even tried to help find her.

The years after saw an intensified political situation, it was a time where almost every civilian was involved in politics left and right. Alejandro also became rigorously involved with the left-wing Sandinistas. It wasn’t until ten years later they met again. She was recently widowed. Her husband and the father of her two children, a military man very much like her own father died during the civil war. Ten years later, Conny and Alejandro reunited.

1985, six years since the Sandinistas National Liberation Front overthrew the last Somoza dictator of Nicaragua. Unsettled by the burgeoning communist influence in Latin America, the Reagan administration secretly funded and trained right-wing Nicaraguan militant group the “Contras” to further sabotage the young regime. Years of civil unrest, war and corruption had left the country in a state of poverty, desperation and ecological desolation.

In the same year Alejandro came to United States. Things became difficult and he couldn’t find work back at home, and he wanted make money to support her and the children.  America was sold to him on the idea that it’s the place where money was made, besides it wasn’t really a choice to stay. Yet after he came here he was presented with a different set of reality.

Being an undocumented minority who doesn’t speak English. There were not many job opportunities and with the few left that are legal, neither were they dignified nor well paid.   Making ends meet became a daily struggle, let alone sending money back home. One cannot imagine what he had to go through these years, stranded in a country with limited means to support himself. Now thirty-something years later, debilitated by a case of bad arthritis, Alejandro couldn’t work anymore. He still lives in the project housing in Bed Stuy. He could not get welfare.

In violation of several International Laws for aiding anti-government rebels, the International Court of Justice ordered United States to pay billions of dollars in reparation to Nicaragua. United States refused payment to this day.

In the car ride back to Brooklyn, we begged him to sing “Conny” for us. He said he was ashamed to keep in touch with her because he was doing poorly. He said the relationship faded with time, he hadn’t heard from her again. Time had passed and all there left was a song, Alejandro still chokes up when he sings about her.

 

“Something never gets talked about”

Irvin said, I got a chance to do this performance, with a thousand dollars from the Bronx Museum, it went to Alejandro. He is undocumented, he has got arthritis and can’t work, but he has this beautiful talent. That’s why I hired him. Instead of making big sculptures I hired an undocumented immigrant to sing a song.

“Going back to me, the reason why I am making this whole performance was that I was twelve when my mother was deported. I didn’t see her again for another two years. They locked her up in Mexico for three months before they deported her.”

“There was no structure back then, so they could do what they want with you. What happened with Trump’s administration and Obama’s too was that they deported a lot of people. The children stayed behind because they are citizens. It’s fucked up to separate these families, and it’s exactly what happened to me. I’m making my performance piece about that, it’s about this loss and divides. This beautiful Spanish song is about passions but to me it’s more than romance. It’s an intimate emotional song. That’s why the title of my piece is called Volver Volver, it means Come Back, Come Back. The song Conny talks about his love for her and this song he performed today…  all talks about this distance. This lost love, usually not because someone choses to leave but because wars and all these external reasons. It separates people. That’s something never gets talked about.”

“ We are all kind of screwed up, my story is crazy but there are millions of these stories. This is what’s happening to a lot of people right now.”

“So how did you reunite with your mother?”

“She came back through the border, illegally.”

The Estranged Father

The tattoos on Irvin’s body is a map of archaic symbols. On the outside of his left elbow is a six-legged jaguar, tail curved and sharp claws sprawl about. Tracing upwards are morse code-like dots and dashes. Those are Mayan numerals that spells: 1, 9, 8, 5. Inside his left elbow, a feathered serpent with tail coiled. Its mouth agape and fangs exposed, howling silently towards him. Juxtaposed on his inner right elbow is a salamander depicted with elegant, fluid lines. Also facing him, it clings onto his elbow in a playful, gentle grace.

The salamander is his mother, the archetype of all that’s kind and loving. In one of the rare photographs they had taken together in Salvador before the separation,  she wore a sleeveless dress holding Irvin who was no more than five years old. They stood under the tropical sun and in front of the lush vegetation of Salvadoran suburbs, her face glows with gentleness. When he grew up he would have his mother’s eyes. The feathered serpent represents his father, who he had not been on speaking terms with for decades. In his eyes, father is the haunting dark cloud that looms over the family.

