BY MIMI TEMPESTT
on the porch, she smoked marlboro reds all day
auntie vivian wasn’t a nice or pretty woman
she had a bulldog stare
a husk in her voice from all the marlboro reds she inhaled
she spoke badly about people
and she stank
she died on her dead mother’s birthday
there were a tower of tears crumbling over her loss
she died asking for forgiveness
we often wonder how she got so mean
the man that loved her, really loved her,
died over there off the 110 to pasadena,
you know the exit where you really have to slow down
so your car won’t tip over?
we often wonder if she ever found love again
well, she was with knucklehead
in the late 90’s. that’s when she turned to meth
after that, she got cancer. they took out all her teeth
even gave her a hysterectomy too, so she couldn’t have babies
he didn’t love her, he just used her
she let it happen.
when she did smile (an unlikely fate) the gums glistened bright pink
the branches tell stories in elysian park
Chavez Ravine in the late 1940’s was home to Zoot Suit gangsters, Jewish families, and newly migrated Chinese who were trying to find a safe haven and begin new lives. Steep hills of grass, a lake in Elysian park, and outlines of trees underneath the California sun. It consisted of two elementary schools, a neighborhood store, and the missionary church, San Conrado, where sunday masses were held. This was the new home to my great-grandparents, Jesse and Jenny Seja, who trekked their way from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Albuquerque, as the story is told, was Jessie’s final stop in a series of trains he hopped on to hobo from state to state after The Great War. In Albuquerque, he initially fell in love with Rafaela, but after finding out that she was already taken by another man, settled on her sister Jenny. It is told that Jessie lost in a final battle against his drunkard stepfather, the stepfather who made a deal with the devil, and sacrificed the lineage of every man in his family for generations to come until the deal was satisfied. The devil who led Uncle Peanut walking with his pants hanging at his ankles onto the 110 Freeway heading North as he screamed at the top of his lungs about a man who had been chasing him for weeks. Was he just shell-shocked from Vietnam? Or simply schizophrenic? The same devil who my brother heard whistling behind his ear as he walked the tunnel underneath the very same freeway towards our grandparents house on a hot August night. No one really knows, but Chavez Ravine is where the devil followed Jessie, Jenny, and their daughters Gloria and Concepcion, in 1946. Concepcion, my grandmother, was followed by Pete, Patsy, and Vivian. The first wave of Seja children who would run and play in the streets of Casanova and Solano with the Torres’ and Monges’ before land was purchased to bulldoze the community in half in 1949; A Los Angeles housing project eventually making way for the former Brooklyn Dodgers to showcase their colossus of a stadium in 1962. Loretta (adopted from Helen), Dolores, and Paul were the second wave of Seja’s born after the stadium was built. Spoiled by Jenny and Jessie, and too young to remember the abuses of years long passed and Friday afternoons spent on the corner of Broadway and 7th. Jenny with her young children waiting patiently, for hours sometimes, to find Jessie after work. Praying, that he didn’t blow his entire check on other women and liquor. Wishing, he had enough money to at least buy potatoes and tortillas for the hungry mouths she had to feed. Hoping, he would stay out long enough, so she could escape his open-hand slaps, backhanded threats, and whiskey-tinged breathe. My grandmother doesn’t say too much about growing up. Her sister Gloria was always sick, and favored most by their mother, so at a young age in an attempt to vie for her mother’s love and attention, she took charge and unquestionably did whatever her mother asked of her. A tradition that has lingered in my family longer than the devil himself. My grandmother was a Senior at Lincoln High School around the time the second wave of Seja babies were born. She worked at a furniture store to help pay for the new mouths that needed to be fed. As it is told, every dollar of every check she earned from that job was given to her mother. One day, she walked past the Macy’s in Downtown, and saw a red polka dot dress that sat beautifully on the white manican of the department store. “Mimi, it was blood red with tiny white pearl-colored polka dots. If you saw it today, you would have loved that dress!” She begged her mother to keep just $15 dollars from her next check to buy it. Jenny adamantly refused. My grandmother cries when telling that story until this very day.
Lincoln Heights is where my my mother, Ruth, and her Uncle Paul used to race motorcycles up and down Broadway on the weekends. Wherever my mom went she stood out. On the basketball court for the Lincoln High School Tigers, where writers from the L.A. Times would come and interview her after tallying up her game stats, standing next to her cousin Susan (they both lived alone in the backhouse behind Grandpa Jessie and Grandma Jenny) who often wore black concert tees and barely brushed her red curly hair compared to my mother who changed at least three times before going to school every day, and she stood out especially at family functions, where she was often the only black person there, was seldom next to her mother, and despite not looking solely Mexican, was more fluent in Spanish than all her cousins. This was in the 80’s. When interracial children were frowned upon, and my mother who was exceptional in high school was still no exception from her mother’s disgraced romp that occurred with a black man named Robert Harrell. A man who she didn’t even keep in contact with after finding out she was pregnant. Robert refused to claim Ruth in 1969 when she was born; It is remembered that he later came knocking at Grandpa Jessie’ door after reading about her in the papers. And Concepcion, who was no longer a Seja, now married to Miguel Aguilar, an immigrant from Colima, Mexico had given up her parental rights and responsibilities of raising my mother to her next door neighbor, Tia Rafaela (or Tia Fella). By the time my mother was thirteen, she was without both her parents, was being raised by her great-aunt, and as it is told, remembers seeing her mother leaving for vacations with her new family. Rumour has it that a month before my mother was born, Tia Fella had a nervous breakdown and tried to kill her own daughter Anabelle with a kitchen knife. Most of the women in the family assumed Tia Fella’s breakdown was caused by a sadness of no longer having any children to raise. All her children (Annabelle, Patrick and Gilbert) were well into their 20’s and starting their own families. Or was it because of old age? Or simply depression? No one really knows, but to cure her sadness, they let Rafaela watch my newborn mother when Concepcion left to work a week after giving birth. By the time my mother was thirteen, she was estranged from her mother, and although she witnessed her mother’s family trail off on vacations without her from her bedroom window, she always felt connected to her Tia Fella in a way she would never feel connected to her actual mother. Tia Fella was her true mother. Fella loved her and spoiled her, and despite the rest of the family making my mother the black sheep, fought others if she even thought you looked or said something that was disrespectful about Ruth. It is told, that when Ruth was five, she had a full afro that was unkempt and wild. One day, she was near a refrigerator when Patsy opened milk and accidently spilled a few droplets on her hair. When the milk sat on the top of my mother’s tight curls and didn’t dissolve, Patsy found this funny and laughed aloud. Tia Fella caught the entire moment, and kicked Patsy’s ass so bad, that no one ever considered talking about my mother’s hair aloud again. “Even though I was really young, those were the things I remember. My Tia Fella didn’t care if she was liked by anyone in our family or if they ever talked to her again. She didn’t give a shit! I just always knew she loved me and protected me. Even later on, after I had you, when she was blind and had dementia; I would go visit her at Annabelle’s house, and when she heard my voice, she always knew it was me.” My mother cries when telling that story until this very day.
Mimi Tempestt (she/her/hers and they/them) is a queer and Afro-latinx multidisciplinary artist, poet and daughter of California. She has a MA in Literature from Mills College, and is a PhD student in the Critical/Creative PhD in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Her debut collection of poems, The Monumental Misrememberings, is forthcoming with Co-Conspirator Press in November 2020. She was chosen for Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices for poetry in 2021, and is currently a creative fellow at The Ruby in San Francisco.