Growing up in El Paso wasn’t so bad. Especially, since our family knew the trick of living in one hundred degree heat—a 20-ounce bottle of Jergen’s extra dry lotion. We called it crema. Our family of four went through a yellow bottle on a weekly basis. We’d rub the lotion on every part of our bodies after we got out of the shower, even up our nose. Sometimes that wouldn’t stop the nosebleeds. The dry heat sucked up every bit of moisture it could find. The inside of our noses were so parched that any movement, a sneeze or nose wiggle, would cut up the inside walls like an over ripe watermelon and we’d bleed. El Paso heat was the kind that made people crazy, according to my sister, Rochelle. But my mother insisted the tap water was to blame for making tía Manuela and me nuts. El Paso water was legendary. It was so hard it could rub the baby hairs off your face if you let it hit you right from the spout. Mom claimed that city council members had lithium poured into the water supply to subdue us.

"If they can pour lithium in the water without asking us, who knows what the hell else they put in there," was what mom always said whenever the topic of water came up. "They" was the pronoun she used to describe anyone she thought was trying to pull something over on her. When I catch myself using the pronoun now, while talking to my adopted daughter, I smile.

Lithium was the drug tía Manuela took when she lived in Big Spring for six months, before I was born. Doctors said it would curb her craving for beer and ease her paranoia. She stopped drinking beer all right—switched to vodka and drank a fifth a day. Mom didn’t mind her drinking in the house because it kept her from wandering the streets. It was the spells she couldn’t stand. Nothing could bring her out of her spells. Once Mom got so fed up with it she grabbed hold of Manuela’s arm and dragged her off the couch. Manuela hit her head on the coffee table and bled all over the carpet but continued to hum and rock. Mom said our place sounded like a nut house whenever Manuela hugged her legs to her chest and sat humming, rocking back and forth, for hours. After that we left her alone when she went into herself. When she sat next to me during one of her spells, sometimes, I would rub her back. She seemed to like it. "Something's got to be wrong with a baby that was born in a toilet," Mom would say as a way to explain Manuela's moods. 

My grandmother, Chela, long since dead, gave birth to Manuela while she was sitting on the commode. Rochelle and I got this kind of information out of Mom, who was eight at the time of the incident, in bits and pieces throughout our lives. It's how we got most of our family history. 

"I should have let her flush your sorry ass down the toilet," Mom would scream at Manuela as she rocked before she would walk out the door.

Mom thought she was crazy. When Manuela laughed, it sounded like a hen’s clucking. Her brown lips curved into her mouth where her front teeth used to be. She lost them in a fight. It wasn’t her toothless grin that made her look so old (she was only 34) it was her eyes. She had a way of tilting her head to one side in a downward angle and then glaring up at you with her left eye that made you take one step back. It reminded me of the look cops give when they think you're lying. Whenever strangers talked to Manuela they always took several steps away from her and she followed right along matching them step-by-step. One day we sat in silence on the rock fence in the backyard, sweat dripping from our foreheads onto our shirts, as we made circles in the fine sand with our big toes. The heat made imaginary pools of water on the cement patio in the duplex next to ours. Manuela’s laughter broke the silence at my unsuccessful attempt to make circles in the sand with my big toe, while my longer middle one kept getting in the way. 

"You know, gorda," Manuela said using a nickname for me because I was always eating. She was the fat one. She had a large round beer belly that made her look pregnant. "The drugs. The drugs, they work. I told the doctor, too." She always used the Spanish pronunciation for doctor, dok-Tor. "I told him I didn’t have no money and the pendejo just laughed. He said I should drink 600 cups of water. You believe that?" I believed everything Manuela told me when I was ten. 

It wasn’t until later I found out that lithium really was in our water and fluoride, too. It occurred naturally in the bolsones where El Paso water was stored. After I’d read about it at the university I told Manuela, but she already knew. 

"I paid for your school so you could learn shit we all already know from the papers," she said, when I told her.

Mom thought I was crazy, too, ever since she found me playing with my Barbie in a way I wasn’t suppose to. She always said I drank too much water. I was ten the time she caught me using up Rochelle’s supply of sanitary napkins. I was labeled for life. I stacked her double live albums into a square, and then I stuck her Stayfree maxi pads to the walls of the makeshift room. My Western Barbie, who I named Rochelle, had her very own rubber room, like Manuela. I’d stick her in there whenever she had a nervous breakdown. She had lots of them because Anita, the Pac-N-Sav Barbie whose legs didn’t bend, could get Ken’s rocks off. He was always sneaking off to see her behind Rochelle’s back. I cut off Anita’s beautiful long brassy hair during one of my beautician days. I made Ken like Anita’s Mohawk. It made her dangerous. Ken also liked the fact that Anita wanted sex all the time. She and Ken would go to porno theaters I made from old Ohio Players albums like "Honey" and "Fire." It was Manuela’s fault Mom caught me playing insane asylum that weekend. Whenever my aunt disappeared for the week I had to play by myself. Mom’s narrow foot in her stiletto heels kicked over the double albums. 

