Super-Sized Chicana Blog

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Archive for Childhood

Heather tagged me awhile ago….trauma and drama

December 16, 2007 at 2:43 p · Filed under Body, Childhood, Laughter, Mexico, embarrassment, ex-boyfriends, fear, menstruation, unpleasant relatives

My friend and avid blogger Heather tagged me awhile ago…finally I am acquiescing, to her request.  Sorry that I took so long, Heather.

When I was seven, I got chased by our rooster and I thought I was going to die. My brother saved me. My mom said the chase, me, the rooster, our half Chihuahua and half pekingese dog, Penny, and my brother going around the house, resembled a carton. We had some great chicken stew that night.

I didn’t make my communion until I was ten years old. Most of my friend had made theirs when they were eight years old. The years I could have made it, my mom had been ill, so everyone in my family kind of forgot that I was supposed to do this.  One day, I must have been nine years old, I decided to quit sitting out this part of mass and took it upon myself to go ahead and take communion.  I was fine until this stupid fifth grader saw me and threatened to tell our priest Father Anthony what I had done. (He ran off with a beautiful woman) This scared me so much, that I told my mom and to my surprise, she didn’t care.  I had this haunting me for a whole year and nothing happened. I went to confession, and the priest didn’t care.  I thought I would be severly reprimanded. A million Hail Marys, Our Fathers, etc. for me.  It would be so humiliating and obvious that I committed horrible sins, because I would have the longest penance to say in the history of our church, the Immaculate Conception.  One of the nice priests had heard my confession, and just sent me off to say a couple of prayers. As for the creep who threatened to tell on me, years later she was the big slut at our high school.

My ninth year of life was quite eventful.  This was the same year that it was reaffirmed for me that my great-aunt was a mean old bitch.  For Christmas vacation, my mom, aunt, brother and I traveled to Laredo, Mexico for the holidays and to attend a cousin’s wedding.  We had to go visit this woman in Monterrey and then she came back with us to Laredo for the wedding.  My father had warned me about her and everything he said was true.  She was on my case for every little reason and worse of all, she would go out of her way to bitch at me in front of everyone. She stopped it when, one day she and I were alone, and I had enough of her crap.  I looked and her and in a calm voice told her, “my father hates you very much and he has told me everything about you, so leave me alone”  For some reason, she left me alone.  I was so afraid that she would tell on me but instead she was sooo nice and kind.  Many years later, my dad told me that she tried to make a move on him. EWWWWW!

I busted in on my brother after he got out of the shower.  I was nine and he was sixteen.  We had only one bathroom and I had to go, bad.  Just like some kids, I would wait until the last minute. Apparently, he forgot to lock the door. He got so mad, and I was so freaked out.  I come from a family whose members never walked around the house half-dressed, I think I had seen my mom’s boobs a couple of times. In regards, to the men in my family…nada.  So, when I saw my brother nekkid, I screamed and he yelled. I thought I had seen the devil but at the same time I was totally grossed out. In my nine year old mind, if men looked like that down there…EWWWWWWW!!!!  In my fifty-year old mind, it’s not pretty, but that is not what counts.

When I was a freshman in high school, I had to be escorted out of one of my classes because unexpectedly, my period came a few days early. That year, my body was betraying me more than ever.  Boobs, hair all over the place, smelly armpits, and menstrual cramps. That day, on a fall afternoon, unbeknownst to me, I had a huge blood stain on the back of my dress.  This ocurred during my Health Education class…what a coincidence. The teacher who was also the coach of our football team saw it and walked up to my desk and whispered to me “young lady, you need to go to the nurse, the back of your dress has a stain. I just knew what it was and I wanted to cry and throw up at the same time. I had to tie my sweater around my waist and go to the nurse’s office. Everyone in class stared at me as I left the room.  The nurse gave me a lecture on how we girls need to keep track of our cycle and start being prepared by wearing a Kotex. I hated Kotex’s. Those little wafer thin pads did not exist and I always had to buy them in a super size.  I just knew that they could be seen through my clothes, and frankly, them damned things just grossed me out. The vice-principal drove me home. I have never been so embarrassed in my life. I didn’t want to go back to school the next day, but my mom made me. I just knew that the other kids would be staring at me and making horrible jokes about what happened. My life at fourteen years of age was ruined.  I was mortified to return to the class. The next day, no taunting or teasing ocurred. All of that trauma and drama for nothing, because no one said a word to me about the big splotch of blood on the back of my dress. That was just too weird because I was at a high school where something like this would be prime material for ruthless comments about my personal hygiene.  Lucky me, nothing happened.  For once, I was so thankful that I went unnoticed. For once, it was so worth it to be invisible. I just made sure that I never wore that dress again that year.

