Tino lived in an old blue stucco apartment complex just off Blackstone Avenue, one of Fresno’s most extended and busiest avenues. It was also next door to a funeral home, and I often watched processions from his bedroom window. Tino’s Grandma Rena and Tia Lola lived there. Rena had Alzheimer’s and would often forget that I only spoke English. She used to translate the TV show cops for me, telling me everything happening in Spanish, and I would smile and nod. Tino called his Tia Lola his Marilyn Monroe because she had bleached blonde hair. The first time I met her, she wore a bright red sweatband around her head and a see-through white linen shirt with a black bra underneath. She had a low, raspy throat that sounded like she had a perpetual cough, and she was still in love with Elvis Presley, who she thought was the most beautiful man in the world. The first time I went to Tino’s apartment during the day, I looked on in amazement at a large glass aquarium with water and plastic sea kelp but no fish, not even dead ones.
Dodi Achmad