Beyond the Red Line- Volume I:
The Road to Goodbye
By
R. E. Cruz Caceres
Copyright 2011 by R.E. Cruz Caceres
For Papo
Who once told me to tell the story
And for whom all stories are told.
Pero eso importa poco a nuestro cuento; basta que en la narración dél no se salga un punto de la verdad.
-Miguel de Cervantes
Chapter I:
Dad
I
If I close my eyes and focus, I can remember things the way they were.
Not that life was so much better then, or that life since has been that much worse, it’s just that life was that much different, before.
That’s the funny thing. I don’t really know when it happened. I can’t sit here and give you the exact date that cleaves my life into B.C. and A.D. Believe me; I’ve tried to pin it down. I have every calendar and day planner since my 1985 Peanuts wall deal that features such gems as the only time my mother, hereto forth known as Mama or Mamacita, spanked me. February 21, 1985.
I had it coming, and in retrospect, I would’ve spanked myself.
All I have are images and touchstones; bits and pieces and broken memories whose reliability wouldn’t hold up in court but who do fine on the page. I have memories like the house I grew up in, long since sold when my parents fled the third ring of Chicago suburbs, for the fourth ring and its 3500 sq ft. homes with their three car garages and no lawn to speak of. The house was small, charitably listed as 800 sq ft. by the realtor who sold the place, a nice guy named Armando whose younger brother Rogelio was a rockstar in my father’s 6th grade math class.
That house was barely large enough for the four of us to move around in when we moved there on May 29,, 1985. It was a good house, though. It’s where my brother Rafael and I grew up and my memories of it mostly positive and full of sound. Not music, not laughter, not shouting and conversation, just sound, the combination of all the above that Helena Pergo, my first serious girlfriend, whom I dated from March 3, 1994 to January 2, 1995, used to ask me about.
“Are all ethnic families so loud?”
“What?”
“Your house is always so loud. Your family talks loud, it sounds like you’re always shouting at each other and your parents laugh louder than anyone except maybe Mr. and Dr. Kim. “
I took and still take exception to that characterization; my family isn’t loud, it’s joyous. Her house was like a tomb, still, dimly lit and smelling of a Bingo Hall that had long since gone out of business…it still had the far away smell of Mentholatum and smoke and dust. In contrast, the home I grew up in was full of life, of love, of art, of possibility and discourse.
Growing up, I knew my family was different. Not in the way most teenaged protagonists swear that their family is a bunch of freaks and everyone else is normal, only to find out years later that the inverse was true. Because that’s not me, I always thought of our life in that bandbox of a house as the norm. What was different was that I am the son of immigrants from Latin America, and my classmates were the grand or great-grandchildren of the Irish, Poles and Italians that had built my hometown, the ones who’d butchered the hogs and took the measurements for Chicago’s exceptionally broad shoulders.
The languages we spoke at home were the least of our differences; the big one was our relative position to neo-diaspora.
I don’t want to get into it too much right now, and I don’t want to disrespect the truly diasporic peoples of this world, but…we’re all wanderers now. We may not be forced to relocate at literal gunpoint anymore…or as much I should say, but we are all pushed and pulled by hegemonic migration forces that are impossible to ignore. And once you give in to hegemony, you and your progeny need to figure out how to get back home. For my classmates, their forebears had figured out how to make Chicago into the homeland they longed so viscerally for. But as a Latino at the end of the 20th Century, being in suburbia left us anchorless and looking for the kind of solace that our Sunday breakfasts provided.
In this past that I have to close my eyes to see, I didn’t understand that. I didn’t grasp that Sundays were the time when we were closest to getting back home. I didn’t understand what Helena was talking about when she asked me if my dad had a learning disability because of the way he talked.
“What’s wrong with the way he talks?”
“It sounds funny.”
“How funny?”
“Like, different than anyone else’s Dad.”
It took me a minute but I finally caught on.
“You mean his accent?”
“Is that what they call it?”
“He’s from another country.”
“So?”
“So English isn’t his native language.”
“So that means he’s not dumb, even though he talks funny?”
I think I need to point two things out here. Helena’s mom, Jelena (note the subtle tip of the hat to diasporic assimilation and acculturation here) was the chair of our high school’s foreign language department and taught, wait for it, wait for it…AP Spanish. The second is that after hearing that come out of Helena’s mouth- I didn’t dump her, but I did vow to never take another Spanish class at Meadowdale High School. I didn’t and I still picked up a 4 on the Spanish AP. But that’s only because I slept through an entire section cuz I was bored.
II
I was 16 years old the first time my father let me pick out the music for Sunday morning breakfast.