In the mid -seventies, when I was in college for the first time, (I dropped out and then went back) I caught my boyfriend with another woman.  That has to be one of the top worse feelings that someone can experience. I was so pissed off and sad at the same time.  I was just so crazy about this jerk.  For some time, I had suspected that something was going on because he would not show up when he was supposed to, or he would be late.  Well, on one afternoon, when he didn’t show up, I decided to go to his apartment.  His Ford Bronco was in the parking lot, so I knew that he was home.  I knocked on the door, but he was not answering the door. I left and came back a couple of times, but no answer. Finally, I knocked on the door, but decided to imitate one of his friend’s knocks.   He answered the door in his underwear. There were clothes strewn all over the living room floor.  I shoved him and started screaming at him. I threatened to go into his bedroom but he begged me not too.  So, I grabbed all of the clothes I could plus,  her shoes and purse.  I dumped all of the contents of the purse outside of the window and then, the rest of the stuff followed. His apartment was on the fifth floor.  I sulked around for a couple of weeks and he started showing up at my apartment.  My friends begged me not to go back to him, but I forgave him and we go married three years later. “If I knew now, what I didn’t know then.”

I was in a History of Psychology class.  This was the second time I went to college; I flunked out the first.  I used to like to sit in the very front row because I didn’t know what the hell was going on and because the professor was very soft-spoken.  During one class, I was taking notes and the pen I was using ran out of ink.  I grabbed my backpack and as I did, the contents spilled out on the floor.  An unused tampon came out, bounced out of my reach, and was lying there all alone where several students could see it.  I pretended to not see it and when class was over, I scurried out of there. My face was burning from embarrassment.  Now I think it’s hilarious.

I had been teaching for two years so this incident occurred nine years ago.  Some important scholar was giving a talk in the student union and I had decided to attend.  I had on one of my favorite dresses.  I just loved this dress because it was a navy blue empire-style dress with a full a-line skirt.  I had watched for it go on sale.  When it finally was 75% off, I was able to buy it and even then it was kind of expensive.  I felt I was justified in buying it because I would be able to wear for it job interviews, work, and other important dates.  Before I entered the room where the event was taking place, I went to the bathroom.  Later, I walked to the room, it was packed and standing room only.  I must have stood by the door for about twenty minutes, some other people arrived and went into the room to stand in back.  A friend of mine finally showed up, and she had the weirdest, kind of freaked out look on her face.  She asked how long had I been standing there and before I could answer here, I felt her pullat the waist of my dress.  As she was doing this, I realized  that part of my dress, in back, had been tucked into my tights!!!  No telling how many people had seen part of my butt and this dress bunched up into my tights!!

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Billy

October 21, 2007 at 12:21 p · Filed under Childhood, Death and tagged: , , ,

All day I have been thinking about my childhood friends. I have been wondering what has become of them. I had several good friends when I was a young girl.  All of this reflecting  started with a conversation I had with D. this morning about Billy a boy who I used to hang around with when I was six years old. I would see him just about every Sunday when I would go visit my aunt.  His grandfather was a veteran.  He was a WWI vet.  Around this time, I used to worry about the Russians bombing the hell out of us.  John F. Kennedy was president.  When I was supposed to beore preoccupied or occupied things that pertained to six year old girls, I was more worried about when my father was going to start building a bomb shelter.  I wanted a bomb shelter for my birthday or Christmas; it didn’t matter as long as my father would build one that would house my parents, my brother and my aunt and her drunk woman-chasing husband.  Billy’s grandfather would confirm my fears because he had a pantry full of cans of food, water, and other stuff you would need in case our town got bombed.  He told me that those supplies were for emergencies and a direct hit on our town was one of them. I went home and told my dad this and he just kept reading the newspaper.  After awhile, he looked over the newspaper at me and said, “We are not going to get bombed and I am not building a bomb shelter. If I find out that we are getting bombed, I will go to your school and bring you home. We will all go to Mexico.” I was so relieved to hear that my father had a plan.  Mexico was twenty-four miles away.  That was far enough for me to feel safe. My family’s first language is Spanish, so we would be fine living in Mexico.  The Russians were not going to bomb Mexico.  Then I started worrying about whether or not I could make friends, would I have problems in school, where would we live and other things related to moving to a new place.

