Until the lion learns to write their own story, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter - African Proverb The ConTextos Authors Circle was developed in collaboration with young people at-risk of, victims of, or perpetrators of violence in El Salvador. In 2017 this innovative program expanded into Chicago to create tangible, high quality opportunities that nourish the minds,,expand the voices and share the personal truths of individuals who have long been underserved and underestimated. Through the process of drafting, revising and publishing memoirs, participants develop self-reflection, critical thinking, camaraderie and positive selfprojection to author new life narratives. Since January 2017 ConTextos has partnered with Cook County Sheriff's Office to implement Authors Circle in Cook County Department of Corrections as part of a vision for reform that recognizes the value of mental health, rehabilitation and reflection. These powerful memoirs complicate the narratives of violence and peace building, and help author a hopeful future for human beings behind walls, their families and our collective communities. While each author’s text is solely the work of the Author, the image used to create this book’s illustrations have been sourced by various print publications. Authors curate these images and then, using only their hands, manipulate the images through tearing, folding, layering and careful positioning. By applying these collage techniques, Authors transform their written memoirs into illustrated books.
In Collaboration With:
Slush Puppy Riley
I was born on June 28th, 1996 in the middle of the night. The story goes my Dad got my Mom in the car and the tank was on E, so he had to stop for gas while my ma’s in labor. He apparently made a big scene like out of a movie screaming, “My wife’s in labor! My wife’s in labor!” to get ahead of everyone in line. I think about it now and wonder how big a line it could’ve been at 3:00am. LOL. Anyway, they take Lake Shore to Lincoln Park where I was born at a hospital that is now condos.
None of this was supposed to happen. My Father was told when he was young that he would never have kids because of a rare disease he was born with called Spina Bifida. He was never supposed to walk either. But here I am, and to this day, he walks just fine. One of his legs is a little shorter than the other so he walks with a dip and stands with a lean, but if you don’t ask, you would think he was a pimp back in the day, not slightly handicapped.
My father was 33 and my mother was 23 when they conceived me. They got married during the pregnancy. My mother is Mexican and my dad is black. No one can decide who I take after more which is understandable because I look like a perfect 50-50, resembling them both.
Anyways, after I was born, they took me back to the Southeast side neighborhood called South Shore, where my granny had a big house with a bigger yard. My Dad had a Nissan 240 SX and my granny had a Nissan Stanza. I can’t say I remember these times. I vaguely remember my brother coming into the picture and until 8th grade my name was “Terrence and David” because we were always together.
Me and Dave were Nintendo 64 babies but we were big nature boys. We lived in the yard. We turned over rocks to find bugs. We climbed all the trees. We ran and fought and drank from the water hose. We were in sync. The only difference was I loved cars. When we weren’t playing in the yard or playing Nintendo 64, I was harassing my Dad to let me in on his hobby. He had a Tyco slot car track that spanned the entirety of the basement of what I told you is a pretty big house. This racetrack was enormous and he had a collection of cars to match. To this day, I can remember how every car was so unique, special, and one of a kind in its own little way. I learned all their names, makes and models and once I knew all of them, I gave the extra special ones names of my own. I personified them.
My parents didn’t think any of the local schools were good and the neighborhood was dangerous. I remember seeing a man shot dead in front of our home and him laying motionless with his white shirt getting redder and redder. I was maybe 5. So we went to school a ways from home. That meant the drives were long. And that meant more time in a car with my Dad yelling over and over to go fast again. The old Nissan was a 2 door red 5 speed manual. My dad had the hatchback which, if he would’ve kept it, would’ve been worth a lot of money because old classic Japanese cars are coveted nowadays and that was as classic as it gets. I can smell the leather, cigarette smoke, cologne and aftershave that filled those drives. I can hear the housemusic, Guns and Roses, Aerosmith, and Frankie too. Those many drives probably had more impact on me than the destinations.
