The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light Read Online Free Page A

land in between other houses—my dad probably got a deal on that because he had friends. The best onewas more like a house with a number of rooms and a big yard with a working well. There was no electricity or plumbing—just candles and an outhouse. I remember this house was closer to the ice warehouse than the others. The ice was stored in sawdust to keep it from melting, and we could go get it anytime and bring it home.
    From Autlán to Tijuana and even San Francisco, it seemed like we never had much space. We usually had just two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. Mom and Dad always got their room, and the girls got theirs, so we boys would sleep on the couches or in our own room if things were going well with Dad and the money.
    I guess my dad must have been doing pretty good when we started in Autlán. Tony and I, and later Jorge, shared a room. But there were compromises. The roof was a little rotten, and I remember getting ready to fall asleep one night when suddenly there was a thud. My brother Tony said, “Don’t move—a scorpion just fell, and it’s next to you.” Next thing I heard was the creature skittering across the floor, running away. Man, that was a creepy feeling.
    A sound that is really beautiful is the
plop
of mangos falling down when they’re ripe. They’re big, red, and they smell really beautiful. I would play in the yard, which had mango and mesquite trees, and there were these chachalacas—little birds that are a cross between a pigeon and a peacock. They’d wake us up in the morning because they can be so loud.
    That yard had a dried-up well, and for some reason when nobody was looking I decided to throw some little baby chicks down there. Tony saw me and said, “Hey, what are you doing?” and I started climbing down to go get them, and he grabbed me before I hurt myself. “Hey! Don’t go in there, stupid. It’s really deep.” We covered up the hole later on to make sure nothing bad happened.
    I don’t think I was a troublemaker—I was just a normal, curious kid. I knew right from wrong. The yard had this old wall that I didn’t know was starting to fall apart. It had all these vines on it, and one day I started pulling on them to get at the seed pods. I’d open them so the seeds, which each had little parachutes, could go
whoosh
and fly away. I was really enthralled with them, so I keptpulling on the vines until suddenly part of the wall collapsed and landed right on my feet, tearing up my huaraches and smashing my toes.
    My feet were bleeding, and I was scared to death that my mom was going to beat me because the huaraches were brand new and I had destroyed the wall. Everybody was looking for me for a long time. Chepa finally found me hiding under my bed. “
Mijo,
what are you doing there?” She saw my feet and gasped. She told my mom, who felt really bad that I was so afraid of her that my first reaction was to run and hide. She didn’t spank me—that time.
    Life at home was about living by Mom’s rules. She was the disciplinarian, the enforcer. It was her house, and she was in charge. Dad was gone most of the time, so it was just us kids and our mother, and she could be real intense. My mom and dad were not really good at showing affection and demonstrating their love—to us or to each other. Of course we honored our mom, but she was not the huggy-bunny kind.
    Looking back, I realize that she was learning to be a mom while doing all the mom stuff and Dad was learning to be a father—and a husband. My parents did the best with what they had and who they were. They didn’t have any formal education. I don’t even know how they learned to read or write. They taught us, by example, that you make your own way. “Maybe we don’t have much in the way of education or money, but we’re not going to be ignorant or dirty or lazy.”
    Mom had a modest beauty about her. She was tall, and her style was elegant but not lavish. She didn’t like extravagant stuff—but she