So then, maybe killing wasn’t the answer. Maybe there was another way to get the world to know about the abuses that had happened to me and were still happening to so many Mexicanos?
My heart was beat, beat, BEATING! “Well, then, could it be,” I said to myself, “that my father was right when he’d told my mother ‘yes, you’ve been carrying love for Joseph, but what love have you been carrying for the living?’” Because it was true, I could now see that our mother had been carrying her love mostly for the dead ever since my brother had died. And me? What was I doing?
I breathed, and I breathed again and continued to give witness to my dad, to mi papa, as he listened to all this doctor’s small talk about bridles and saddles with such kindness, patience, compassion, and yes, forgiveness. And I could now see that this didn’t make my father look weak. No, it was the opposite. It made him look so strong and healthy, twenty years younger than this doctor, and yet, I bet that they were pretty close to the same age.
My eyes started watering. I could now also see that this doctor was so grateful for this opportunity of “forgiveness” that it looked like he was going to leap out of his skin and hug and kiss our dad for having come to see him. I took another breath and wondered if I’d ever be able to do what my dad was doing, or would I forever be so angry, here in my heart, that I couldn’t forgive just like my mother couldn’t.
I turned. I’d had enough. I said goodbye and went to my truck. I needed to go to the Academy real quick and gut-shoot Moses before I lost my nerve!
After all, I was tough! I was a wrestler! I’d killed lots of game! I was no little scared coward anymore! But then, I remembered that whatever I’d been through, my dad, mi papa, had been through a thousand times more, and yet he was finding it in his heart to forgive this monster who’d killed his son.
“Joseph,” I now said as I drove down California Street and turned left on Hill to go over to Carlsbad to kill Moses, “help me. I don’t know what to do, and it had all been so clear to me before I saw our dad talking with Dr. Hoskins with such peace in his heart.”
Instantly, I felt that old purring behind my left ear. I’d asked for help and here it was, humming, purring behind my left ear, and then traveling to my right ear. Then I heard that little Voice inside of me and it was telling me so clearly—without any confusion whatsoever—to turn right on Cassidy Street and drive down to the beach.
I had no idea why I was doing this, but I trusted this little inner Voice of mine, so I did as I was told and turned right on Cassidy. I crossed over the railroad tracks, heading for the beach. Then I was told to turn right on Pacific and go past Buccaneer Beach. I did as told. Then at the top of the first little hill, just past Buccaneer, I knew that I was supposed to park and get out of my Chevy. I did, leaving my guns in the truck, crossed the street, and walked out on the bluff. And there before me, sticking out of the incoming surf, was that big black rock.
I hadn’t been down here in years. It was the lowest tide I’d ever seen. The rock was more visible than ever. Quickly, I ran down the bluff to the water’s edge. Back then there were only a few houses in this area. All of the beach houses were either south or north of here. I glanced around, saw no one, quickly stripped, and walked out into the surf. The water was cold and felt good.
I walked out a ways, then dove under the first good-sized wave. I’d become a pretty good swimmer in the last couple of years. The water was delicious! I swam out to the big rock, but didn’t get too close, so that the waves wouldn’t smash me up against it.
This was when I first saw the fins. And they were coming right towards me. The dolphins began weee-heeing to me just like they’d done to Midnight Duke that day years ago. I rolled low guttural sounds back to them and they began chirping.
I dissolved. Just like that, all my rage dissolved inside of me, and I started swimming out to them. They screeched with happiness. I screeched, too. This was all a dream come true. They came close and began to play with me. I laughed, I was so happy. Big, big, BIG HAPPY! We began to talk together like familia. To give Song back and forth. I, too, was now helping Papito paint His Garden of Paraíso! I’d found my place. I was free.
Afterword
About my reading problema; I didn’t find out that I was dyslexic until about 1985 when my wife and I took our two boys to a reading specialist because they, too, were having reading difficulties. One of our sons tested slightly dyslexic, the other tested moderately. The test scoring went from 1 to 20, with 20 being the most severe. Both of our sons were in the 8-to-12 range. We were told that dyslexia was a catchall phrase, and that some forms of dyslexia were hereditary. I decided to get tested, too, but I figured that it wouldn’t be a true test for me anymore because by now, at forty-five, I knew how to read pretty well.
I took the tests. When the woman practitioner returned with my results, I could see that she was on the verge of crying. She told me that I was completely off her charts. That it was a miracle that I’d ever learned to read, write, or even listen because I had both visual and audio dyslexia. I began to cry, too. Someone finally understood all the “hell” that I’d been through since a child when I’d first tried to understand language. And yet in other forms of communications, like painting, sculpture, music, math, problem-solving, and chess, I’d been very good. In fact, in high school, once I learned how to play chess, I’d play lightning-fast, intuitively seeing all these different possibilities at the same time, and I’d won well over a hundred chess games without losing a single game. And that included beating some of our faculty members who thought that they were very good at chess.