"What the hell do you think you’re doing?" Mom put her hands on her hips. The seven silver bracelets she wore on each wrist jangled. She was upset because I had interfered with her routine. She was going away for the weekend and she was in a hurry. I didn’t answer. She put out her thin hand and I handed over Rochelle. She held my Barbie by her matted platinum hair and walked away. I imagined Rochelle was in pain. As an afterthought, Mom walked back to me, bent down, and picked up my Coke can with her free hand. I used it to drink that water. 

"You’re not normal, mija," came out sounding resentful, sad, and hurt all at the same time. Now I was stuck with Anita and Ken. It just wasn’t as much fun without Rochelle to torment. It wasn’t much fun without Manuela either.

Sometimes Manuela took me with her when she wandered. We would take the Sun Metro from the strip mall close to the house down south to Alameda. I started to wander with her when I was eight. We did this off and on for four years. The bus dropped us off across the street from Carmen’s, Manuela’s favorite bar. Whenever I saw the bar’s neon sign that had the name Carmen and a blonde girl kicking her leg in the air my mouth watered because I knew I would be drinking a Coke with two cherries. The blonde lady outlined in neon held her wide skirt up and kicked her leg high whenever the sign was lit. Sometimes Carmen, the bar owner, didn’t have the money to replace a burned out section of neon and blonde looked like she had only one leg.

"¿Quieres una coca?" Manuela would ask before we walked into the dark bar. When we were on the south side, she only spoke Spanish. Manuela would drink Tequila Sunrises made with vodka. She would leave me at the bar for hours. I would walk over to play with Angelina, one of the ten kids that lived in the white cinderblock house next door. We would play in the empty sandlot on the other side of the bar. The green prickly tumbleweeds that grew wild were aliens from outer space that wanted to experiment on us or impregnate us.

One time Manuela came back for me. It was the first time I drank vodka. "You didn’t drink it, you inhaled," was what Manuela said, cackling like a crazy. I was eight at the time. Manuela met her boyfriend of the week at Carmen’s. They sang along with Vicente Fernandez. The guy was actually good. I saw tears in his eyes when he cried out "Volver, Volver, Volver." After his performance he wanted to go for a ride. He said the drinks at the bar were too expensive. We stopped at Western Beverage for some cheap drinks, he didn't offer to buy me anything, and then he drove us to the levy. He backed his truck as close to the rio as possible without plunging into the water. They sat on the bed of his Ford and I was on the roof. The noon sun heated the metal so that it burned through my cutoffs. Both doors were open and his stereo blared Radio Mexicano loud enough for the people on either side of us to enjoy. They kissed and laughed and I watched the kids from the other side of the rio swimming in the muddy water. I handed Manuela the vodka from the brown paper sack next to me when she needed a refill and I handed him a warm beer whenever he asked for another. Thirsty, I drank half of Manuela’s fifth, straight from the bottle. I got a headache shortly after and the last thing I remember was hitting my head against the hard ground. Mom laughed when Manuela brought me home drunk. It was my sister, Rochelle who put me to bed and held me until I couldn’t throw up anymore. Mom was like that, kind of schizophrenic. We never knew how she would take things. Either she would laugh her head off or get madder than hell.

Like the time I told her about my best friend. Sandra Phillips was the only person I knew whose family was more screwed up than mine. Her father liked to do it with her. He was always around us whenever I spent the night at her house. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and he’d be in our room lying in Sandra’s bed with her. Her mother acted like he was the best husband in the world. We met the first day of junior high school just two days after Manuel came back from the nut house. When Manuela came home that second time she wasn’t the same. She stopped taking me with her to Carmen’s. Instead she wandered the streets. Sometimes Mom and I would see her knocking on car windows at intersections on the way to the Mall. She wanted money. Her black hair was dusty gray from sleeping outside. Her skin was a dark red, weathered from the heat and wind. When she could, Mom would pull the car into a gas station, donut shop, or where ever just to avoid her. Whenever we couldn't hide from her at intersections she would come right over. Mom made us lock our doors.

"You locked me up! You smug whores!" Manuela’s eyes zeroed in on one of us in her fury. I never understood why she blamed us. It was her idea to go back to Big Spring all we did was drive her there.

Mom and I didn’t see Manuela walking toward us in the middle of the street because we were talking about how I should act my first day of junior high. She started pounding on the window and yelling at my mother as she sped off. I sprinted across the street and bumped into Sandra and her Dad.

"Wow, she’s pretty mad, huh?" Sandra said picking up the purse I made her drop when I ran into her. Her father never looked at me. He gave Sandra a hug and a kiss on the lips that lasted too long.

"You want to walk in together?" she asked wiping his kiss off on her sleeve. 

I nodded my head up and down. "That was my aunt." I said turning back to see her father standing in the same place watching his daughter walk away from him. As we walked into school she told me all about her father. She also told me she liked girls.

Mom nearly pulled off a chunk of Rochelle’s hair, she was braiding, when I told her about it. 

