May 8, 2022 1sr draft completed on May 20th

Waiting

Due to a herniated disk, he sat in a packed metro area parking lot waiting for the only
chiropractor open on a Sunday, watching two men carry flowers from a grocery store and
wondering how they were going to fit the 6 foot helium filled potted rose in their car without
clipping a tip of it and arriving at destination to present like a plucked and wilted flower, clutched
in the hand a small boy looking up through a three years olds smile to a smile above him with
the words, “See mommy, I pick it for you. Habby mudders bay, mommy!”

The Knock

But this Mother’s Day was precisely three months after a 7 pm knock on a door, opened to three
men standing in dark suits expressing condolences, followed by the ever unforgettable, heart
piercing wail and collapse of a mother who has lost a child. For the safety of the shaking
woman he pulled her into him as they both crashed into the same chair where he sat 3 months
prior looking to his left at the tall but slight and still elegant 28 year old daughter as she
sneeringly recounted every sin, every error and every petal her mother had “...plucked from the
gardenia of my life that has nothing to show for the last 10 years.…I could have had a career, a
marriage a child. But you took that all from me.”

Still elegant, despite ten years of hard cocaine use and even harder the last 2 years of tweeking
and slipping in and out of cars in the proximity of Biscyne and NE 84th Avenue, she stood there
in a long cotton, flower print dress, without any acknowledgement of a mothers screaming
agony uttered only through the anguish on her face and brown eyes pouring tears that dripped
from the sides of her face. Her mother was seated in an antique leather chair to his right and
the child to his left as he asked the child, “...look at your mother. Look at her tears. What do
you feel? Don’t you feel anything for her? “

“Good. She should feel this way. I feel nothing for her tears.”

He felt then and remarked later “In 50 some years of life I’ve never seen such a display of
resentful, contempt for a parent much less a mother.” And he had witnessed mothers who
walked the street, left their children for half dead, beat them with leather, beat them with whips
fashioned from electrical cords, screamed every name imagined at the child but the one given to
them at birth, or even handed them over to the soulless lusts of those whose worship demand
ritualistic sexual sacrifices of the innocence of children. Yet their children, with understandable
fear and trepidation of the mere presence of a repeated abuser would “respect” their own
human civility and not lift a finger much less a hand or tongue to harm even one depicting the
most horrifically imaginable “mommy dearest”.
As was said millennia ago, “...Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the
LORD's anointed, or lift my hand against them; for they are the anointed of the LORD…”

An Anointed Appointment

Whether by force, subterfuge or a single moment of passion, motherhood is an anointed

appointment by the divine for which, is there any more beautiful passion in all its forms of
success, and no greater suffering than in the failure and early demise of its offspring? Look into
the dying eyes of any woman and if those eyes are laid upon the good life of her child those
eyes carry no fear or regret of what is to come. But to him an all too familiar form of hell is the
tormented soul of any mother wondering of and for, the security, stability and sanity of their
child. In the parable of the prodigal son there is for good reason never a mention of any wife or
mothering emotions tp badger a father to “cut a deal”, “not be so harsh”, “make a concession”
so that the son would stay, malingering in the fathers house to be the wedge fracturing the
fathers cognition of and resolution to provide what was actually in the child's best interest and
from the mothers desire to bear and shield from her child's body, mind and heart, any touch of
pain.

The best fathers are said to be those who can reach over from cognitive empathy and on
occasion bear their child’s emotions. The best mothers may be those who can reach over from
bearing every emotion felt by a child, to parental cognition that a child will learn to successfully
self regulate their emotions if the mother that bore them regulates her instinct to bear, much less
be subjected to all of the child's emotions and instead, requires for the benefit of the child that
they honor the anointed appointment with a life of doing unto others and keeping themselves
pure from a tarnished world….at least to some degree and at least for some moments of their
lives.

Six months from the day he sat watching a daughter express no affection for her mothers tears,
he sat in the same chair, the mother sat in the same chair, but in place of the daughter standing
there, was a photograph of the same daughter and the daughter laying not as “if” but as
“actual” ashes in a box beneath the photograph.

Happy fucking mothers day. Tears cloud his view of the photograph, the box and the mother,
then and at this moment, and probably for time, each tearing at a heart torn for love of each of
them and they could feel and speak of to him, when only in his and not each other's presence.
Each of those times of expression it would first be a walk past a blasting furnace of anger for
what each alleged the other had done to them. Singed but not roasted he would move with
each through a field of thorns of resentment of what each had done or could have done for the
other. Still cutting from the thorns he would crash with each of them into a well of choking tears.
But this was only separately with them. When in each other's presence there was only one
instance of tears, and they were the mothers alone, as she remained silent and he attempted to
advocate for her while her daughter raged against her. And there lay his effort to advocate, at
their feet, dust in a box, a life that could only find purity and rest in a furnace.
A mother receiving the anointed appointment carries a divine faith that ”... thou couldst not leave
His soul in hell…” applies not only to a Messianic Christ, but also to their own begotten. He
does not know. Who can? But he would like to hope he could believe that way. Especially this
Mothers Day as he pauses and fails to recall any of 50 or more Mothers Days. Instead he
recalls moments such as those already shared and those to be mentioned further.

Heads turned, eyes closed and without hearts

A moment recalled is a year earlier, walking in and seeing a mother laying the corner of a
couch, tears flowing down her cheeks, sobs racking her body and looking across a room of less
than two body lengths at the backs of her two daughters whose eyes were turned, ears closed
and hearts without care for anyone as they stared a pixels of 16 million colors. This shall not
stand was his only thought as he flipped the chair of the youngest, firmly removed the device
from her hands, looked her in the eye pointing to her mother and stared inches from her face,
“See that? What the fuck are you about? Get over there.” Taking the girl by the shoulders he
practically threw her into her mothers waiting arms.

