Of Dashed Dreams, Chickens, Witches, and Dogs
Working as a specialty auto painter my father had been churning out a pretty good wage. His area of expertise was detailed trim painting; that is, painting intricate designs on hoods, doors and trunk lids of freshly restored autos or new cars whose owners wanted to make them one of a kind. That type of work is now programmed on computers by graphic artists, and printed out as adhesive appliqués that are then applied directly to the automobile. During my father’s era the design originated in the detail painter’s imagination and was then applied freehand with fine-tipped artists’ brushes using acrylic or lacquer paint. It was a very difficult process because there was absolutely no room for error and the paint was apt to dry quickly after being applied. It took not only a vivid imagination but also an extremely steady hand and intensely focused concentration to produce the flawless swirls and flourishes that made up the full detail pattern. As a fairly young man my father was considered an expert in that field, and those who commissioned his work were prone to overlook his preoccupation with liquor. Oddly enough, it seemed the more he drank the steadier his hand got, and that put him in great demand.
I guess because he was an artist of sorts he mentally struggled with having to deal with authority in any form. He was not prone to take orders or accept advice from those who happened to sport titles such as “foreman”, “supervisor”, or “manager”. He preferred, and most of the time insisted on setting his own work schedule, which often differed greatly from what had been set by his current boss. Disagreements between him and those unfortunate enough to have him work under their supervision were frequent and often violent, and he was asked to leave (or just walked off the job) many times early in his life.
Even so, he was talented enough that auto paint shops kept hiring him and paying him top salary and my mother and I benefitted greatly from his labors. During that period of time in some early pictures taken when I was five or six I am smiling broadly while dressed in a natty little beige seersucker suit with short pants, wearing silk socks and shiny brown oxford shoes. Likewise, my mother was pictured wearing the latest dress styles of the 1940’s, and often sporting stylish hats and the latest open toed patent leather high heel shoes. Life must’ve been good.
Eventually word must’ve gotten around, and after having left yet another job because of some slight or perceived insult from management the job offers and opportunities began to dry up. After a few jobless weeks, and with very few options left, my father finally reached out to his older brother Frank in the early 1950’s, and asked for help. As luck would have it Younger Brothers Truck Lines had an opening—but not for a painter. If he wanted a job, my uncle advised him, he would have to start as an apprentice under the supervision of the engine repair shop manager, a feisty, crude, and ill-mannered roughneck nicknamed Red, and learn to be a diesel engine mechanic. And, he would have to behave and take orders like everyone else.
As he always seemed to do after each career disaster he landed on his feet with the Youngers. As he’d done countless times before, he proved to be a quick study and in just a few weeks he was repairing diesel engines as if he had been doing it his whole life. My mother was thrilled because during this training phase my father had stopped drinking and was actually bringing home his weekly check on Fridays. Things were beginning to look good, and for the first time since I could remember we actually had food in the refrigerator and in the pantry. One Saturday morning I remember my mother taking me to Sears to buy me two pairs of shoes: one for school and the other for going out. The good times were back…for a while.
Although he worked for the Youngers for more than twenty years making a decent salary it seemed like we never really gained any ground financially. At first the drinking put a steady drain on our finances, but even so we were still able to stay afloat probably because he was making really good money. But a couple of unfortunate events suddenly came crashing down, and the DeLeón family finance boat began to founder.
First, my mother began to complain of a suspicious lump growing in her belly. She told me, and everyone else that it was a cancerous tumor and she was terminally ill. My father, justifiably alarmed, finally decided to take her to a doctor for a diagnosis. It wasn’t cancer, nor was it a tumor; and on July 7th, 1950, my brother, Ricardo (Ricky) Marcos, was born. For the rest of her days my mother swore to anyone who would listen that she’d had no idea she was pregnant. This, from a woman who had already experienced a miscarriage shortly after getting married, given birth to a stillborn fetus a year later, and in 1939 had birthed a child weighing in at 13 pounds. Doomed because of his size, and the fact that he’d been born at home with only a midwife in attendance and no medical followup, he died at three weeks of age. Finally, in 1942 I was born—apparently successfully.
