I am feeling all fucked up today, like someone dragged me backwards in time. I arrived in back in the weekends and long summer vacations of my childhood. They were filled with music, food, roasting pigs, and more family than I can remember. Its weird growing up on both sides of the tracks. One side tells you to be proper, not to use slang, and the extended family gives you dirty looks for being the dark, bastard children your mother had with a man far too young, jovial and terribly uneducated for her Mayflower, Ivy league stock. They prime you and primp you for their world; you know all the states and continents by heart before kindergarten, can read and write most small words, and certainly mastered your arithmetic tables. You listened to triumphant war stories, tales of how they escaped the clutches of a putrid, mid-August Venetian current, conquered Peruvian mountains or a jaunted to Africa, while they chugged Manhattans, puffed on Benson and Hedges, and you sipped your hot Ovaltine in satin pajamas , lounging on an ancient Persian rug or in sassy, Swedish butterfly chairs before bed. Oh you were going to be something! They had no doubts about that. But don't marry a black man. We know your grandmother is black, but your different from them. You are like us.

Aye que linda! Venga chiquita!
You never really knew what that meant, but it always sounded so good. You could do no wrong here, unless you hurt someone or broke something, or you went upstairs. NEVER go upstairs. I never understood it then, but it was for good reason. Words were more than just words here. They had power, however bad or good. Defending and meaning one's word still meant something to them, they were not charades of patronization. You never needed to beg for a hug, kiss or even a dance; someone was always there to smother you with more lipstick and cologne than an Avon sales kit. We had no toys. We played with rubbish we found in the alley; "Achin' Head Alley." Glass, tools, nails, snails, sticks, tree stumps. Sometimes my mother would take us to the discount store and we would bring half a dozen coloring books which featured nameless characters and came with cheap, plasticine crayons that made the paper glisten and smelled like the inside of a new shoe. Then we ate, we ate and we ate at that faux wood, formica tabletop that was always felt sticky and smelled like hot sauce. Grown men walked around in pajamas at noon, smoking cigarettes, playing dominoes, or drinking coffee, asking Buela for money. Papi always yelled at them, trying to make himself out to be the responsible son.