Our family home, made of cinder blocks, sat two blocks north of the Río Grande. Although the formal entrance to the house faced Grant street, everybody used a side chain link gate, entering through the kitchen door that faced the backyard. A mesquite tree stood sentinel by the side entrance.

The smell of percolated coffee and natural gas permeated the kitchen. The Ornelas’ were extroverted, curious, and gregarious. No matter what time a person stopped by, they were invited to sit and given a fresh cup of coffee with a convivial, “¿Bueno, que me dices?” Behind the dining table hung a calendar and a cross made with the palm strands from Palm Sunday.

The back bedroom windows were left open to catch the riverside breezes. One bathroom served the eight people who lived in the house until they built another in the early 1970s. 

Gladiolus flowers, peed on by my brother, Boyer, and my primo, Nandito, lined the yard. Hibiscus bushes and peach trees grew beside the clothes line. Orange trees sat in the middle of a grassy area and fig trees delineated the end of the property. The garden emanated the sweet and luxurious scent of fruit, including a slightly sweet-rotting odor that comes from having more fruit than you can pick.

My Tío Nando, his wife, May, their three children, my spinster aunt, Tía Helen, and my divorced aunt, Tía Lucy, and her daughter lived at 502 Grant. My father moved out when he married. My siblings and I loved visiting to run wild with the primos. The house sat in a perfect location for a mischief of children. The tortilleria where we went to buy fresh corn tortillas was two blocks away. We’d get compensated by getting corn tortillas sprinkled with salt. Downtown Laredo was five blocks away, as was San Agustin church, where we were sometimes sent to Mass without the adults. If we were sent on a Saturday evening, we’d stop at the corner candy shop and spend the money they gave us for the collection at Mass. If it was a Sunday, we’d stop by my great-grandmother’s house around the corner on the way back from Mass for cookies.

The primos got into trouble en masse. A hierarchy of privilege existed. Nandito, the only son of the eldest son, could do no wrong…so he was the chief instigator of trouble. Boyer, the only son of the youngest brother, took the brunt of the blame. This disparity made Boyer learn a finely tuned wit that ultimately endeared him to the tíos and tías. The girls ranked after the boys. Patsy, blonde and green-eyed, vied for the top spot with my sister, Sylvia Margarita, who was named for my paternal grandmother. Terry and I got squashed in the middle. Linda, the mouthiest and most rebellious, was the bad girl. We understood our strengths and weaknesses and planned our adventures accordingly. Instead of shunning the primo that brought punishment upon us, we made fun of them. Our favorite taunt started when Terry had been given a pencil that looked like a broom. As we tried different maneuvers to divest her of her pencil, Tía May nos dio una sacudida. Meanwhile, Terry strummed the pencil like a guitar across her chest and started shuffling her feet to a norteño rhythm that she sang out: tarata-tunda-tunda-tundarata-tunda-tunda-tunda. We laughed when Tía May turned her lecture to Terry. From then on, when one of us got in trouble, we’d either hear the tunda-tunda-tunda rhythm if the adult was out of hearing range or we’d see the primos quietly playing an imaginary guitar behind the adult giving us a scolding. 

Every afternoon, the street in front of the house needed sprinkling to stifle the dust that went into the house as people drove by after work. If Nandito got the duty, inevitably the adults would have to deal with an irate driver that would’ve been squirted with water as they drove by with their windows down. Nandito also liked spraying a can of Lysol into the room gas heater and seeing flames shoot out. While he was rarely punished, he sometimes pushed his mother into giving him chanclazos. She’d take off one of her Daniel Green lounge slippers and chase after him, shrieking his name and swatting at him with her chancla. He would run and scamper while laughing a Scooby-Doo laugh. Every anniversary of Nandito’s death, I imagine his idea of heaven is making his mom chase him with her chancla.

At the primas slumber parties, we’d read Tiger Beat magazine and Linda would make up stories that involved meeting our magazine heartthrobs. We listened to 45’s on the record player and imagined being the Latino version of the Jackson 5 or the Osmond Brothers. Nandito and Boyer would plot and execute scaring us.

The adults would chase the primos out of the kitchen to gossip at the dining table. We would sneak into the adjoining living room that was separated from the kitchen by a French door that was covered with a curtain and was missing a glass pane. Although the living room had a squeaky wooden floor, we knew how to move quietly to eavesdrop. A gasp or giggle would give us away. When we’d get banished outside, we’d climb the orange trees or play tetherball. To cool down, we’d ride our bikes through the drying lines, letting the freshly washed clothes slap against our dirty, sweaty faces to cool off.                                                                                                                

Birthdays were marked with carne asadas. Several tables and stackable chairs would be set out. Tío Nando would freshen paint/insecticide at the bottom of the trees. Relatives and friends would be invited. For a primos birthday, my Tío Nando would pick up a car load of children from the Sacred Heart Orphanage who attended class with my primos and bring them over. We ran wild playing Hide-and-Go-Seek or La Vivora de Lamar. Injuries involving blood put an end to play so we learned to play through the pain. The meat would be cooked by 10pm and the cake cut shortly after. The kids from the orphanage would be returned by midnight. 

On Saturdays, Tía Helen watched the primos while the adults worked or ran errands. She kept her room icy cold with a window AC. She’d turn off the light, sit in a cushioned chair in front of her black-and-white TV to watch Tarzan or Godzilla movies and smoke her unfiltered PallMalls. We were welcome as long as we didn’t squirm, talk, or, leave the door open and let the cold air escape. If we did, she’d yell, “¡La puerta!” The primos, of course, would yell along with her. When she died and we were debating whether to have a open casket, we imagined her sitting upright in the coffin with her hands crossed on the chest yelling, “¡La puerta!” one last time.

Our home was razed in 1978 when the government’s eminent domain proceedings closed. A second intrnational bridge was needed and our house stood in the way.  Our family took the government compensation and moved into one of the duplexes used by airmen and their families that were abandoned when the Laredo Air Force Base closed in 1973. Nando and his family lived on one side of the duplex, Lucy, Helen and Patsy on the other. Their backyards were separated by garden sheds. Although we cooked our carne asadas outside, our parties were indoors. Tía Helen brought cuttings from the fruit trees, but they never took root. The base was in north Laredo, far from the riverside breezes. Wrought iron covers the windows and doors. Abandoned cars dot front yards. There are no neighborhood tortillerias or small candy shops. 

A way of life disappeared.

The periphery of Texan life is my center. Some Americans treat me like an immigrant even though I am a fourth-generation United States citizen. My story is peripheral to and often even hidden from the mainstream story of the country of my birth. Growing up in the United States, I centered myself in someone else’s myth, ignoring and sometimes even concealing the beautiful kaleidoscope of my own center. My writing refocuses my lens. I am not only a Tejana, but a Tejanista. I tell the story of a marginalized people. My story is bigger than Texas. My stories circumnavigate the world and transcend time. Of the stories I tell, some come from me; the rest I scribe on behalf of my ancestors who refuse to let these stories lie dormant. This is how my stories bubble out of me. I’m the tía that can identify the ancestors in sepia photos, in part because I listen when the ancestors speak to me. My stories nourish and strengthen my community. My work adds color to the photos and seeks to memorialize our stories before an outsider appropriates them.