Inexplicably, the hospital and doctor bills for Ricky’s birth amounted to over $5,000, and not having the money to settle the bill outright my parents were saddled with having to pay it off in monthly installments. As if her previous medical expenses weren’t enough, the following year my mother began complaining of severe backaches. My father, already financially stretched to the maximum, told her she was becoming a hypochondriac, and suggested she apply mustard compresses and take more aspirin. After passing out from the intense pain one afternoon, she was transported to the hospital by ambulance and diagnosed with multiple kidney stones and diminished renal function. Three life saving operations later and a long recuperation with an attending nurse at home resulted in an additional $10,000 in medical expenses. Having no health insurance to cover the added medical expenses the bill was tacked on to the existing previous balance and their monthly payments tripled. It was more than my father could stand and his descent into a liquor filled abyss began in earnest.
A few years after my dad had started working at Younger Brothers, Red suffered a near fatal heart attack and decided that he’d had enough. My father took over as Diesel Shop Foreman, and pretty soon was treating his workers the same way Red had. Although he’d somewhat curtailed his contempt towards authority, it seemed that down deep inside his artistic drive had been choked off by his mundane mechanical duties and the deepening quagmire of medical debt, and his frustration with his current state of affairs began to increase. Slowly at first, then increasing in frequency, he began to turn Friday paydays into late night parties and soon the long weekend binges resumed.
It was during this trying time that my mother, also extremely frustrated with her medical situation and having to tend to my baby brother, began searching for help from other than worldly sources. Since an earlier brief attempt at becoming a practicing Catholic, or even a Pentecostal, had proven fruitless, she decided that maybe she would try the occult. Asking discreetly around the neighborhood for some leads on anyone who might know of someone practicing some form of dark art, she was eventually referred to a neighbor a couple of blocks away. After a short visit, this neighbor suggested my mother contact a certain “lady” and arrange a consultation.
On a rainy Saturday afternoon my mother, carrying my brother in her arms, and I caught a city bus and traveled a short distance to an adjacent neighborhood. We got off the bus in an area that was still predominantly Hispanic, but the homes were a level up from the ones in our neighborhood. They had actual driveways and the lawns were populated with green St. Augustine grass.
We walked a short distance, with my mother constantly referring to the slip of paper that bore an address, and soon she stopped and quietly told me we had arrived. Asking me to sit on the stairs and wait for her, she walked onto the porch and knocked on the door. The door opened, and unable to see who had opened it, I watched my mother and brother disappear into the house.
Being an eight or nine year old child at that time I had no real concept of time passing. But I do remember that after having occupied myself for a while by digging up roly-polys from the soaked soil in the small flower garden in front of the house, I suddenly heard my mother call. Looking up I saw her coming down the steps telling me to put the bugs down and to clean my hands. Briskly, we began walking back down the block to the bus stop.
The mysterious woman with whom my mother met with turned out to be a local “curandera”—a female Mexican witch doctor. The neighbor who had recommended her told my mother, “She won’t come cheap, but she’ll get the job done—and before you know it Bob will be off the bottle and he’ll bring home every paycheck right on time.”
Going To The Dogs
The promises made by the curandera must’ve sounded like sweet music to my mother’s ears. So, after our visit to her house she began to save money by the only means available to her: she cut into our already pitifully small food budget. She initiated several plans to accomplish her monetary goal. The first was to take the two bologna, or pressed ham sandwiches she usually packed for my lunch, and cut them down to one. The nickel she gave me every day to buy those little half pint glass bottles of milk with the cardboard stopper at school suddenly went missing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “Drink water,” she said. “It’ll clean out your insides. Besides, don’t be putting on airs, you weren’t born drinking milk.” Well, actually, I think I was born drinking milk, I thought—but I didn’t dare disagree.
But probably the absolutely worst idea that she had ever came up with to shave our expenses (and this is the absolute truth) was when she suggested that maybe we should try to supplement our hamburger meat rations with some of that dog food that came in cans.
“I saw a can of it the last time I was at the store,” she said breathlessly, “and it was very sheep, only twenty cents. And it said it was almost one hundred por ciento meat,” she said knowingly.
“Mom, it’s horse meat with beef and chicken guts, plus a lot of other junk!”
“So? When I was living in Mexico we ate horse meat and it didn’t kill us.”
“I’m not eating any horse meat, and I mean it, mom!”
“Oh you…you’re so spoiled! Ha! Mister Frankie doesn’t eat horses,” she said in a sing-song manner.
“No, and you can’t make me.”
“Bueno, vamos a ver.” (We’ll see).
It was only a suggestion, she continued to assure me; and only if it tasted OK after she mixed it up in our sopa.