I went to Bret Harte Elementary in Hyde Park which is exactly where Stony Island ends at 56th street. It was a great school. Small enough to be personal and big enough to have a nice diverse group. I attended for six years and so did Dave. Everyday we would attend after school at the YMCA on 63rd and Stony—literally a straight shot from the school.
It seemed me and Dave never fit in growing up. We got along ok for the most part but as far as being fully accepted. . . . I can’t recall a time we were. Being both black and Mexican is not hard, honestly I’d sign up again for the next life. But when you are around blacks, you are Mexican and when you are around Mexicans, you are black. Again, Bret Harte was pretty diverse, so we didn’t feel it there as much as the YMCA on 63rd or back home on 79th. On top of that, we never chased popularity, had phones, cool clothes, etc. My mom used to call us country.
Now my Dad never played a sport other than tennis which he’s really good at but that was it, and me and David were two highly athletic, highly energetic boys. For example, when we saw The Matrix and watched Keanu Reeves run up and do a backflip off the wall in slow motion, me and David came to an agreement that we too were going to do backflips off the walls and proceeded to destroy the drywall in the room we shared in the process. So we were literally bouncing off the walls. Dave was a natural born athletic phenomenon. To this day he has control and reflexes like no one else. A true gymnast at heart, he can do any combination of front flips, back flips, twists, side flips, double front flips, double back flips. . . . You get the picture. With no formal training, he could do this at age 10. I was athletic but never at his level and I was a different type of athlete. I like basketball, football, baseball, and tennis. Growing up we played basketball with a milk crate nailed to a pole, we played football on rough ground and rocky dirt in a makeshift parking lot, sometimes with grown men. We didn’t play baseball but we played piggy (if you know you know).
I say these things to say that although my father never passed down knowledge of sports to us, we still played them all. I remember my high school coach telling me I had quite the arm, especially for a freshman and all I could think back to was the hours of throwing train track rocks over a warehouse behind my home.
Anyway, as we grew, so did our need to venture out. We wanted to explore. My Ma didn’t want us leaving the gate but eventually there was nothing she could do. We would break loose and be gone longer and venture further. Once we got bikes, we would ride all day from sun up to sun down. I saw a lot at an early age and knew the neighborhood was dangerous but during those summers riding around, I genuinely felt I was living in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The trees were vast even along the streets and their canopies drooped cascading leaves in a green only nature could provide. Rainbow Beach, only two blocks from my home, is a quarter mile long with a magical view of the city. Glistening like a King’s crown resting next to the lake that seems more like an ocean. The neighborhood itself had unique homes and no two houses looked the same. I used to think people would die to live here. But people were dying living here. People were getting killed everyday and I couldn’t figure out why.
So I stopped trying. It was too much to think about and nothing made sense. It was just how it was. I told my Ma one day “good thing I have an Afro so it can stop a bullet,” joking obviously, but coming from her seven year old that was about as funny as . . . well, her seven year old dead. Anyway, let’s get away from the trauma stuff. You wanna know what else I learned about around seven years old? Titties.
One day I asked my Dad “Hey dad, what are those things on mom’s chest called?” He said, “Son, those are called Titties.” “Titties?” I said. “Yep, Titties.” Then we watched How to Be a Player and that was it. He dusted his hands off and I was now sexually educated. Thank god he had a ton of porn. The man had more porn than he could watch in a lifetime. I watched porn for years and didn’t even know how to masturbate, but let me tell you, when I figured it out . . . let’s just say I made up for all those lost years. Obviously, no one knew about my explorations but I had to learn some way and if my Dad thought an abbreviated synopsis of titties and a movie would satisfy my curiosity, he was wrong.