Every day with my family was a moment to be treasured, but Sunday mornings were my favorite. Sunday was the day that the entire family would clear off its entire schedule and make time for each other. No matter how crazy life got, no matter how many directions we were being pulled in by life- we always made the time to have breakfast with each other on Sunday mornings. Sunday mornings were sacred.
My father always got up a little before 7 and this Sunday was no different. He walked into my room quietly and sat down next to my bed and quietly called my name.
“Diegito, wake up.”
I opened my eyes to see the winter sun trying to come in through my window, a blanket of clouds and drapes fighting its rays every step of the way. The room itself wasn’t terribly large, so even this weak light was enough to give it a glow that allowed me to see my four walls, covered with posters of Walter Payton, Ryne Sandberg, Michael Jordan and Bono all looking appropriately heroic. On the shelves sat books that contained secrets on subjects as diverse as college basketball and quantum mechanics, with the complete works of both William Shakespeare and Eric Carle thrown in for good measure. The bed, desk and dresser took up most of the room’s floor space making my father’s six feet of height and 265 pounds of weight much more imposing than they had any right to be. Thankfully, the rest of him offset any intimidation. My father’s been balding since college and he categorically refuses to do anything about it. He grows it long in the back to appease my mother who long ago fell in love with the loose curls that define what’s left of his hair.
His size and scalp caused my mother to start calling him “My Yul Brinner” when they started dating Easter Weekend 1972, the first Easter in this country for the both of them. Though they arrived separately, from two different countries, a month a part, they’d spent all but six months of their lives in the U.S. together and as such their American experiences are forever linked.
I stumbled down the stairs after my father. This was entirely too early for me to be up, but having my father all to myself was too great a reward to pass up, so into the kitchen I went. When I arrived in the kitchen there was nearly a foot of snow there to greet me from the other side of
the patio window. My father had Neil Diamond’s Hot August Nights already playing on the stereo and the basic equipment for arepas waiting for me on the tiny counter that dominated the kitchen in our townhouse.
Arepas aren’t a complex item to prepare: flour, lukewarm water, salt and cheese if you’re feeling extra special. But there’s a trick to putting these few ingredients together, when done right you get a food akin to risotto or polenta, creamy and starchy and amazing. When done wrong, you get hockey pucks. There are an infinite number of variations between these two extremes, but getting away from hockey and towards art is something that cannot be explained via remote, it must be demonstrated and critiqued and practiced.
On this particular day my father had skipped cheese since, in his opinion, I hadn’t yet put hockey pucks far enough in rearview mirror to begin to experiment with exotic additions. We squeezed around each other in the claustrophobic confines of that kitchen. Working with him was an intricate dance, two steps forward, dip, spin, three steps back, repeat. The heater would kick in every once in a while to add a percussive element to the symphony created by Neil Diamond, cooking and shuffling.
Everything went in and out of its proper place at its appointed time. Once the arepas had been combined and formed, all of the ingredients went back into the pantry and the bowls and measuring cups used were washed, dried and put back into their appropriate locations in their appropriate cupboards so as not to fill the cupboards to bursting, we’d move on to frying bacon and making coffee. Again engaging in the intricate dance that allowed tag team cooking to occur in this space built for one.
We spent that morning talking about sports, music, school and girls, the only four things that ever really matter to a 16 year old boy, unless that boy is into boys, or not into sports or music. OK, so maybe not every 16 year old boy is into these things, but I’d like to think they are.
The day’s menu was pretty minimal by my father’s standards: arepas, bacon and coffee. Some days we’d get donuts or pancakes and coffee, some mornings he’d make arepas with eggs or bacon or chorizo or fruit salad or any other number of things, or nothing at all. But with most fruit out of season due to the snow outside our window and the snow keeping my father from venturing out for donuts, we went with what we had on hand.
Neil finished serenading us when my father turned to me and said something I never thought I’d hear.
“Why don’t you pick the music this week.” My father old me.
“Really?”
This was a big deal. As far back as I could remember no one other than my father had ever picked music for Sunday breakfast. I tried to play it cool as I walked over to the shelves and poured over the CDs, trying to figure out what to play. Salsa, cumbia, folk, pop, classical, Celia Cruz, La Lupe, the CSO, Los Angeles Negros, Jimi Hendrix, Mozart, Joan Baez, the Beatles, the New York Philharmonic, Abba, Machito, Mahler, Tito Puente, Beethoven…Steve Goodman, they were all there begging for my attention and respect. Eventually I went with Hendrix, Mahler, Celia, and Abba. When I got back from loading up the changer and hitting play, the coffee was ready and a few minutes later my mother came down the stairs.
“Smells good my boys.”
