La Pluma

When I was a kid, I was mystified by the bag lady who used to barge into my grandpa's house in El Paso. The front door would slam, then she would appear, panting. Her hair was white and wispy, and her lined face was marred by too much makeup. "Howdy!" she would cackle. Back then, I thought she was a family friend or maybe an old neighbor. She didn't look or act like any of my Chicano relatives. She didn't even speak Spanish. She was loud and crass and made everyone uncomfortable. While Grandpa hid behind his newspaper, my mom would try to be polite: "Oh, hi, Anita."

Years later I discovered that Anita was actually my great-aunt. Even though Anita had long since passed away by then, this news surprised me. Our large clan has always been inclusive, never drawing distinctions between first or second cousins or relations by marriage. For generations, la familia has been everything to us. Why had everyone acted so strangely around Anita?

Last year, when my relatives gathered for Christmas, I began asking about Anita. I started with my mother.

"Mom, what was Anita like?"

"I didn't really know her."

"But wasn't she around when you were growing up?"

"Yes..."

"So what was she like?"

"I don't remember."

My Aunt Lola was more forthcoming. Lola sat on a couch in the living room and reached back into the past effortlessly.

"Oh, Anita was so beautiful. She was like a flapper, with lots of boyfriends. She was always decked out in the latest styles?crepe de chine dresses, silk stockings. She used to give us extravagant presents. Once she brought me a navy-blue leather coat with matching gloves." Lola paused for emphasis. "And this was during the Great Depression, when people didn't have money for basic items, let alone luxuries."

Lola recalled Anita as a sensuous young woman, with fair hair, flashing eyes and a porcelain complexion.

"Were you close to Anita?"

"Well, not really. She lived away, you know, in the white world, not the barrio. In those days, the neighborhoods in El Paso were very self-contained; we never left our side of town. We only saw Anita when she wanted to see us. She would sweep in like royalty, and then blow out just as fast."

Lola's memories were captivating, yet I felt her picture of Anita was incomplete. I still wondered why Anita had kept her distance.

When I brought up Anita's name with my Aunt Emma, her face darkened.

"I'll tell you the truth," she blurted out. "Anita was a pluma."

"What's that?"

"It's an old slang term, of course you wouldn't know. Literally, it means 'feather.' It used to refer to something, someone, floating around that anyone could grab?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do I have to spell it out? Anita was a prostitute! She thought she was better than everyone else because she looked like a gringa, then she disgraced the whole family. She didn't like being Mexican and look what happened to her?served her right." Emma turned and stormed out of the room.

I didn't know who or what to believe. By the time I knew Anita, she was an old woman who wore baggy house dresses and carried an enormous black purse stuffed with paper towels. She lived in a rooming house somewhere downtown. I made the mistake of bringing this up one afternoon while Anita was sitting at Grandpa's dining room table. She was using an ornate handheld mirror and the light streaming in through the windows to pluck out stray gray hairs.

"Anita, where do you live?"

My mother, ironing nearby, quickly intervened.

"Mi hijo, go get the mail. Now." From the tone of her voice, I knew the conversation was over. I went to fetch the mail from the front porch while Anita continued her plucking. Later Mom told me that Anita was secretive about her exact address.

"Why?"

"Um?she doesn't live with?uh, any family. She's embarrassed. So don't mention it."

Sometimes Grandpa would take me for a drive in his pickup truck and I would see Anita sitting on a bench in the plaza, surrounded by overflowing shopping bags. When I waved at her, she would turn her head and angle it down toward the crook of her arm. She pretended not to see us. She never waved back.

When Anita dropped by Grandpa's house, she continued her tradition of bringing gifts, only now they were presents nobody wanted?like chocolate-covered cherries from Newberry's or plaid socks from Woolworth's. Unlike every other relative who came over, Anita was never greeted with besitos (kisses). She smelled like sour talcum powder and we kids used to hang back when she reached to hug us. Everything about her seemed so inappropriate, from her hillbilly accent to her habit of wearing nightgowns in the middle of the day. I was embarrassed by her attempts at conversation.

"What's your favorite street?" Anita would say. Everyone would just look at the floor without answering.

?

No one told me when Anita died in the late 1970s. By then most of my relatives had moved out of El Paso and lost touch with her. Only my Aunt Pichona attended the funeral, which she recalled with a shudder.

"The service lasted 20 minutes," Pichona said. "There were three people there. I brought a $5 bouquet and they were the only flowers on the casket." Pichona didn't know what happened to Anita's belongings. "I don't think there was much? I guess everything went in the trash."

Growing up, I thought Anita was weird and a little crazy. Now, her shadowy life story haunts me. I wish I knew more about her. I searched through dozens of photo albums without finding a single picture of her. Anita's life spanned four generations of my family and yet she never seemed to connect with any of us. She is my phantom relative who lived and died and barely left a trace. Her only legacy is the questions I have about her.

Recently, at my prodding, my mother relented and reminisced on the phone about Anita.

"When I was teenager I couldn't wait to get away from her prattling and carrying on. I feel bad about that now, because she was nice to me. Anita took me to the circus, the movies. Her favorite was the Crawford Theater because they had double features."

"Was it true about her past?"

"Well, by college, I had heard rumors about Anita. El Paso was like a small town?everybody knew everybody and word got around. But hardly anyone knew we were related to Anita. She would leave the house whenever people came over. She would grab her coat and purse and rush out the back door."

"Did you love Anita?"

My mother sighed. "Honestly? I didn't get close enough to care for her. It's funny?for a long time, Anita stayed away, so we thought she looked down on us. Now I think maybe she was trying to protect us. Maybe she didn't want to embarrass anyone with her reputation."

I didn't say anything so my mother went on. "I'll tell you what, if you want to find out some details of Anita's life, go look up the old census forms, from the 30s and 40s. Maybe you can find them at City Hall. In those days, the census used to record people's occupations, education, who they lived with, all sorts of things."

I took my mom's advice. The last time I was in El Paso, I made a search request for Anita by submitting at a form at the public library. I was hopeful I might gain a lead on my great-aunt's life story. I received a postcard back two weeks later. Anita's name was misspelled and the card was stamped, "PERSON UNKNOWN."