Just Between Us

by Mario Lopez

  When my dad met the beautiful Elvia, he mentioned, coincidentally, that he knew her brother. A good icebreaker, I guess. Dad was quite the ladies’ man, so much so that when he met my mom, he introduced himself as Richard Lopez. Why an alias? Because that way he would never get caught running around with another girl. Changing names was his system for staying straight. Once he realized Mom might be the one, he fessed up and told her his real name was Mario. She still didn’t understand the point of the alias, but later on, when she did, Mom simply said, “Okay, well, you’re always Richard to me.” From then on, everybody called him Richard.

  Elvia and Richard dated for a couple of years and settled into married life together before starting a family. When at last I was born on October 10, 1973, I was given the name Mario Lopez, which should have made me a junior, but for some reason my mom and dad opted not to give me the middle name of Alberto. That made me the only person of Mexican descent that I know who doesn’t have at least one middle name. Nonetheless, I made a promising entrance, weighing in at eight and a half pounds, and was welcomed into life by all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins who were on hand to celebrate the joyous occasion of my arrival. But then, to everyone’s shock, almost overnight, I shrank to less than half my birth weight.

  The problem, they later discovered, was that my stomach couldn’t handle the milk. I’d vomit and have diarrhea and then become dehydrated. As soon as I showed signs of dehydration, my parents would rush me to the hospital and the doctors would use an IV of Pedialyte to quickly hydrate me. They did this over and over again, for a period of almost three months, without resolving the crisis. Before long, the doctors had to sit my anguished parents down to say there was nothing more they could do to prevent me from wasting away.

  Whenever my mother told this story in a group, she would start to cry all over again, remembering how a doctor advised them, “You must prepare for the worst.” The doctors thought I was going to die. It was not a matter of if but when.

  A priest was called in to bless me and say a prayer—my last rites. My parents were beside themselves, understandably. But my father, stubborn to the bone, refused to accept the fate the doctors had handed down. With absolute conviction, he stated, “No! My son is NOT going to die.”

  Mario Alberto Lopez aka Richard had reason to believe the doctors could be wrong. In his younger days, before I was born, Dad had beaten a dire prognosis from medical experts. In that era, he worked in a machine shop where he hoisted heavy loads of material—over a hundred pounds at a time—all day long, moving the loads from one spot and then setting them on the milling machinery. After a while, in spite of his strength, the physical demands of his employment began to wreak havoc on his body. What kind of havoc? Really scary stuff. As my dad once told me, “My spine was completely crooked and I was in constant pain.” Barely able to walk, he also couldn’t sleep, no matter what medications they gave him. The doctors recommended an array of expensive tests and invasive procedures. But rather than accept that those were his only options, Dad agreed as a last resort to go with his dad, my grandfather Tata Lopez, to see a witch doctor, or bruja. She was located in an out-of-the-way place near Rosarito, Mexico. Upon seeing Dad and hearing of his ailments, she immediately went to work.

  If anyone ever asked my father what she did exactly, he would only say, “Oh, she performed that Santeria black magic stuff you hear about.” This seems to have involved cutting off a chicken’s head and spraying the blood on him. And then some. Whatever the approach, it took all day and Dad walked out of there like a mummy, totally wrapped in bandages. During the healing process he had to bathe in seaweed from the ocean. As crazy as it sounds, it worked. She had managed to straighten out all of his bones. The witch doctor cured my dad.

  This was my father’s justification for taking the drastic action that he did when my condition worsened and the doctors deemed my case to be terminal. He and Mom had been through so much, constantly taking me back and forth from the hospital every time I became dehydrated. At his wit’s end, my dad marched in and kidnapped me from the hospital—a last-ditch effort to save my life—and took me to be seen by the very same witch doctor who had saved him. Within an hour or so, he’d made it across the border, and in a candle-lit room filled with smoke the bruja made her mystery concoction. Eye of bat, wing of beetle, hair of dragon? Perhaps. Whatever the magic was, she mixed it with Pedialyte and suero (fermented milk like yogurt). She brewed it up, added goat’s milk, and said to my dad, “Give him that.” The concoction had Carnation evaporated milk in it—a quarter of the bottle—and the rest was mostly water.

