I grew up in the vast wasteland of sprawling deserts of West Texas. El Paso is the place in movies where the death scenes happen; it’s desolate, dry and boring. I felt out of place and tried to make up for it by appearing to know who I was and what I was about. I tried to not be shy, when my insides seemed to be screaming at me to shut up. I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know how I became who I am, but here is a little about me, as a kid…
During recess on the playground I quickly learn to duck and cover when a windstorm races across the sprawling, dry landscape and slaps the sand across your legs. It seems similar to the sensation of rubbing sandpaper across your skin. The worst is when it happens in the summer and you’re wearing shorts. I learned quickly to either make a run for the nearest doorway to huddle and wait for the storm to pass. Or, on the occasion when you are too far away to make it, you pull the ‘duck and cover’. When you wear a skirt it comes in handy because you can crouch all the way down and pull your skirt over your legs with one hand and pull the neck of your shirt over your face with the other. Or, you learn to wear bigger t-shirts so you can pull it over your legs and pull your arms inside so you don’t get blasted…anything to keep from literally getting sandblasted by the dust storms.
I hate the playground. It has always been a source of anxiety for me. I’m not an athletic girl, so sports always makes me feel awkward. It’s not that I am totally unable; I just never had a lot of practice. The only “sport” I ever enjoy during recess is tetherball, which is not really a sport, not like dodgeball, which I hate! I like tether ball - I can duck when the ball is aimed to hit me in my face, and when they think they are going to win, and have their guard down, I pop right back up, and slam it back around the other way, and beat the pants off them!
When all the tetherball strings broke and it was just 4 posts in a row, the last thing you want to do is go play doge ball. So, JJ, my best friend, came up with the idea to see who could swing around the poll the most amount of times in a single swing. He ran as fast as he could and grabbed the poll with his hands, picked up his feet and flung his body around the pole like the tetherball. It was such a great idea, it became an actual game we liked playing that better than tetherball. JJ figured out how to grab the pole with two hands and leverage your arms to make your body more horizontal and get a few rounds of swings twisting around the tetherball poll. JJ and I made that tetherball court our safe haven because it was the only place we felt comfortable during recess.
In our neighborhood social class was not determined by the type of car you drive or the brand of jeans you wear, but by the paleness of your skin. It’s not a racial thing. It isn’t as if the discrimination is about being black or white, it’s a spectrum. We were a lot kids from the military and most of us were mix so we had many races and backgrounds. The Brown-skin-hierarchy is not really a spoken thing, it just sort of exists. Other than that, the rest of the social-sphere was pretty equal - people don’t have nice cars, or a fancy house or even name-brand clothes. In my neighborhood all of our parents struggled to make ends meet.
Being a mix-kid has never been easy. I’m mostly German, but I am also part Cuban and probably many other things too. I have an olive skin tone, which is even darker by the end of the summer. I have brown eyes and dark brown hair. Both of my parents have some German heritage and I have a German last name, “Ubelhor”, but my Mom is half German and half Cuban. My Dad is what they call, “tall, dark and handsome”. He is 6 feet tall with light skin and green eyes, and jet-black hair. My Mom is more of what they call a “Latin Beauty” she has olive skin, dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, she is a mix too, but most people think she is Latin. My brother has more of my Dad’s lighter skin tone, but he has really light color, almost blonde hair. He looks way more white, than I do.
I’ve always had people come up to me and start speaking Spanish, so people react to the way I look as if I am Latina. It’s mostly new people though, like when I go to a friend’s house and everyone is speaking Spanish because they think I can too, then my friends have to tell their family that I can’t understand Spanish. All friends who are Hispanic see me as white, and my Black and White friends see me as Hispanic, I’ve never really fit into any bucket.
In my neighborhood, and in my family, a lot of first and second generation families believed that speaking the language of their native country is a sign of lower class and to speak English is seen as a higher class. I personally never believed this because I am third and fourth generation, I always wished I knew how to speak Spanish so I would fit in better with my friends. I also love the sound of a language that I don’t understand, it sounds so cool, I just wish I knew another language.
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