Revenge of Cortez

A short story

The beginning

¹

I have thought about the meaning of life at different points in my life. This thought resurfaces from time to time and almost appears as a buzz in the ears. This sense of purpose passes from person to person and my grandfather was the founder of this feeling in my family.

As a young man, he was raised as the bastard son of a cacique- a powerful Mogol` from a small town in Mexico. His father was a complex man and worked him and his brother to no end. My grandfather learned that to succeed, he must be clever. He made himself worthwhile to the man that he feared and hated most, the self-appointed mayor of the town. At a young age, he learned that the stakes to survive were all or nothing. He was all in, and life began to look like a gamble for him.

He helped his mother with the other children and found that his father had left her in a position to be unable to care for the children he kept forcing upon her.

When he was 18, he immigrated to America and went to Chicago. There he landed in the Jewish Community and met a well-known tailor. This man was like a surrogate father to him and showed him the delicacy of sewing. His excellent craft of tailoring made a name that could stand on its own. After that, the buzz in his ear never stopped.

Once his life unraveled, he moved to California and had another family before he met my grandmother. It was rocky and dramatic and when my grandmother found out about his dark history, she made him swear it would never be spoken about. He and she created and established a family, and soon after, his “sole purpose” turned into making money.

It had almost completely taken over the idea of craft and artistry, and he had decided to make a million dollars before he died. This goal became the family goal, regardless of the opinions of the individual members of the family. These individuals were 5 others, his wife, son, and three daughters. The goal to make the family rich became an obsession.

Every day my grandparents worked endlessly, barely spending time with their children. `The days looked the same. Wake up, get dressed, brush teeth, eat breakfast, leave for school,

drive the 25 minutes between cities, and then the family would separate. The kids went to their schools, and the parents went to the tailor shop to continue the pattern. From the outside, it all looked so routine. Like clockwork, the alarms would go off, and the school bells would ring. The time for everything was always counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds to make the next dollar. After school, the kids would join my grandparents in the shop to help them with the afternoon business. In the late evening, they would all pack up and jump back in the car 25 minutes home, have dinner, sleep, and start again to work at the tailor shop the next day.

The clients would walk in with suits, and my grandfather would greet them in broken English.

“Hello, nice to see you, Señor. This is my daughter; she will take down your information.”

The client would respond with a simple greeting back and proceed to work with my mother or whichever aunt was the girl in the front of the shop. Occasionally there would be a language barrier between the client and my grandfather.

The client would begin,

“Hey girl, tell the old man in the back that this is too loose. This seam isn’t closed up enough and hangs off my back. I’m swimming in this sports jacket.”

My mother at 9 years old was the messenger and would try to not offend her father with this unhappy request. Always spoken in the voice of their mother tongue,

“Daddy, this customer says the jacket is too loose from the back. Can you fix it?”

My grandfather felt his work was without error, and these small nagging requests would insult him. His voice would raise, responding in Spanish,

“Tell that stupid man that he came here much fatter last month. We took his measurements, and now he thinks he has lost his belly fat. I see him with a new woman every month, and when he gets comfortable, he fattens up. So tell him I did him a favor by keeping it the size he came in with.”

Flush with embarrassment, my mother translates as eloquently as possible,

“ My dad says you should come in next month if the jacket is still bothering you, and he will fix it for you. But since this is the original measurement, he thinks waiting may be better.”

The customer would leave unhappy, but with my grandfather’s reasoning, eventually, the situation would happen just as he discreetly proposed, and inevitably, the customers always returned. As a result, the tailor shop stayed in business for over 40 years.

The middle

My grandparents were delighted to get business from the finest folks in the city. They would often say they had to work just as hard as any film producer, actor, lawyer, or doctor who came in for service; Even their children worked hard and made this dream come true.

It seemed like the buzz that drove them to success became so loud, that sometimes, they could hardly hear anything else. My grandmother had her disposition on this million-dollar goal. My grandfather’s strong will canceled out her attempts to voice her intentions. Always thinking about himself and his plan, my grandmother felt this goal was too individualistic. She wanted a collective property for the families to join together on holiday and have friends over to show off the wealth they had mutually accumulated.

My grandfather was jealous of this idea of excess flaunting. He began his offensive language towards the vision my grandmother shared. The thoughts that made money purposeful to her were those that seemed vile and in bad taste to my grandfather. He secretly flirted with the idea of leaving the family, running away to Vegas with a showgirl, and spending all the money on a property for him and his lover to escape. Although they wanted the same thing, money for my grandmother was a status of power and for my grandfather, money was an escape from his past.

They were often invited by some of the clients from the tailor shop to come to dinner. This was a mutual enjoyment for them both at first. My grandfather shopped to dress my grandmother in designer clothes and altered them to fit her like a glove. He wore his golden rings and dressed with pressed cuffs and pleated lines. Arriving at the soiree in his 63’ blue Mustang convertible, they spent the evening with their friends and mingled with doctors, lawyers, and the town’s mayor.

She would open the discussion when returning home from these fanciful dinner parties.

“You know the wife of Doctor Hamberg said that they just bought a property in Bixby Ranch. Remember I said that my father helped Bixby build that ranch, and I know the son of Mr. Bixby. That lady said they bought it for 50000 dollars, and she said she would loan us 20000 if we bought the property next to theirs. She doesn’t want the mother-in-law to discover that the house next door is open. It’s a great loan, and we have enough for a downpayment.”

My grandfather would stay silent and then his voice tore the illusion of unity.

(story continues below…)

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