Survivors

As the Penn State sexual abuse scandal unfolds into an abhorrent nightmare, I am aware of a primitive terror emerging once again from deep within me. There is no escaping the graphic and atrocious details of countless assaults by a monster who shattered innocent lives. I sit alone on my bed. The shades are drawn in my pitch black room. It starts again. I instinctively recoil and suppress a wave of revulsion. Long buried images tumble out from the flimsy niche I had carved out as a young child. I catch flashes of swirling smoke and smutty fingertips. The images speed ahead like a slideshow timed to the thrashing of my restless heart. Cigarettes and putrefying crooked teeth. Dimmed lights and a worn bible on the floor, while shadows on the wall perform a vile act witnessed only by two. Long brown hair falls in turbulent waves over the edge of a rickety bed. I catch my breath; icy fingers fly up to silence my quivering lips. I squeeze my eyes shut. The nausea propels me forward to the bathroom where I fall on my knees and cradle the toilet bowl with two shaking hands. I heave. His nicotine tinged odor wafts over from a past that follows me around no matter how far I go. No matter how far I’ve come. Nothing comes up as I wretch and gag and catch my ashen reflection on the mirror reflecting back a little girl who has never really grown up. I continue to lurch in supplication, pleading with my body to expel every last bit of venom he left inside. I’m frantic, practically shoving my fingers down my throat and tearing my tender nerves in the process. But nothing comes up. I stop and look in the mirror, tears streaming down my terror-stricken face. My heart feels like it’s about to explode and smear the mirror, which I polished only hours before, with a red, sticky substance that might never come off. I know what’s happening. It’s just a flashback, a voice squeals from somewhere within. I pant and squeeze the rim with all my might. The moment will pass, but the memory won’t. Victims never forget. I remember my breathing exercises and rise up on two quivering legs as I stumble over to the sink. The cold splashes of water shock me at first but start to bring me back to the present.

Who are the victims? Who are the victims that remain faceless, nameless and silent until speaking becomes necessary for survival and healing? I wonder what they’re feeling. The boys who were savagely stripped of their innocence. What strategies are they invoking in order to deal with the media circus? How have they been able to get up every day from the moment they were first violated and brutalized? What did they think of the rioting? Have they contemplated taking their lives? Do they ever laugh? Do they know what happiness feels like? Can they forgot for just one moment what happened to them or do they relive with every waking second the horrors they were subjected to by a man beyond sick and evil? I try not to obsess over the boys who were raped. The boys who are now young men.

It has been estimated that 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls are victimized in one way or another before reaching 18. Surely the estimates must be generous. If the victims are coerced into abiding by a code of silence, how do we know with certainty how many victims are among us? They could be your neighbors. Your friends. Your boyfriend or girlfriend. Your lover or enemy. The barista who prepares your latte every morning at 8:45 before you board the train that will take you to work. Or the checkout lady from your neighborhood grocery store who always smiles at you no matter how busy it gets. Who are these boys and girls? What do they do after surviving such a devastating trauma? Do their dreams shatter in an instant and their entire lives afterwards are nothing more than a struggle to understand something that has no meaning? Are they broken, doomed to find ways, both healthy and unhealthy, to repair wounds that might never fully heal? How many times do they cry and curse the world around them? Or do they keep it all bottled up inside, a seething rage that burns and sizzles as the years drag on and the memory never fades?

I lay in bed with my knees pressed to my chest and a thick blanket pulled up to my chin. Fiona sings to me in the background. She is one of the girls. Her words are like therapy for all the other victims who relate to her pain and ordeal. And as she serenades me with her stirring melodies, I realize there’s a part of me that wasn’t touched or harmed by him. The part of me that creates and strives to share my story with the rest of humanity. She is no longer a victim- she’s a strong, lovely survivor who forged something beautiful out of something so completely horrible. Those boys who are now young men are survivors. And while society might look upon them as victims, I know they are fighters. They have a long and arduous road ahead of them on their way to recovery from deeply traumatic events. Some of them might give up on the journey, but I sincerely hope they hold on and share their stories with other victims who can become survivors.