  It worked. No more vomiting or diarrhea. Digesting milk was no longer a problem. I was healed.

  The same hospital that couldn’t save me and was willing to almost leave me for dead also billed my parents for those same failed treatments. The bills made a huge stack about a foot high. The hospital charged my parents something like seventy grand—which was astronomical by 1973 standards. The hospital charges were for the care, not for the cure they didn’t provide. The witch doctor cost six hundred dollars.

  Within a few weeks after drinking the potion, I not only started putting on weight and rebuilding my strength, but my appetite spiked until it was off the charts. Making up for lost time, I was so insatiable, apparently, that I soon became that fat Mexican Buddha baby everybody in the family loved to joke about. According to reports, I just got fatter and fatter until I finally began to walk. And once I went bipedal, as my mom would say, “Mijo, all bets were off!”

  Of course, she and my dad were thrilled with my full recovery and rapid transition into bruiser status. But that brought with it a new set of concerns. Like one night when I was just starting to motor around the house, wobbling from here to there. Mom and Dad, both seated on the couch, began to call my name at the same time, each opening up their arms, as if to see which parent I’d go to first. After toddling in one direction, I’d change at the last minute and wobble over to the other parent. Unable to make up my mind, I kept it up for a while, going back and forth until finally I fell face-first—smack—right onto the corner of the coffee table.

  Mom began to wail, becoming hysterical at the sight of blood gushing from what turned out to be my broken nose, and then almost fainted, prompting my dad to rush both of us to the hospital—to get me stitches and to make sure she was going to be all right. In the aftermath, I was left with a pronounced Frankenstein scar on my nose between my eyes that you can still see if you look closely. Considering a multitude of other close calls in the years that followed, the scar is no big deal. Besides, it gives me character, or at least that’s what the girls would say.

  The broken nose hardly slowed me down. By the time I hit preschool—in the period when our family grew to a total of four, thanks to the addition of my younger sister, Marissa, three years my junior—I was basically transformed into a young Speedy Gonzales. Living with boundless energy and very little fear, I may not have consciously recognized how lucky I was to be alive. But from as far back as I can remember, I had a vast appreciation for every experience that life had to offer and didn’t want to miss a thing.

  Whatever was happening at home, with our immediate family or with our larger extended family, at school or in the neighborhood, I wanted to be a part of it. Sometimes I wonder if the witch doctor didn’t put in a little extra ingredient that made me into something of a ringleader or instigator. Or maybe this was just early training for my eventual hosting skills.

  Who knows? What I do know is that I may have caught the performing bug as early as three years old, when, because of exposure to mariachi music, which my dad loved, I started singing Spanish songs and winning local competitions. It was also at age three that I started to read, something that came easily and that I’m sure my mother encouraged—and, allegedly, spurred my uncanny knack of being able to memorize what I’ve read or heard, even if I have no clue what any of it means. To the amaz
ement of most adults, I could deliver word-perfect renditions of soaring mariachi ballads by the likes of Vicente Fernández, a Mexican icon. My dad couldn’t resist bringing me with him to mariachi bars in Chula, where I would entertain him, his buddies, and whoever else was in the place. He would lift me up onto the bar and I would happily sing passionate love songs such as “Sangre Caliente,” “La Ley del Monte,” and “La Media Vuelta.” This went on for years.

  By no means were my early forays into mariachi music an indication to anyone in the family that entertainment could be my calling in life. Not by a long shot. The truth is, I was a hyper kid who could not sit still—what today would probably be seen as having some form of attention deficit issues—and so, to keep me from getting into serious trouble, Mom, in her infinite wisdom, had to devise a strategic plan of action. Her first move? Enrolling me in dance class at age three. It took me many years before I figured out the method to the madness.

