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CounterPunch
September
21, 2002
By the Hand
of the Father
by
SUSAN MARTINEZ
Click
Here for a Spanish Translation by Oscar Sarquíz.
I was the first baby delivered in spanish in Bakersfield,
California, by Dr. Ramirez at Greater Bakersfield Memorial Hospital.
My father recorded the event on reel to reel tape, and he played
it for me once. Actually, he played it for me several times,
but I could only bear to listen to it once, the sound of my first
song followed by his sobs of happiness, then he and Dr. Ramirez
congratulating each other as if they'd done all the work.
Dr. Ramirez was Venezuelan but had been
raised in Massachusetts, in english, with his mother's family.
He wanted to find his hispanic heritage and therefore started
with language, by taking a night school course. My father, chicano,
taught him to speak, read, and write spanish, and Dr. Ramirez
in turn coached my white mother through pregnancy with such revolutionary
ideas as preparing juice and instant milk with fluoridated water
from the drug store, so that I would have strong teeth. My birth
was his first step in providing health care to spanish-speaking
people in Bakersfield.
I told my mom, when we talked about the
details of this, that he'd delivered the right kid. She hadn't
thought of it that way, but that has  always been the struggle between
us: she sees my hispanic heritage as novelty, not central to
my soul. Our struggle crosses the bounds of generation, race,
and geography.
My parents divorced 5 years after my
birth and I was raised in New Jersey, in english, with my mom's
side of the family -- not unlike Dr. Ramirez. Thousands of miles
from me, my father was a champion of bilingual education, but
at my school no one could pronounce my last name, not even my
high school spanish teacher.
This is the Cliff Notes of my life, and
there is a longer version but the soundtrack to my story is already
composed and arrived in the mail on a CD last week. "By
the Hand of the Father" is the music and selected
stories from the theatre-work created by Alejandro Escovedo in
collaboration with playwrights Theresa Chavez, Eric Gutierrez
and Rose Portillo. The play and music explore the relationships
between immigrant fathers and their children, but the CD could
also be the sonic companion to my journey as a woman staking
a claim where race and culture are defined -- and undefined --
by the migration of time, boundaries, and blood.
"By The Hand of the Father"
is not just about the border, and I don't mean any disservice
by saying that, because the lyrics and imagery are tangible and
fragrant, among the most exquisite poetry I have ever heard.
"On the border of a new age, I have a foot in each century.
But when time was measured differently and borders had another
meaning, my father had a foot in each country, where the mud
on each boot caked the same and the dirt sifted the same through
each hand and the earth had but one scent." This is the
music of contradiction and resolve, of carrying twice the story
instead of clutching a history half-lost. It is a landscape populated
by guitars and fathers who bury their sons; by violins and lovers
swept up in Italian waltzes at the Aragon ballroom; by the mourning
of a cello as a daughter wonders what makes her father's hand
suddenly strike... it is the man who cries after a lifetime of
marriage that he wasn't a saint but he stayed. These are the
songs of defending your identity, even to your own parents. I
am not the first child in my father's family brought into the
world in spanish, more likely I was the last; nor am I the first
of a wave of Mexican-Americans: my father's family has lived
in the same area of the west where it is the nation's border
that has migrated, not just the people. Mom bristles when I remind
her that though her side of the family settled New England, dad's
side was here first. When my great-great-grandfather traveled
west to find gold, he cut through my other great-great-grandfather's
sheep pasture and silver mine to get there.
"We met at a point in space and
passed off a genetic code, a hand to hand return to earth. Two
separate bodies, two separate minds under one roof. And when
you leave this earth we will return to that point for just a
moment, our two bodies becoming one continuous line til we float
away from each other, two bright signals across a bright universe
transmitting a message in pure silence."
My father died 15 years ago and it is
too late to ask him questions I did not know to ask when I was
young. He cannot tell me his stories one more time; it is up
to me to remember them as best I can and pass them to the next
generation in all of their pain and beauty, his cries of "my
heaven, my blue-eyed heaven" when I took my first breath
just part of a continuous line with whatever I say next.
Susan Martinez
lives in Berkeley. This essay originally appeared in Rock
and Rap Confidential.
She can be reached at: sebm9@earthlink.net
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September
20, 2002
Joan Hoff
Debating
War:
the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master
Jean Chretien's New York
State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
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About Bush's
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Krystal Kyer
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The Rape
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Richard Falk
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Jeffrey St.
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