Chasing Amy?

Life was a losing game for Amy Jade Winehouse. It was not a five story fire that came bearing modest flames; it was a raging, towering inferno from which she could not flee in time. She sang it all too well. From the deepest and darkest depths of her soul, the pain spilled out in velvety torrents of melancholy, mediated by a deep, powerful contralto voice that shocked first time listeners with its unparalleled expressiveness. Clearly, the frail-looking petite that burst onto the UK music scene in 2003 with her debut Frank had a raw, brazen and sultry talent that belied her tender years and hinted at the greater things to come in her budding music career. But life was more than Amy could stand. She battled drug and alcohol abuse, violent outbursts, and an eating disorder. Her every self-destructive move was documented by the paparazzi and scrutinized by the public at large. Many, including her family, were surprised she lasted as long as she did with all the demons that tormented her ravaged soul. She was incredibly gifted but immensely troubled. It has often been said the stars that burn the brightest, burn the quickest. And Amy burned faster than you could blink. Laughed at by the gods, the odds were stacked too high against her to successfully combat the ills that plagued her life. I discovered Amy years ago on some forgettable reality tv show about geeks and beauty queens when “Rehab” came on in the background during one cringe-worthy scene. As mediocre as that hitherto unnamed show shall remain, that unforgettable, insane voice of Amy’s caused me to go on an internet rampage. I was floored. Who was this dazzling soul-tress? The new Badu? A viable successor for Lauryn Hill? My generation’s Nina Simone with a touch of Macy Gray thrown in there for good measure? Amy seemed to defy categorizations and simplifications. Her sundry musical influences were apparent at once but just as equally hard to pinpoint with certitude. She could croon like the jazziest of them, her vampy voice rising and shaking with heartfelt sentiment. But she also had a funky groove going on, with “frank” lyrics to match her indolent swagger. That Amy was in a league of her own, nobody could dispute. And after Back To Black, she sealed her place on the exclusive list of influential artists of all time. This album represents everything I love about music and it reinforced my nagging conviction that “real” music by a female artist, or any artist in general, was not a dying breed. Shunning auto-tune and all the dressings of spic-and-span studio polish, Back To Black stands as an astonishing testament to the gifts musicians possess and the power of music to transcend genres and borders. It’s a throwback to the 60’s doo-wop era of girl groups, like the Supremes, and Amy’s sensual voice takes center stage over the harmonizing backup vocals. The album effortlessly mixes a Motown R&B sound with modern, soul scorching lyrics. On a personal level, Back To Black (along with The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots) almost single-handedly nursed me back from a gut wrenching period in my life. To the mournful tunes of tracks like “Back To Black,” “Love Is A Losing Game” and "Wake Up Alone," I sobbed an untold number of times on my pillow, trying to find a way to mend a fragmented heart. After exhausting all my emotional reserves, I could rebound to the sassy subject matter of “Tears Dry On Their Own” or “You Know I’m No Good.” I knew Amy was broken, which made her music all the more real to me; I didn’t need to go that far to understand her sorrow and struggles. Her intimate words were there for me, not to dissect and critique, but to commiserate and connect with on those endless nights when the prospect of a new day held absolutely no luster. Like many, I was not surprised to hear Amy had died but possibly, like a few, I had held out hope that she would be able to defeat those horrid demons aching to claim her for their own. Perhaps because I’m no stranger to dysfunction that I could relate to Amy’s plight. I too had struggled with depression, alcohol abuse and an eating disorder in my younger years, albeit, away from the limelight. Believe me, it takes an incredible amount of time, therapy and sheer will to “recover” from these afflictions and sometimes, there will be those who simply can’t make it to the next round of the game if they have a losing hand. Amy’s death shook me; it reminded me that I could have died had I not found the strength from somewhere to carry on and give those traumas meaning. At 27 years of age after playing and making a mess, she reached the final frame of her life. Life was a losing game- it was more than she could stand, and I can’t help but feel that I lost some part of myself with her death.