He then turned to the older, still with her back to them and caused her to flip around in the chair
with a cuff to the top of her head. To her startled look he simply pointed at her sister and
mother with his right hand, took the device with his left hand and growled, “Get your ass over
there.”

She did.

She wanted to live another day and post more photos on instagram. Many of the mothers tears
that day were related consternation over her daughters instagram postings which would include
suggestive photos of the daughters 12 year old ass and breasts. A Mother or Fathers day card
from such a daughter could only read, “Roses are red, violets are blue, I posted these photos,
just to say FUCK BOTH OF YOU!”

He pauses to wonder. Had he cuffed the 28 year old in her mouth, what would have been the
effect? Would for the first time in her life, a righteous challenge to her foulness would she, like
the 10 and 12 year old, have had a turning point and developed a degree of civil respect for
their mother and a civil respect for their role in society and not ended up as a photograph sitting
on a glass coffee table above an alabaster box.

Mi madre lo es todo para mi

A schizophrenia of Latin culture troubles him. In the Catholic Latin culture, “...mi madre lo es
todo para mi…” But he observes the same that claim to revere their mother as everything, will
turn and treat a woman as less than nothing but an object of desire and seduction and upon
serving such purpose to be Machistaistically discarded with no objection to her soul being left in
hell. Is this particularly Latin? Or is this an observation geographically colored when one sits in
a parking lot 20 miles north of Miami? The young men carrying the 6 foot helium rose - are
they that, or are they different? In his mind he can see them entering a suburban kitchen and a
Cuban mother, who purses lips and mutters “...hay una madre mexicana en Homestead a la
que le falta su adorno de jardín de 6 pies…” lamenting that her sons have all of the taste of the
chusma in Hialeah their parents slaved to escape. Reality - her friends are envious that she
has not one, but two sons who bought the biggest rose they could find and they, as does he,
hope and imagine that they are as good to most in some ways as they are to their mother.

He can’t recall ever giving his mother a flower or wanting to. He can’t recall her having the
feminine gentleness or kindness he has observed in most women and that would beget them an
offering of roses on Mothers Day, a Valentine's Day or a Just Because Day. One would think
he could recall a mothers day for the mother of his three children, but sitting there and recalling
the wailing of the mother he knew who lost a child and the sobs of a mother thinking she was
going to lose hers, all he can recall of the mother of his child is her sitting on the floor, knees to
her face, back to the wall and wails and sobbing as he prepared to leave her for Miami and for
whomever other than her that he would find there.

Never loved back

There was no animus towards her. The mere observation of her pain was in a way the climax of
his purgatory of 20 some years of miserably hoping he had accepted the fact that she did not
and had not, ever loved him. Largely feeling guilt for putting her through the pain of being loved
and trying to love back, someone that you couldn’t really like and now the shame of them, being
the one to leave when it should have been the other way. She should have openly rejected him
and left him with the simple public explanation that he was simply not good enough for her.
Everyone that knew them would have understood that. But doing this to her without the
decency of waiting until after Christmas. It still sickens him to this day to think of that month of
time, since then, but then he thinks of the 20 years before and tries to accept the unacceptable
loss of years and heart with the rationalization that while there will be no Valentines Day, or
Anniversary to celebrate, she will have and he will have played a part in giving her three
children who do love her and give her that love as he hoped he did on every day including
Mothers Day. And maybe she finds comfort in knowing that she was loved even if by someone
so imperfect for and imperfect to her.

Mimosas and Moments

While he sat in the parking lot with an aching back the same woman with whom he shared a
knock on the door three months before was with her son, being driven to a gilded bistro in a
seaside Miami suburb where over Mothers Day Mimosas they would recall time after time
moments with the daughter and sister, not from her last decade where she mixed SSRI’s with
cocaine and methamphetamines, and the last year where her in her lostness, her mother and
the man sitting in the car stood waiting to catch her in her last fall, but unlike the song, she
never looked for and never found more than another set of headlights that flicked, then slowed
and then then dimmed into the alleys off Biscayne Avenue.
Still waiting, his mind wanders through love in photographs recorded in the gigabytes of a phone
in the pocket of his jeans. His first daughters, minutes old, cradled in her mothers arms, the
look of nothing more than pure innocence and love. 17 years later he looks at a photograph of
the daughter still reflecting that pureness and love and who in her total physical disability still
needs the daily cradling of her mother who never left her despite her mitochondrial disorder and
painful seizures predicated by wailing and followed with calming stupor. But he did. He left
her. He left both of them in all of their pain filled sobs and painful wailing. For Mother’s Day they
can celebrate together. But for whom do they celebrate for Fathers Day ? Him ?

Less than 90 days after leaving that mother and two daughters, he left another wailing mother
and her two daughters. The moment he recalls is a moon lit plea of two little girls (10 and 12)
over the noise of a gurgling fountain, “Please don’t leave our mom. You are the only man that
ever loved her and did not use her for sex.” Their words haunt him as the most horrible and
wonderful statement ever made to him. But the reality faced is that despite desire, hope and
love for the three of them, he was not the one to get them to the place they wanted, needed and
deserved to be, any more than he was able tack the the futility of his daughters condition which
for which a decade or more search for a cure now appears to be what kept him in a daily
communication with her mother.