So the next afternoon she sent me off to Henry’s Store to buy, instead of a quarter pound of carne picada (hamburger), a can of dog food. With strict orders not to divulge what it was going to be used for she pushed me out of the door and told me to hurry.
Well, that was quite the scene—me, trying to explain to Henry that, yes, I really did want to buy that can of dog food.
“But, you don’t have a dog, Frankie” he insisted impatiently.
“Um, no. But we think we might get one soon, and my mom wants to make sure we have some food on hand for him in case we do…ah..get…you know,…one.”
“Who’s gonna give you a dog?”
“I don’t know. But I think my mom knows somebody that has an extra one they don’t need.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, really! My mom said he’s a runty kind of dog, but he’ll need to eat all the same, but not much, so that’s why we only need one can right now. Anyway, I need to get home. Can I pay for this now?”
“OK, but I’m going to talk to your mom when I see her…and I better not hear that you lied to me.”
“OK. Is it going to cost more than a quarter pound of carne picada?”
Lucky for me, after opening the can and daintily placing a smidgen on the end of her tongue, she smacked her lips, wrinkled her face, and announced that it was gritty and tasted like tin can.
Furrowing her brow, and in her best Spanglish, she mused, “Well, it might be OK if I mix it up con ajo and cebolla. Pero, I don’t know if it’ll stick together in the pan. What do you think, mijo?”
“Can I go outside?”
“No, not now. You know, I don’t think this idea is going to work out after all, so I’ll have to put the top back on the can so you can return this to that tonto Henry.”
“I’m not going back there! He already thinks I’m crazy! And he’s not going to take back a can that’s already been opened!”
“Bueno, then you’ll have to eat your sopa with no meat, mister smarty pants.”
“I don’t care. Can I go outside now?”
The Great Chicken Caper
A few days later, after returning home from school, I walked into the kitchen and noticed that my mom was in a really good mood. She was whirling about the kitchen cooking away like crazy and singing some spicy little norteño ditty. It was absolutely nuts. Cutting to the chase, I asked her if she had found money that my dad may have lost.
“No,” she said, “much better.”
“What could be better than found money?”
“Mira, what do you smell?”
“I don’t know, but it smells good, whatever you’re cooking in that pot.”
“You bet, flaco (skinny)! And it’s gonna taste so good too!”
“What is it?”
“Go look in the tub,” she said in a suddenly mysterious and sultry voice.
“The tub? You mean the bath tub?”
“Sí, silly. The tub!”
“MOM! Why do I have to go look in the tub?”
“Well, if you don’t go see you’ll never know, now will you?” My mom was philosophical like that.
I crept up to the bathroom door, wondering what I’d find, opened it and carefully looked inside.
As my eyes slowly adjusting to the semi-darkness of our bathroom, (there was no light receptacle so if we went at night we had to light a candle, but that’s another story), I began to see that the tub was smeared with what appeared to be blood—a lot of blood! Edging closer, I saw (feathers?) and some stuff that looked a lot like the remains of that cat we’d dissected in biology class. Yes, and there was a small beaked head with an eye staring directly at me!
“Mamá! There’s blood, guts, and a head in here!” I screamed, retreating back into the kitchen.
“Chure! It’s a shikin.”
“How did a chicken get in our tub?”
“Well,” she said beginning to absolutely beam with pride. “Remember the dog food? Well, that estupido Henry wouldn’t take it back, so I began to think how I could still use it. Then it came to me! I spooned some out, mixed it with a little arroz (rice), and put bits of it in a line out in the back yard.
“What!?”
“And then, just like magic the shikin just followed the dog food and arroz and, ‘POW’,” she yelled, smacking her fist into her open hand, “she just walked right into our house…eating. It went right into the bathroom and I cut the head off!”
“MOM! You what? Where did the chicken come from?”
“Oh, you know…Señora Gutiérrez behind us has all those stupid shikins she keeps for the eggs she sells? Well, one of them flew over the fence to eat my dog food and I caught it, and that’s what we’re having for dinner. Is your mommy esmart or que?”
“MOM! You can’t just steal her chickens!”
“Oye, (listen) you silly! I didn’t esteel her shikin. She must not be feeding them enough so it just flew into our house greedy for the arroz I put out. It was hungry! I can’t help that! Besides, she charges too much for those lluevos anyway, so it serves her right.”
“MOM!! It didn’t just fly in here. You baited it.”
“I don’t know what that means you smarty mouth. But if you want to eat you have to clean out the tub. And, make sure you bury the head, feathers, and all the guts under the house so no one sees. Now hurry, the shikin is almost done.”
