"Danza De Flores/The Pristine Daughter" by Violeta Garza

Some girls 
get quinceañeras 
to mark the moment 
between girlhood and womanhood.

Not me.

No poofy dress.
No goofy dance.
No playlist of the times.

Instead, on my birthday, 
I was gifted a battle-weary 44-year-old mother, 
Graciela Garza De León, 
in a hospital bed, 
woozy from surgery, 
breast removed.

That day, tíos y tías, primas y primos, 
they all stood next to her, 
a clump of well-meaning 
words and 
gazes and 
sobaditas. 

I heard someone say she was lucky to be alive.
Did I imagine it?
Did she hear it?

I stood to the side.
Hoping to hide,
to disappear into my personal brand of emotional paralysis.

In the weeks leading up to that moment, 
between diagnosis and Incision Day, 
I’d watched my avoidant father, brother, and sister from a distance. 
Morose. Forlorn.

Not me.

I told myself that my family needed 
my light, 
my strength.

I tried.
Except I lied by pretending 
I could stay dry 
through the tempest.

Turns out, 
I was always more transparent 
than I thought. 

No poofy dress.
Just a cotton t-shirt and denim shorts.

No goofy dance.
Just a shrinking violet frozen against the wall.

No playlist of the times.
Just my mother ignoring
the fawning of her family
and putting the spotlight on me.

“Mija, ¿cómo te sientes?”

In asking me how I was, 
in posing such a simple question, 
my mother’s voice became a squeeze of lemon 
on a cold sore.

Turns out, 
I was never as invisible as I thought.

In front of the whole family, 
I splattered into the thousand oceans below us 
into a sorrow 
that could now fully consume me.

I was a sobbing mess, finally.

Tía María, the house of fortitude, persuaded me to sit.
The nurse came into the room.

My tía pointed to my drowning body and told her,
“She’s a very smart girl.”

The nurse nodded sympathetically at me. “I can tell.”

My throat swelled. 
My capillaries churned. 
My brain waves buzzed.

You don’t know me.
I should have shoved the hurt in deeper.
If I had just been a better daughter, God would let me keep her. 

I can still savor the salt on my cheeks from that day.
I can still feel the coarse texture of cheap tissues on my nostrils.
I can still hear the soft brush of family members putting their fragile hands in their pockets.

In the years following– 
   confusion, 
   anger, 
   guilt. 
The tangle of inevitable role reversals.
The visits of family members who adored her before she was a wife.
The inflamed arc from mother and back to child before the last silence.

Nearly two decades later, 
my mother’s magnetism remains. 
She is here 
with me
when a hummingbird looks through my window.
When I put my hands in my lap.
When the clock strikes 10:21.

And also, when I play my Rocío Dúrcal playlist.
When I do goofy dances while I clean.
When I put on a va-va-voom dress 
and her shape looks back at me 
in the mirror.

If I stay really still,
I can time travel 
to that birthday 
and put my arms around teenage Violeta:

“You don’t need to bargain with God.
You don’t even need to be a pristine daughter.
You just need to love your mother, learn from her.
And if you’re gonna challenge her, do so with respect and curiosity for her side of the story.
Above all, thank her 
for the kindest versions of her
and the most cacophonous.

Cos loving the most 

appalling, 
frustrating, 
unpredictable 

versions of your mother is how you learn to love the same versions of yourself.”

Here’s to healing. 
Here’s to balance.
Here’s to growth in illness.
Here's to not hiding anymore.
Here's to making space
for the dark and the light,
the calm and the bite,
within the inner child and 
inner mother in all of us.

Don’t take it from me, but you might want to
put on your comfy clothes.
Play that cozy song.
Let your inner blood fam
break out dance moves from decades ago.


I mean, who’s really watching anyway?


BIO:

Violeta (vee-oh-LET-uh) Garza is a multilingual poet, weaver, and artist from the Historic West Side of San Antonio, Texas. Her mother passed away from breast cancer in 2005 after a 9-year-battle. Violeta can still feel her mother’s presence while playing cheesy Mexican love ballads from the 1980s.

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