Crisco and Cussing

            So this one is the first draft of a piece I really enjoyed writing, but that was also personal, and ended up being quite difficult at times. 

There are swears, in English and Spanish. Just so you know.

This is of course based on my real-life experiences, but I have taken creative license with a couple of details, while staying true to the spirit of these experiences.

Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings.

            I was at least eighteen years old before I realized that my dad had an accent, and a thick one at that. A friend here or there might have mentioned that they couldn’t understand what my dad was saying, but I must not have heard them, or else I disregarded their comments.

            I liked to tell my dad stories, about my life, about the world. In fact, he often called me his “little story teller.” I now think he might have been implying that I was a liar, which is mostly a true statement. He would look interested, his eyes focused on me, occasionally nodding or muttering “Mmm-hmm.” I took that to mean that we were on the same page and that he enjoyed my regaling him with my mildly exaggerated adventures.

            He did actually enjoy my stories, or at least the time I took to tell them. He did not, however, understand everything I told him. Of course, I had no idea that this was the case. My brother Jared, who has always been my dad’s shadow and my best friend, finally enlightened me one day over donuts and chocolate milk. These were the good donuts—from the Macey’s bakery, and Cream of Weber chocolate milk, suitable for a revolutionary conversation. Jared asked me if I ever noticed the nodding and mumbling while I told Dad what was new in my life or what I was excited about. I told him I did, but never thought anything of it.

            “Lola (my nickname), he doesn’t understand a lot of the words you use. He doesn’t want you to know because you might think he’s stupid.”

            “Serious? I didn’t know. I guess I do use a lot of big words, but he’s never said anything. Hmm… I’ll pay more attention and maybe pick different words.”

            “Okay, but don’t make it obvious.” Jared got down to serious donut-eating then. He is my physical opposite and has been since I was twelve, him thirteen. For six glorious months I was taller than him. I haven’t grown since then, but Jared sprouted. He towers over most of my family, he’s mocha dark and slim no matter what he eats. Downing half a dozen eclairs or bear paws was nothing to him. I would eat half a bizmark and have to run three miles. Our family is a kaleidoscope of DNA splendor. Tall and short, brown and white, shy and boisterous. We make a fun mix, but when there are eight children, you’re almost guaranteed to have a diverse amalgam, which suited us fine.

            Dad never taught us Spanish. I found out later that he didn’t want us to think he couldn’t speak English, our native tongue. It was a point of pride and a convenient guarantee that he and Mom could speak their secrets openly, knowing we hadn’t any idea what they were saying. The only other time we’d hear my dad speaking “the Celestial language” (his words), was when he was swearing. Sure, he’d use hell, god, and damn in English, but when things got serious, only Spanish had the words to correctly express his ire. We didn’t need to know what he was saying.

            Jared and my younger brothers built a fire in the backyard once, along with some neighbor boys. Our oldest brother, Jeremiah—one of the whitest of my parents’ brood, sat at our kitchen table discussing something forgettable with Mom and Dad. I joined them with a glass of juice. I was just getting into their back and forth, when yet another brother, Jaime, came in through the back door and slunk past us with a stick. Six years old with dark skin and a head of tight brown curls, wearing cut-off jean shorts and no shirt, Jaime-bear (Dad gave out most of our nicknames) was the picture of northern California comfort—except for the stick that he was using to scoop Crisco straight from the can. Without replacing the lid, he turned around and walked through the open back door, not even attempting to conceal the stick.

