Allegra Ruiz

Three kids, one law degree, and an affair with a trophy wife in Indiana almost thirty years later, Pa and I drove down the I-90 expressway to his parents’ house. Now that his life was consumed with dinners in fancy steakhouses overlooking downtown Chicago, Ana in her fur coat, and acting in front of juries, these hour-long car rides were often the only time I got to spend with Pa–not Miguel Ruiz, the powerhouse immigrant who worked as a personal injury lawyer.

When I was younger, these rides were filled with banda^[1] and secret smacks across car seats. Fighting over game consoles and Goldfish, the boys and I screamed while my parents loosely held hands and stared out of separate windows as we passed cornfields and apple orchards. Now, these rides were silent. Focused on the road with me sitting quietly and scrolling through Zayn Malik’s latest tweets, Pa played songs from his black and white memories as a child. I hardly  knew the songs; the few lyrics I learnt were from how often he would play them around me..

As we sped down the expressway, he grabbed my hand the same way he used to hold Ma’s, placing his right hand over my left with the majority of his force laying on my index finger. He sang me “Cien Años^[2]” by the famed Mexican singer Pedro Infante:          

Te vi sin que me vieras,

I saw you without you seeing me,

Te hable sin que me oyeras,

I spoke without you hearing me,

Y toda mi amargura,

And all my bitterness,

Se ahogó dentro de mi.

Drowned inside of me.

Me duele, hasta la vida,

My life aches,

Saber que me olvidaste.

To know that you forgot me.

Pensar que ni desprecios,

To think that not even disdain,

Merezca yo de ti.

I deserve from you.

Y sin embargo sigues

And yet you still are

Unida a mi existencia,

United to my existence,

Y si vivo cien años,

And if I live one hundred years,

Cien años pienso en ti.

One hundred years I will think of you.

Eyes still focused on the road, he slowly turned the music low, until Pedro was nothing but a whisper in our shared air.

“I used to sing this song to your mother on rides like this. She cried, thinking I was singing about another woman.” He let out a short laugh—almost a scoff. My eyes left the phone screen and looked at his aging brown face, still acorn-shaped with drooping cheeks. His eyes glossed over very slightly, as though he would allow himself one tear and nothing more. His grip on the steering wheel tensed, turning his knuckles white.

“I was never singing about another woman, mija.^[3] It was always her. Now, I sleep in a big house with someone who isn’t your mother. I eat with children that aren’t mine, and yet when I hear this song, all I can think about is your mom. Even when Ana holds my hand, I picture it being your mom’s. Funny, huh?”

After hearing his words, it was as though my mouth couldn’t open. I was known in my family as a talker. I talked and talked and talked, with no real end in sight. I never stopped talking.  But now the thoughts that used to run laps in my head were nowhere to be found. I focused, instead, on the cars in front of me. Count the numbers on the license plate. COUNT THEM. DO IT AGAIN.

^[1] Mexican band music

^[2] Song that translates to “One Hundred Years”

^[3] Spanish word for “daughter”

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Allegra Ruiz is currently a sophomore studying English and creative writing at NYU in New York. Allegra has been passionate about writing and language since she was a child growing up in a bilingual, Mexican household. After spending her freshman year studying in London, Allegra’s passion for writing morphed into a love for creative nonfiction. The majority of her writing focuses on familial relationships, sudden changes, and past/present double narratives. Allegra aspires to one day write for major publications on the true meaning of being an “American,” and hopes to teach as an English professor.