So around the time just before we went from being Nintendo 64 babies to GameCube boys, I was going to school/after school. I was exploring the neighborhood little by little. I was building slot car tracks of my own and generally enjoying a healthy childhood. On March 20th, 2002 my sister Trinity was born. I remember getting out of school, hopping in the car and my Dad telling me that my mom had given birth to my sister and that they were at home waiting. For once, the drive didn’t matter and all I cared about was getting home so I could hurry up and give all my love to this complete stranger. When we got home, me and Dave broke out of the car like it was on fire, shot out the garage to the back door where we realized our efforts meant nothing because my Dad had the keys. But once he caught up and opened the door, we broke in like a drug raid. Me and Dave finally reached the room where my Ma was holding my sister and there she was, wrapped in her pink blanket sleeping. To say I was excited is like saying Mount Everest is pretty tall. To try and give you an idea how I felt in the moment would be like describing the Sistine Chapel through morse code. I can’t put beauty like that in words. My Dad named her Trinity. I’ll give you a chance to guess where he got the name. . . . If you guessed the Matrix, then you are right. My Dad loves that movie that much. However, my Mother gave my brother his middle name after Antonio Banderas and I wonder if my Dad was getting back at her. Whatever the reason, the name was perfect. She was a fat baby and had big ole eyes with stars in them. Me and David knew our responsibility to her since day one.
Now my Dad worked sometimes over 12 hours a day as a dialysis technician and my Ma worked long hours at McCormick Place so we spent a ton of time with my Granny. My Granny is like a second mother to me. That statement is common where I’m from but there is nothing common at all about my Granny. My Granny raised us to say, “yes ma’am” and “yes sir.” She hated when she’d call us and we’d say, “Yeah?” No, you had to say “yes?” She taught us to be respectful at all times and to carry ourselves with pride. My Granny was elegant, almost regal, in the way she carried herself and we were her mixed little ducklings following close behind. My Granny married once but her husband, my Grandfather, died from alcoholism when my father was nine years old. By coincidence, my other grandfather died of drug abuse when my mother was also nine years old, but I’ll get to that. Anyway, my Granny never remarried. She came close to marrying a man named Gordan who worked for the Secret Service on the President’s security detail. She truly loved him but he died suddenly of a heart attack and I think her interest in remarrying went with him.
My Granny did extraordinary things. Once a year for decades she held her own fashion show and models wore clothes she made. She produced an all black figure skating show called Ebony On Ice. She loved to salsa dance and would host an event called the Salsa Congress. But above all, she was once in a tragic accident while on the road with a boyfriend. He was a truck driver and she was just keeping him company. Something happened and the truck flipped. The wreck was catastrophic and my granny was pulled away in critical condition. She was unresponsive for a long time and when she began coming back there was a chance she may never walk or talk again. Against steep odds and by the grace of God, she fought and won her speech and mobility back. She is stubborn and I’ve never heard her say “I’m sorry” because I don’t think she regrets anything. I could go on and on but I’ll leave it at my Granny is The Michael Jordan of Grannies.
Now while I learned a lot from my Granny, there are some things that aren’t learned so much as they are impressed upon you. Things like sensitivity, empathy, nurture, and how to show love. If you’ve ever seen Power Puff Girls, those were the ingredients and my Ma was the professor. Somehow my brother only got Chemical X though. LOL. My Ma’s name is Tangerine. Her father named her after the Led Zeppelin song “Tangerine.” She adored her father and although he passed when she was 9, my Ma clings to the memories of him like a life preserver in the middle of the ocean. The time was short but she remembers every detail. Her mother, my Nana, was not super loving and was hard on my Ma. My mother got pregnant at 18 and my Nana said she’d have to figure it out on her own but couldn’t bring a baby home.
My mother had the baby and gave her away. This and more caused my mother to promise herself to always make sure we knew we were loved and that there was absolutely nothing that could change that. Me and my Ma were, and still are, close. We connected a lot through music. While me and my Dad’s drives were to break speed records, me and my Ma’s drives were air guitar and drum solos. We never had a dull moment and the nights she had wine on her breath, oh man forget about it! We were gonna find something to laugh about for hours. There was one night me and my Ma were watching a movie and my Dad comes in. He had just finished taking a shower. Now for whatever reason when my Dad gets out of the shower, he wears a bathrobe and Nike Air Force 1’s. True story. He still does this to this day. So this particular night he decides to come sit in on the movie. I’m sitting on the floor and he plops down on the couch behind me. My Ma is sitting off to the side. I forget the movie we were watching, but I had a question I turned around to ask. I turned and said “Hey Da...” It took a moment for my brain to process until finally it was like “Yep. That’s your dad’s ball sack.”
