See the Mexican
Growing up in Palos Verdes, a Southern California suburb during the 1960's and 70's, I noticed that all of the neighbor ladies spent time cultivating their tans. Mrs. Nordquist two doors up would put solid plastic eye shields over her lids before she settled into her half hour sunbath. Mrs. Rick shared her "secret" recipe of iodine and baby oil with a few drops of olive oil ("like the Europeans use," she'd say) with those who gushed admiringly over her tanned limbs. Even Mrs. Wright, an over-worked mother of five managed to get in a few afternoons each week napping on her day lounge by the patio, slathered in Bain de Soleil (for the St. Tropez tan). "Laying-out" was an activity, an accomplishment of sorts that could result in a tan between your fingers if you were dedicated and disciplined.
I felt very lucky. Comparing
myself with the neighbor ladies I saw that my skin was a lovely
golden tan color despite my inability to sit still long enough
to successfully "lay-out". I did wonder why I was so lucky. My
mother's skin was the color of the neighbor ladies skin, though
she never seemed interested in tanning. My father had rich
brown colored skin that needed little attention. I don't think
I ever saw him do much more than splash on aftershave. My
mother would slather herself in white lotion to ward off the
dryness her skin was predisposed towards. In the kids
bathroom she
put a bottle of the same brand of lotion. To keep us kids from
using her lotion, she bought us a different version. Ours was
"almond" lotion, infused with the scent of almonds and slightly
colored to match the golden tan plastic dispenser. With a
child's logic I concluded that my skin must be darker than my
mother's and lighter than my father's because of the color of
the lotion I used.
My parents weren't trying to
keep any secrets about skin color. I watched I Love Lucy
re-runs on television and knew that it was entirely normal for
a man who spoke Spanish and English to marry a woman who only
spoke English. Though Ricky Ricardo wasn't very tan (at least
not that I could tell on our TV), he was a dark contrast to
Lucy's pale coloring. My father spoke Spanish, but like Ricky
Ricardo, he didn't speak much at home. Though, when he took me
on visits to his mother's house, he and my grandmother would
often only speak Spanish when they were alone
together.
Listening to my father and
grandmother, I would try to say things in Spanish, but they
quickly admonished me to speak only English. My grandmother
would often tell me stories about the Mexicans -- "Rich
Californios and Rancheros who lost their property to dishonest
Americans, because they didn't know English." she would say.
After the United States won the Mexican War in 1848 and
negotiated the Gadsden Purchase for other lands, the Americans
sent tax bills only in English to landholding citizens, people
that had no concept of a land property tax. My grandmother said
that these things happened despite the promises to uphold the
rights of the Mexicans settled on these lands for hundreds of
years. Her godmother was Catalina Pico, a direct descendant of
Pio Pico, the last Governor of Mexican California. Swindled out
of his lands, Pio Pico died a pauper in his daughter's home.
"Only because my father learned English," my grandmother would
say, "was he able to conduct business and prosper." Despite the
fact that she knew the two languages perfectly, she and my
father thought that it would be best to know only English. With
time, my father changed his opinion, but not while I was a
child.
None of this was more than a history lesson to me. The people in these stories died so many years before I was born that despite the presence of old photos lined up across my Grandmother's room, I could only envision them vaguely. While my father and grandmother talked I would often go upstairs and play with the hand woven rugs and clay Indian pots that had come from the former family ranch in New Mexico.
Despite that experience, I never felt like I was different from our neighbors. We did eat some things the neighbors didn't regularly eat, like enchiladas and salsa but that didn't seem like a big deal. The Nordquist's ate pickled herring and the Goldberg's ate matzo crackers. Like the rest of our neighbors, my mother made Jello pudding and joined the ladies in heated discussions comparing the merits of Cool Whip and canned whipped cream. I thought we were all pretty much the same. That is, until the day I looked for the Mexican.
My Junior High School had a split level campus. Walking up the stairs from the lower field to the main buildings I saw a boy at the top of the stairs yelling. I wasn't into boys when I was eleven years old, so I didn't pay much attention to him. I kept walking up the stairs, and he kept yelling, "Hey Mexican, Hey Mexican". Wondering who he was yelling at, I turned around, fully expecting to see an old Ranchero in a serape walking between the buildings. There was nobody there. Nobody. At that moment, all the little things I'd felt and heard over the years fell into place: The confused expressions that I'd see when I responded to questions about my skin color with a recommendation for almond lotion. The frustration my father would express at the dinner table when talking about not being allowed to join a Los Angeles businessman's club. My embarrassment over watching my father being patted down by the police while standing on the sidewalk on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, in full view of the restaurant we were headed towards, dressed in our Sunday church clothes. At that moment I realized that I was "the Mexican".
Until that moment, the things I knew were simple. I knew what type of dress was perfect for a piano recital. I knew that a man had to know how to tie a Windsor knot, because only little boys like my brothers wore clip-on ties. I knew about charity balls. I knew that a sandwich on white Wonder Bread was worth two Ding Dong cupcakes on the school lunch trade table. And I knew that the color of my skin was perfect because I had a tan, even in the winter.
What I didn’t know was that the perfect color of my skin, my long wavy dark hair and the melodious sound of my Spanish name would influence how some people treated me. Awakening to this realization began the day I turned to see the Mexican.
Photo:
Catalina Maria Ortiz de Acosta, Cristina's Grandmother (circa
1922)
Photo: Woman with
Necklace & Straight-Forward Gaze, Catalina Pico, Granddaughter of Pio
Pico, the last Governor of Mexican California, godmother to her
namesake, Catalina Maria Ortiz. According to my grandmother,
Catalina Pico would also call herself Catherine (in addition to
Catalina) when she socialized.
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