Blusas
This essay appeared in the January 2018 Issue of under the gum tree.Ā
Digital:Ā https://www.underthegumtree.com/digitalissues/issue-26-january-2018-digital
Print:Ā http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1383639
I recently asked my mami for one of the traditional Mexican blouses that she wore when I was younger (by which I mean pestered her for weeks). She said she didnāt have any (by which she meant I shouldn't be wearing womenās clothing).
She had accepted my queer inclinations when they were jokes, when she needed a best friend. Now they were costing her a son, her first son, and that she could not allow.Ā
When she gave me a very final no, I asked my Abuelita Ofelia. She nodded excitedly and said sheād put them away in the garage. She came back with the clear plastic bag that once held my mamiāsĀ wedding dress; it was covered in dust and cracked. Inside were six white shirts that seemed to glow. I gave the smallest to Bianca, my twelve-year-old cousin.Ā
It looks funny, she told me.Ā
Try it on, I said. I put on the biggest of the shirts to encourage her. Bianca laughed at me and pulled on the shirt.Ā
Te vesĀ bonita, Abuelita told her. Bianca looked like a vision from heaven: the white shirt hung loosely around her torso, and her dark skin and hair shone all the more for the contrast.Ā
I canāt wear it. Itās weird.Ā
I told her of all the hipster white girls that wore traditionalĀ Indigenous and Mexican clothing as fashion statements. They felt comfortable wearing Mexican femininity as a performance piece while Mexican girls and women were denied the freedom (I wondered where that left me).Ā
I canāt wear it, she told me again. That made two of us.Ā
My family went to Mexico every year when I was small. My papiĀ used the trips as opportunities to instill his Mexican machismo, he and my uncles tried to take me out into the fields to do ātrabajoĀ de hombreā. They wanted to show me how to foster life in those fields, that you could tell good dirt by the color.Ā They made a show of including me in their drinking circles and offering cerveza.Ā
Cuantas novias tienes, they would ask to try to develop my identity around how many mujeres I was playing.Ā
Si te hablanĀ patrasĀ las madreas. Part of being a man was keeping mujeresĀ (and femininity) in check.Ā
I always found opportunities to slip away while they werenāt watching. I ran across the dirt street and around the corner to my Bisabuela Juliaās yard. There Iād find her sitting in the sun with an extra chair for me though no one had warned her of my coming.Ā
Sientate, sheād say.Ā
Sheād sit quietly and look at me. I was convinced that her life had moved from her body and into her eyes; they were a brown that would have grown enough crops to feed all of Mexico.Ā
When I shied away from her gaze she would start speaking.Ā
No eresĀ comosĀ los otrosĀ niƱos. Her voice wheezed out between coughs. Hoye me, mijo. Each word sounded so fragile that it should be wrapped up for safe keeping (now shattered and lost). Yet her stories were long and heavy. She spoke of when my father was young, when my grandfather was young, and when her hands were strong enough to support all the hombres that relied on her.Ā
I took to rubbing Abuela Juliaās hands while listening to her stories. They were bony and weak. Her skin was dark brown and as thin as her breathing. She always sat in the sun with a reboso around her head and shoulders.Ā
During one of our last talks, she said she wanted to rub my hands. I rested my arm on her leg as she took my left hand in both of hers. Her touch was so soft that it tickled, but I tried not to pull away. I slowly put more effort into holding my arm up because she rearranged her leg under the weight. She laughed and pushed my chubby arm back down onto her leg.Ā
Iām trying to read the story in your hands, she told me. Quieto.
