Boy’s jefita’s car wreck set the family behind. Not only did it mean her family lost feria to the repair of their ramfla, it also meant they had to wait for their jefito to come home from work before they could shop for food in his pickup. It was gatcho.
It wasn’t her fault. She was driving home from the grocery store, when a woman from the “rich” side of town who had gotten lost in the Southside drove through a stop sign and ploughed into her car.
“You hit me!” the distraught woman screamed at Boy’s jefita, who didn’t understand what she was saying.
“She said we hit her,” Boy translated to his mother.
“Tell her she’s crazy. Watcha! We didn’t have a stop sign, she did!” Boy’s jefita shouted while pointing to the stop sign.
Both cars had to be towed away. And Boy’s family had to cope with their loss, which was felt immediately.
“Christmas is gonna be meager,” Boy’s jefita announced that evening at the dinner table.
When they got their car back— months before Christmas, the bite from the repair shop left only enough feria to pay rent and gasoline. Whatever food was left in the pantry was all they had to survive on until the next paycheck.
The day before payday, Boy’s jefita went to pull out what she thought was the last bag of beans and saw there was none. She had miscalculated. There’d be no dinner, breakfast or lunch until the next day. She turned to her husband and shook her head.
Boy’s jefito took over from there.
“I ever tell you about how bad things were in my grandparents’ day?” he said.
Nobody responded.
“Back in those days, the raza went hungry in the winter. And the only house that had smoke coming out of it belonged to an old Mexa named Valles, who also had a lot of firewood piled outside. Everybody saw the smoke and thought he was the only one who had food, and they were jealous. Then one day somebody peaked through his window and saw Valles was only boiling water and putting in corn husks to flavor it. He was just as hungry as everybody else,” their jefito said.
“So what did they do?” asked Boy.
“The raza began piling firewood to pretend they had something to eat like him,” his jefito said.
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