The Colorado Street Bridge

***discussions of past violence*****

‘The baby was born early. Please come, I wrote your name as the father.’

Jaime Hernández read his mom’s erratic handwriting over and over on the back of the impossible photograph before he turned to look at the sepia tinged image again. The woman holding the dark skinned newborn, swaddled in a thin pink blanket didn't look so much like his mom, Jaime thought, as it did of himself, just a few years ago before puberty squared his jaw and broadened his shoulders, so young and so scared.

Jaime flipped through more of his mom’s photos, looking for something, anything to explain the image. Jaime had no siblings, and his Papa, even younger than his mother, would have been 12 or 13 if Jaime could guess an age.

He squeezed the photos in a rush of anger. Papa, still acting like a teenager, had left them both for Fuckin’ Stephanie, his gym trainer.

The name and address on the torn envelope, in Boise, Idaho meant nothing to him. His Mom as far as he knew had never left the neighborhood where they lived now in Pasadena, California.

“Mama!” Jaime called down the stairs. “Come look at this?”

“Mijo, if it’s your Papa’s just toss it. Anything else, throw it in a box.” She called out. “I know you think it’s too much, but I wear all those sweaters, and could never give away my scarfs-”

His Mom stepped in the room and stopped abruptly at Jaime splayed out on the floor, a circle of photos around him, a halo of history.

“What are you doing!” In one of Papa’s old button-down shirts, Mom looked more like a sweat-streaked factory worker than a renowned fashion designer famous for luxury dresses for dolls.

“We have to be out of here tomorrow; you’re just making a mess!” She pleaded. Wild eyed through the dust and grime of cleaning, Mom had a look Jaime hadn’t seen in months, of the mania that would inhabit her like an alien being, driving her to design and sew elaborate doll clothes for days on end. The bandana over her head never could keep Mom’s curls in check, nor her frantic ideas; wisps of hair edged out in gray black tufts. Jaime looked over at lines of bins in a corner, the dolls in one, their outfits in four more. A disease that paid the bills now in online sales to every corner of the globe.

They had almost finished clearing up their house to be sold. Their old life as a family had ended, a casualty of the endless fights between his parents. His whole childhood was consumed with navigating Mom’s ‘moods’; her hyper mania blasted their lives like the hot summer sun, turning every moment brighter and more intense, until the cold winter blew in and her depression doused her like a wet blanket. Papa had left for calm weather last year. With the divorce and her new meds, they were moving on to a better place, downsizing into the new apartment, up in the hills with a view of the iconic Colorado Street Bridge.

“Who is this?” Jaime held the picture up.

“I can’t see without my glasses.” Mom took the picture, moving it away for her far-sighted eyes to register, until her arm froze, her face grew slack.

“That’s you of course.” She lingered on the photo, rubbing it gently with a thumb before tossing it in a half full trash bag on the floor.

“Put those away,” Mom waved to the photos strewn over the ground and next to the empty shoebox. “I need your help in the kitchen and then sort the dishes.” She turned to go, her voice high pitched and clipped.

Jaime leapt up to rescue the photograph, cradling it as an archaeologist to examine the fossil that could change all he knew of his history.

“This is not me, and did you see what’s on the back? ‘The baby was born early-”

“-Stop, goddammit!” She yelled without turning, shouting down the hall into the past. “I don’t need to hear it. I threw that picture away, it's back to haunt me! I just can't, not now. We have too much to do, the movers- tomorrow! Maybe when this is all packed up and then we have to get to the storage unit they close at 9 and the new apartment …” Mom’s hands flew, wild gestures pushing Jaime, and the picture away.

“Mama, stop. Have you taken your meds? Breathe 1,2,3….” Jaime said, used to these episodes, brought on by the stress of the move he knew. By the end of the day Mom would crash, and sleep for 24 hours. “Please, who is the picture of, is that you? And then who is the baby?”

Mama let herself be directed to a desk chair, before collapsing on it. She looked everywhere in the room except for Jaime. In utter chaos, a dismantled bed leaned against the wall and drawers yawned open from the dresser. Boxes of items to move were surrounded by only one bag cleared to be tossed.

“I keep too many things I know, I just don’t want to let anything important go ever again.

She rubbed her face with her hand, smearing the dust instead of removing it.

“I’ve never told this.”

Two tears streaked down the thick lines.

“God it was hot that summer.” She began in dull monotone, focused out the window deep into another time and place. “Years after my parents split, my mom, your Grandma Jane, sent me to stay with my Dad in Boise for a summer. You never will meet him. She didn’t want me to sit around the house while she was at work, and thought he could straighten me out because she couldn't. So she sent me to the suburbs from hell.

I hated Boise, I hated him, and my new stepmom, who only cared about her Church, just wanted to save me. I guess I had changed, but my dad did too. When my stepmom was gone he would corner me for long talks about how I was a bad girl, sinful, destined to hell unless I did what he said. He had a point I guess, I’d made poor choices, and made even more since. But his lessons, long into the night, were worse than anything I ever did. Eventually I just couldn’t take it. I began staying out more and more. But compared to LA where I had my friends and the beach, Boise was torture. I would just cruise on his old bike through the endless cookie-cutter neighborhoods.

It was that bike that started it all.

It always had problems, and on one ride the chain broke! It had to be over 100 degrees, and there I was pushing a broken bike on a sidewalk sweating through my shirt. Then a convertible pulled up next to me. A man in a burgundy red Chrysler LeBaron asked me if I wanted a ride.