"Don’t ever go to that house again. Do you hear me, Bobbie? The sick fuck! If I ever caught anyone doing that—Oh God, I don’t even want to think about it. Death. Death. That’s what that man deserves." When I saw the tears in her eyes I promised her I would never spend the night there again.

The whole thing made me kind of sick to tell the truth. But I didn’t blame Sandra for being a lesbian. I’d have been one too if I had a father who did what hers did. I didn’t have a father as far as Mom was concerned. She never told me who he was and I never asked. Not because I didn’t want to know, because, believe me, I did. I wanted to know where I got my dried out hair, my Indian nose, and long middle toe because it sure wasn’t from Mom. Mom looked like a Mexican Jane Russell. I never asked because anytime Rochelle tried to bring up the subject Mom would split. She always came back a few days later but it would scare us so bad we cleaned up and made dinner for a week without being told.

We could frustrate Manuela, too. It was easy. All we had to do was hide the crema from her after her bath. Manuela didn't like for anyone to play jokes on her. The last time I hid the crema I must have been eleven years old, when things had just started to go bad for her.

"Where is it, Goddamnit!" Manuela’s wet hair dripped on to the maroon towel she wrapped around her thick body.

"Where’s what?" I said lying on the couch watching TV.

"You know! You know!" She flailed her arms out.

"I can’t read your mind tía?" I kept my body on the pillow the yellow bottle was under.

"The crema! The crema!" She looked at me square in the eyes without tilting her head.

"I don’t know." I shook my head.

"¡Pendeja! You know." Manuela slapped my bare legs until I rolled off the couch to protect myself. The slaps stung. 

The bottle rolled onto the floor from underneath the pillow. Manuela was shaking as she picked up the crema and for the first time in my life I was afraid of her. I got up and started to run into our room. Before I got there the yellow bottle hit my feet and tripped me up so that I fell on the floor in front of the door. She jumped on top of me and continued slapping me. Her towel fell to the floor. When Mom walked in from outside and saw her naked sister slapping me, she laughed. Distracted Manuela looked up and I crawled out from underneath her and locked myself in our bedroom. My skin burned. Manuela cackled. Both women laughed themselves into quiet sobs. I noticed the bottle lying inside the closed bedroom and I quickly opened the door and pitched it outside, which started another round of hysterical laughter. 

High school in El Paso came and went. I didn’t know anymore than I did when I started. I told Manuela, on one of her good days when she was at the house, that she didn’t miss much skipping high school. She was staring out the window absently plucking her chin hairs with her thumb and forefinger.

"You need to go to college now," Manuela said, wincing when she pulled out a hair.

"If it’s anything like high school, no thanks." My voice came out mumbled.

"You can put off working four more years. I’ve even met people who have never had a job. All they do is go to school all the time, that’s their job." I must have looked at her like I didn’t believe her because she added,"Claro que sí."

I did have to work to pay for college. Mom didn’t put anything away. She thought I was going to wind up at Big Spring. She wanted me to go work with her at the Phelps Dodge refinery in the meantime. Besides, she had spent all her savings on Rochelle’s new house on the East Side since her husband couldn’t hold a job for more than three weeks. 

I decided Manuela was right. I wanted to see what college was like. I had to wait until the end of the month to borrow the ninety-nine dollars for the college entrance exam. I had to find Manuela before she cashed her disability check. I found her on Texas Street, with a man she had met in line at the Western Union office before she went into the bar. Manuela was more than willing to help. She told her new friend, "I’m not crazy for nothing," tapping her knuckles to her forehead. I scored about 700 on the exam. The only university that accepted me was in my hometown. That was when I decided the University of Texas at El Paso was good enough for me.

After I enrolled Manuela got it in her head that it was a stupid idea.

"It must be stupid," I said, "because it was yours."

"It was my idea?" A wide toothless smile.

"You’re wasting your time," Mom said.

The job I found was cleaning the vomit on the slides and jungle gyms at Shakey’s. It was pretty disgusting as far as jobs went but it paid my tuition. I never let Mom bring Manuela to the restaurant because I knew she’d want to go into Playland. I’d bring them pizza’s I had made. The day I quit that job was the day I'll never forget because it was the last time I saw my mother. I got fed up and walked out on Saturday, our busiest time, when my manager told me to stop making the extra large pepperoni pizza and clean up the slide. I didn’t think it was fair because he was already in Playland and he could have done it himself. So I pushed through the double doors with my latex gloves still on and walked out straight home.

When I got home the front door was wide open. The spit in my mouth came up in gushes when I smelled the inside of the house. I thought I was going to puke like the kids at Playland. When I walked through the door Manuela was lying in a puddle of blood in the middle of the living room floor. As I stepped closer to her I noticed it was her blood. She was cradling a bloody baby.

"Tía are you okay?" I asked over and over again.

She held her finger to her lips to quiet me and then nodded to the blotchy mess next to her. I sat on the living room floor next to Manuela and the baby in silence.

A few hours later, when Mom stepped through the door in her maroon miniskirt and black lace top, she stared at Manuela and me without saying a word. Then she turned around and walked out the door toward the heat and disappeared into an imaginary pool of water radiating from the asphalt.