‘What’s a beautiful memory for you was a nightmare for me’

“When I was a little kid, my father took me to see an uncle in the hospital in Mexico. My uncle had gotten into an argument with his dad, my grandfather. It was over money he gave to a woman. I think he wanted to marry her. The family didn’t want that.

“My grandfather was so upset. He told him, ‘You’re not a real man. A real man would have kept that money and told that woman off.’ They had several guns in the house. My uncle took one out and said, ‘You want to see a man? A real man?’ And he put the gun to his head and shot himself. He didn’t die, but they couldn’t remove the bullet. It stayed lodged in there.

“After that, his personality changed. He would do things like hit the wall with his hands until they bled. People tried to calm him down. But it wasn’t until they got the right medications that he became more relaxed. This all happened in his 20s. He lived into his late 60s.

“One day, I told an older brother that I sure missed going to the family property in Mexico. Every summer they would take us there, and I had the best times. He just looked at me and said, ‘Brother, you don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s a beautiful memory for you was a nightmare for me.’ I learned that the uncle who shot himself used to physically beat my brother. A lot.

“Most of us are dark-skinned. My brother was the only one born in our family who was real light-skinned. They put ideas into my father’s head that he wasn’t his son. In Spanish they call it el hijo del Sancho, like the son of another man. Subconsciously, I guess, the family disliked my brother because of that.

“Years later, that same uncle went with the family to Galveston. They were having a cookout when he decided to go swimming. They were supposed to keep an eye on him to make sure he was OK. But somehow, they forgot.

“When they asked for him, somebody saw him swimming away into the ocean. My brother was one of the people who swam way out there. He was able to grab my uncle by the hair, and he started pulling him back to shore. So after all that had taken place, he was the one to save his life.”

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