  • • •

  Back in the day—I’m talking about Chula Vista of the 1970s, up until I was six or seven years old—I assumed everybody around me was Mexican too. I thought everybody spoke Spanish, ate tacos, liked Chihuahuas (for want of a better stereotype), and had a last name that ended with z—Gonzalez, Fernandez . . . Lopez. And so on. This was only natural. When you’re a kid, the world outside your window is the world. So, of course, I concluded that everyone was just like me. Soon enough, I would learn that wasn’t true at all.

  Yes, much of the population of Chula was Mexican, but we also were home to a mix of other Hispanics and fellow immigrant families, not to mention a few white people—the “salt” sprinkled on the top of the colorful, multicultural melting pot in which we, Latinos, were the majority. The diversity had to do with the nearby navy base in San Diego, which attracted all types and nationalities to the area. Chula Vista had a strong Filipino community, a black community, even a Samoan community. Eventually, once I started meeting people from different backgrounds, I gained a much broader worldview. The differences, in my opinion, were cool. Not only did I become extremely accepting of others who weren’t like me, but I genuinely enjoyed getting to know how those differences shaped them—their race, culture, food, music, lifestyle, you name it. That inclusive attitude is part of the world that shaped my sensibilities and is an aspect of what makes San Diego so beautiful.

  The atmosphere of inclusion is probably also what allowed me, a border-town kid, to grow up feeling that my childhood was really all-American—in the way that I felt connected to fellow citizens, that this was my country and we all belonged. Those patriotic, traditional values were prevalent in Chula Vista, and important to my upbringing. Once my schooling started, weirdly, it was almost like growing up in the fifties—kids’ parties, school dances, local hangouts, football rallies, prom, and constant family involvement. Kind of like a Latino-themed Happy Days.

  Then again, Chula neighborhoods like mine were tough, especially back in the 1970s and ’80s. As a border town, we had criminal elements associated with drug smuggling and hard-core gangs that added to dangers for everyone. We were, after all, the barrio—the inner city that could be even tougher than in comparable blue-collar neighborhoods of Boston or Chicago. Like those being raised in urban areas, we too weren’t free to roam in the woods and run around building forts, making slingshots and bows and arrows, or learning to hunt and fish. Instead, in Chula Vista we played football in the streets, dueled each other in mud- and rock-throwing contests, and, more or less, lived on our bikes.

  The good news from this mix of influences was that Chula offered an education in itself—a way to appreciate my heritage, to enjoy a normal childhood in a hardworking middle-class community with all-American values, and to develop the street smarts that living in a tough neighborhood demands. Of course, the foundation for all these lessons came from growing up among the colorful cast of characters who were members of my extended family on both the Lopez and Trasvina sides.

  Whenever there was any excuse for a get-together, the word would go out and next thing we knew all the relatives would converge either at our house on Paisley Street or, most of the time, over at the home of my maternal grandmother, Nana Trasvina. A matriarch of our family, Nana probably had the strongest influence on me during my childhood, other than that of my parents. She was a true sweetheart, loved everybody unconditionally, and, as a devout Catholic, lived her faith by example, going to church daily at six a.m. Nana always had on an apron because with all of us congregating so often at her house, she was always cooking. In fact, I never saw her when she wasn’t in the kitchen. And I never saw her when she wasn’t in a beautiful mood.

  Nana’s solution to a household full of rambunctious kids was to insist we go play outside. Her belief that fresh air and exercise were important was what later inspired my children’s book, Mud Tacos. The story captures the essence of my early childhood, back when kids had to use their imaginations, back before computers and iPads. All of us kids in the neighborhood would team up and make mud tacos—mud, leaves, and worms. Beef, taco, and cheese. We’d set up our little kitchen outside and make up plates full of mud tacos to share with the family.