2 daughters - 2 fathers

He could not stop their mothers monthly bleeding and needed hospitalization which she refused.
He could not force the hospitals to remove the fibroid that caused the monthly pint or more loss
of blood. He could not prohibit the miserable machistaism of a father that would have a 10 year
old waiting for his arrival Friday afternoon, still waiting Saturday morning and finally arriving
Sunday night whereupon he would take her to McDonalds and then drop her off at school on
Monday morning. A particular cruelty of it all was that 10 year olds father could not have
forgotten the story of the mother he was divorcing being a 10 year old waiting in a Valencia
apartment for her father to return from Caracas, but by Saturday morning at 10 am he was still
not there and the little girl began calling and leaving messages until her fathers voicemail was
full. Sunday morning she was awakened by her mother and advised that the father for whom
she waited, was dead in a car accident. The 10 year old staring at the screen full of pixels who
had to be thrown into her mothers sobbing arms, knew the full story of how her mother waited
and how her grandfather died. She explained to the man later, that it actually comforted her to
know that while her mother waited for her grandfather who had died at the hands of a Chavista
hit squad on the highway into Caracas and not in a car accident, she knew her father was just
off in Doral with a girlfriend and would actually show up Sunday afternoon despite telling her it
would be Friday night.

Then there was the other father in Mexico blowing up every time someone would send him the
latest photos his 12 year old was posting on instagram The 12 year old was refusing to answer
dads calls so dad would call and text the bleeding mother, while she worked, leaving her in a
state of agitated disconsolation and inevitable conflict with both daughters later that evening.
Anxiety was their consciousness. Sleep was their only respite.
Knock on the door

He recalls the night of the knock at the door and looking up at the ceiling with the dim hue of a
man’s failure. In little more than a year he had failed not one but three of the most decent
committed examples of motherhood. The first was still slavishly caring for or preparing the care
of a completely disabled daughter. The second was now without daily contact with either of her
daughters, both of whom were with their fathers. And the third, was waiting for the answer as to
her daughter's cause of death - which was presumed to be overdose or as it turned out,
strangulation on a night that was several years since her brother had seen her, several months
since her mother had seen her and exactly 3 weeks since he had seen her, at the Wendy’s,
down the street from one of the rent by hour hotels on Calle Ocho, where he had given her a
phone and 100 dollars and with tears begged her to let him take her to Jackson Hospital where
she would be given the change to detox a body which could not stop an amphetamine induced
twitching.

She again refused treatment, thanking him for the money and the phone and the last he saw of
her was the slender figure hunched in a dark wool coat against an early evening January rain
and then past a doorway and around the drive through and to wherever something other than
food could be obtained to slow the twitching. In his pocket is a phone with the photo of an hour
earlier of her at a lunch counter where he had tried to take her to eat, but she could not bear to
sit still and order from a menu on account of her left hand which kept twitching as she would lay
first on its back and than back on its palm. It had the eerie effect of reminding him of his 17 year
old daughter’s autistic, pre- convulsive twitching.

Lost Children

As he thought about what he could have said, or might have done, he recalled sitting on the bed
in the middle bedroom of his grandmothers house in East Dallas, listening to his sister recount
the days leading up to her first abortion at the age of 15. Would it have made any difference if
that holiday he had been there to listen and say something rather than off in the Marine Corps
and only able to hear of her first experience of motherhood a year later. Nonetheless he
regretted knowing nothing, and doing nothing but listening and 30 years later knowing that she
would have been just as wonderful and committed a mother as the three he had failed so
recently. The second mother he failed that year had also experienced an abortion at the age of
15 and his mind wandered to that conversation in a car, in an alley in North Miami Beach and
her recounting the horror of being dragged to some sort of family therapist where as her mother
told it to him, “...they all agreed…” that she would not have a child at 16 as her mother had had
her and then as she told it him, she “...did not agree…” but was physically dragged by the same
mother who pointed a gun at her own head a few years earlier, to a local clinic where she as a
pregnant 15 year old was physically hoiseted onto a medical bench, ankles slammed into metal
stirups and then having ‘...her first child…” scraped from her womb.

In college she sought therapy. Therapy was successful on a number of issues but then the
session that touched on the abortion. The therapist gasped and sat in stunned silence. Finally
he opens his mouth to say that he does not know where to go with that. She leaves his office
and through two marriages, two children and two divorces she never again mentions the lost
children until 15 years later sitting in a car in North Miami Beach. But for all that time, at any
moment where she would see a child that appeared to date an age of the ones she lost, she
would pause to look in their eyes and wonder if their look and the expression on their faces is
not but a reflection of the ones she lost. And sitting in the parking lot he recalls her story and
recalls himself looking in the eyes of children whose ages date the ones from his family and
images their faces to look as might the faces of those family members upon whom he has never
laid eyes, but thinks about every day.

The deceased daughter also charged the loss of her unborn to her mothers conscience despite
the doctors contention that the fetus was not normally developing due to the daughter's
continued drug abuse and lack of participation in any form of nutrition. To the daughter that
made no difference. Every memory of these traumas includes upon him a stamp of time and
place to remind him of the first time he shared their horror and sorrow. This loss is stamped
with a late Saturday afternoon drive East on the Dolphin taking the single lane exit North on I95
listening to a tearful plea how she should have been given a chance to at least love and lose the
un-developing child on her own terms rather than being dragged to the doctor by her mother
and then being inserted with an IUD.

Three years earlier on a Saturday evening he stood in the hall outside the women's restroom of
a church in suburban Detroit waiting for the mother of his three children to partially miscarry
what she claimed was their fourth and last child together. A few hours later what remained of
that child was scraped and later discarded in a fetal remains plot near the Catholic Hospital. If
he thinks about it for more than a moment it still leaves him numb.

