WEBVTT

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Now I'm going to skip
ahead to part two.

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And probably the only
thing you need to know

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is that about a year after
that scene when I was 19,

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I decided I got into an
argument with my mother.

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And I showed up on my
boyfriend's doorstep and said,

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I need to move in.

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And he lived in a
house with his parents

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and eight younger brothers and
sisters on Tucson's South Side.

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And they took me
into their home.

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And it took about
15 years later,

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I would tell this student--

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this to my students as a way
of introducing myself to them.

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And after about 15 years
of telling this story,

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it occurred to me
that maybe it was

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a kind of an imposition
for me to have shown up

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on their doorstep.

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And I mean, it
really-- it took me

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that long to realize
that that probably

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was not the best thing to
do, but they did take me in.

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So OK, so these are from part
2 which is about that time.

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18, the Summer
Fernando's mother saw

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La Llorona she was just a girl.

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They had sprayed down the
dirt outside the house

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to cool the air.

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It was early evening.

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They had sprayed
the dirt, packed it

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down with their
bare feet until it

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was hard and polished as stone.

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They had taken the
beds outside to sleep

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under the trees behind the
hedge in her grandparents yard.

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And they all saw
her, a woman dressed

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in white floating down the
street like this as if her feet

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weren't moving.

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That was the summer her
two younger brothers died.

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First, the older one
and then the baby.

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The morning the baby
was dying, her father

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was sitting at the
table in the kitchen.

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He felt so helpless.

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And then the older one
came back on a breeze

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through the open
window and told him

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he would take care of the baby.

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In the morning, in the
kitchen, in the yellow light,

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I sit at the table and
watch Dora gingerly heat

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the tortillas on the gas stove.

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She pours a spot of coffee
into a cup of warm milk

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and gives it to Anna
with her tortilla.

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I stir in the sugar.

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Anna peers at me over
the edge of her cup.

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Sometimes, I think Dora tells me
these stories simply because I

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am a willing listener.

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I love the way whole histories
open up before my eyes, one

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or two details.

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And I can imagine a life.

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Sometimes I think she is
initiating me into the family,

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showing me a history other
than the one I've been taught.

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Saying to me,
"Listen, I know what

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you think that the world has
a smooth, seamless surface,

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but really everything goes
much deeper than that.

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There is a tangled
web that roots us,

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makes us who we are,
limits or lifts us.

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What happens to us isn't
a matter of simple will.

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There are powers
beyond our control.

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And sometimes, all
we can do is give in.

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Have faith.

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Ojala que sera, sera.

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When her mother
Grace was a girl,

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her own mother died, and
there were younger sisters

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to care for.

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In the mornings, Grace would
go outside to get the water.

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And when she came back in, her
younger sisters, their hair,

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it would be already
brushed and braided.

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"Who braided your hair?",
she would ask them.

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And they said, it
was their mother.

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Grace was old enough to
understand that their mother

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was dead what that meant.

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And so one morning, she went
out for only a little while,

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and when she came
back in her mother

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was there, standing there.

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She had just finished braiding
the youngest girl's hair,

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and she reached out to Grace.

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But Grace was afraid
and she flinched.

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And so when her mother
touched her temple, it burned.

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Her fingers were so
cold, they burned.

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And after that and for
all the rest of her life,

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Grace got headaches
there on her temple

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where her mother had
touched her in anger.

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After that, her mother
never came again,

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and the priest put a glass
of holy water on the mantel.

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He told Grace when
the water evaporates,

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her soul will be in heaven.

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It takes a long time to
evaporate when a mother dies.

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A long time because she does
not want to leave her children.

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