If you have ever flown a store-bought kite, then you know that the package always has a warning on the back. It tells you not to fly your kite near telephone wires, in storms or in crowded areas. Because if you do, you could get seriously hurt. Most people would be fine doing the bare minimum to not get electrocuted. Not Emelio Ramirez.
In the summer of 2012, My abuelito and I stood in the alley behind the house where he lives with my abuelita, Fredez Binda. She and my mother were inside making, what I would estimate, to be about the fifth meal of the day. It was a clear day, and a gentle breeze was dancing over the lines of tall stone walls. On either side of us, oily brown telephone polls rose up into the blue sky.
He popped open the snap button on the package containing his new kite. He brandished it proudly like a knight would his sword.
“Alright, Chica. Let’s fly this thing!”
My mother chose that moment to peer around the gate, brow furrowed.
“Carmelita! We’re just about to fly my new kite! You wanna watch?”
“Don’t the instructions explicitly say not to fly it near power lines?”
“No, no. That’s only for people who can’t steer.”
“Hmm… Okay… Be careful though, dad.”
“Don’t worry! I got this.”
There was a twinkle in his eye and I knew right then, that I trusted him. Six-year-old me firmly believed that he knew what he was doing. I think he believed it too, and I would later attribute our lack of injury in our daring endeavor, to his faith in god, confidence in himself, and his absolute and total disregard of physics…
Suddenly, as if the universe had decided that flying a kite in a forest of power lines alone wasn’t enough of a challenge for Emelio Ramirez, the blue sky went dark. The sun had only just reached its peak in the sky and all at once, the alley was cold and coated in blue shadows. I looked up to see what monstrous thing had managed to obscure the whole sun, and at that moment, a small drop of rain hit my nose. I looked to my abuelito who was squinting his eyes at the ever darkening sky.
“Looks like it’s gonna rain.” He said. “Eh. Better wind probably. Our kite will fly better, chica!” That was not exactly what I had been thinking. Even though I was barely seven and had no interest in reading instructions or manuals of any kind, I knew that you should never fly a kite in a storm. A bolt of lightning cracks across the sky, silhouetting the tall telephone poles against the bruised clouds.
He saw my pale face and chuckled.
“It’s only lightning, baby.” He said smiling gently. “We got this.” As he began to unwind the kite string, a clap of thunder boomed in the distance.
I was the runner, of course. He held the wooden dowel tight in his hands as I ran up the alley. As I let go, the kite sailed gracefully into the air.
My mother practically raised her siblings. From the time she was eight years old, she was filling bottles, changing diapers and cooking all three meals. It’s not that my abuelita and abuelito didn’t love them, but when you’re trying to care for an immigrant family with three children in downtown Chicago, there’s not much you can do except get as many jobs as possible. They were always working. They never had the things they wanted and occasionally, they didn’t even have the things they needed. My mother biked to school in the morning. They couldn’t afford to buy a second car so she biked to school every morning in the harsh Chicago summer heat and biting winter cold.
Sometimes, the rain would come down so hard, she couldn’t see the street. On a few occasions, she ran into parked cars. More frequently, unparked cars ran into her. She would show up to school, bleeding from both knees, covered in mud and grass, and sit down at her desk. She barely even cared though. She would gladly be hit every day of the week if it meant avoiding the bus. She knew what the looks and stares meant. She knew what the other kids did to “people like her.” She wasn’t the only one who suffered though. Her sister Patti couldn’t take the bus either. Her brother Bibi never made friends. He didn’t want them to see that his house had no fence, no TV, no washer and dryer.
My mother would come home every day to be met by a cranky toddler, a crying baby and a twenty to take to the store. She would do her homework while she cooked dinner. She wasn’t mad. She knew how hard her parents were working just to keep the fridge from being empty.
The kite rose higher but was immediately beat back by the rain. It careening toward the pavement like a hawk diving for fish. At the last moment, it swooped up again and turned toward the ever-present power lines. My abuelito’s face was red with concentration. He jerked his arms wildly as the kite bounced between poles. This idea was crazy! Who can fly a kite in a lightning storm? There were too many risks and too much potential for everything to go wrong. But he knew that. He knew how slim his chances of success were in such crazy circumstances.
He knew how hard it was going to be to keep his family afloat. But he had to try. He had to make sure that his children grew up and were happy. He had to make sure that they got everything they ever wanted and lived the life he couldn’t. It was a gamble, but it was his best shot.
He steered the kite away from the imminent danger of the power lines and higher into the sky. He took as many jobs as he could and took the abuse of his white co-workers, who taunted him like vultures around a corpse. He shrugged it off. He had to keep quiet if he wanted to keep his job. And he knew it wasn’t about him. None of this was about him. It was about his babies at home and the future he would make sure they had. And eventually, they saved up enough money to move to a bigger house. One in a safer neighborhood where my mother and Patti could take the bus, where Bibi could make friends.
The kite passed the final wire and floated gently into the sky. It was all smooth sailing as soon as he got it past the poles. The sky seemed so open and inviting when I saw the way the kite soared. The heavy rain became a light drizzle as the sky began to clear. The harsh wind was soothed and so was I. He took my little hand in his, as we watched the kite soar higher and higher, free from obstacles. It had left the power lines and the Chicago streets and him and I far below it.
“I told you didn’t I?” he said lovingly. “I told you it would be alright.”
Photo: “Lightning Storm” by Jan Bambach is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
