of that between an American black boy and a Southern white girl, which my great-grandparents’ was. My great-grandfather, often mistaken for Japanese in the States, was full-blooded Chichimecca Mexican Indian, and my greatgrandmother was green-eyed Michoacán Spanish-ancestry pale. Forget how they had money to burn, it was a wonder they didn’t get lynched—either in Mexico or in the States. Years of piecing clues together, eventually I learned that the true source of all the family money came from a blue-collar twist on white-collar crime.
It seems my great-grandfather was an Uncle Tomás. Perfecting what must have been a humiliating role as compliant darkie, he had worked as a scab for Sunkist during their most devastating Depression-era union strikes. As all the company’s other immigrant laborers—Mexican, German, and Irish—picketed in the fields and factories, lost the small savings they had, went without food and housing and were forced to return to their home countries, my great-grandfather had worked for the Man. And for his loyalty, the bosses paid him pretty under the table and later gave him breaks on buying up orange groves, company housing, and undeveloped lots when the company was ready to unload them. By the time my mother was born, her family owned acres of orange groves, entire city blocks of houses in their barrio, and clusters of homes all the way north to Sacramento.
In 1955, the family opened a little neighborhood grocery and sundries store. Remember, this was back in the era when signs reading No Dogs, Niggers, or Wetbacks were still a common sight in many Southern California store windows. Mexicans had few places to buy necessary goods. My mother’s family saw a market need, and so they met it. Plus, confirmed rumor around town was that if you needed a fake green card or papers, that store was the place to go. Located in the heart of the city’s barrio, it was a cash business. Hand over fist and into various shoebox stashes and accounts, my mother’s family played creative with their taxes and made bags of dough they then invested for even more profit.
Through it all, the family played like they were still as poor as their neighbors. They wore thrift store clothes, drove old rusted cars, and stood in line for government food. They could have eaten out at nice restaurants every meal, but they stocked their pantries with government grub instead. Completely strange and twisted, right? Even more bizarre and contradictory, as they did all these things to blend into their neighborhood, my grandmother insisted my mother lose her inherited accent, attend services at the local United Church of Christ, win 4-H blue-ribbon prizes, and assimilate as best she could. Given this mess of circumstances, no one was too shocked that my grandmother didn’t approve when my twenty-year-old mother met my father.
“Don’t marry a Mexican,” she told my mother.
I don’t care if that Francisco boy is fair-skinned and tall. And it makes no difference that he was born in Chicago—he grew up in Mexico, on a farm no less, he has no formal education, and he’s poor. Don’t you dare love him , she’d meant to say.
“I won’t marry Francisco. I promise, Mother,” my mother said to hers.
Technically, she kept her word. She and my father never did marry. But they did fall in love. She, an undergrad honors student working long hours in the university research lab, was earning gold stars for med school applications. And he, the lab’s minimum-wage assistant (really a glorified guinea pig cage cleaner and toxic chemical janitor), was courting my mother by retrieving coffees for her late at night from the coin-operated vending machine located on the other side of campus. Their flirtation started out so innocently. But the lovey-dovey stars in their eyes brightened and brightened until there was no recourse save for universal expansion.
And so, when my mother received early acceptance to med school across the
It seems my great-grandfather was an Uncle Tomás. Perfecting what must have been a humiliating role as compliant darkie, he had worked as a scab for Sunkist during their most devastating Depression-era union strikes. As all the company’s other immigrant laborers—Mexican, German, and Irish—picketed in the fields and factories, lost the small savings they had, went without food and housing and were forced to return to their home countries, my great-grandfather had worked for the Man. And for his loyalty, the bosses paid him pretty under the table and later gave him breaks on buying up orange groves, company housing, and undeveloped lots when the company was ready to unload them. By the time my mother was born, her family owned acres of orange groves, entire city blocks of houses in their barrio, and clusters of homes all the way north to Sacramento.
In 1955, the family opened a little neighborhood grocery and sundries store. Remember, this was back in the era when signs reading No Dogs, Niggers, or Wetbacks were still a common sight in many Southern California store windows. Mexicans had few places to buy necessary goods. My mother’s family saw a market need, and so they met it. Plus, confirmed rumor around town was that if you needed a fake green card or papers, that store was the place to go. Located in the heart of the city’s barrio, it was a cash business. Hand over fist and into various shoebox stashes and accounts, my mother’s family played creative with their taxes and made bags of dough they then invested for even more profit.
Through it all, the family played like they were still as poor as their neighbors. They wore thrift store clothes, drove old rusted cars, and stood in line for government food. They could have eaten out at nice restaurants every meal, but they stocked their pantries with government grub instead. Completely strange and twisted, right? Even more bizarre and contradictory, as they did all these things to blend into their neighborhood, my grandmother insisted my mother lose her inherited accent, attend services at the local United Church of Christ, win 4-H blue-ribbon prizes, and assimilate as best she could. Given this mess of circumstances, no one was too shocked that my grandmother didn’t approve when my twenty-year-old mother met my father.
“Don’t marry a Mexican,” she told my mother.
I don’t care if that Francisco boy is fair-skinned and tall. And it makes no difference that he was born in Chicago—he grew up in Mexico, on a farm no less, he has no formal education, and he’s poor. Don’t you dare love him , she’d meant to say.
“I won’t marry Francisco. I promise, Mother,” my mother said to hers.
Technically, she kept her word. She and my father never did marry. But they did fall in love. She, an undergrad honors student working long hours in the university research lab, was earning gold stars for med school applications. And he, the lab’s minimum-wage assistant (really a glorified guinea pig cage cleaner and toxic chemical janitor), was courting my mother by retrieving coffees for her late at night from the coin-operated vending machine located on the other side of campus. Their flirtation started out so innocently. But the lovey-dovey stars in their eyes brightened and brightened until there was no recourse save for universal expansion.
And so, when my mother received early acceptance to med school across the
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