So then, what does this catchall phrase dyslexia really mean? Is this what enabled me to feel that humming behind my ears? Was this what allowed me to sometimes see the whole world come alive in light and color? Could dyslexia be a gift? Could it be that we were all “dyslexic” back at one time when we all recognized that the Kingdom of God was within and we knew how to bring what was within out into the world?
Then about three weaks ago, now in the year 2003, I received an e-mail that I think has maybe given me a small part of the answer.
Aoccdring to rscheearch at an Elingsh uniervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what order the ltteers in a word are, the only iprmoetnt thing is that the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the word as a wlohe and the biran fguiers it out aynawy.
Could it be we stifle our children’s genius by languaging them too quickly away from their hearts and into the straight and narrow confines of linear thinking? For thousands of years women have been told that they become too emotional if they get into their feelings. And men have been told that they are wimps if they get into theirs. And yet could it be that only by getting out of our “heads” and into our “hearts” and “souls” can we access our Intuitive Genius—our Spirit Guide reconnecting us to our natural full Thirteen Sensory Perception?
About “English only”: Let me tell you a little story that happened in Houston, Texas, just before I became a national best-selling author. I met this young woman at the University of Houston. She looked like she was part Black, part White, and part American Indian. She was stunningly beautiful, with huge greenish eyes. She spoke Spanish. I asked her where she was from. She said Panama. I asked how she liked the United States. She said she didn’t, and that as soon as she graduated she wanted to return to Panama. I asked why. She told me that she’d had a boyfriend for four years. “And the other day he said, ‘I think I love you,’ so I dropped him as fast as I could. My God,” she added, “after four years he was still thinking about our love. I can’t stand to be around people who are always thinking so much.”
I laughed. I could see her point completely, because in Spanish you’d never say, “I think I love you,” especially after four years. That would be an insult. You’d say, “I feel love for you so deeply that when I just think of you, I start to
tremble and feel my heart flutter.” Why? Because Spanish is a feeling-based language that comes first from the heart, just as English is a thinking-based language that comes first from the head. And Yaqui, Navajo, and the fifty-seven dialects of Oaxacan are ever-changing languagings that come first from the soul, then go to the heart, and lastly to the brain.
In one dialect of the Mayan languaging down in the southern tip of Mexico in the Yucatán, I was told that there are twenty-six ways to say “love,” just as in the Eskimo languaging—I’ve been told—there are twenty-six ways to say “snow.” And so when a married man or woman has an affair with some other person there’s actually a word for this kind of short, little, happy love, just as there is another word for the kind of long, harmonious, thorough love that brings the married couple back together without having feelings of being betrayed. In fact, betrayal in marriage isn’t a concept that’s even available within this Mayan dialect, because love, in all her great wild twists and turns, is forever growing, changing, deepening in the on-going drumbeat of our eternal hearts and souls.
So could it be that we live in a very small and limited world by only speaking one language? Could it be that “only one” of anything imprisons the mind—religiously, socially, and politically—and only one in language is the first sign of the end of any nation?
And also, could it be that in the first part of their lives, kids can easily learn two and three languages at the same time, but orally, and with play and games and healing stories; thus expanding their mental capacity far beyond what we now call the norm, and access genius. Could it be that being taught to read and write before children have had their fullness of dream and play and adventure stifles them for life? Could it be that the whole future of our country, here in the US of A, is dependent on how fast we can get out of the straight and narrow confines of “English only”—which had its place for a little while—and enter into a greater and more flexible global understanding of communications?
Personally, I had to go six months without speaking as an adult before I was able to re-find my Inner Voice to become a writer. And in that time I came to many very interesting understandings, one being that maybe, just maybe, even Jesus, Himself, deliberately didn’t learn to read or write until he was well past twelve years old and that everything that He knew of the Bible before that age had been read to Him? Why? Because He hadn’t wanted to clutter his mind and get His heart and soul bogged down with the details of linear thinking if he was going to accomplish His Earthly Work in such a short life. Believe-you-me, children truly are our latest messengers from God, as my grandmother used to tell me, and each is unique and wonderfully brilliant already.
One more story, about two months after my talk in Long Beach, California, at that CATE convention, I saw Moses coming out of the Carlsbad post office. Immediately, I tried to walk around him, so he wouldn’t see me, but he turned and saw me.
“Hey!” he said. “Aren’t you the—the author?”
A lot had been written about me after the CATE conference in most of the Southern California papers, plus the Bay Area of San Francisco.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m the writer.”
He smiled and looked at me, like he was trying to place me. He looked old and weak, and certainly not as big as I remembered him.
“I had you in class, didn’t I?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes, you did, sir.”
“I thought so,” he said. Then he said something that I’ll never forget as long as I live. “We had fun, didn’t we?” he asked.