  In hindsight, I’m amazed that when it came to our gatherings we all could fit inside Nana’s house or ours. Besides our family of four—Mom, Dad, Marissa (pronounced Ma-ree-sa), and me—the lineages included Mom’s five brothers and five sisters along with their kids, and Dad’s four brothers and four sisters as well as their kids. Mom was the oldest girl. And Dad was the oldest, period. He always seemed older than fire and dirt.

  All of my cousins lived across the street, around the corner, or within walking distance. Louie and Gabe lived across the street, Alex and Victor and Ralphie lived around the corner, and all of my mom’s family—everybody—lived within a couple of miles of each other. The saying “Mi casa es su casa” really applied, no matter where we gathered, as did the phrase “The more the merrier.” Man, did I love those times, so much so that even though I’m no longer in Chula Vista, my house in LA is still ground zero for overflowing get-togethers.

  Having a tight-knit group of male cousins helped make up for my lack of brothers. One of my absolute favorites was my primo Louie. On the Lopez side, he was the son of my father’s younger brother, the oldest of three boys, and a good-looking, all-around great kid. With a ready smile, he had that gift of lighting up a room when he walked into it—not in a boisterous way, more like the glow of a warm candle. Unbeknownst to the family, he knew he was gay early in his teens but didn’t come out until much later, during a turbulent period for him after he had abruptly left Chula Vista. After the fact, I was upset that he felt he had to keep the reality of who he was and whom he loved a secret from the family, who would have accepted him no matter what. His story, as it later unfolded, would impact all of us, as would that of my cousin and godson Chico.

  There were times as I approached adolescence when I naturally sought out the counsel of my older male cousins to help give me insights on stuff like girls and other worldly matters—sometimes at my own peril. Meanwhile, my younger cousins were like younger brothers for whom I tried to set a good example, though not always successfully. Ironically, although Marissa is three years younger than me, she’s about a hundred years older than me in terms of maturity. Marissa does not mess around. Direct and focused, she has the rep in the family for being that person who will tell you the way it is. And tough? She was definitely braver than me, pushing the envelope with Mom and Dad much more than I did.

  As different as my sister and I could sometimes be, we both loved our family gatherings and enjoyed hearing the stories that would inevitably come to light after a few cervezas at a family get-together.

  “Oh, and what about the time you . . .” someone would start, bringing up a story everybody had heard over and over, and the next thing we knew the entertainment would begin. The music would quiet down and us kids would draw in close, listening wide-eyed as the other pers
on would say, “No, that wasn’t me. You must be thinking of somebody else. Here’s what really happened.”

  Then came the tales of what it was like back when our parents and aunts and uncles were growing up in Sinaloa—what’s now known as the drug capital of Mexico. Despite its dark side, Sinaloa has some of the most beautiful countryside and beaches you’ve ever seen and is also known all over Mexico for its beautiful people. From the reputation we heard it had, it seemed that life there was like being in the middle of the Wild, Wild West of Mexico—whether or not you had any contact with the Sinaloa cartel, notorious for having in its ranks the most powerful and dangerous druglords, male and female.

  Though I never found out the details, our family in Culiacán may have included relatives high up on the cartel food chain. Whenever I asked, though, I’d get one of those answers like, “If we tell you, we have to kill you.”

  “How bad could the drug gangs be?” I asked my dad once.

  “They’re serious” was all he would say. Apparently, the Mexican cartels were nothing like your average “sell on the corner” ringleaders or the “made men” like in The Sopranos. They were Colombian serious. Pablo Escobar serious.

  That gave me some perspective, but I never got the full story about whether or not Dad at one point was brought briefly into the family end of that business. I figure he couldn’t have been in too deep, because he’s still alive. Nobody else in our extended group of family members was involved, for sure. If anyone was connected, though, Dad was probably the only one who had the balls, or the insanity, for that kind of thing.