So I promptly turned around. The question no longer mattered. I had fresh emotional trauma to tend to. I looked to my Ma who was pretty toasted and focused on the movie, but she caught my eye. She looked at me with a “What’s up?” kind of look, and I guess I started looking like a hostage at his front door with a gun to the back of his head trying to signal the police that he was in danger. She looked behind me then bit her lips together the only way you can when you’re about to laugh uncontrollably, but there was no stopping it. We both broke out laughing. My Ma is my heart and I’m lucky to have her.
Now my Dad, as you might have put together by now, has always been a character, but he worked hard. Growing up he used to wear his work scrubs and a stethoscope and everyone in the neighborhood called him “Doc.” I used to think everyone knew my dad and that my dad was super generous, always helping strangers out with 50 cents and they in return gave him a cigarette to show gratitude. I later figured out that was called buying “loose squares.” LOL. All jokes aside, my father is generous and kind-hearted. He worked so much that although I saw him all the time, there was a layer of mystery about him that made him so cool to me. He was eccentric. Growing up my dad would cash his whole $1500-$2000 check into Kennedy half dollars. Imagine being a kid and seeing your dad show up with sacks of silver coins like he just robbed a cartoon bank. This and more added to the mystique of my father.
So around the time we went from being GameCube boys to Playstation 2 pre-teens, my Granny began taking us to Colorado via Amtrak, an eighteen hour ride across the midwest to Denver and from there to Colorado Springs, where my cousins Ramon and Zhenee lived. The town was called Fountain and it was outside of Fort Carson military base where their mom, my aunt, was stationed. My Aunt Lorna was always gone overseas to Iraq leaving my Uncle Ramon Sr. and the kids home. We absolutely loved being there and the contrast to Chicago was like night and day. Fountain was a suburb in a military town. People left their garages open… at night! I’d never seen anything like it. There were lizards and snakes and coyotes and cactuses and red rocks and mountains and white kids. Chicago could have been on another planet. Needless to say, me and Dave had our work cut out for us, but we spent every day exploring. These visits were from the beginning of summer until the bitter end, and over the years me and my cousin Ramon grew very close. He was two or three years older than me, so I looked up to him and we connected a lot through music and video games. But little did I know we would soon become like brothers.
During the time I was going from a Playstation 2 preteen to an Xbox 360 teenager, I woke up to screaming. It was coming from the kitchen. I went to see what it was and I found my Dad had my Ma pinned to the floor. I thought she was hurt, but it became clear he was restraining her. My Mom was screaming to let her go, but my Dad was furious and it wasn’t until my Granny came in and said “Let her ass go!” that my Dad stopped and my Ma stormed out the door. I followed her to the yard and it was a beautiful day. I asked her where she was going. “I don’t know,” she said. I said, “I’m going with you,” and she said, “No… you can’t.” That was the last thing she said to me and I didn’t talk to her or know where she was for a long time. My Granny saw the impact the loss was having on me and in fear of losing me to the streets, she saved my life and sent me to Colorado to live with my cousin Ramon.
Riley I Am From I am from over East, South Shore. From Rainbow Beach. I am from tall trees, short tempers, and BBQ. I am from every season at it’s finest, snowy Winters, spring flowers, sunny summers, and colorful autumns. I’m from David and Trinity. From Super Smash Bros, and from being Shorter than my sister. I’m from don’t do this, and don’t do that. I’m from do whatever makes you happy. I’m from Chicago! From wings and Scotch From Bernie I am from necessary pain.
Until the lion learns to write their own story, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter - African Proverb Copyright
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