Dress Sizes

My family tree is sparse.  What I know about previous generations I learned by hiding behind the sofa when I was supposed to be in bed while the adults sat around the kitchen table reminiscing. I have more Intel from my mom’s side of the family because she and her sister’s were storytellers without knowing it. I wonder sometimes if this influence has something to do with my love of writing, and making up stories.

My Latin family had secrets, exotic and mysterious ones, and the only way to learn them was to resort to tactile maneuvers while the girls—my mom and her sisters–poured sweet wine into their tumblers while listening to an eclectic selection of albums, the combo set the tone for the story hours.  Telling stories preceded dancing, which meant the LP’s dropping down on the Magnavox were the mellow sounds of my dad’s collection.  It was probably Eddie Fisher, Patsy Cline, The Four Tops, and Dean Martin, anything pleasant that didn’t get the foot taping or change their mood.  A ritual went along with our annual family reunion dinners, rowdy drinking music during dinner preparation, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw during dinner, and then after, background music during their memory weaving.  Much later, there would be more wine, and dancing music.

There were always some stories they liked to tell over and over again, and I did have my favorites, but it’s hard to know what the facts are because each time I heard the tales, there was something new added, or something remembered that wasn’t there before.  If I ever write these stories down it will be as fiction, because there are no facts behind these late night narratives.  There isn’t enough time to lay out the entire tree here, suffice to say that on my mom’s side its Apache blood, I like to think that is what gives me my fire, and the fight.  There’s some other stuff too, as exotic and complex.  From my dad, I have the Navaho, to which I attribute my artist self, there are also some Dutch, French, and Spanish blood.  The travelers to the new world liked the Indian women.

My favorite story is about my Grandma Della, and original storyteller.  She was the daughter of an Apache Indian, and like her mother, Della was a force unto herself and definitely not someone to mess with.  She wasn’t a blue rinse, Bloomingdales sort of lady,—she clipped coupons, a scarred survivor of the Depression prone to hoarding cans of SPAM—and when the gray started weaving its way into her thick head of hair she opted for Lady Clairol’s Cherry Silver (a deep shade of red), and the Vintage clothing store equivalent of the day—community church halls.  Della’s mother, Hinueva, an Apache Indian wasn’t a happy woman by all accounts.  I heard over the years that she was a sold for two horses and a blanket to a trader of skins.  I don’t know how long they were together, nor did the girls know because he was long gone by the time they came.  The way Della told it that he was a mean drunk that beat her mother frequently.   Hinueva didn’t suffer fools easily and didn’t want the burden of having to take care of man so until took to mixing finely ground glass in his food until he bleeds to death.

Many a women have followed this path when suffering their own form of torture, and I know I shouldn’t be proud of the woman, but I am, and fiercely so.  She never hooked up, or allowed herself to be owned after this man was dead.  I presume he was my grandfather, but Della never knew