My Life as a Chicana

Culturally speaking I had what will become the American childhood, a mélange of cheerful American pragmatism and Latin baroque and African-American skepticism, and the hybridity seemed irreconcilable for so many years until I understood the American habit of maintaining a reductive naiveté through compartmentalized guilt. I hadn’t yet learned to feign ignorance towards the different parts of myself; to participate in national innocence through collective delineation. Until I understood this, it was impossible for me to integrate my childhood memories:

A piñata at every birthday party, the beating of which heralded rips and grass stains on massive white dresses. Sporadic attendance at mass, but baptisms and first communions requiring the rental of a public space and a mariachi band. At least three cars to every house—two cars beached in the driveway or on the curb, one without wheels. Every Saturday afternoon, a team of oil-stained men surrounding the cars, fortified by a cooler of beer and a busted radio booming Mexican rock. Scant mention of Mexico in school history classes; still, a regular festival for Cinco de Mayo (but only those aspects which could be safely dehistoricized and commodified, such as folklorico performances and trays of empanadas), which was much more fun than Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (always a dreary assembly, with the tone-deaf lower grades crooning “We Shall Overcome” to a piano arrangement that sounded like a dirge). Long bedazzling days of fruit-picking in Watsonville with friends’ families. Childish beauty fantasies guided by the hands of older Chicanas, who insisted on the elegance of black lipliner and Aqua-Net hairspray. Cafeteria burritos on Monday, tacos on Thursday. Innumerable aunts and cousins in every family, and at least four godparents for every child. All-night story sessions when la abuela y la tia came to visit. First crushes named Cruz. A Spanish vocabulary consisting exclusively of cuss words and slang. Slip ‘n Slides, kiddie pools, and jugs of Kool-Aid dragged out to front yards during hot summer nights. Parents drunk enough on the heat and the long conversations to slosh in the pools by midnight. Joking discussion of la duena when the prettiest daughters started to date. Family photographs on every available surface. Letters from Mexico. The rosary. Black beans. Gilt.