Going Back to Tejas

When I first moved to Albuquerque in 2000, I was invited by the University to Texas to speak at the Americo Paredes Symposium. Of course I agreed. I was excited. When I was at UT, I would see Don Americo in the hallways of Calhoun and Parlin. He was in his early 80s, he walked with a cane. He always wore a sports jacket and a hat. He would smile at all the students. This was the man who wrote With His Pistol In His Hand (1958). This was the legend who faced down Walter Prescott Webb. This was the first Mexican American to graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas. He is an icon. I turned in my Master's thesis in early May. I walked out of the watchtower and sat on its steps. Statues of Confederate icons decorate the southern mall -- Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis. It was a humid day. I sat there, looked toward our pink limestone Capitol. George W. Bush was still our governor. I had no idea he would be our president. The next day, Cinco de Mayo, I went to a professor's house for an end of the year party. I sat on the couch eating some fancy tapas when the whispers started making its way through the small crowd. Americo Paredes was dead. I left Austin a couple of days later. I didn't go back for two years.

When I did go back, Austin had a fancy, huge new airport. The Paredes symposium went brilliantly. My paper was received well. I got to sit on a panel with some of the best anthropologists in the field. Was I on top of my academic game? Absolutely. We ate at an amazing Mexican restaurant. I had been craving real Tejano fajitas since I had left Texas. We drank a lot of margaritas, but the entire 3 days I was in Austin, there was a specter with me. An invisible presence that would whisper into my ear as I fell into a deep sleep, Call them. Tap me on the shoulder when I went down to the hotel lobby for my breakfast bagel. They are only 30 minutes away. You don't know when you will be here again. But 3 days is not a lot of time. The conference organizers had packed it full of events. There were all my friends. I didn't know when I would see them again either. I would always see my Uncle James, Aunt Rosie, Christopher and Christy again. I called them every Christmas, and then every January 3 for my uncle's birthday. I would get to Austin sometime soon for them, and if not there would always be the next family reunion in Santa Fe. Uncle James always went to those. I didn't call. Trying to meet up would be way too complicated. It would stress me out.

A month later my relatively new boyfriend Hector was making me breakfast and coffee. I didn't drink coffee, but he did. So he always made me a cup. It was a Saturday. The cat Mia lounged on the corner of the bed. Hector watched cartoons. It surprised me that a 46-year-old man loved Bugs Bunny, but Hector did. He said it reminded him of growing up in El Paso. I could sort of understand it, I mean I still loved Schoolhouse Rock. I knew I had to call my apartment to check my machine. I hadn't been home since Thursday. Hector turned on the TV and I picked up the phone. I knew there would be some messages from my mom, there always were, but I wasn't expecting anything from my Uncle Max. This meant bad news. My dad's brothers never called me unless something bad had happened. Probably it was my grandpa. Maybe it was my dad. My heart fluttered around like birds in my chest, in my neck, in my mouth. I watched Hector laugh at the TV. Mia licked her front paws. I called Max. In just one sentence he told me. James died last night. I wanted to scream. I was just there. I wanted to run a knife across my arm, my leg, any part of my body until it hurt as badly as I did. Hector still laughed. I didn't know what Bugs was doing. The funeral is Monday. I nodded. Yeah, yeah I'll be there. And then I was off the phone, stunned into silence. Hector couldn't go to Texas with me. Work. Always work.

My dad, Uncle Tony and Grandpa picked me up at the airport. Their cowboy hats, Wranglers and muddy boots stuck out amidst all the glass, shiny tile and burnt orange. We were West Texans in Longhorn country. The truck was stifling. No air conditioning. Dad drank a beer. My uncle stopped for some whiskey. I had no paper to present this time. The watchtower loomed in the distance. The first time I came to Austin, uncle James took me to a restaurant on La Vaca Street. There was a long wait. He couldn't sit still. He paced back and forth for 15 minutes. All my dad's brother do that. My dad, too. None of us has any patience. Why didn't I call? I could still hear his laugh over the phone. Hey Patti! Que paso? My dad had never been to a single one of my graduations -- not high school, not college. I'm sure he had and has his reasons. But James and his family were always there. Why didn't I bother to drive half an hour four weeks ago?

Tony's tapping on the steering wheel. My dad and grandpa are crying. I want to be anywhere but stuck in traffic on 183. You know, Patti, she's right. I had gone with James, Aunt Rosie and my cousins on a summer road trip to El Paso. We were listening to Janis Joplin. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. I laughed. I was only eighteen and I loved the talks long road trips inspired. Plus I appreciated James for still treating me like I was part of his family even if my parents were divorced. It made me feel like maybe I hadn't done anything so wrong. And after I moved to Austin, it was great to have family there. Whenever I had a flat tire, he was there to fix it. Or whenever I was lonely I could just drive up to Cedar Park and there they were, all of them. How could I not have called?

Way before James and his family moved to Austin, before I ever went to college, I used to spend every summer with my grandparents and we would drive to Lubbock to visit all of my uncles while they were in college at Texas Tech. They were all so young then, in their twenties -- newlyweds, some dating.

I would get so excited to climb into my grandparents' Cadillac and make the two-hour drive from Friona to Lubbock. All these years later one of the things I remember most about driving into Lubbock is getting to James and Rosie's house. And always the same laugh. Hey Patti! Que paso?