Day one 1,367

The town sprawled out from itself; flat land surrounded on the outskirts by cotton and hey fields. Its name came from someone who found themselves in the inverted mesa, maybe even a ground zero of an explosion of some kind of past civilizations. Its body of land was intersected by a creeks of ten miles that snaked its way behind some of the biggest and most luxurious homes of the town while also curving into abandoned lots with tree lines blocking off the properties. From the car rides you took daily you know that tree line meant running water, tadpoles in the spring and fat toads in the summertime. The clean clear water which ran from a spring your father took you to see once after a long slosh against the moving water, jeans rolled up over knees and at one point chest deep and arms raised with the glimmering sunlight cutting laser lines between the spaces of the pecan tree leaves above. The spring somehow magically muttering from one small muddy hole up that endless gentle incline, clear, clean and undulating all that time from perhaps years and years ago. The wonder of life is this. How things just exist on their own accord without you knowing about it. That one day you do find out, your world does then become a very magical place. It will begin to become your life’s work to find all these beginnings, to have grace in the notion that all things will come to an end. Summer Breeze by Seals and Croft. You are sitting in the hot back seat of the 1970s model Plymouth in polyester shorts and itchy lime green tube top, nothing actually filling it in. Flat chest of 6 year old, knees perpetually skinned and bruised. Even to this day you are always in such a hurry you bump and scratch on every surface you come in contact with. You are a continuous body and soul in various states of healing processes. Now its late morning and swinging feet in pink plastic flip flops kick the back of the driver’s seat, burgundy vinyl sticks to the sweaty stubs of chubby legs. Mother sewed those shorts, blue with white pattern clusters of flowers that stretch out unrecognizable over the baby fat you still carry. Baby Fat, Baby Fat.. It is very hard for her to find clothes to fit you at this age so she goes to the fabric shops to buy scraps of fabric to sew into basic (very) shorts and pants. This is the fabric store you plunge your short arms into the bins of buttons to feel the cool plastic discs glide between your fingers. You stand and play quietly with the sensation of what wind chimes must feel like when they tingle. The style of the day dictates that everything you wear for the first 10 years of your life is polyester and tight. You have no choice in the matter. Money is tight and you wear what you are given, but what you really want is a T-shirt with the Bee Gees on it, with your name in iron on fuzzy orange letters on the back. Hey look, there she is! How clever for her to have her name on her shirt! I was wondering where that great kid was! I could be famous like little Janet Jackson doing her Mae West impression. I had gumption and cuteness. I had moxie. But I didn’t have the clothes that matched that. Always in the car, always on the move, first you go to the grocery store You hoist a plastic crate with empties into the slot and the lady behind the counter gives you a quarter and dime and a nickel. . A nickel in a box gets you a Brachs candy, coconut chocolate is your favorite. Mom picks ground beef in the family size packs, dried beans, milk, cottage cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomato, a glass liter of Coke, marshmallow chocolate cookies, captain crunch (peanut butter flavor), black olives and tins of sardines. Next to the Quesada’s. Baby Ida calls you Anna Lisa and you don’t know why. The Quesada family is girls girls girls, and you don’t know quite how many because you can’t count that high. The back bedroom that they all share is really a TV room, entertainment den with a sunken area and at the back of the continuous room almost a stage where two of the beds are. There are clothes, shoes and bras everywhere. The girls range from maybe 13 to 18, all teenagers and even Baby Ida isn’t a baby and that confuses you as well. Their mom had tough leathery brown almost red skin, pock marked with acne scars. She doesn’t scare you because she is kind and sweeps you up in her thick tortilla slapping hands and meat cutting arms and makes you feel warm. You can remember her from when you were an infant you think. She soaped your baby fat in the kitchen sink and powdered and diapered you as you were her own. You mother worked nights then, your father rarely home from his truck driving job, and when he was he was asleep. Mrs Quesada made your fideos and your beans with extra juice because it was good for your tummy. The trees in the backyard are oak. The leaves always shimmer and glide in the sunlight and wind. There is a tiny playhouse in the back yard, a tiny tudor house painted white with pink trim. It only has two built in seats and a window to look out of. You love this house and beg Baby Ida to let you stay outside alone when she has grown bored of 6 year old imagination play. She leaves you and you begin to make tacos out of oak leaves and grass. Carful on your imagined comal, its hot and you will burn the tips of your fingers like mama does if you are not careful. Look mama, I found a pajarito. In cupped hands I pad into the kitchen with baby bird. I open my hands and the bird breaks free and flies dumbly into the walls. Mother screams and I begin to cry..I want my baby back, why did she go away? Daddy runs into the kitchen and begins to try and shoo away the bird out the open back door. It flies behind the stove and I begin to wail. The bird will burn to death and it’s my fault. Mother picks me up and takes me away from the kitchen..I cry myself till I exhaust to sleep. It’s the ride across the neighborhood back home. Into the yellow kitchen with the yellow phone, yellow and white vinyl seats and formica table. Baloney sandwiches with mustard on white bread. Purple Koolaid and corn chips. Back outside is your own playhouse, on stilts, tudor top covered with shingles that your dad built just for you. Small brown chairs and a menagerie of stuffed animals, a Rangers ball cap, a table with puzzles and a coffee can filled with broken crayons. Your life is food, over abundance and love. Your father works long hours and stays away for days. You are poor but don’t know it because they give you everything you need and you want for nothing. It is their plan to make you feel this security they never had as children, and have already succeeded in preventing you from knowing work at an early age by picking fruit or cotton. They are constant in their battle to make your life better than theirs, and later in the year you will move from this house to a better larger one in a safer neighborhood that will allow you to go to a better school than you would be doomed to living on the other side of those tracks. Everything you have ever known about home and your life will change. You will have your own slice of that creek running behind your own home. You will have an acre of land to dig up rocks in and run through as fast as your chubby little legs will carry you.