She passed away a few years ago. I never learned her story. Never saw it in her hands. The same men she always talked about had little if anything to say about her. I love my Abuela Julia, but I resented that sheād never told me about her life. Yet my Abuela had given me femininity, and her story rested in it.Ā
The traditional Mexican blouse is cotton and of varying styles and cut, but they all share detailed embroidery. My Abuelita is from MichoacĆ”n, and the blouses her side of the family wears are in the style of the P'urhĆ©pecha people.Ā The material is a non-stretchable white cotton or linen, and the embroidery is thick along the collar or and chest. Each blouse has a mosaic of flowers, animals, or patterns derived from Indigenous cultures; and all of the shirts are embroidered by hand. The shirts and the skills to weave them are passed down from other to daughter, so these blouses are labors of love.Ā
My mami and tia wore them on special occasions when it was acceptable to be proud of being Mexican and feminine, but through the years my family shifted into the ānormalcyā of Americanness. Other Mexican families loved the Salinas Rodeo and Cinco De Mayo festivals. They celebrated Dia De Los Muertos and the Posadas. Often these cultural events were left to mujeres to organize, but my mami was raised American. She didnāt know how to celebrate these events, so my family did none of these.Ā
My papi tried to push both Mexican pride and machismo onto me, so they became tied together. Mexican culture was masculine; it was violent; and it was everything I hated about my life. The only time my papi seemed happy with me was when I wore boots and a cowboy hat with him. He didnāt smile, but a deadpan expression and calm voice were better than the usual scowl and yell.Ā
Te ves como hombre. (As if the appearance might make it true.)
My mami allowed me to be emotional and feminine. She often told me that I was her best friend, and both a son and daughter to her. I was twelve when my sister was born, and I often watched her while my mami ran errands.Ā
Sheās going to think youāre her mom, she would joke. I needed the affection that I thought was tied to being American and the freedom to express myself how I wished.Ā
Eventually, even my mami tried to shut down my femininity. She appreciated it when I was her support system, when she was raising her best friend. I guess she thought that at some point Iād grow out of it. That I would be an hombre, the femininity a phase she could tell girlfriends about.Ā
She still asks my opinion on hairstyles and outfits. She still relies on the femininity she gave me when itās useful, but she wants me to live up to my papiās expectations. My femininity has outlived the laughs, she only ever looks uncomfortable when I try on blusas or rebosos.Ā
Donāt be dumb, she tells me when I mention wanting to wear feminine clothing and wanting a man more than I want to be one.Ā
After graduating from college I moved to San Francisco for an internship. Up until that point I didnāt think of myself as queer. I knew that I wasnāt straight, but I fit into the messy idea ofĀ āmenā at Vassar. In San Francisco, some men brought attention to my style of dress and painted nails. Others asked me what my favorite bar in The Castro was like Iād know gay spaces Iād never been near.Ā
It took coming home to Salinas to figure out that I just didnāt fit the worldās idea of masculinity anymore. The space that made me so comfortable in my Mexican identity now made me scared for my feelings of gender. Some boys in a class subbed for caught me crying and didnāt speak to me again. A man avoided shaking my hand when he saw my nails. Another man in the gym saw me wearing just tights and said, I thought we were friends.Ā
Even worse, people read me as white or American more often. The woman at the Mexican corner store that Iād shopped at my whole life refused to speak Spanish to me. Students pronounced my name in English and tried to hide things from me by talking Spanish. Few people I spoke to believed that Iād grown up in Salinas. My queerness marked me as other, as non-Mexican.
There is no way to identify with my chosen gender in Spanish, yet I know that Iām not an hombre by the standards of Mexican culture. Hijo, Maestro. These terms are attempts to give me strength perceived in machismo, but the languages rigid gendered forms erase the strength in my femininity. I was taught how to survive by women, and when I let people refer to me by masculine terms I let my Abuelaās stories slip away.Ā
Others do not see the violence in the words. Itās normal for them, and the language demands it.Ā
Iām reminded of my papiās lessons.Ā
Donāt talk back to your madre, o te voy a madrear. The word swallows the person that loves me most, replacing her with my papiās fists and how these words are inadequate.Ā
I tried on my Abuelitaās shirts when I was alone. I wanted to see myself wrapped in the stories of the mujeres that raised me. The embroidery told me what words had never managed: the mujeres in my family had survived and prayed and built. The material was tight around my chest and hung loosely around my arms and belly. My collarbone looked amazing in the low cut collar, and the swaying blouse gave an elegance to my love handles. The white linen made my dark brown eyes shine as bright as my Abuela Juliaās.Ā
That femininity would not be accepted by hombres at Mexican festivals where there are no words for my reflection. Still, my Abuela Ofelia offered her blouses to me when I asked.Ā
Machismo created a limited language, but that never stopped mujeresā ability to pass on their stories. Mujeres never stopped surviving and fighting and creating. They never stopped loving.Ā
The people who raised me where both Mexican and feminine. I cannot give up either.Ā