Hearing this, I almost shit a brick. I guess he had no memory of the torture that he’d put me through. I smiled. I laughed. Then did this mean that I was the only one who remembered all the crap that he’d done to me. I felt like belting him in the mouth. But how could I do this, he looked so old and weak and pitiful, just the way Brookheart had referred to him.
“Yes,” I finally said, “we had fun, sir.”
“I thought so,” he said, grinning.
I began to grin, too. What else could I do? “Your wife,” I said, “how is she?”
His face twisted. “She died several years back,” he said.
“Oh, I didn’t know,” I said. “I always liked her. She was a very decent, goodhearted woman.”
His old wrinkled-up eyes filled with tears. “She was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
I nodded. “I bet you’re right. ’Bye,” I added.
“Goodbye,” he said. “Good to see you!” he shouted after me. “Keep up the good work! We’re all proud of you!”
When I was done at the post office, I crossed the street, went into the restaurant bar across the street, and ordered a beer.
“To You, God,” I said, making a toast, “to You and Your wild sense of humor.” I drank my beer, then got on my bike and pedaled over to the beach. A part of me realized that I had to thank Moses, because it was a lot of my hate towards him that had kept me going all these years.
Down at the beach, I pulled over and looked out at the sea. Past the surfers, the water was calm. There really weren’t any good waves; not for surfing, anyway. I breathed and became mesmerized by the quiet movement of the water as I looked out past the breakers to the huge expanse of ocean, our mother, the place from where all life originally came.
I said a little prayer for Moses and his wife. Then it dawned on me that his name was just like Moses of the Bible. I’d never made the connection before, and it was so obvious. I started laughing. Oh, my Lord God, there really was a larger, grander plan going on that we mortals couldn’t see. Moses had done his job once again. It had been “he” who’d led me out of the desert and to the promised land within my own soul.
That little purring began behind my left ear, traveling across the base of my head to my right ear. All around me, I began to see the whole world come to life with light and color. Once again it was another gorgeous day in Paraíso.
Thank you, gracias.
Acknowledgments
First of all, I’d like to acknowledge you readers who have been purchasing and reading my books all these years. Without you I would have no career and there wouldn’t be any books. Thank you, gracias from mi familia to all of you and your familias. And a special thanks to you readers who have written to us or e-mailed us, because, even though we haven’t answered all of you, we have read and treasured your letters. One reader from Washington, D.C., told us that he read Rain of Gold to his father every afternoon in the hospital for the last two weeks of his father’s life. He told me that the book bonded him and his father across generations as no other experience ever had. Thank you. I am humbled, as we are told story after story of how these books of our familia have taken on a life of their own, validating the stories of our readers’ familias. Truly understand, it is YOU WHO HAVE VALIDATED the heartfelt struggles of our crazy-loco family! I salute you, con todo mi corazón!
Also, I’d like to thank my longest living editor Rene Alegria; well, it’s not that he’s really that old, it’s that he’s been the only editor who’s “lived” this long with me. I love you, Rene, and respect you, and yes, hate you at times, too, but that’s what happens when you become familia, just as my longtime agent Margarita McBride is familia, seeing us through thick and thin and even thinner. Thank you, Margret, and your great staff, Donna, Renee, Faye, and Anne. And thank you, Andrea de Colombia, Rene’s assistant editor. And also a big thanks to Gary Cosay, my movie agent, and Chuck Scott, my longtime lawyer, two people who have been with me for over thirty years, and my new lawyer Mark Hollaran.
Then I’d like to thank my sister Linda, who’s now been running my office for speaking engagements for several years. After all those years of brother-and-sister arguments, we’re doing pretty damn—I mean blessed—well. And thanks Jackie, who handles my finances, and Jolyn, who’s been typing for me till midnight, and last but not least, thank you Juanita, mi esposa, for keeping calm even when I jump up at two in the morning and I’m so full of the Great Spirit
of writing that I can’t keep still. Thanks, Juanita.
And now I thank God, Papito, and my brother Joseph, my dad and mom who’ve passed on, too, and my Spirit Guides who were assigned to me at birth. Gracias, mi Angelitos de Luz, and our first grandchild, Isaac Salvador, meaning “Laughing Savior.”
About the Author
VICTOR VILLASEÑOR’S bestselling, critically acclaimed works, as well as his inspiring lectures, have brought him the honor of many awards and commendations. Most recently he was selected as the founding chair of the John Steinbeck Foundation. He lives in Oceanside, California.
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Praise for Burro Genius
“Burro Genius is…a redemptive book, a celebration of courage and tenacity…. Real writing, as Villaseñor shows us, embodies the very same qualities.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A mountainous, gigantic book.”
—RAY HOGAN, San Antonio Express-News
“A powerful memoir.”
—San Diego Union Tribune
OTHER WORKS BY Victor Villaseñor
FICTION
Macho!
NONFICTION
Jury: People vs. Juan Corona
Burro Genius Page 34