Maria

The numbness carried longest is for a mother for whom he never lifted a finger of resistance to
her suffering. Even if there was simply nothing he could do to help her predicament has
haunted his dreams and filtered each view of motherhood with the color of pain.

It was like any other dry, hot August 1989 Saturday afternoon outside a Camp Pendleton
barracks. Where a 20 year old Private First Class with a car and an urge to drink legally off
base offered a trip to Tijuana that night to any of the others unlisted with no better place to go
for the cost of $5.00 of gas. Four hours later they were parked on cobblestone street in Tijuana
and walking a couple of blocks to the modern, neon lit entertainment district. The music
filtering into the street was no different than that of the clubs on Mission Beach or downtown
San Diego but the cover charges and drinks were less. So the other 4 drank, standing at the bar
and watching crowded dance floors. Knowing the probability of none of the other four being fit
to drive back he did not but just watched the dance floor and watched the other four.

One of the four was approached by a thin, local looking young man and the one then had all 4 in
conversation. The short of it was that they were being assisted to attend another club with a
more favorable male to female ratio. So to the blaring techno rendition of Bizzare Love Triangle
he and the four left the club, following their “coyote” through the techno district, north down a
cobblestone street which shortly turned to gravel as the buildings aged and then to just a dirt
street with tin shacks and finally a windowless, single story, rectangular, cinder block building
with a lightbulb hanging from a light post, a steel door and a bear sign signifying it as a business
establishment.

The coyote led the five across the board bridging the gutter between the dirt road and the
building. 5 feet from the doorstep in the dirt sat 2 children, a boy and girl maybe 3 to 5 years of
age, in front of them a flat cardboard box, upon which were arrayed an assortment of candy and
cigarettes. The little girl lifted a box of Chicklettes toward them revealing 3 fingers that were
little more than pale stumps. The other 5 did not appear to notice or hear her whimper
“Senor ?”

He reached in his pocket and poured loose change in the coffee can sitting in front of the box
and waved away the hand containing the gum as they both looked up at him and whispered
“Gracias Senor”, barely heard as the coyote opened the steel door to the sound of perhaps La
Martina on the Mariachi juke box. Compared to the street the inside was well lit with a long bar
to the North at his right with a large dance floor in front of him that went at least 60 feet to the
south end of the building. Behind the west wall of the dancefloor were several open arches into
a hallway lined with at least several doors. Behind the bar was an older bartender and leaned
against it were 2 large middle aged men with drinks but with more of the appearance of security
as they eyeballed the five Marines being separated by the coyote, at round tables that
surrounded the dance floor.

Suddenly, from the open arches appeared one, then two, then four women crossing the dance
floor and seating themselves in one of the two chairs at each of the round tables where the
other four Marines were seated. At least three of women were dressed in Jaliscan dance
costumes but the fourth wore a blue cocktail dress. Each spoke to the Marine at their table and
before each could pull cash from their wallet, the coyote was placing a longneck beer in front of
each of them along with a mixed drink topped with the umbrella stir for each woman. He sat
alone watching each couple as the first two each took a parting gulp of beer and sip of cocktail,
rose from their seats, crossed the dance floor, through the arches and through a door to the
rooms on the other side of the dance floor.

He didn’t notice the last two couples as from across the north side of the dance floor where he
sat closest to the bar a dark haired woman, in a red cocktail dress and pumps was walking
toward him, paused to ask to be seated and then sat in the chair across the round table.

“Will you buy me a drink?”

Her English was thickly accented like the coyote. He’d never had a woman ask him to buy her a
drink. He looked over at the coyote and around the bar as he saw the other two Marines and
women entering different rooms across the dance floor. The bartender was staring him down
as were the old men.

“Uh, okay.”

The coyote was there with a mixed drink, placing it on the table along with a longneck beer that
he waved off saying “Pepsi please.”

The coyote gave a look but pulled the beer back from the table and returned with a glass of
Pepsi while the bartender and bouncers continued the stare down. Nervous, he asked the
woman her name.

“Maria”

“Where are you from?”

“Acapulco.”

“My aunt went there on vacation once.” Her English was not sufficient to know the word
vacation the first time he said it but with a moment of thought she could put it together.

He continued asking questions about her age, family, and details of how she came to Tijuana
from Alcapolco while she glanced nervously at the coyote, bartender and two men at the bar.
Her English was sufficient and he finally asked her where she got the silver crucifix around her
neck. With that question the pleasant, but nervous look on her face turned to strained sadness,
and with her right hand she reached across the table and patted his left arm saying, “I have to
go make some money.”

Eyes on the bartender she got up from her seat, and leaving her drink behind she walked to the
bar and stood next to one of the bouncers, arms folded across her chest, with a look of
uncomfortable concern. He glanced at them. They continued to stare him down while the
jukebox played. He looked to the rooms across the hall. He looked back at the bar. Over and
over again. Everyone just stood there and looked back at him. Finally a door across the hall
opened and one of the Marines marched across the dance floor, sat at his table and began
finishing his drink. Then the 2nd. He had a strange look about him as he glanced at the Marine
at the other table but said nothing. Then the 3rd and 4th appeared with similar glances, quickly
gulping what remained of their beers and then standing with the coyote on cue walking to the
steel door and followed by the five Marines.

As the coyote led them back up the dirt street the 4 Marines discussed what was behind the
doors on the other side of the dance floor.

“Never fucked a woman on piece of plywood sitting on 4 cinderblocks.”

“Mine had a mattress.”

“Stained?”

