Red-Inked Retablos

The Truman Capote Aria

The Truman Capote Aria Television was one of our English teachers in the 1980s, the decade we had to adjust to our new home in the United States. Four branches of the González family lived together in a three-bedroom apartment in Thermal, California; the school-age generation included eight cousins, my younger brother Alex, and me. Each evening the ten of us would cram into the living room to watch one of the two snowy channels we were able to get without cable, while the adults, my paternal grandparents usually holding court, sat around the small dining room table in the kitchen to talk. The only time we came together was during Buck Rogers and The Incredible Hulk, when we’d laugh at Abuela invoking Jesús, María, y José at the transformation of Bill Bixby into the green beast. The Hulk frightened her because she thought it was a duende on steroids and therefore capable of terrorizing the streets in daytime. (Duendes were supposed to come around in the cover of dawn when their music and mischief was meant to occur without human witnesses , though every once in a while someone claimed an accidental sighting .) But otherwise it was made clear that because the grown-ups were discussing important matters in the kitchen, the women sipping coffee, the men nursing beers, the ten of us had to sit still and quiet in front of the television, which was kept at low volume. The strategy for keeping the noise down worked for the most part, and only once or twice do I remember a disagreement breaking out over which of two competing programs to watch. These arguments were settled by Abuelo, who simply walked over the bodies splayed out across the floor and reached down to pull the plug from the socket, which added a dramatic flair to his dead-pan pronouncement: “Now go to sleep or I’ll yank the cord out of the television too and then that’s the end of that.” Because all ten of us were under fourteen, we were enrolled in the elementary school across the street. My older cousins resented being held back a year or two, but our parents were told that we had some catching up to do in terms of our English skills. I didn’t care either way. At ten years of 2 Self-Portraits age, I liked school and my teachers and especially how my personal English tutor would show me new words, like “chores” and “chimney.” “Shores is something else,” she said in response to my inability to pronounce the ch sound. “Chores,” she explained further, “are what you do after school, after you’re done with your homework.” I looked up at her, “You mean like watch television?” She chuckled. “Not exactly. I mean what you do before you earn the right to watch television.” “Shower?” I said, explaining to her that because there were so many of us at home, all of us kids had to take our baths right after school, before the grown-ups got back from work. “Okay . . .” she said, showing me her full set of teeth. “Then who mows the lawn and who cleans your room?” We had no lawn. We had an old beat-up elevated porch in the front and a deserted lot in the back where the men parked the cars. My room was the living room, which I shared with nine others. In the mornings, all we had to do was pile up the blankets in the corner and then, like Abuelo always said, “That’s the end of that.” “I see,” my tutor said. And then she moved on quickly. “How about this word: ‘chimney’.” I secretly hoped she wouldn’t ask me to relate to that word either, since the only thing we had was a gas heater we used as a bench during television hours because we didn’t all fit on the three-piece sofa set. In reality, there really weren’t that many “chores” to go around. The women swept, mopped, and did the laundry and the dishes. Abuelo cooked, mostly in an industrial-sized pot and mostly stew because it would feed the entire family. He was very territorial about his domain and whenever my aunts or my mother made a noble attempt at the stew, he had something to say about it. Once, he came over to peek under the lid and scoffed: “What the hell kind...