Mañana Means Heaven

The Last Interview

1 tHE lASt iNtErViEw It was almost nine o’clock in the evening, and we had now reached the point when it seemed like there was nothing left to talk about. Silence filled the small dining room. Outside a car whisked past, and a dog barked after it. It was the sound of east-central Fresno. She was tired, that much was obvious. But there was still the one question I had not asked. It had been on my mind since our first meeting, but timing was everything. Sitting across the table from her, I wondered how to ask it. Or if I should. What right did I have to pry into the intimate matters of Bea’s past? I couldn’t help right then to think about the events that had brought me here, to this house, at this moment. Three years ago I was standing in the snow in Boulder, Colorado. I had just walked out of a classroom at Naropa University where the topic was lineage. I left with a feeling of skepticism, wondering what exactly I was doing in this school, a place built upon the reputations of the very outcasts that the author Jack Kerouac himself dubbed the Beats—as in rundown, tired, beat. Standing there on that curb, I did something that I had done several times before: I cracked open Jack’s most famous book, On the Road. But this time, without really knowing why, I was looking for something of myself within those pages.I flipped straight to the chapter about a farmworker woman called “Terry,” whom Kerouac referred to as “the Mexican girl.”She was from the San Joaquin Valley, the town of Selma. A speck about twelve miles south of Fresno. Selma, Raisin Capital of the World—I remembered the billboard sign on Highway 99. I read on with a renewed sense of interest. Kerouac’s description of California’s agricultural region,the central valley,though only partly accurate,took me there, to that place I knew so well. Reading his depiction of Terry reminded me of my own grandmother. A woman who, much like Terry, also lived a good part of her life among the labor camps of the valley, or, as they’re known locally, los campos.The cold air fell away and a warmth settled on the backs of my hands and 2 against my neck; for a brief moment I had forgotten that I was standing outside in Colorado’s coldest month. When I was done reading the chapter, I closed the book and thought of Terry. The real Terry. That is, Bea Franco, the Mexican girl. I wondered what ever became of her. This was the beginning. Or at least my beginning. Her beginning was elsewhere,as I would soon discover.A separate reality.A different time and place altogether. “Bea,”I finally said to her. She lifted her tired gaze up at me.“Do you remember a man, a friend of yours named Jack?” She rubbed and blinked her eyes several times, angled her face away from the light, and thought for a moment. When the answer did not come quickly enough, Albert, her son, nodded at me and pointed his eyes at the photograph that was sitting on the table. “Do you think a picture of him would help you remember?” I asked. “Maybe,” she said. I lifted the photograph and passed it to her. She took it from my hand and stared blankly at it for a second, then rubbed her eyes some more. “I need my magnifying glass,” she said, rising up from her seat. She slowly tucked the loose end of her sweater under her arm and shuffled to her china cabinet, and from the drawer she pulled out a large round lens. She gripped its black handle, flicked on a small desk lamp, and lifted the thick magnifying glass inches above the photograph. Her back was to the table where Albert and I sat studying her closely. She maneuvered the photo until she’d found the right angle, and then held it as still as she could. Her hand trembled. She fixed her eyes on the image of Jack for a few seconds, and looked back over her shoulder at me. Albert fidgeted with his moustache. “Do you remember him, Mom?” he asked, growing impatient. She turned the photograph toward the light and stood motionless, fixated on the details of Jack’s face. Her breathing was audible but soft...