Dagoberto Gilb grew up in Los Angeles and in El Paso but now lives in Austin, Texas. He has been a professor and is the executive director of Centro Victoria: Center for Mexican American Literature and Culture at the University of Houston–Victoria. After earning his BA and MA in philosophy and religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Gilb worked for many years on high-rise building projects as a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. As an essayist and award-winning fiction writer, he is revered for his distinctive Southwestern Chicano voice, humanistic perspective, and clear, direct style. His most recent collection of short stories is Before the End, After the Beginning (2011), influenced by his 2009 stroke. He also edited the acclaimed Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature (2006). The following selection comes from his 2003 nonfiction collection Gritos: Essays.

AS YOU READ: Identify how Gilb contrasts expectation and actuality to present his mother.

1

On a Tuesday morning, just before dawn, I jerked myself out of a dream. It was so strong I turned on a light and wrote it down. In the dream, a voice was talking to me, asking me if I wanted to talk to my mom. Why wouldn’t I? Because we never did anymore, hadn’t really talked in decades. When we did, there was nothing but strain and mutual disapproval, and for several consecutive years, there was nothing at all. I’d moved far away, to El Paso. The voice, not my mom’s, was asking me questions from my mom, and I’d started responding to the dream, to the voice, and straight to my mom. It was in the form of an interview, her questions and my answers. I answered the voice, yes, I always loved her. I loved my mommy so much. She had to know I didn’t care about whatever was bad that had come between us, that I would remember only how much I loved her. I was always so proud of her. I said I thought she was the best mommy, the most beautiful woman. I loved her so much. I said I understood everything she’d gone through. Of course I didn’t think only about the past, our troubles. Of course I forgave her, and I told her I wanted her to forgive me, too. And then I was overcome by a sob that wasn’t in my dream but in my physical body and my mouth and my eyes.

2

Two days later, her husband called me. He was calm and positive. My mom, he said, had been taken to the hospital Tuesday. She was found unconscious. There was a problem with her liver. She was in intensive care, but he was convinced she’d be fine, she’d be home soon. He just thought I should know. I thought this sounded much more serious, so I called the hospital and got a nurse and asked bluntly. She said I was right, it usually was only a matter of time, it could be at any moment, though it could also take days or weeks. I asked about the liver, whether it was the usual reason a liver goes. The nurse asked, Well, was she always the life of the party? I got a plane ticket. I remembered a visit the year earlier, finding an empty vodka bottle — plastic, the cheapest brand you could buy — in the corner of the bedroom I was sleeping in, where she kept a mountain of purses and shoes and wallets. I’d found another bottle, most of it gone, behind a closet door that she left open.

3

I rented a car and went to the hospital. She was bloated, her hair a tussle — this woman who never missed a hairdresser’s appointment — an unappealing white gown tied around her. Tubes needled into her hand and arm, a clear mask was over her mouth and nose. When she saw me, her eyes opened. She had no voice. I talked. Years had passed, she knew little about my life. She knew that I did construction work, thought it was all I did, ever, didn’t know anything about the other life I led, the one as a writer. I never told her. I was afraid that she would only be his wife, not my mom, and she wouldn’t care in the appropriate way. Or that she would be too relieved, and that all those other years I’d been struggling, when she didn’t seem to care, when she disapproved of me, even thought I deserved whatever misery befell me, would be forgotten. I didn’t want to give that up so easily. These were the reasons I had told her nothing. But I knew my mom would be proud. I knew she would be so happy for me. I told her that not only was I a writer, but I had one book published and another one just out. I had won prizes. I had been going to New York City and Washington, D.C. I’d gone there more than once, and I never paid. Her eyes smiled so big. I knew she would like this the most. She always wanted to travel the world. Can you believe they were even giving me money? I asked her. She was proud of me, and she was as surprised as I was about it. And then I told her why I had to come. I told her about the dream I’d had two nights before, on the first night she’d spent in the hospital. My mom’s eyes stopped moving. I said, I talked to you, you were talking to me, we were talking. She nodded, and her whole weakened body squirmed while she was nodding! I wouldn’t believe this story if I’d heard it. It was such a telenovela° deathbed scene, mother and son, both weeping about a psychic conversation routed hundreds of miles through the smog and traffic and over the mountains and across three deserts, from one dream to another, so that we wouldn’t miss telling each other for the last time before she died. She was as stunned as me, as happy as me. You know? She kept nodding, looking at me, crying. Oh, Mom, I said.

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