From Scratch
For the most part, the recipe stays the same. Nonfiction by Jan Karlo Lopez
Trying to cook by using a family recipe, but there aren’t any. No measurements, only directions. Everything from scratch, from memory. The ingredients don’t change but the quality does. From milking the cow on the rancho at 4 AM to picking up the milk at the tienda on the block, then crossing into America where vending machines sold milk on street corners. A place where milk is right next to almond milk, soy milk, lactose-free milk, skim milk, and milk that doesn’t fit the definition of milk in the nicest grocery store Oak Cliff has to offer, (Tom Thumb) because even though property taxes doubled it’s still not nice enough to get anything better on this side of town.
The Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and Central Market sit across town, where the rest of the nice things are. Off US-75 by North Park Mall, it is one of the most visited malls in the country. They advertise an HEB coming to Dallas that lands in Frisco because of course they need more, they always need more, and they always get more. We settle for Wal-Mart but avoid the local one because of the locals. Avoid another that closes early because of the crime. And then there are the Cost-Plus grocery stores that add a surcharge to shop there. Why support local businesses if the local businesses don’t support the locals?
For the most part, the recipe stays the same, the changes over generations are minimal and unnoticeable, like the minimum wage. Fill it up to put it here then in there, a one size fits all measurement. If the bowl is bigger, add more. They always add more, more hours, more interest, more payments, more taxes, doing more, getting less. To leave a third-world country for a developing city. To leave the motherland for the ghetto/barrio/hood. To leave everything known for something unknown. Hope with no promises, but the reward overshadows the risk, and the risk is everything.
Start all over from scratch with whatever can be carried across the river. Over their head, on their back in the desert, pay extra to be smuggled in plain sight over the border, or ride with the rest of the group under the truck, hidden until clearing the checkpoints. Waiting and saving for years to bring family over like pieces of a torn picture, saving up for another, choosing between who to risk bringing and who to risk leaving, saving up for another, then another, only to get raided in the middle of the night and deported. Far from anywhere called home. No pesos. No dollars. Having to start all over from scratch to do it all over again and wait more years to have the picture taped back together, risking missed pieces.
There’s no recipe for the American pie, it’s all from scratch, scratching, and clawing; the blood, sweat, and tears turn the dirt into mud. It is stiff enough to crawl out and start from the bottom. A chance at something stable. Options are limited without proper documentation. Gotta know someone who knows someone who works for someone who will act like they don’t know. They’ll come disguised in the same skin color to soften the blow.
There’s no recipe for the American pie, it’s all from scratch, scratching, and clawing; the blood, sweat, and tears turn the dirt into mud
Wake up at the crack of dawn to clean houses, and hotels, clean after kids, then clean up and get ready for bed to do it all over again. Everyone sleeps together on the cold nights and alone on the hot ones, the weather seeping through the warped windows with ease. Landscaping until sundown. Still can’t speak English, so gotta point to the menu to order. Sleep comes abruptly after the sixteen-hour shift, but lightly because they’ve been breaking into cars at the apartments. Can’t risk what little they have. Wake up the kids before the shotgun blasts. Better to expect it because the movies don’t show how it goes mute after gunshots.
Then leap into a house, back to scratch, no more rent, now there’s a mortgage, with high interest, insurance with a high deductible, a sixty-year term contract, where generations benefit from the interest paid so generations later the home can be owned, but property taxes are still due annually. They rise but so does the murder rate. The murder capital of the country, the most dangerous place to drive, but so expensive to live in. Back then they went west looking for gold, now they came here for lower property taxes. Are they too late moving, or am I?
The locals can't afford to live here because the hood is worth the money. There will be ones who will profit from it say it is. They knock it all down to start from scratch. Price out all the local businesses and bring in the small shops, financed by out-of-town money. Slap a modern look that resembles a mom-and-pop look but not like my Ma and Pa. The smoke shop down the street has a stigma, but the CBD store is accepted with open arms. The overpriced grinder and locally made drink both leave a bad taste.
Somehow, some way, the black sheep makes it through the rebellious phase. The yearly one-on-one parent-teacher conferences. The in-school suspensions, the out-of-school suspensions, and the expulsion until the sixty days of alternation school are complete. Where everyone had it for cheap and crossword puzzles were the only assignments given. Came out and got addicted to heroin, switched schools, dropped heroin, got charges pressed, then charges dropped, and graduated in reconnect by doing one class in one day. Not unintelligent, uninterested in the school system, the hierarchy, or the establishment. Graduated and picked up my diploma. Stopped working to go to college, dropped out, and went back to work. Haven’t stopped since. I somehow stacked it up, legally, and got a house, to start all over from scratch.
Jan Karlo Lopez is an emerging writer with no formal training aside from community college. An avid reader, traveler, and native of Oak Cliff, Texas, he has been published in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters and MagCloud. See more of his self-published collections on Gumroad.
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