Other nonfiction or
memoir in this issue:

Mary Norris:
It Hurt to Hum

Tim Gomez:
Soda

Domingo Martinez: THE BOY KINGS OF TEXAS

I. CHRISTMAS WITH GRAMMA

Having grown up destitute during the Great Depression, Gramma
had developed the survivor's ability to draw profit from circumstances
other people would find debilitating. She was depressed, sure;
but what could she or anyone else do about it? You're a starving twelve year-
old Mexican girl on a dying farm; you deal with it, find a way to
cope. You don't have a choice.

This is how Gramma learned to live during her entire adolescence
and into her first marriage: coping with circumstances others would
find crushing, terminal.

She was like a labor boss in this regard: able to secretly earn a fairly
good living though presumably doing nothing, meanwhile maintaining
a status in the barrio as the chief moneylender. She always dressed
like a regular widowed Mexican peasant woman, clutching her bulging
black imitation leather purse, and she kept her gold Catholic idolatry to
a minimum. She wouldn't wear the cheap f loral perfume popular in
the barrio, meant to cover the garlic and cumin smells of meat-heavy
cookery. And she would never wash away the bloodstains of a freshly
slaughtered animal on her hands, which in Gramma's cosmology truly
defined wealth.

Jewelry, electronics, perfume, real estate, travel—none of this mattered
to Gramma. It was hollow wealth. You can't eat a diamond ring.
You can't eat a Ford. You can't eat a trip to San Antonio.

Gramma knew where she was going to keep her money: under her
mattress, and in guns. Guns never depreciate on the border, in Texas.

Everyone in the barrio owed her money, even me, since I wanted
that Indiana Jones action figure Mom wouldn't buy for me.

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DOMINGO MARTINEZ Originally from Brownsville, Texas, Domingo Martinez is a
graphic designer now living in Seattle, Washington. His first book, The Boy Kings of Texas,
was recently sold to Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot..