I stand over Tia Ivonne’s headstone, having missed the funeral. I had always understood her name as the Anglicized Yvonne just as my mom’s name was the Anglicized version of abuela’s and now I’m wondering if I ever heard her name correctly. My brothers stand next to me at this burial, and we fleetingly look at the spots near her. Her dad, whom I knew as Grandpa Marshall — a jovial man with a jolt of white hair cracking it up with my dad in the smoke-filled living room before that smoke took out his lungs and I would slowly learn what death meant at the age of four — lies next to her mom — the tough-but-caring matriarch of the family who died when a chunk of strawberry refused to be swallowed without a fight, after my four-year old child and I flew down to say goodbye ourselves — her youngest sister Estrella — who drowned at a family outing at the age of 13 about a year before I would be born and whose memory would haunt me every time I thought I was ready to kick/wave in Lake Michigan — and her younger brother Phillip — who after apparently only emerge out of his reclusive bedroom in the apartment he shared with Grandma, Ivonne, and the baby brother, Sherman only to watch Barney Miller, work on cars in the street with his best friend (who didn’t mind hitting Phillip’s scrawny 8-year-old nephew), and push my mom down a flight of stairs, pulled out a revolver convinced that The Government and a Cabal of one or another was out to get him and his life was endangering our shared family.
In what I consider a tribute to Ivonne, I begin the Hokey-Pokey. You know the song and dance.
You put your right foot in
You pull your right foot out
You put your left foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the Hokey-Pokey and you turn yourself around
And that’s what it’s all about
HOKEY POKEY!
Ivonne would do the Hokey Pokey all the time with us. Whether she was nervous or upset or wanted our attention or was bored or she was trying to entertain us. Sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference. Aunt Ivonne would watch us boys a lot when we all lived downstairs from Grandma and her unmarried children and when she wasn’t working at the factory for disabled adults licking stamps like a damp sponge for pennies an hour. I remember walking with her and my brothers and the stares we would get and that would make her nervous at times, but she seemed nonplussed. I think now in some neighborhoods it may not have been so weird for young boys to walk with a Black middle-aged woman, as she would be mistaken for a nanny. But this was a Working Class community of families, many of whom were immigrant — and besides, at the time I thought all families had mixed skin pigmentation.
Ivonne would frustratingly do her hokey-pokey in between being called a “r*t*rd” and her repeatedly arguing that she’s not that; she’s just slow. She’s just slow. She’s just slow. Technically, the words are synonyms, but I could tell the pain it caused in her to be talked about as if she weren’t human, weren’t one of us, was just a sideshow freak as popularized in those days. But Ivonne was a full person with a full heart, a mind, and love to share. I felt the same way when I heard a group of teen boys refer to my grandmother as a Sp*c. I felt that those were awakening moments for me. I would not allow language to be used to dehumanize another person after witnessing its effects on my family, especially my Tia Ivonne.
My brothers hesitantly recall the song, and her dance. But the nervous energy made me stop. I missed her funeral, and just wanted to say some words, but I don’t know if anyone knew what to speak. I was as lost as that time Ivonne took us to the mall. It may have been the Brickyard back when it was an indoors mall instead of stores and restaurants stacked on a mile-long parking lot. Or HIP before the goth malls. I don’t remember where it was, but I remember being scared of the teeth and the space at the top of the escalator. I imagined the gap between the rolling, climbing stairs and the receiving metallic teeth would widen like a monster clown (did I mention my fear of clowns?), and swallow me whole like gum. I would spend the remainder of my years riding down and up the demonic steps until they rusted shut. She and my younger brothers continued on without me, mocking me for my perfectly reasonable and indeed scientific fear. I stayed put as directed to do so until a whopping three minutes passed and I panicked. An adult couple (they all looked the same to me) must have seen the Lake Michigan-sized sweat dripping from this freckle-faced, scrawny, curly-haired boy with anime-sized tears and eyes before asking, “Are you ok, son?” I — obviously a very composed and confident six-year-old — blurted out, “No I don’t know where my auntie is!”
They called Aunt Yvonne and we went home. I don’t think I’d be so collected if one of my brothers left my kid at the bottom of the stairs in a crowded mall, but this was the early 80s. It was a different world.
I wanted to ask my brothers if they remembered that scene. I think Chuckie would’ve been three years old, but I don’t remember dates or entire scenes very well. I don’t remember my gaudy and svelte clothes, either. All hand-me-downs and many from my ranching cousins in Nevada. I am presently looking at an outfit I wore. It was very brown and heavy. My pants especially were brown and heavy and flayed just above the ankles like bell-bottoms, but high on me. I was always asked where the flood was, because my height meant my pants never reached my shoes. I may have been either wearing boots or thinner pants underneath these. I had a mix-match button-up shirt underneath my Bears jacket, and the shirt itself was brown on one side and had brown squares on the other side. However, I may have just had a vest on under the blue Bears jacket with orange sleeves.
It was the 80s. Things were different then. And my hair was very sloppy and curly on top of my head like an uncombable Brillo pad.
I dressed a little more fashionably at Ivonne’s grave, I like to think. I did not find in any of the literature we had for her burial or the funeral any reference to her father. I don’t know if she knew who her father was. Abuela Rosa left Puerto Rico with her first child, Ivonne, and soon married a recently widowed veteran, William, who had four children of his own already and whom I would know as Grandpa some thirty years later. Together, they would have another four children, starting with my mama and ending with Estrella. As far as I know, my Grandpa was Yvonne’s dad, followed by Grandpa Luis, a Filipino immigrant who fell in love with abuela. They “retired” to a farm in Oklahoma — where they both tirelessly worked and relaxed until abuela’s homecoming. Eventually the rest of the family settled there, starting with Chuckie and then Ivonne and her terrible husband Robert. Robert wasn’t allowed near my brothers after discoveries I won’t go into here. However, Yvonne had a lot of love to give and Robert generally treated her ok. I guess. Except when it came to pantyhose. Yvonne would call her older kin to complain that Robert never gave her enough pantyhose to stay ahead of the running. The family would always supply. Always.
The next time I looked at Ivonne’s grave was last month, burying my baby brother from Covid. The ground was surprisingly dry after some heavy rains, but the earth gave away and had the rest of his ashes. I thought about how I wished I brought something for all the graves, did something specific to remember them all.
I think next Memorial Day or next time the family decides to go, I’ll bring along an egg of pantyhose. I think I’ll do the hokey pokey.
