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Who's TJ, Who's What?
It’s a tradition, more than a tradition, a way of affirming who we are. Despite the protestations of who we aren’t – TJ’s, a bunch of fresh, over-the-border Mexicans with no couth, unsophisticated and unprepared for the big city, L.A., and all its glamorous trappings, such as are represented in the little holes we occupy there, lower- middle-class enclaves with little to recommend them except warmth and shelter (maybe that’s enough! One year you’re in Mexico suffering under a palm roof on the outskirts of the rancho you don’t even own, complaining about the brutal jefe, and the next year the clouds clear and you’re in California with enough to eat until you look up and see your family around you, and, hijo de la chingada, nobody has starved in so long you mustn’t be un pobre anymore, let alone your grandchildren seeming so American it’s almost painful to watch but for the blessings of food, shelter, work, clothes, and a little left over for a good party on Christmas Eve) – we eat the ancient foods and claim some connection to raza, to the people, no matter how disdainful. Seated in a living room festooned for the occasion (“Merry Christmas!” “Feliz Navidad,” provided the soundtrack early on, aunts and uncles and cousins and relatives so distant you barely knew they existed bursting in with food and drink and taking their places comfortably), on couches and in chairs set up in a loose oval, we struggle with tamales on paper plates in our laps, poking at the chili-colored husks until they unravel to reveal the beauty of a burnt-orange mound of carne wrapped in masa, done the old way, not with prepared cornmeal (“masa preparada,” the concession to the modern age still sounding a bit ignominious to the purist, the connoisseur of real Mexican food), the masa ground by hand this year by fiat of an obsessed viejo drooling in the corner. He’s doomed to die of a rare cancer within months, so he has demanded of the women an authenticity within arm’s reach.
He has seen it all, the leap from the most perilous poverty to this nighttime scene of joy and a table so plentiful we must have never been that poor after all, really, come to think of it. It wasn’t so bad back then in the old days, the days of the crossing and afterwards of working and living in L.A., the slick stone-castled place above the smog-line that everybody fit into easily. Paradise was our natural destination.
We were angels with our style and debonair grace. Our classy wings flapped so hard nobody could notice the huaraches on our feet when we left the ground and hung out in the blue-tinted porticos, getting along with anybody with a pipe and an ascot.
“I remember when… ” And Grandfather and uncles were more sophisticated and elegant than in the pictures you’ve seen of them, average Mexican men, workers in denim jackets and dungarees, leaning against posts in the greater L.A. area between jobs or looking awkward, not quite right, in Sunday suits. Big smiles, thin mustaches, ropy muscles, not at all the Clark Gables they’re made out to be.
“We weren’t TJ’s like these new ones around here.”
“That’s for sure, pass me the sal, honey, these beans are a little bland… Sin sabor.”
“Rita! Tutti’s complaining about your beans again!”
“¡Ay, tú! Shut up! On Christmas Eve! They’re delicious, Rita, just… yummy. Sabrosos.”
“Here come the TJ’s, ssshhh.” Down the street, a group enacting Las Posadas stops at a house and knocks; a patch of dirt separates us, and then there is the hall for community events. We see them out the front window standing under a porch light.
“I wonder if they’ll come here.”
“Naw, they won’t. They know who’s Mexican on this street.”
“¿Cómo qué who’s Mexican?” Grandmother pipes up bringing in another plate of tamales to offer around. “We’re all Mexicans here but you, Tutti. You think you’re what? ¿Princesa de esta calle de tierra? ¿Carlotta aquí en mi barrio? Sheesh, don’t tell me Mexican. Soy mexicana. I’m proud.”
Munch munch. Silence.
“Still, we’re different…”
“What do you mean, different?” A cousin wants elaboration. She scrunches up against the couch and asks honestly. She holds her hair up in a twist and listens.
“Well…”
“I heard on Independence Day they threw parties, our grandparents back then, great grandparents.” I wink at another cousin across the room. “Roasted goats and flew la bandera mexicana proudly. Wasn’t that true, Mom? They threw big barbecues in your back yard celebrating el dieciséis de setiembre?”
“Yeah, and they got drunk and got all sentimental over el grito, they sure did.”
“Sound like a bunch of… un poquito,” I nudge my grandmother because we understand each other, “TJ to me.”
“Ay, enough. Don’t talk about my abuelo that way. He was a good man.”
“He was.” Grandmother assents to the goodness of her father-in-law.
A knock at the door, and we all spring up. On the porch, Mexicans dressed in traditional costumes crowd around us, Joseph and Mary asking for entrance. And we, the non-traditional, not-Mexicans that we are, bow our heads and listen.
We smile gravely at the pitch.
“No tenemos espacio en la casa.” Grandmother handles them, and when she’s done, turning to us with a smile of satisfaction on her face, asking us, “Who’s TJ, who’s what?” we bury our faces in the food, scooping up the beans, the rice, the tamales on the plates under our noses.
“¿Estos tamales están buenos, no?” The ancient in the corner pipes up in exaggerated Spanish. “Tan sabrosos como en méxico.”
And we all laugh.
©Stephen D. Gutierrez, 2008
Stephen D. Gutierrez ('94) wrote a very early draft of "Who's TJ, Who's What?" in the Summer Institute that many years ago. He continues to publish short stories, essays, and produce the occasional play, and direct the Creative Writing program at CSUEB. He'd welcome hearing from old BAWP'ers. steve.gutierrez@csueastbay.edu
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Copyright 2008 Digital Paper
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