As the heat rolls in

I suffer from frequent fits of nostalgia and remembrance in my loneliest and liveliest of moments. I have often stated to anyone and everyone around me that the 90’s were the best decade for living and breathing. It’s odd to feel this way about a period that was unquestionably the most destructive to me in more ways than I can ever be fully poised or confident enough to recollect without forcing back waves of dread and revulsion. And since I’ve been unemployed for so long now that I can’t tell the difference anymore between a week and a weekend, all I’m inclined to do is venture back to those ten years where I saw more than I should have as a young Chicana coming into her own with only a handful of compassionate souls to turn to when the worst got perversely demoralizing. As the heat unequivocally rolls in and settles over the city like a dense, oppressive shadow of searing red ardor and blinding white haze, I wonder if any people will die this week. The July heat wave of 1995 claimed the lives of approximately 750 Chicagoans, although officials were (and probably still remain) hesitant to produce an official death toll number. For about a week, there was no escaping the miserable and sweltering daytime temperatures in the mid-90's and low 100’s with heat indexes well past 100 degrees. Nighttime brought little in the form of relief as readings would only dip into the upper 70's or low 80's. July and August are typically the most daunting summer months for me, and I suspect for most as well. The combination of a clarion sky, scorching sun and suffocating humidity cause many a sweaty and irritable soul to wonder why the hell anyone would willingly choose to live in Chicago. In order to survive such extreme climatic conditions, one must remain confined within the cool walls of an air-conditioned building. And the two most vulnerable groups in a metropolitan as large as Chicago, the poor and the elderly, are hit the hardest when temperatures rise beyond a broiling level because even if they could afford to buy an air conditioner in the first place, they might not be able to pay the high electric bills generated by such a purchase. 1995 was a lonely and deadly year for the 750 mostly elder, fragile and isolated souls who lay in their stuffy, blistering rooms, slowly dragging in burning wisps of hot air, unaware, or perhaps sadly aware, that they would soon succumb to the fiery clutches of a heat wave. Back in my blazing part of the city on the north side, not only was I coping with the unbearable weather in a bedraggled two bedroom apartment that trapped more heat than it disseminated, but I was also trying to figure out how to escape the agony and trauma that will forever be Daniel’s doing and my undoing. During the entire week of the heat wave, my younger siblings and I wearily trudged over to the pool down the street, which was bound to be crammed with loud and perspiring bodies of all ages and sizes. Even the unruly guys who faithfully congregated on the sidewalks in front of every other apartment complex on our block decided to stumble over to the pool in order to catch some reprieve from the hostile and almost unnatural conditions trapping more than just heat in the neighborhood. As we lined up impatiently outside the gate that would lead us into a more tolerable and hospitable environment, we could all sense something sinister brewing in the muggy air, something disastrous that the newspapers weren’t printing or the newscasters broadcasting. Nobody could articulate how suspicious it appeared when the first bodies started to accumulate in large numbers on the south side. It was hot, they said. They were old and most of them assuredly died of natural causes, others offered. But even I in my tormented adolescent years could understand the abnormality and severity of such a high mortality rate swiftly unfolding within a matter of days. Leaning against the brick wall with sweat pouring profusely down my neck and the glaring sun stinging the top of my head, I knew the dead were too far away to be given more than an ancillary thought. It was disturbing, but we had our own urgent problems to confront in this part of town. Many of us constantly struggled to stay sane, cool and hydrated in homes without air conditioners. The streets were always “hot,” especially at night when the trouble could start up again. As soon as the sun would shift its ardent rays away from the city, we’d head outside to escape the stifling incubators that housed our sticky bodies. But it wasn’t smart to congregate in large groups because we’d attract the wrong kind of attention, either from cars with tinted windows that would creep up wondering who we were representing, or from the cops who were patrolling our part of the neighborhood in an attempt to keep order and safety. Yet the bodies kept piling up on the south side and nobody wanted to call it what it was or respond to it properly until it was too late. After the heat wave ended, nothing would ever be the same again in the city for me. Or anybody else. I remember the summer of 1995 as vividly as I recall the last time Daniel’s hands poisoned my flesh- those stained fingers with their distinct toxicity left their stamp on me just like all those unnecessary deaths left their mark on Chicago. Perhaps because I survived such a fatal and oppressive period that I see all the life that I was able to salvage from the mass death wave long after the dead were buried. It took over a decade to finally bury Daniel, and everything I value about life and what it has taught me about survival, I can directly trace back to the 1990's.

