My goal is to write engaging books that draw readers in. Page turners that inspire the reader to care about my characters and their plots. Stories with settings that come alive, and themes that inspire compassion.
I write about the cultural intersection of Texas and Mexico. This, as I sit here in the dark with not even a hint of sunrise peeking through the curtains. I’m drinking coffee at my mom’s kitchen table in Corpus Christi on Saturday morning. My elderly mother is still asleep. My husband and kids are in Austin. I’m here to give my 97-year-old mother’s caregiver a break. The caregiver, Filomena, lives in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, but she has traveled here to live with my mother and earn $2,200 per month to look after Mom. Filo, as we call her, sends every penny home to her family in Reynosa.
Mom tells stories, stories, stories. I especially like the one when my mother’s mother was a child in South Texas. Mama Abuelita she was called later when we grandkids came along. Mama Abuelita was about four when the story takes place. She was ill, but there were no doctors in that area at the turn of the 20th century. As my mother tells it, God sent a faith healer, Don Pedrito Jaramillo, who healed my grandmother with water. The little girl grew up to marry the medicine man for his tribe (my mother’s words) on a native reservation.
Now, I check on my sleeping mother. She’s still out, but when I return to the kitchen, I find my brother. He has entered the house with his key. He bears menudo and pan de dulce. This would never happen in Austin. In Austin, I make special dates with my Latina friends to go out and find menudo or barbacoa. Not the pan de dulce though; we try to stay away from carbs. My friends and I have come to the sad conclusion that there is no good menudo in Austin and barbacoa is nonexistent. But there are still ladies like us that care enough to continue the search, and it occurs to me that we are the cultural intersection of Texas and Mexico.
My brother also arrives with a topic: “What would I have done if I had been alive when Jesus came along?” Would we have been believers, or would we have turned against him? I set aside my writing and pour fresh coffee for the conversation that solves nothing but alights our imaginations. Lately I’ve been obsessed with Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. I’ve watched it 2 ½ times. (I’m probably the first writer to blame my procrastination on Nikki Giovanni.) At the beginning of Giovanni’s writing career in NYC, she bore a son. She said she had never had to feed another person before besides herself, so she knew she had to make money writing. So she did.
One thing Giovanni’s wife, Virginia Fowler said about Giovanni: “She loves to write” so she writes . . . prolifically. I love to write too, but the hard part is sitting in the chair in front of the computer and writing. There’s always something else to do. My brother has gone, but my sister just called to talk at length about our mother’s health. And right now, I better get up and finish the laundry, so I can leave clean sheets for Filo. But first, I hear Mom calling for me, and I must help her to the bathroom. I’ll get back to my writing tonight after the baseball game when Mom goes to sleep.
P.S. You can google Don Pedrito Jaramillo. He was real.
Annette Montez Kolda 