A stranger, years older than me, I never should have accepted the ride, but I was so mad! He had blonde hair and a big smile. Hot, and tired from walking, I knew that my dad would be furious if I got in that car. Maybe that’s why I did it. His name was Jimmy, and he was in college. Only city college, but still, a college boy!”

Jaime watched his Mom’s body relax. She had fallen into the river of memory, and she floated on the golden sunshine of those long lost days.

“Jimmy understood me, he listened to my ramblings. No one else even saw me, let alone paid attention. His eyes, turquoise stones, would just stare into me, like I had a secret he wanted to uncover. He saw me. But with only two weeks left before I went back to California, it sped everything up, do you understand? We only had a short time to spend together, and then we both knew we’d never see each other again. That made it all Ok.”

At the long pause Jaime prodded. “Made what OK?”

“Sex of course.” Mom’s lip curled into a small smile. “It seemed like fate had brought us together, had made this connection, out of time, out of place. Jimmy was so gentle, always used protection, always asked how I was doing. For once someone cared about me. Boise became an alternate reality where normal rules didn’t apply, and I lived in a magical dream. That was the best summer of my life”

Mom shifted on the chair, touching her hair once before folding her arms tight around her chest and crossing her legs.

“Until I found out I was pregnant, of course. My mom raged against my dad, I had never heard such words from her. It was his fault for not watching me, for letting me out his sight. I think she suspected what really happened, but she never spoke to me about it.

I didn’t know until then that they had only married because she was pregnant with me at about the same age. He likes them young I guess. She didn’t want me to go through what she did. A different time then, I had to drop out of school once I started showing. Mom wasn’t happy with any of it. She gave me an ultimatum, for my own good she said. Keep the baby and live on my own, or give it up for adoption.”

Mom shook her head. “I didn’t know what to do. I went to an abortion clinic, but even if I had the money, that wasn’t for me. Finally I screwed my courage up and called Jimmy. He didn't understand, not at first but gracias a Dios! He was going to save me. We had long phone calls, full of intricate plans for our future. Through birthday gifts and my part time job as a waitress I had saved up $1,315. I’m ashamed how foolish I was, but I thought I was rich, and that with that money and Jimmy’s job at Waremart we could make a life.”

Jaime’s legs hurt from sitting on the floor, but he didn’t want to break the spell by moving. Mom had never talked about herself before she met his Papa.

“That spring was hard. Trapped by my huge body inside our tiny apartment by myself, I didn’t go out, my friends didn’t call. I mean how could they understand? They only knew about grades and boys, going to baseball games and maybe college. I was fat, and settled into being a housewife. I knew it would be a girl. That’s when I started sewing her outfits, so she would be taken care of and beautiful. That's how I looked after my dolls, I thought it would be the same, how was I to know? I was set on moving to Idaho. But for my friends that meant I was falling off a cliff.

Jimmy was going to come and get me. The baby was due in June, on the 20th. He was going to drive in on the 21st, pick us up in the convertible and we would drive off into the sunset. I was such an idiot”

Mom wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the cuffed shirt.

“Then Jimmy stopped answering the phone. I think he figured it out. The last time I spoke with Jimmy was that March. I called and called until his phone was disconnected. I didn't know what to do. I’d go on long walks, praying to see that red LeBaron driving up behind me asking if I wanted a ride.”

Mom pointed to the photos.

“There’s another photo in that box, a postcard of the bridge.” Mom nodded when Jaime held it up. “ I walked over that every day, the Colorado Street Bridge. “Josephina came in May, four weeks early, La Nina I called her. Born with jet black hair, she was so beautiful with her olive skin. She had a cleft lip, a genetic defect which happens when….” Mom touched her own lip.

”I sent that picture to Jimmy, hoping that seeing the baby would change his mind, show him that I needed him. ”

“But you have the picture?” Jaime asked, holding it up..

“The letter was returned. So I had a decision to make; raise her on my own, or give her up.”

Mom breathed out a long slow breath, her hands on her hips. She stiffened, as if bracing herself for a choice she was about to make instead of one that she made close to 30 years earlier.

“Dios mío! How to make a decision like that? As a mother your only job is to feed the baby, clothe it, and give it the best life possible. Who else could care that much? To give up that baby would have broken me in two.”

“But you did give her up for adoption right? You worked at the Polo Lounge, you met Dad there, and then you had me and-” Jaime twisted his head staring at this woman who he no longer understood at all.

Mom reached out for the postcard. The bridge curled out past the frame, the road continuing toward an unknown future, on and on. “I waited until June 21st. I really thought Jimmy would come through, to save us. I went for one more walk on the bridge that day, looking for that red LeBaron.”

She stared at the postcard, looking in it for an answer to a long-ago question.

“I didn’t know how to be a mother then, you have to understand that! I smoked, drank, and could barely take care of myself. And I knew no one would want her, she was an abomination! After a month she was so thin, she could barely suckle because of her lip. She just cried all the time, night and day. No one would want her, no one wanted me, and it was just so hard. $1,315 dollars doesn’t last long.”

She dry heaved, and then with a sudden wail began sobbing.

“I loved her, don’t you understand? Jimmy must have found out she wasn’t his. And I just couldn’t.

I make her dresses, and outfits. She has to be clothed right? That’s how you take care of babies. ” Mom fell to the floor curled around the photo.

“Isn’t that enough?”