What's in a jar of mayonnaise?

It is day 1,057 of being unemployed. I know because I checked the calendar to confirm and then reconfirm the date. Vic’s birthday is a month away, but I don’t need to check the calendar for that. And I don’t need to reconfirm the impending weeks to know I won’t be able to buy him presents again. I tuck the calendar behind my desk and turn off the lights in the living room. It’s barely 9 am, and I detect the first warning signs of a massive hunger attack. Yesterday I ran out of mayonnaise. We were making egg and turkey sandwiches in the kitchen and my mom suggested I scrape the sides of the jar with a butter knife in order to reach the last dabs of mayo. I peered intently inside the jar. Perhaps I had missed a teaspoon of mayo and it was secretly laying in wait for the moment to be scooped out. I pressed my face against the rim of the jar, half expecting layers of thick, creamy, tangy sauce to materialize, at least for one or two crummy sandwiches, but nothing happened. There was no mayo there. I took a step back and glanced at my mom standing next to me. She wiped a smudge of mayo off my nose and tucked a couple of strands of hair that had fallen in my eyes behind my ears. The kids were starting to get restless while sitting at their respective places around the kitchen table, and I detected the potential for a meltdown if I didn’t get these sandwiches out fast. My niece, nephew and Vic were itching to rip open the bags of chips my mom had bought at the grocery store across the street. She bought everything. I gazed at the loaf of bread resting on the counter and the avocado and tomato she had sliced. There were still drops of water dangling on the tips of the spinach leaves she had rinsed in the sink. I closed my eyes for a brief second to choke down the anxiety that was starting to creep in. Then their laughter interrupted my descent and brought me back to the task at hand. I cracked a half smile at my mom who was starting to get that look of concern in her eyes. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my jumpy hands, so I pressed them down against the counter. There was no point in saving the jar. It was indeed empty. Nothing was as clear to me in the dimness of my kitchen on a late Sunday afternoon than the emptiness of a mayonnaise jar. She started to say something, but I reached over the stove and tossed it in the garbage can. We looked at each other again- there was no need for words. She nodded once. I picked up a couple of slices of bread. She knew. How could she not? I stretch out on the futon and cradle my stomach in my frigid hands. I take comfort in the fact that the most severe hunger pangs will only last about half an hour. Tops. After that, I can block out the famishment until the next bout of hunger assaults all my senses. It’s the small everyday challenges that threaten to defeat me in ways that the large hurdles in my life have been unable to. I couldn’t stop thinking about the jar of mayo. An empty jar of mayonnaise might not seem like the end of the world. I mean, who needs all that saturated fat, right? But it’s more than just an empty jar. The jar is everything. It’s the overall void that consumes me bit by bit as the days turn into weeks and months, and I still don’t have a job. My entire well-being depends on my ability to sustain myself through any means possible, not to mention my son’s. I guess if I have to be completely honest with myself and not just mildly truthful about the seriousness of my current situation then that’s what ultimately hurts the most: not being able to support my son. It’s what stabs at the pathetic excuse of an ego I thought I had lost use for a long time ago. It turns out an ego is always the last thing to go when you’re cleaning out the SELF closet. You’re only reminded it’s still hanging around when life pulls out the rug from under your slippery feet and you land, not on your hands and knees, but on your face. So that you don’t know which to process first: the shock or the pain, and I guess it hardly matters because if by some miracle you didn’t break anything or several things like your nose and teeth at the same time, you’ll still have to deal with the blood and vertigo that will keep you prone on the ground. As my mother stood next to me in my dark kitchen with exposed pipes and the characteristic dank smell that comes with living in an archaic basement, I was transported back to the wearisome days when I was a child with a struggling single mother. There was a particular rough period in my childhood when we didn’t have much to eat and the refrigerator was as empty as the look on my father’s face when he said he wasn’t going to help me anymore. I was 8 years old and David was 9. We were too young to care for our baby sister Jessie who was only 2 and she had to spend most evenings with my aunt and uncle. My mom worked the second shift at the plastic factory out in Elk Grove Village, which meant David and I were going to be left alone to fend for ourselves whether we were ready or not. In the beginning, it wasn’t too bad. We figured out how to look after ourselves in the wake of my mother’s forced absence and learned to keep quiet about not having enough to eat at home. Some kid who lived in a nearby apartment complex told us a story about another kid who lived on the third floor and how he was almost taken away from his parents for not eating at home. He went to school with us but we weren’t in the same classroom and he was almost as skinny as David. No, we didn’t say anything at all. How could we? We learned not to complain about feeling hungry, not even to each other. We ate our sad school lunches with such gusto, the other kids sitting with us in the cafeteria would make fun of us. “Ewww…seafood!” “Stop chewing with your mouth open!” “God, you eat like you've never eaten before!” No, we couldn’t mask our starvation but we would never say one word to confirm its presence. I get up a little too quickly from the futon and find myself fighting off a wave of darkness in order to regain my balance. By now I’m sure Vic has finished eating his breakfast and must be going over his reading and vocabulary lessons. I shake my head vigorously and shuffle over to the bedroom as my vision slowly starts to clear up. I’m supposed to go apply at a restaurant in the loop, and I have just enough money for the fare to and back, which is why I hope Toni remembered to leave some money with Vic. The soft morning sunlight filters in through the half-open shades, encasing one half of my room in gossamer wisps of warmth and pale luminosity. Through the fragile network, I see some people with bags on their backs or in their hands hurrying along to the train station. It’s the small everyday challenges that don’t leave me alone- they have me in their tight grip.