            Jeremiah and I were immediately charged with reconnaissance. I should mention that we have the same face, just feminine and masculine versions of it. I got the Rodriguez beauty mark—worn by our grandmother and aunt before me, and Jeremiah got a bunch of moles. It’s all semantics, really. We have similar personalities, which has led to seasons of great and meaningful camaraderie, interspersed with years of conflict and stormy silence. On this occasion, we were a team, and took our assignment seriously, employing G.I. Joe- stealth. Squished against each other behind the big yellow shed that Dad built, we peeked around the corner just as a blazing fire exploded into the summer sky at the back end of the lawn, flames licking at the high branches of our cherry tree, heat radiating across the yard toward us. Pure Crisco makes an excellent fuel for rogue boyhood fires. Jared sat in a very low metal lawn chair, those old kind with the woven plastic in yellow, brown, orange. He poked at the base of the incendiary tower with a long stick, looking like a king on a low, fold-up throne. Around him, the younger boys either sat watching in amazement, or brought armfuls of sticks, bark, and branches for his inspection. It was probably one half of one second that Jeremiah and I stood in shock, frozen.

            “You’re BUSTED!” Just those two words and my brother pushed past me, leaping like Jack over the candle stick, toward the back door.

            In less than a minute, Dad was running, long green water hose in hand. He would later have both of his knees replaced with titanium, so this memory of him running—fast—has become nearly as remarkable in memory as the fire that I’m now pretty sure didn’t actually touch the clouds.

            The boys, barefoot and dressed only in shorts or loin cloth—the fire turned out to be part of a very imaginative reenactment of a Native American initiation rite—ran in all directions. Some made it to the fence at the side of the house, escaping to their homes. Others ran down the hill at the end of our lawn, scaling low fences and hiding behind the brambles that would later hide Jared’s marijuana enterprise.

            Dad put the fire out, but not before sirens were heard in the distance. Dropping the hose, he used whatever energy he had left to chase down any boy he could get hold of and give him a sound Mexican thrashing with his leather belt. I stayed mostly by the yellow shed throughout the event, watching and listening intently. That was the first time I knew for sure that Dad was swearing, and they were the big ones, the naughty words that you say with friends while hiding in your bedroom closet. Hell was unleashed in glorious, Celestial profanity that day, and never was entirely surpassed for drama, flames, or violence. The boys: Jared, Jaime, and little Jose, went to a fire safety class and had a lengthy discussion with a couple of police officers. I found out later that my parents got to have their own discussion with the local child protective services. Really, when I look back at what we all did to entertain ourselves growing up, the miracle is that all eight of us realized adulthood. We’d hear the sirens a couple more times in the next few years. Little Jose had discovered his love of the flame, and no amount of spankings or visits with the firemen would change that.

            Jaime, the Crisco boy, shared a series of memories with me the other day. He’s tall and brown, with still curly masses of course dark hair. A combat veteran and father of two girls, he loves his family, God, his guns, and swearing. It almost never matters with whom he shares company, the vulgarity ensues, just assuming different levels to suit the crowd. So, he reminds me of how our parents always used to employ the “Do you ever hear me say words like that” qualifier. As each of us kids began learning Spanish in school, that question had to evolve: “Do you ever hear me talk to Mommy like that?!” Pretty much, we have concluded that swearing is just another part of our kaleidoscope DNA, with Dad having always gone for the glory, and Mom busting out her more restrained flavor of big guns, CRAP and DAMN, only at the most necessary, passionate moments.  

            Visiting with a couple of my dad’s brothers during his funeral, I realized a strange phenomenon that somehow, I had always overlooked. Having lived stateside for decades, these two particular uncles speak fluent though not grammatically perfect English, both with a master’s level proficiency in American profanity. It seems that when they were learning to speak their second tongue, among other migrant workers, they didn’t learn to distinguish between cussing and the more company-friendly American lexicon. Honestly, I don’t know if they even know that they’re swearing. They must by now though, it’s just too late to do anything about it. And anyway, they’re Catholic. A good Mexican Catholic can speak of the virgin, the weather, and his pendejo son in law in curse words alone, occasionally throwing in a necessary adverb.

