[singlepic id=713 w=320 h=240 float=left]<\/p>\n
The day was a normal fun filled day with T\u00edo Lupe flipping burgers and cooking Carne Asada on the grill with a cold Corona. Manuel, Baby Joey, and David were trying to rap and the clapping of my little cousins was encouraging them. As usual all the t\u00edas were gossiping about who is getting a divorce, and who would get married next.
\n
\nAfter everyone went home we cleaned up the spilled pops, beers, and suckers stuck to the dim gray rugs. Once we finished, I started to get tired and decided to go to sleep. I woke up to the sound of the house phone ringing.<\/p>\n
Due to my sleepy haze, I was slow to answer it. I greeted my grandma on the phone and she asked to speak with my mom. I ran and told my mom that my grandma is on the phone. Right then there was something in grandma\u2019s voice, but I\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0sure what was wrong. Mom picked up the phone, and in that cold harsh moment, my mother\u2019s scream pierced my ear.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy baby, my baby.\u201d Is all she could manage to say.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Right then there was something in grandma\u2019s voice, but I\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0sure what was wrong. Mom picked up the phone, and in that cold harsh moment, my mother\u2019s scream pierced my ear.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n [singlepic id=712 w=320 h=240 float=right]<\/p>\n Then mom told me to get a jacket on. Told me to get my little sister and put her in the car.<\/p>\n I still\u00a0didn’t\u00a0know what was going on as we pulled up to a hospital. Once the engine was off, mom leaped out of the car, swung open my sister\u2019s door and told us to get out. Grabbing my sister\u2019s car seat and my hand, she ran inside. In the lobby were the rest of them: my grandma, my grandpa, T\u00eda Abby, and \u00a0T\u00edos, Lupe, Steven and Danny.<\/p>\n \u201cI need to tell you something.\u201d Mom said.<\/p>\n I was 9, I don\u2019t remember every detail of the things she wore, but I can picture what she\u00a0would’ve\u00a0worn<\/span>. It was past\u00a0midnight, so she was probably wearing her purple polka dot pajamas. She\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0wearing any make up. She probably did that thing she always does when she\u2019s upset, she looked down at the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cTia Maggie was shot\u201d She said.<\/p>\n The man who had shot my<\/span> t\u00eda was her boyfriend\u2019s friend. To me he wasn\u2019t even a man, in my mind he was a dark eerie shadow, a mixture of PCP and meth. This shadow was yelling at my t\u00eda and she had enough. She went to a room and called her boyfriend, telling him that she was about to leave because \u201chis friend is an idiot\u201d.<\/p>\n Just then, the shadow came in the room and locked the door and began to say some very foul words. My t\u00eda said she had enough. The shadow shot my aunt in the head.\u00a0\u00a0It took him a few minutes to realize what he had done, but by that time it was too late, someone broke open the door to see what the noise was. The shadow man ran away. The police found him hours later in a different location.<\/p>\n \u00a0To me he wasn\u2019t even a man, in my mind he was a dark eerie shadow, a mixture of PCP and meth.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I can\u2019t help but think about how things could\u2019ve been different. If my t\u00eda had left her party, and agreed to come to our <\/em>party. She would have been one of the first once there, eating Carne Asada with the t\u00edas and gossiping. She would have danced with the boys as they tried to rap, maybe even tried to spit out her own rhymes.<\/p>\n There will always be that one part of me that wonders if she made the right decision to go to their party instead of ours. I can only hope it was a part of God\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Words by Victoria Sandoval<\/p>\n Images by Jessi Proulx<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [singlepic id=713 w=320 h=240 float=left] The day was a normal fun filled day with T\u00edo Lupe flipping burgers and cooking Carne Asada on the grill with a cold Corona. Manuel, Baby Joey, and David were trying to rap and the clapping of my little cousins was encouraging them. As usual all the t\u00edas were gossiping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4065"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4070,"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions\/4070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howlheritage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}