When it came to Uncle, Chicago was like paradise. It was his mental Narnia. He often chatted about how those years in the windy city affected him. A young Puerto Rican man, single, riding his motorbike, and cohorting with Latinos from across the world. In perspective, I see he was talking about freedom, which is what we all wanted …. from the very family that chained us.

My uncle was the miserable patriarch of a family that gaslit itself into believing: singing, dancing, laughing, and cooking are the only sources to joy, in part, because that is what we did best. Yet, there was a fifth and sixth marker, fighting and ill-wishing, that was so powerful it dominated the others.

He was showing pictures of his time in Chicago, and called over his kids to see them, of which I followed. He asked, ¨Which one am I?¨ and they had no clue. He simultaneously grimaced and smirked, ¨Come on… which one?¨ They did not care, but I stepped up and said ¨This one!¨

He laughed but was slightly disappointed it was me. ¨Yup, can you believe my long hair,¨ he replied. He looked Puro Taino. Built, tan, with hair passed shoulder blades, and, honestly, I was shocked he was so handsome. My family was what I liked to call, ¨Pretty tired.¨ They were not ugly but they looked like a weird blend of younger for their age/ beaten down and slightly sad. It was the same dynamic I noted in my own father´s features. Genetics had protected him by making him handsome and looking younger than his age, but life oddly made him look tired and lost. For however bright his smile, he had no direction beyond the quiet plots of malice he had against the people he loved him, and the sexual/ drug addictions he used to pacify that, deep down, he too hated that he was genuinely an abuser and a good man by lies.

My uncle launched into a joyous retelling of his life in Chicago. He was so proud and jubilant. I was right there with him imagining the concrete snow and the boys club that he defined as his friends for life. He looked beyond me as if, for the first time in decades, he received oxygen. There was breathiness to how he spoke that made witness the haggard man in front of me truly was the happy, handsome man in those pictures.

I went to the kitchen to grab a Snapple, and his mother and wife were there. ¨He’s talking about Chicago, again,¨ they chided: smirking with an eye roll. His mom was a known bruja, and she was proud of her next statement, ¨I did so much brujería to get him back. He could not be over there. It’s dangerous and also why.¨ It was the why part that stuck out to me because why not. He was happy. It was the same reaction my mother would have when I confronted on how she always stopped/ stops me from pursuing my own dreams of singing and acting, even saying ¨I just think you are too smart.¨ The truth is we were raised to be our parents partner, and they could not imagine or allow us to find happiness somewhere else, away from them. Hence, they cut our dreams or, at least, pressured us to do so, until we ended up older, looking at pictures of the past, and wondering why we did not fight for more for a happier future.

It was on a period of visiting his family, from Chicago, that his mother set him up with the wife that would, eventually, accuse him of stopping her dreams. Still, it would be years that, despite knowing my family’s bitterness and seeing the roots of it, I would realize that that is why we were never happy with each other…. we never let each other be happy without the other, either. With how much in common my father´s family had to my mothers, I wondered if,
perhaps, that is why my father was demonically selfish stealing from his wives and clients, committing fraud and identity theft, and abandoning kids like he was abandoning his empty wallet. He always felt family held you back from your joy, the problem is he just became a walking misery seeking occasional companions.