            Dad died a Mormon, but tradition and DNA aren’t washed away in the standard shallow baptismal font. Mom spanked us for repeating things we’d learned at school: butthead, buttface, butt-cheese. Meanwhile, Dad ranted about the mendigo cabron at work who didn’t know how to use a power drill right. I grew up increasingly confused, eventually realizing that situation, nuance, and level of authority determined one’s permission to swear. Oh, and the one who wielded the belt or sandal definitely had free reign with vulgarity. Mom still tries to monitor our swears, to mostly no effect, if she’s lucky. We may have become one of those cliché statistics that result from prohibiting something. Adulthood = freedom to be vulgar! If it’s one of those days though, or she has recently upset someone, she will be rewarded instead with gratuitous escalation. Can’t fight DNA. It turns out that some of it came from her side. She didn’t have the same accent as Dad, so I didn’t notice it in the early years, but she frequently appropriated Dad’s Celestial expletives. I don’t really blame her; raising eight kids in a 900 square foot house is no joke. And besides that, her mom grew up on a farm. The woman dropped expletive colloquialisms of her own, passing down the tendency through the blood line.

I only have three children and twice the living space as my childhood home in California. Still, you’ll often hear my kids say things like, “Sometimes Mommy says naughty things when she’s scared or mad.” “She’s still learning to be a mom.” “Mommy is working hard to not say swear words.” They don’t know the half of it. Incidentally, I refuse to give them any kind of vocabulary double standard—in any language. Instead, I tell them that using some words will hurt other people’s feelings, or scare them, or might not represent your character as effectively as other options. It isn’t a matter of good versus bad, or stupid versus intelligent with my child-rearing endeavor. Some words are just best used judiciously and in certain moments—like when you narrowly avoid running over an elk carcass at 75 mph in a dark, narrow canyon. Sometimes, no other word but shit, will suffice. That doesn’t even require DNA, just honesty, adrenaline, and the occasional brush with death.

            Dad battled prostate cancer for two years, which saw me sitting with him for hours at a time, telling him more stories. By this time, not only did he not always understand some of my more eloquent word choices, but he was also legally deaf. I spoke loudly and slowly, trying to always look him in the eye. Expression and tone communicate most of our conversations, and anyway, most of what I said was nonsense. Sometimes our interaction was nothing more than holding hands, but there might not be enough words in my vocabulary to adequately convey all the meaningful dialogue that was transmitted through that touch. 

            Our whole family gathered in the emergency room a few weeks later—there are a lot of us—so that our kids could say goodbye to Grandpa Rodriguez. During this, the twilight of his life, he was only able to understand Spanish. Forty years of speaking English, or at least his portion of it, seemed to have been erased by a stroke two weeks before. Luckily, most of us kids developed at least functional levels of fluency, acquired through school, employment, and Mormon mission service.

Our kaleidoscope family was shoulder to shoulder in that small hospital room, ignoring the visitor limit posted on the wall. My family looks just scary enough (Is it the darkness or the bulk?) that when one of the nurses began to politely but sternly remind us of the policy, it took only a moment’s collective glare to quickly silence her. I stood next to my only sister, ten years younger than me and at least four inches taller. She got the dark skin and curly black hair, and the notorious Rodriguez resting bitch face. The nurse literally backed away from her. Language comes in many forms and certain elements of vocabulary are understood universally. My sister, Raquel, though far more ethnic in appearance than me, speaks no Spanish. More than a few comic situations have resulted from our differences, indeed, from the differences, and similarities, between all eight of us kids. But that day, I didn’t feel my usual jealousy over my sister’s height and natural curls. Our dad understood me, clearly this time, and so I told a few more stories and lies, not always sure he was conscious.

            The next morning, with his last words, he spoke English again. He told me he loved me, and never spoke again, in any language.

 If there is a heaven, and if he got there, I hope they’ll make sure he’s aware of which words are appropriate in the Celestial sphere. And then I hope he’ll tell them he’d prefer the chamucas malditas in hell.

I’ll join you there, Dad, with  a cold drink and a warm tortilla.