“Blood or shit?”

“Her blood now?

“Where’d you fuck her?”

“In the fucking ass man. How am I going to turn that down for 10 dollars?”

“Fuckin A. Mine got me for 20.”

“In the ass? Hell yeah!”

“Make her bleed?”

“No.”

“Mine. Made her bleed. Uuuurahhh!!!”

“What did she say? Did she fucking moan? Mine was saying something like ‘dos me’ over and
over again.”

“Dos me! You are an ignorant cunt. Fucking dumb ass. She was saying ‘Dios Mio’ “

“What the fuck does that mean? Dios mio.?”

From the front, without turning his head, from the coyote came without emotion, “My God. She
was saying ``My God.”

The four discussing had transpired in the rooms were all drunk, but not that drunk. That was to
follow. One in particular was a short, freckled red hair Marine who read his bible religiously.
Hungover, the next day back at the chow hall he asked, “What did you do with yours?”

“Just talked?

“Really?”

“Yeah. She has a four year old son Jose back in Acapulco. With her parents.”
“She was fucking hot. They were all hot. Can’t wait to do that again. Crazy shit. You can do
anything down there for practically nothing.”

“Yeah. I heard.”

“You didn’t do anything with her? Really?!”

“Never left the table. She was wearing a crucifix.”

“Oh.”

“I see you reading that Bible every day.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you………. How do you do that? “

“How do I do what?”

“How do you read that and do that?”

“Huh”

“I know what’s in there. How do you read what’s in there and then do that like last night?”

“Shit………. Well man. I just always wanted to do that. Maybe I’m going to hell.”

Silence. They finished the meal in silence, got up from the table and he never mentioned that
night or that conversation for more than 30 years. But the name Maria has haunted him. What
Catholic church is without a figure of Mary or Maria? The dark hair evenly framing each side of
a gentle olive toned face with full lips and brown eyes, haunts him. The combination of a
sleeveless, red cocktail dress, wrapping around curved hips looking down at clear coated
manicured toes strapped by red laced pumps with a 4 inch stiletto heel is still recalled in full any
time he sees a woman with even one of those symbols of that night. These recollections are
always followed with the horror of the thought of what happened to each of the 4 women that
night and what was happening to them and Marina on each and every night for an unknown
period of nights and an unknown line of men.

Over the years he would understand that Maria, like millions of mothers over thousands of
years, have left behind little ones and entered into the dark to have done to them what is done
behind doors across a hallway, done in cars in alleys and most often done in the dark.
But Maria was 26 years old, a mother of 4 year old Jose, back in Acapulco with her parents ,and
she wore a silver crucifix around her neck. She wasn’t unknown, she was real and what was
happening to her was nothing like he had ever imagined. He knew the right thing to do was to
go back for her. But how? He would not even know how to find the place. When ? He was
contracted to the US Marine Corps. What? And do what? Go in and shoot the place up? Burn
it down? Quietly slip her a name and phone number to call? A place to meet up in Tijuana and
slip her across the border. All of this took place in his mind the hours, days, weeks and months
after that one encounter. Over the years he would encounter more of these types of places and
more mothers trapped in the same sort of misery as Maria. As Maria was his first experience,
they were all a version of Maria, feminine, vulnerable to their surroundings, he with a desire to
stop her suffering, even while he was there to pay for a drink to the bar that trafficked her and
ensure the safe return of his fellow Marines after a late night debauching of other browned eyed,
Spanish speaking mothers from a third world circumstances.

He only recalls the face and name of one of the four Marines - the one with whom he had
breakfast with the next morning. He wonders what that Marine does for Mothers Day. Does he
buy his mother a six foot helium rose? Does he have a wife? Maybe he’s had several. Does he
have daughters? Does he ever think of the women with Maria and consider what he did with
them and think about his daughters, sisters and mother.

Marias

Sitting in the parking lot recalling the face of Maria he cannot forget on Mothers day, he recalls
other faces that remind him of the night he met Maria. The first was a deep brown eyes, round
face, round head and round body on a six year old that sat in a Charter School entrance office.

“Hey boss,” his small voice was a bit gravely and just a slight central american accent.

“Si senorita.”

The brown face chuckled, “I’m not a senorita.”

“Ah. Señora. Los siento.”

“You funny man. What’s your name coach?”

“What’s yours? Brown bear? You look like a little brown bear.”

“You look like a coach.”

His son and daughter attended the same school. His daughter was in the same class as the six
year old who had an 8 year old sister. The sister was the one to register them at school as their
mother from Guatemala who had been in the country for about 15 years, could still not read or
speak English. But she could clean, and every day she cleaned houses and sent most of the
money back to Tegucigalpa, where her father suffered a debilitating kidney disease. The money
went for his dialysis and the rest was drunk by her brothers.

Perhaps their mother had a head injury from one of the unducumented, heavy drinking roofers
with whom she would drink, one of whom battered her face and put her in the hospital. But
rarely could she recall the correct time to pick up the two children who were left over after the
school, so, he and his children would take them home and his children's mother would feed
them dinner and wait until as late as 9:00 pm for their mother to arrive, while he wondered if
their mother was fit to drive having taken advantage of someone dinnering her children to work
a little later and spend the extra cash at the Cantina a mile away. But despite their mothers
dysfunction, abusive boyfriends and fathers they had barely seen who had fled back to Central
America due to outstanding warrants, the boy and his sister were the most loving children he
had ever met. The sister was brilliant, an artist and already teaching herself French in addition
to English and Spanish fluency. Her little brother who looked and acted as a small version of
Gabriel Iglesias (comedian Fluffy) could not read and really didn’t care for class where he was
picked on by other boys who had fathers and whose mothers could speak English, do more than
clean other people's houses, and who were not less than 5 ft tall, and not less than 300 lbs of a
diabetic woman waiting for a heart attack.