El Sombrero de Abuelo

She didn’t cry when he died. She wasn’t even there when it happened. As she made her way to the airport terminal, a strange sensation took hold of her composure and she’s been carrying it around ever since. Abuelo died in that moment in the arms of my cousin Juanito, who pierced the death filled air with a shriek so alarming and definitive, abuelita knew before rushing into the bedroom he was gone. When mom arrived at the house she grew up in Ciudad Hidalgo and saw abuelo laying in his wooden coffin, she did not weep. The tears refused to spring forth of their own accord as if some part of her being intuited there was no need for such a harrowing display of grief. She looked around at the somber dispositions of neighbors and relatives gathered around to pay their respects to Maurilio, my abuelo. Some she remembered from the days when Ciudad Hidalgo was just a tiny rural village surrounded by dark imposing mountains. Others were like the strangers she passed daily on the streets of Chicago, as distant to her as the tears that had yet to materialize. She briefly considered changing into mourning clothes upon glancing down at the wrinkled jeans and sweater she still wore after the eight hour trip. But then she noticed abuelita sitting quietly next to his coffin, oblivious to the flow of people entering and leaving the home abuelo built from the ground up. Mom took a place next to her and for 114 days, she did not leave her side. Abuelita would not have made it without her, even as we struggled to hold ourselves together back here without mom. I can’t imagine what it’s like to not lose it if, and when, one of my parents dies. Death has been on my mind as of late, a constant presence that cunningly gnaws away at my foolish attempts at composure. The earth has given way to life after a long winter that tested the resolve of even the most hardened of cynics. The trees, once bare and naked during their barren, albeit transitional, cycle are now dressed in their lush foliage. I met abuelo when I was 11 years old. If only I had known that would be our only encounter, I would have asked him about life before Ciudad Hidalgo and the money he buried on the farm he was raised. We all went to Ciudad Hidalgo the summer before Daniel fractured my spirit. Our extended break from school had just started, and I have no idea how mom came up with the money to fly 6 people to Mexico. She was barely making minimum wage and raising 5 kids on her own. Those years were hard, savage and unpredictable and many a night I wondered why we didn’t have money. But we went, and now, every time I close my eyes, I still see the guava tree in abuelita’s garden and the millions of stars twinkling down at me as I glanced up from the atrium where I stood on those cool summer nights when the crisp mountain air would come rolling down. I never saw abuelo again and even though he’s dead, I feel him all around me. His picture hangs on my refrigerator door. In it he’s wearing his signature sombrero, the one that complimented his full white beard and starched white collared shirts. A glass of mezcal rests on the table where he sat down to feast on simple meals prepared by abuelita who taught mom everything there is to know about cooking. He wore that straw colored sombrero everywhere, even to church, right up until the last two years of his life when he was too sick to get out of bed. All I have is that brief moment in time to hold onto and the heavy weight of knowing there is nothing I can do to keep my parents from meeting the same demise. I long to walk the dusty narrow streets of Ciudad Hidalgo, even though I don’t belong there, because I so desperately want to belong somewhere other than this place that offers me very little in the form of certainty. I thought I saw abuelo late one night last year when I lay in bed after a particularly long and trying day. I don’t think I believe in ghosts; I’m really not sure anymore. I’m not so easily swayed by our mind’s romantic attempts to hold on to the dead after they have passed. Dead is dead, and I know for a fact the living are even more precarious to hold onto so you might as well let go of those who have stopped breathing. Yet I can’t help but wonder if he was in my room and if on his deathbed he thought of me and how he would have liked to have seen me one last time as I so fervently wish every time I pick up the slowly fading picture hanging on my refrigerator door.