This was my cue to go retrieve the newspapers off the front step, the Sunday Chicago Tribune and New York Times. At the time I didn’t grasp my father’s subtle lesson on who I am, but that’s mostly because I’m not too bright, not because he didn’t try to tell me.
“Read the Trib to know about your neighborhood. Know your home, know your neighbors, know your politicians and follow your teams. Because no matter where life takes you, you’re never more than a Cubs game away from coming home…”
“…And the Times is the paper of record, mijo. Everything in the world is recorded here. Except for what happens in the Latin world. Apparently our news is not fit enough to print.”
Our news.
I am the child of two immigrants who nationalized after 25 years in this country spent owning their own home, raising two children, earning advanced degrees and more or less building a life for their progeny. But through all that, they never lost sight of who they were, nor did they ever let Rafael and me forget that we were Latinos. Spanish was the primary language in the Hidalgo house, but it was demanded of us that we excel at English.
“Si tu Papo y yo can go to college in English, then you two can live your lives in English. Never allow anyone to think less of you because you have an accent like your mamacita. Surprise them that you know Spanish, but don’t be afraid, don’t be ashamed. You are Americans, but you’re Chileno and Colombiano tan bien.”
But this isn’t my mother’s story, so she’ll have to go back to the sidelines. I’m sorry Mama.
We spent the next few hours reading the paper and catching up on each other’s lives. We would trade sections read stories aloud to each other while my father punctuated our reporting with a report to my mother on most of what we’d talked about while cooking (my father was great at keeping secrets and art of his magic was making people think there wasn’t anything he was holding back.)
By twelve thirty, my brother had come down, eaten, joined the conversation and loaded up the dishwasher; just as cooking was my job on Sunday mornings, his job was cleaning up. Because, while I didn’t like getting up at 7 with Papo, I still did it gladly. Rafael, well, he wouldn’t have done it, period. One by one, we all started drifting off to our own individual tasks, ending another great Sunday, but one that wouldn’t soon be forgotten.
III
It’s strange to say it out loud but in our slice of suburbia, my father is something of an institution amongst the Spanish-speaking community. He’s been a teacher for almost 15 years, leaving behind a quasi-lucrative career in business for the classroom. From the start, my father’s been a force to be reckoned with. In his first year at Crown he failed a kid in his 7th grade math class. It was the first time in 37 years that anyone had been made to repeat a grade in district 511 and when the school board called my dad onto the carpet to account for his actions, what felt like the entire Latino community showed up to rally around him.
“We know what you want. We know you want our people to fail; you want Sr. Hidalgo to pass my son so he moves along, keep your numbers looking good. But what happen to him when he don’t know the things Sr. Hidalgo tried to teach him and he gets fed up and quits school to work with me in the factory? I didn’t come to this country to have my son work with me. I came here so he can be somebody like Sr. Hidalgo. My son didn’t pass, my son should try again until he learns what Sr. Hidalgo says he should know.”
Yeah, that was the kid’s father.
By the end of the meeting the entirely Anglo school board had no choice but to commit political suicide and let the Colombian teacher fail the Mexican student. Granted, the Daily Herald didn’t play it that way. Their headline the next day read “School Board Fails Mexicans.” Plural. Honestly, it wasn’t the board or the paper’s fault. Large chunks of the Northwest Suburbs have been caught completely off-guard by the Latin population boom of the last few decades. In the case of district 511 the last quarter of the 20th Century was almost too much for it to endure.
That episode raised my father’s profile and as a result he spent his summers writing curriculum and helping area businesses figure out how best to communicate with their increasingly non-Anglo workforce. It was a nice setup for him. He spent August-May teaching the students of the men and women he’d advocate for from May- August. As a result, my father became the guy you came to when your cousin or sister first arrived in the country. He’d use his connections to hook them up with a job and then my mother, who was an institution in her own right, would use her strings garnered in a three decade career as a translator and social worker to make sure their kids were enrolled in school, they had a roof over their heads and for the first few months, clothes on their backs.
Thankfully for all of us, this country is full of peopl
e like my parents.
I’ve seen often enough what happens when our young men don’t have a man to look up to who’s half as incredible as my father, so I’ve always appreciated how blessed I am to have him in my life. But, being his son has been difficult at times. When your role model is a successful, self-made man who enjoys nearly universal popularity and whose money is no good at many locally owned businesses, well, where do you go?
To his credit, my father never compared us to him, he only wanted me to do something that made me happy and that contributed to the world in some small way.
“Mijo, there was no future for you in Colombia or Chile. This is why your Mamacita and I left for America. We left our families, our homes, our friends, in search of a place where there would be a future for you and your brother. All I ask is that you take the gifts God gave you, go out into the world and do something with them. Remember who you are and make the world a better place in your own small way and remember to always tell the story.”