I was amazed by my friend because he knew so much about football, baseball, and all sorts of stuff my father never talked about.  It was obvious that Billy spent a lot of time with his father; this was something I never did at the time because my father worked twelve hours a day, six days a week.  He, his grandmother, my aunt, and I would sit under this huge tree and talk about all sorts of things.  I remember the two women treating us as if we were adults.  I never had anyone pay that much attention to what I had to say.  I remember those Sundays fondly.  Later I would find out that these afternoons kept my aunt sane because her husband would be gone for a few days drinking his paycheck away.  I just thought my aunt was very tough and I admired her very much.

Billy and I never had a fight.  I remember being a little jealous because he had met a little girl named Linda on the first day of school. We would talk about toys, horses, and cats.  He would describe his house out in the country and how some day soon he would get a pony.  Back then, I wanted a pony so bad but my chances of getting one were as good as having a bomb shelter built. Billy would tell me that when he got a pony, I could go over to his house and ride it. He would talk about all of the places we could go exploring and how we could take a lunch and water so we could stop somewhere to eat.

The last weekend that I saw him, I remember telling him about my birthday party that I was going to have.  I was just going crazy with excitement because my mom had actually bought invitations, filled them out and delivered them to our neighbors.  I wanted to invite Billy but my mom said that he lived too far away. I had saved an invitation so that he could see it. He liked it very much and said that when he turned seven, he would get some invitations like the one I showed him.

I had a fabulous time on my 7th birthday.  It was on a Wednesday, after school, that I had several of my friends from the neighborhood come over.  My mom bought a  chocolate birthday cake at the supermarket, some paper plates with Barbi on them, sugary concentrate for punch, icing-covered animal cookies, and two half gallons of ice cream.  My aunt had come over to help my mom with the party.  After my party, I went with my father to take my aunt home.  When we arrived to her house, my uncle was standing at the gate in front of their house. I could tell there was something wrong because he never greeted my aunt when she got home from being at our house because either he was too busy reading the newspaper or watching television.  He came up to my dad’s truck and he told us that Billy’s father had been in an accident.  He was a gunner at the army proving ground.  They had been testing some kind of new artillery and it backfired.  In the explosion, Billy’s father along with three other men died.  My uncle had to help my aunt out of the truck because she looked like she was about to faint.  I remember that we left as soon as my aunt made it into her house.  She had left the two pieces of cake she had brought home for my uncle and Billy’s grandparents. I thought maybe I could take their piece of birthday cake to them but I looked over at his grandparents house and I saw that the lights in the house were off and their car was gone. On the way home, I had a bunch of questions about people dying and Billy’s dad for my father, but he just kept looking straight ahead  hardly answering me.  I had never seen him appear so serious.

The Sunday following Billy’s father’s accident, I didn’t go to my aunt’s house. In fact, it was over a month before I went back to visit her.  My father had been spending more time with us on Sundays.  Billy never went back to his grandmother’s house after his father died and my aunt gave me strict instructions not to ask Billy’s grandparents about him or his father. Later, I would learn that his mom didn’t get along with his grandparents and she would not allow Billy or his sisters to go visit them.

I didn’t see Billy until several years later when we were teenagers.  He went to the same school as I did, but we didn’t hang out.  He was in a gang and I was a total nerd. Billy and I would sneak glances at each other and kind of signal a “Hi” to each other.  Several years later, I found out that he was in the sheriff’s department.  I wish the best for him.

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