And so, ended our experimentation with dog food. I dread to think what might’ve happened if she’d actually liked the taste. To this day, I can’t open a can of dog food without having that scene come rushing back into my mind.
Oh, and the shikin was very good indeed.
The Witch Doctor Pays Us A Visit
I would assume several months went by before she was finally able to save enough money to pay the commission for the witch doctor to cast a spell on my dad. When that day finally came my mother swore me to secrecy and promised an eternity in Hell if I so much as breathed a word to anyone. The woman would be coming on Saturday afternoon, since my dad would be out on a bender anyway, and I was ordered to stay out of sight and out of the way.
A soft knock on the wooden screen door interrupted the game I was playing with Jerry, and he curtly informed me that he would not be available until after the devil lady had left.
My mother came rushing out of the bedroom dressed to the nines, wearing makeup and sporting her only decent going out dress. She shushed me away and pointed me back to the kitchen issuing me stern instructions to stay right there.
“And be quiet, mijo, I want this spell to work. Now go!”
Lying on the cool linoleum floor in our tiny kitchen with my head peeking out toward the front door, I saw the witch doctor enter our house. A strangely dressed dark skinned woman, she wasn’t old…just hard to place in years. She wore her hair, well, she really didn’t wear it any way. It just hung in tangled strands, black with silver streaks here and there and long jingling earrings hanging from her ear lobes. She smelled funny too, like old dust-covered up with cheap perfume. Putting down a large bulging cloth sack she had slung over her shoulder she took a seat in the center of our front room and listened intently while my mother informed her of my father’s many sins.
“I have”, the dark woman said, “just what you need. But…” turning slowly to pin me with her gaze, “…it will cost you ten dollars.”
Getting up from her chair my mother rushed into the kitchen where I was hiding. Pulling me up by my shirt she thickly whispered, “Hijo, I don’t have enough money! You have to go to your tia Janie and ask to borrow two dollars.”
“I don’t wanna go and ask for money,” I whined.
“You go, and you go NOW!” She spit out through clenched teeth. “Don’t you want your father to stop drinking? Because if you don’t go then he won’t stop and it will be all your fault!”
“Mom!!”
“GO!”
So, regretfully, off I went.
Carefully avoiding the real reason we needed two dollars I finally convinced my aunt that not only was the money for a good cause, my mother would return it by tomorrow. Rolling her eyes she reached into her apron and fished out some change. Counting out two dollars in quarters, dimes and nickels, she instructed me to have my mother call her later. I promised to deliver the money and the message.
After pocketing the loot, the witch doctor began her ceremony. She dug into the sack took out some candles and arranged them in a semi-circle on the floor. After she lit them, a lot of arm waving and hoarse chanting ensued. She then asked to be shown where my father slept.
Since there was only one bed, (I slept on the floor then), she followed my mother to the corner of the room all the while mixing water and a green liquid from a small unmarked bottle into a small pot she had also retrieved from the sack. She asked for a mop, and once she got it she sloshed the liquid under the bed—careful to use the mop to spread it around evenly. The smell of menthol/mint was overwhelming and my eyes watered. To my mom it must’ve been the sweetest aroma she’d ever smelled; all the while thinking that her life was finally going to make a big turnaround. The curandera finally ended the ceremony by reciting some type of mumbo-jumbo in a language that sounded like Cajun and pig Latin. In a grand swoosh of skirts she headed for the door, leaving the empty pot by the bed. My mom was absolutely beaming, looking up to heaven and holding both hands to her breast. She should’ve known better.
Well, OK; so it didn’t work. After coming home on Sunday and sleeping off his hangover he asked my mom why the house smelled funny.
“I don’t smell anything,” she said defensively. “Maybe it was one of your whores that left her stink on you.”
“Vieja loca.”
As if on cue my father went on a huge bender that next weekend and didn’t come home until Tuesday morning. After making several calls to my mother inquiring about my father’s whereabouts on Monday, one of the Younger brothers’ sons went to my uncle Frank and told him they planned to fire my dad on Tuesday morning. Walking the long walk from his paint shop to the main office that afternoon, Frank interceded with the elder Youngers and saved my father’s job.
Later that week Frank walked into the mechanic’s shop and pulled my father aside. With his mouth almost in his ear he whispered in a low growling voice that this would be the very last time that he would ever intervene to save his little brother’s hide.
Time to shape up.