When the eight year old Irvin moved to United States to live with his parents and sister, the family lived together in a Spanish-speaking suburb of New Jersey composed of a largely working class neighborhood. Father is a mechanic who gets bitter when he drinks. He does not talk much let alone communicating with the children. Mother runs the house with the little money that they had. She is quiet too although she sings sometimes and loved the children abundantly.

One of the things Irvin will never forgive was when his father burnt all of his drawings. Drawings of dinosaurs and flowers and cars and houses. He was a quiet child whose favorite thing in the world was to draw, thousands of drawings strung around the house.  One day his father came home, his breath pungent with alcohol. He said son, you are not allowed to draw anymore. You have to become a man now.

He took all of his drawings to the front yard, he took all the blank pieces of papers and the pens and color pencils and crayons, started a bon fire and everything went up in flames. He never forgot at that moment that he wanted to kill his father. Like a cub he was small and powerless. He had just turned twelve.

He could have ran away, but who would be left to protect mother and sister? From then on he told himself that he must get bigger. Buying time in his own home so that one day he will be strong enough to defend himself.  He also took up photography in high school which for reasons unknown, his father did not presume as unmanly. The time came when he was seventeen. During one of the usual episodes of drunken rage father threatened to terrorize his sister. Saw this Irvin went outside and came back with a wooden club. He went up to his father and told him, from today on you are not allowed to abuse anyone anymore.

Father stood facing his son, staring back at him was a fully grown man taller than him and much stronger. The feathered serpent deflated. He went to the bedroom to collect a few things and left the house. From then on there was peace at home, because he never came back.

 

“ Fuck Your Wall”

The day after Donal Trump was elected into office, a grandmother in Hawaii created a Facebook event that invited friends to march on Washington in protest. The Facebook post quickly caught traction as thousands of women signed up. “The Women’s March” took place a day after Trump swore into office. A record of five million people worldwide of all background and agendas took to the street on January 21st, 2017. The march in Washington alone drew a crowd half a million strong. Blossoms of pink knitted hats dotted Pennsylvania Avenue paled the White House in comparison. Amongst them was Irvin whose face fatigued from driving but showed verve in a bright red sweater. He held overhead a big shiny silver board with letters in bold:  “ Fuck Your Wall”.

For him, its personal. After all, his entire family came to this country both legally and otherwise. Especially himself who came to the country alone as an eight year old. He feels for all the people who went through and are going through what he had. His work has gotten more political as well. When the Bronx Museum of Arts commissioned him for an exhibit, he focused on the issue of undocumented immigrants.

Exhibited concurrently with the performance piece were some sketches, some were works of his own while others were sketches he collected from undocumented immigrants he personally knew.  Sometimes things work in strange ways, little did he know this very project would lead him back to father.

Until recently, father’s life was a mystery that he didn’t know much about. Partly because he never talked about himself, partly because Irvin hated his guts. His father is still undocumented and lives in New Jersey. Irvin had not seen him since his mother’s funeral ten years ago. He has been collecting the drawings and thought of him as he drove from Richmond to New York. He called his sister.

“Oh is he there? Can you ask him if he wants to do some drawings with me? He doesn’t need to know how to draw, it’s just a game.”

Father wanted to see him so it was happening. Irvin brought along his partner Patricia, an artist from Chile to be the mediator since they could not be in the same room for more than five minutes and he wanted to ask as many questions as possible. Quite as expected, there was a wall between them, luckily father was softer to Patricia and talked.

At some point Irvin noticed that he drew those lines very well. Father said he used to be an artist when he was little.

…What?

He said when he was twelve years old, he became a child soldier and they didn’t allow him to draw anymore. He had to throw away his pencils and pick up a gun. At the same age when he burnt all of Irvin’s drawings, somebody took away his drawings too.

When Patricia asked how he got to this country, he really started talking.

It was the end of the 70s in El Salvador, civilians were being massacred for protesting against the fraud election of president Carlos Humberto Romero. Paramilitary death squads that was initially funded by elite landowners just begun to consolidate into government’s military intelligence service. Under a fiercely repressive regime that murdered thousands of students, union leaders and activists; more people were becoming radicalized by ideology of the proletarian struggle. Father had an older brother in San Miguel who was a political activist that wrote propaganda and protested on the streets.