But the boy was funny, energetic and loving. He would ask you what time it was and when you
checked your watch stating the time, he would shout, “No! It’s huggie time!!!” and he would
throw his arms around you.

The girl was kind, brilliant and loving. The color of their faces and the texture of their hair was
that of the two he had seen offering Chicklettes from the dirt in Tijuana, and both loved their
mother more than any children he had ever seen love a parent. Every time he stopped by before
the end of school to set up the chess club, he would stop at the boys class and ask to see him
and chat there in the doorway for several minutes. Back in his seat the other boys would ask
who that was and he would say, “That’s the chess coach. He’s my dad. If you mess with me he
will beat you up.”

They knew the chess coach part was true. They would see the boy hanging out with the chess
coaches son and daughter. They would also see him and his sister get into the chess coaches
SUV on occasion. So the bullying stopped, the boy learned to read and his grades improved.
And when he learned from the little girl that another undocumented roofer had fought with her
mother, moved out and left her to pay the full months rent for which she had received an
eviction notice, he advised the school guidance counselor if the situation, handing her an
envelope of cash marked “Anonymous”.
Birthdays and Christmas he and his children would shop for gifts for the two and Mothers Day
was always preceded by a cash gift to the girl specifically for the purpose of including flowers
and gifts with the affection they would give their mother on that day.

Christmas presents are best delivered being driven through a fresh blanket of snow. The boy
answered the door with his usual affection but his typical exuberance accent was curtailed.
Something was wrong. He and his sister sat on the couch and opened the gifts while he and his
son and daughter watched. But the second bedroom door never opened and the mother never
appeared. He could see champagne bottles on the dining room table. And the nervousness of
the little girl. It was obvious that the mother had been out drinking and that she was with
someone behind the bedroom door.

Later that evening after Christmas dinner, the two explained that their mother felt bad for the
undocumented roofer who had previously battered her face, so she met him at the cantina and
acompanied him to various Xmas eve parties with the boy and girl in the back of the car while
she and the undocumented roofer drank. Upon returning at about 2 am mom and the
Guatemalan roofer stumbled into bed as they had done over the last several years and the 13
year old and her 11 year old brother quietly went to the bedroom they shared and the 11 year old
pushed his bed against the door so that no one could enter in the middle of the night.

The look on the 13 year olds face was troubled but clear. He had to ask and the 11 year old
brother responded how he wasn’t going to let the mothers boyfriend touch his sister. He looked
to the sister. asked if the man had done something and she looked down and nodded in full
view of his wide eyed 9 year old daughter and 16 year old son.

Merry Xmas.

The law requires reporting of abuse. As he had met the two in the context of being a
background checked volunteer at their school he was a person required to report or be
considered complicit. He confirmed this obligation the next day with a retired school
administrator and then called the abuse hotline to report the molestation. He was advised as a
witness that he could not have any contact with the children during the investigation. They
could not tell him when that would be.

Since he dropped them off that Xmas evening more than 2 years ago, he’s not seen their sweet
smiles, asked the time or had shouted at him “It’s huggie time!” Small comfort is the thought
that there was some sort of investigation confronting the mother with the prospect of losing her
children if she continued to associate with an undocumented, drunken, sexual predator.
Another side of him regrets not just showing up at the cantina and buying drinks, and buckling
the predator into his SUV passenger seat for a “ride home”. But on the “way home” down the he
75 mph interstate passing lane with a passenger door not actually closed, the driver could
calmly unbuckling the seatbelt of the passed out passenger and as the vehicle pulled 7 or 8 car
lengths ahead of a semi truck, give the passengers left shoulder a little shove toward the
unclosed door.

The semi driver would probably never even see the undocumented predator fall out of the car
door. He’d just hear and feel his front tire and 80,000 lbs of freight roll over something he’d
assume was a deer and keep driving. In the dark he would be followed by a few more unwitting
80,000 lb units at 65 miles per hour. .

But then the question of circling back and letting the police know the unidentified body was
drunk and somehow was unbuckled and fell out the door or, to just keep driving? Probably just
keep driving and make certain to have on that particular night dressed and combed one’s hair
differently for the hour at the cantina bar, to leave the cellphone at home, and to clear the state
line so that the what’s left of the body is just an unidentified corps of an undocumented middle
aged Hispanic male 60 miles from the cantina where he was last seen with the Gringo. If the
police ever asked at the Cantina, no one there would be likely to recall anything much less say
anything if they did. And even if they asked, it would be a long time and he could state “I can’t
specifically recall….and for that reason I’d best remain silent…so as not to mislead your
investigation officer…”

Or. just let the call and investigation by the abuse hotline be the shot across the mothers bow
and or at least letting the girl and her brother know that other people knew and would report
what was going on and that the boy was right to push his bed against the door at night and that
with this and her own wariness another molestation could probably be avoided. But he knew
that he would probably not see the boy and girl again until their mother collapsed literally or
figuratively in acknowledgement that in the USA, an illiterate house cleaner, that can’t speak
English and carries on with undocumented drunken abusers, really can’t parent bilingual
teenagers. They will parent her, even as they celebrate her on Mothers Day.

Dallas
His aunt was only 51 when she was put on a plane to live with him after an attempted overdose
of pills in an East Dallas hotel room. She had 4 children in her lift but the eldest by the age of
30 was working on a Psychology thesis, the next struggling with substance abuse, the next
newly married and the youngest at 20 expecting a son with a 39 year old nurse he met on one of
his revolving doors between periods of power, smack and 12 step rooms.