September

They say time heals everything. I say not everything heals with time. The days are deliberately losing their luster due to a scheduled shift in the universe. Most people think of fall as the official end of summer, leisure and vacation. The air becomes meaner, crisper and more haunting. The sun retreats to the other side of the world, or better yet, we retreat inward and away. But they don't realize that autumn is a perfect calibration of elements and essence. I walk along the river with a shaken heart and sense the four elements quietly at work: Agua, Tierra, Viento y Fuego. The fifth element eludes me; it hovers somewhere far beyond my reach, and I wonder if that's the reason why I feel so empty. Can it be true? Is the celestial sphere merely just a geometrical projection for astronomers to locate celestial objects instead of a physical reality? If so, then how can we know where we stand on any given day? How do I know those stars flung way up high in the quiet night sky are really dead? Why does such a calculated alignment of centers despite an imperfect celestial tilt evoke a low level dread in the pit of my stomach? The points meet in unison at a precise moment in time, and it serves as a comforting pattern to ponder after all the inconsistencies on a long strip of naked numbers. But then I remember it's just an illusion. As the last days of summer unfold before my eyes, I walk aimlessly along the river and all I hear is your voice lapping at the sunken banks. When the new year started, I expected nothing of the weeks lying dormant ahead of me. I feigned indifference if only to buy time in your presence. Now, almost 35 weeks later, I confess I always knew I could not tell which side you were standing on or what I was defending. Until defending the unknown left me standing all alone. I woke up on a recent rainy Saturday morning and couldn't remember when we had switched sides. And so it has been. The year progressed from winter to spring then summer. Now, fall is within reach and slowly descending upon my wounds. A wound is a cunning thing to behold, you know. Its depths reveal a story with vague fault lines, fractures and a considerable amount of pain without a voice. You can peer intently at its composition and dimensions but never really know why some wounds will heal and others won't. I walk back home with the four elements calmly nudging me along, my heart still in a wrangled state. The river is cloaked in shadows and darkness, and I can scarcely see the path that will lead me out into the city again. I carefully step over discarded wine bottles and crumpled beer cans, as I hear the local critters scurrying around, but I don't feel fear anymore. I'm always humbled by what I see reflected here and what I don't.