Brey Willows

Card 53, Writing Down the Bones: Where did your family come from? When?

I grew up Mexican. Latina. My surname is unequivocally Spanish and mangled by most anyone who doesn’t speak Spanish. Until the day I found out that was a lie. Forty-five years later, in fact, I found out that my family and what they think about themselves is a big, fat, willingly ignorant lie…

You know how you go through those years when you decide you want to go down the Ancestry rabbit hole to see if there’s a single interesting person in the history of your family tree (because there isn’t one at the moment)?

I did that. Tracing, tracing, tracing. Mom’s side was surprisingly easy, even though that side moved like their asses were on fire, constantly setting up in new places to see if they could cool it off. Our weird little stock in a weird little oil company helped, because it had been bought by a great, great grandfather from Denmark, and that $25 a year keeps getting passed down through the family. Another grandfather married a Cherokee woman named Grace. That’s as far as I got with that one.

It’s my father’s side, the Latin side, where the lie pops up like a weasel, but no one bothers to whack it back down.

Mexican. That’s what Dad said. That’s what Grandpa said. But when I asked Dad (after seeing him for the first time in thirty-five years) to give me some info on our ancestry, he gave me both sides:

French married Spanish. Spanish married French.

They moved to America. Had their kids in America. My dad was born in Georgia.

Notice the distinct lack of Mexico as an entity in this equation. When I pointed it out, my dad said, “I’m sure there’s some Mexican in there somewhere.” (He actually used an ugly pejorative, but I’m avoiding that for the sake of sanity.)

I, on the other hand, appear not to be after all. I’m Spanish, and given my love of that country, I’m good with it. I still grew up Latina in predominately White neighbourhoods and had to deal with all that entails.

Where is my family from? Probably a moon orbiting a yet to be discovered planet.