By Alexandra Torrez
I wonder if my mother is disappointed in me for not wanting children. I wonder if my grandmother and her mother and her mother’s mother would be disappointed in me for not choosing the life they have chosen. I wonder if they would understand my desire not to ever get married or, at the very least, not to have children. And if they cannot understand, then would they allow me to at least explain why?
My name is Alexandra Torrez. Alexandra Kailani Torrez. It’s a good name. A strong name. But a deceitful name.
I am not Greek, as Alexandra suggests, but then again, hardly anyone is ever what their given name suggests nowadays. I can trace my roots to the shores of Hawaii, but only as far as my middle name will allow. And although by the look of it Torrez – spelled with a “Z”- indicates Portuguese descent, I am actually Hispanic. So how did I get this name?
You see, I got this name many years ago when my maternal great-great-grandfather, an aristocrat from Japan, immigrated to Hawaii to avoid war and married a picture bride. I am told he was a musician, someone who entertained the military on the islands and who was a solid tower well above six feet. I am told I owe any chance at height to him.
I got this name from one of their children, my great-grandmother, a small bony woman who gave birth to her children in an internment camp. I am told she smoked cigarettes too often, and that her fine fingers are what allowed many of us great grandchildren to span piano keys with ease, not that I ever took up either habit.
I got this name from my maternal grandmother, who manifested into this world from the lady with fine fingers. Only instead of fine fingers and an affinity to breathe in what was bad, she gave my grandmother the ability to spin gold out of words with each breath. She gave my grandmother a quick tongue and a writer’s mind. I have yet to inherit any of these quality attributes.
I got this name when my maternal grandmother married my grandfather, a Maui-born Filipino who found himself at San Jose State. A man whose skin was so deeply stained by the sun, the color of which I once thought was melting off in the a hot tub when I saw him without an undershirt for the first time. I don’t know if I will ever live up to who this man is because he gave so much with so little, I can only be grateful because no act would ever repay his service.
I got this name from my mother, although I did not inherit any of her beauty. My mother is a beautiful Filipino-Hawaiian-Japanese woman who has fair skin, and thick, straight, coarse jet black hair she only gave to my brother- the lucky bastard – but whose ability to dissect a text may have given me some hope in life.
I got this name from my paternal Danish great-grandmother who married a Mexican man. I grew up on stories of how she would knock down the door of any mother who called any one of her twelve children bastards just because they were a shade darker than my grandmother. And, although I can’t imagine the shriveled lady from my childhood knocking down any doors I’m inclined to believe her strength of will never left our family line over all these years.
I got this name from her daughter, my grandmother, who married a Mexican-Native American man. I have no memory of his face but whose native blood gave me the right to claim the land as my refuge if I should no longer have a place to sleep.
I got this name from my father, whose high cheekbones and earth-colored everything hide the fact my sister got her blue eyes from his bloodline but decidedly skipped over me.
And so my name is Alexandra Torrez. Alexandra Kailani Torrez. A name which carries enough confusion even before one brings their eyes to meet my face. You see, I do not look like my mother or her mother or her mother’s mother. I do not look like my father or his father or his father’s father. Instead I am a product distinctly American and, at the same time, not American at all.
So I wonder; is my mother disappointed in me? Is she disappointed in me for not wanting to continue this unique cocktail of traditions? Am I not the physical manifestation of what it means to be American? Am I not the product of the struggle to find solidarity between communities or the fight for the freedom to define one’s own self? I wonder if my ancestors would be disappointed in me. Disappointed that I, the combined total of their communities’ struggles, do not want to birth children who are so distinctly American that they cannot find a face similar to their own.
About the Author: Alexandra Torrez is an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley. She is majoring in Political Science with an emphasis in International Relations and minoring in Global Poverty and Practice. In her free time, Alex enjoys hunting down the best coffee spots in the bay and getting a good dose of chlorine at the pool.
