Casa

Still working om catching up! So for day 9 of #InktoberLatinxColectivo2020 challenge, the prompt is CASA / HOME #LatinxInk20

Despite having been born and growing up primarily in the U.S., “America” never really felt like home. There was something about the environment around me that always felt off. It wasn’t until I went to El Salvador at the age of seven that I realize just how isolated and uprooted I had really been. It was the first time that I was meeting my mother’s family as a conscious being–and it was the first time that I felt like I belonged.

From the age of thirteen, my mother spent twenty years working herself do death–at times holding down two jobs. Her aim was to get enough money to place a deposit on her own home. And so, after much effort, she managed to get a small plot of land in Mejicanos and promptly began building her house. A house just for her siblings and my grandmother. My mother established a rule that no partner of hers would ever live in that house. My mother’s republic was matriarchal.

I loved my mama’s house. It had a large courtyard with four large trees for shade, flowers, hierbas, tenguereches running around everywhere, a parrot living under the canopy, and two turtles. When it rained, the courtyard became a small ocean and turtles would come to drink and play. My favorite thing was to wake up early and sit by one of the trees to read.

While my mother’s home didn’t suffer much damage during the 1989 offensive, in the late 1990s, the area became a haven for La Mara. Slowly, all my siblings began to leave. The last to live there was my grandmother, until she passed away in the 2010s. Sadly, there is almost nothing left of my mother’s house, but a few bare walls on a largely empty lot.