But the question this May was if the son would survive for the coming Mothers Day. He had
been on a bender of his favorites getting up with the cocaine and coming down with injections
of China white in the gay district of Dallas where older men would rent apartments for clean,
good looking but strung out young men that lit their fancy. Of course they pretended to be
benefactors and elder statesmen of the “community” but the reality was that they trafficked the
young men, keeping them stupefied in their drug dens with just enough energy to call their
benefactor for a little cash and maybe first a meal followed by an obliging or maybe even
grateful act of sexual obeisance, sometimes when again high and other times while the dealer
was still on his way.

This was how the 36 year old fiancé, nurse and mother of Girls aged 19 and 16 described the
condition of his cousin who was AWOL a month before the finance was to give birth to his son.
Yes, the ages are correct. He was 20, his fiancé with child was 36 and she had 19 and 16 year
old daughters.

The last time he’d seen his nephew the kid was six years old and he was 20 taking him around d
the west end of Dallas. Sweet kid. Like the Huggie Time fellow. And rhe cousin thought of him
as a dad as no other was present in his life. So with the thought of that sweet blond six year old,
with a face covered in ice cream, he called the fiancé, then the two sisters in Dallas and got in
his truck and was alone for the next 12 hours and 750 miles.

Arriving in Dallas about 1:30 in the morning he checked in with the sisters who knew the likely
adresss and apartment number where their 20 year old brother had been the last 72 hours.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was fearless masculinity left over from his time in the
Marine Corps, but a bunch of gay junkies slouched in an apartment in the gay section of
highland park, just didn’t cause him concern. So it only took another five minutes to get there
and ring the bell calling out the young man’s name and telling it was his cousin and that he was
needed at the hospital. Even junkies are usually empathic to someone at the hospital.

He could hear movement in the apartment and slowly a standing, stone slight and effeminate
figure and voice, opened the door, “you want Eddie?”

“Yeah”, his finance is on the hospital.

“Oh…that sucks…..Eddie….Gina’s in the hospital…..Eddie…”

The figure laying half on the couch and half on the floor moaned a little. “Here help me get him
out of here.”

Stoned as hell but still trying to be helpful the apartments only other occupant helped Eddie sort
of into his feet and they stagger walked him between them into the passenger seat. 20 minutes
later Eddie moaned and his eyes slightly opened. “Where we goin cuz?”

“To see your mom.”

“Where she at?”

“You need some water. Here drink.” He handed Eddie water with nighttime alkaseltzer to keep
him knocked out. They were half way through Oklahoma by the time he woke up, again asking
where they were asking to call his fiancé and her persuading him to go see his mother in Illinois
and dry out before coming back to Dallas and the birth of his son. Eddie went back to dozing
before being fed and dosed with 32 ounces of coffee south of St. Louis. The two then caught
up.

Mom was a mess so by the time the kid was 12 he was living in Texas with his sisters. The
older was in a masters program and working as a masseuse/escort and booking her younger
sister who was still an undergrad. She was also booking her little brother to older gay men.
This was the first his older cousin had heard of this, but there had been intimations and rumors
going back to when he had left Dallas 14 years prior that nothing surprised him. Another reason
to not be surprised was that mother was 17 when she joined the children of God and it was an
open sex sort of place where children born to parents in the cult would have to pause and
maybe years later check 23 & Me to confirm their paternity. So it really came as no surprise to
hear to the kid mention being molested by a drunk and high mother at some point between
kindergarten and second grade.

For the next two weeks his cousin stayed with him in Illinois and attended AA meetings. His
recollection of Mother’s Day assumes roses were provided to the mother of his child but the
only real memory is his aunt and cousin sitting in the front parlor of the 3 story brick Victorian
and the cousin asking mom if she even remember molesting. She hung her dead in denial. Said
she did t recall anything like that. But half the kids with mothers in the Children of God recalled
nights of multiple women, men children, all naked in bed. One can only wonder what such
people do for Mothers Day.

After a couple of weeks of drying out and being set up for outpatient, cousin was sent back to
Dallas for the birth of his son. 18 years later the son has graduated from high school, his father
is a commercial artist and his father has a new fiancé who is a nice lady and actually several
years younger than he.

The middle sister is a cancer survivor and works for a law firm and the oldest sister who pimped
her little brother to old men, has her PhD and is a geriatric psychologist.

But 18 years later, the seminal memory is of his cousin drying out, trying to clear the air and
telling his mother that he didn’t care if she molested him, because he forgave her. If anyone
ever deserved sobriety, it was that kid. He was a hero that day. He forgave. And he did as he
was asked to do on the drive back from Dallas by his older cousin who pulled him from the drug
den “Get sober to see the birth and life of your own son.” Yes, it makes for a really odd Mother’s
Day recollection.

42 years earlier a Mother’s Day came and went without a mention. For ten days they had
camped in tents on the asphalt at the port. The women and girls used the bathrooms and
showers at night to avoid the piercing lears of the men recently released from the prisons of
Havana. There were no flowers in site. There was no Mother’s Day dinner. The morning
serving of eggs were still green with mold. Any afternoon and even servings were no better
whether partially cooked, partially fermenting, or containing parts of what nibbling rodents left
behind.

But none of the six thought anything of it. The father, mother, two daughters, son and grandson
only thought of getting off the tarmac and getting on the boat that had waited for them in the
harbor for more than three weeks. Four days after Mother’s Day 1980 the six manifested
passengers were ordered on to the boat brought down from Miami, along with 46 other Cubans,
most like the six,, families that left everything including jobs, homes, friends and other family
members to escape the dominion of the Castro regime but also a number of men of the leading
type that had been released from Castro's dungeons to make room for any new dissident voices
unwilling at the moment to check themselves into the Mariel Port concentration camp and be
unwilling to be overcrowded onto a vessel crossing the less than predictable currents and
weather of the straight between an island of dictatorship and an isthmus of freedom.

The engines roared as the boat slipped from the port but with a good thirty more passengers
than its rated capacity, riding low between the waves that sloshed over the bow. Within 2 hours
and 30 miles north of the port the water diluted fuel, sold to the captain while waiting at the port
was slipping though the fuel lines and into the engines. With only one engine running the boat
slowed even as the size of the open water waves increased and the boat began to take on
water. With concern the captain of the vessel observed a fishing vessel heading South toward
Havana and tacked his craft toward them. Over the loudspeaker he asked if they could come
alongside and take the women and children onto the larger fishing vessel so as to allow his
smaller craft to rise in the water and with the remaining men on board he would try to make it
back to Havana to repair the waterlogged engine and refuel.

Over the fishing vessels loudspeaker came the reply, “you made your choice. Now live with it.”
The fishermen on board waved middle fingers and jeered at the passengers on the sinking
vessel, “shouting go die motherfuckers' '. As the fishing vessel headed over the horizon the 51
souls on deck including mothers and children considered their fate. The boat was sinking in the
increasingly dark waves and below the offspring that which devoured the prize of Santiago as
described in old man and the sea awaited the taste of not a single Marlin but the blood of 52
men, women and children.

Grimly, the captain opened the hold containing the life jackets that were not stolen while the
boat sat for a month in Havana harbor. First to his mother and her husband, then his sister and
her 4 year old son and then his younger half brother. The remaining were secured to the women
and children but there were not enough for them all. Those without jackets looked at
detachable parts of the craft that might bouy them, while knowing only minutes remained
issued final mayday calls over the two way radio and set an emergency beacon that would
remain on the water marking where the boat sank.

Below in the hold the captain's 16 year old sister, awakened at her brother's desperate request
over the loudspeaker and the jeering reply of the fishing vessel and sailors mocking them. The
lower part of the vessel had filled with water preventing her from opening the door to the hold.
With elbows she broke the window glass and bleed from fresh cuts she slogged up the steps to
the deck where the children huddled against their mothers wailing their prayers to the saint of
the see. Seeing her, her father removed his life jacket and placed it on her minutes before the
boat's stern slipped below the waves and by ones and twos and then threes, 52 souls slipped
into the 10 to 15 foot waves that quickly separated families and mothers from children.

In the trough between two waves she could see a large dark figure splashing toward her. For
the first moment she thought it good to be able to see someone, but as the figure paddled
toward her she could see the desperation in his face and in the dusk he grabbed onto her and
with only her single life vest attached to her slender frame, under the waves they went as she
began to claw, punch and elbow to break his hold. From what seemed at least a body length
beneath the waves she was able to break free from his grasp and in a second her vest popped
her back above the waves where she could gasp for air which now contained the hot smolder of
diesel that floated on the water. She could hear wails, screams and prayers to the saint of the
seas but only at the top of the waves could she see others bobbing yards away.

She did not know that as the boat sank, her nephew slipped from his adult sized life vest and
that her brother the captain dove deep below the waves to rerun him to the vest and his mother
bobbing above him. She did not know if any were alive. For the next five hours she was alone in
the dark, alone in the 20 foot waves, hearing her screams and the screaming of the other
survivors too weak to paddle away from the pools of smoldering diesel that burned their arms
and chests. As the waves grew to 20 ft they broke the pools of diesel, even as they salted the
wounds of those still with enough breath to moan the searing pain.

In the darkness of the night, crashing of the waves, burning of her flesh and knowing the sharks
below would surface for the wounded when the waves calmed she accepted death. Pain, age
and sorrow do that. For the next several hours she screamed, she moaned and in and out of
consciousness waited for death. But instead of a last sound came a light beaming on the water
and pulsing percussion noise of chopper blades in the distance. Then the noise of US Coast
guard cutters guiding the choppers and pulling alongside Survivors and calling out a tally as
each were hoisted aboard.

The mayday must have contained the number on board and as the communications between
the vessels announced the count as when survivors and bodies totaling 52 were announced and
confirmed to be aboard the ach vessel the vessels charted a three hour course to port in key
west even as the storm called and the sun arose as they pulled into port.

It was not until in the US Coast Guard Cutter hospital bay that the father (Dr Lopez) who
strapped his life jacket to his only daughter, before the drug running vessel slipped into the
depths, saw that his only daughter was alive. Bloodied, and badly burned, but she was alive.
42 years later, a man sits in a parking lot wondering how a woman can survive six years of a
communist boarding school and five hours in burning waves with sharks circling below but the
woman’s daughter cannot survive a childhood raised in Coral Gables attending the best Catholic
schools and every effort her mother, therapists and others who loved them had to offer. But
instead she risked her life with drugs and people that favored them, until one of those persons
placed something around her neck and squeezed the life and light that still remained, from her
soft brown eyes.

A mother can give a daughter life, everything in the world and make every attempt to save her.
But maybe the will to live and to live a good life lies in a child knowing not what their mother
would do for them, but that in life’s worst storm their father would give them his life jacket.

He sees a figure approaching the chiropractor office door and unlock it. His thoughts return to
the pain in his back.