Considered a dangerous communist, one day the death squads kidnapped his brother along with other communist protesters, tortured and executed them by blowing their heads off. Afterwards, they hung their headless, mutilated bodies upside down from a tree in the middle of the city to instill terror in other protestors. It was only from the shirt he wore did father recognize his brother’s body, a shirt that he had bought for him.

At that time father was just twenty seven years old. A famous mechanic in his town and married with two little children. Fearing that he will be considered a communist because of his brother, he took the family and fled to the countryside of San Salvador to stay with the children’s grandmother for a couple of years.  When Irvin reached two, father fled to United States. Two and a half year later, mother joined him. Even with parents in United States, the government could still hold Irvin and his sister in ransom so they would return, yet the government was dealing with more pressing issues at hand.

In October 1979, civil military group “Junta” staged a coup that displaced president Romero. They then enacted a land reform program that was fiercely opposed by the elites. Death squad killings soared. The final straw was the assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero during an open mass on March 24th, 1980. Due to Romero’s calling upon Salvadoran soldiers and security force members to disobey orders of killing civilians. A week after saw a further forty two mourners killed by government sponsored snipers at his funeral.

In May 1980, several Salvadoran revolutionary fractions coalesced into Farabundo Marti para la Liberación Nacional, or FMLN. Named after Farabundo Martí, the insurgent hero killed by National Guard who lead the indigenous farmers uprising against landowning elites half a century ago. They officially declared insurrection against the military.  A decade long civil war ensued.

 

An Ancient Humanitarian Crisis

Over millenniums, the many volcanoes that clustered in Salvador incessantly spew forth fertile ashes. Warm climate provided the sun as well as an abundance of rain water that falls from the sky, thus bore out of these elements a thriving tropical biome. To the east of capital San Salvador lies the second largest lake in the country, Lake Ilopango, it was once an active volcano crater. Some scholars believe that the great pyroclastic flow produced by a severe eruption of Ilopango in 5AD devastated Teotihuacan in the valley of Mexico, contributing to the downfall of this great Mayan metropolis. From the decline of Teotihuacan rose the Toltec civilization.

The Toltecs worshipped Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god who commands wind and rain. The stone steles and sculptures discovered from places inhabited by the Toltecs revealed a culture obsessed with war and human sacrifice.  Stone carvings often depict jaguars, eagles and coyotes eating human hearts as well as serpents feasting on skeletal human figures. In fact, the name “Toltec” is believed to come from Mayan Ch’orti’ language which means “expansion of the bruisers”, it could also be translated as “mutilators”.  Archaeologists believed the rise in human sacrifices may have created a moral crisis that caused several Nahuatl speaking groups to disperse from the valley of Mexico. Some of them fled south to the western part of where now known as El Salvador, linguistic studies traced the first wave of migration to as early as 800 CE.

An alternative theory suggested the migration was caused by a bloody war waged between two familial lines of Toltecs over succession to the throne. The defeated clan went on exile to Central America. The people accompanied the defeated Toltec clan were called “Pi-pil” which in Mayan Ch’orti’ language means “companions on the journey”. Regardless of theories, it is clear that the indigenous people who inhabit El Salvador today came here to sought refuge.

Irvin remembered playing on those ancient steppe pyramids that are hidden in the jungles of the countryside, desolated and forgotten. Like the ruins of Tazumal, those were remains of a lost memory.  Although Irvin’s grandfather was a descendant of the Pipils, he was brought up with very little native knowledge. Since “La Matanza” in 1932 and the subsequent government sanctioned killings that targeted indigenous people, his grandfather were among the many others that abandoned their native ways and language in fear of persecution.

Perhaps time is circular, maybe human history is a memory of places and  continuous migration. A few thousand years later this child would join the narrative of his ancestors and embarked on a treacherous journey to seek refuge. Except unlike his Pipil ancestors, he would have to make it alone.

In fact, this semester, I had to switch professors because the professor immediately pointed me out being the only Asian and how “Asians never get anything wrong on tests.” Even when I didn’t get the answer correct on my first try later on in the class, the professor still said, “See. Asian.” Honey, no. Get it out of your head that just because I’m Asian, it means that I am smart and immune to error. It’s actually quite the opposite, I’m not the brightest of the bunch when it comes to academics, and it’s not because of my race, it’s because of who I am.