Mumu’s visits to Crystal City have always meant a lot to the sisters. They meant a lot to my grandmother when she was alive. Juan Ramon was Gami’s youngest, and my primos and I assumed he was her favorite being that the she and the sisters made a big deal of his visits.

Juan Ramon, whose name was changed to Mon by one of my cousins, later just became Mumu. That’s what some of us still call him. Mumu is what I call him.

“Va venir Juan Ramon este fin de semana y vamos hacer tamales.”

“Mañana llega Mumu y vamos hacer mole.”

“Cuando estemos hablando con Mumu vale más que no andes allí entremetida. ¿Oíste?”

I learned early on that my uncle was off limits to me. Mom made that very clear with her warnings in the car just before we entered Gami’s house or by the frown on her face if Mumu engaged me in conversation.

Mom’s look made it clear that I was to answer him, but not to talk for long. My place was not at the kitchen table with Gami and her children.

Mumu never believed he meant that much to his family, but that’s what it seemed like to us.

After my grandmother died, Mumu’s visits were still a special time for the sisters. However, I noticed that eventually he could no longer relate to the local gossip they were into. And they couldn’t relate much to his life as a reporter for a major newspaper who lived in Houston or Washington, D.C.  Many times, he’d had have to explain the significance of people or places, so the gist of a story was often lost on the sisters. 

Their conversations eventually found their way back to someone or some event from back in the day – a relative, a neighbor, a friend, a fire, an accident, a death. Common ground. It was mostly the sisters who recalled the stories. Mumu would ask clarifying questions. Everyone would laugh.

Because Juan Ramon was the only uncle who ever showed any interest in what I had to say, I looked forward to his visits, too. I always loved talking to him as a kid. Even as an adult, I made it a point to hang out with him when Mom wasn’t around. I knew better than to intrude on their time together.

It was during one of the times that I had him all to myself, that I complained to him about how mean Mom could be sometimes.

“Your mom was always mean,” he told me.

“Well, not to you,” I said, “You’ve always been her favorite.”

“No, she was mean to me when I was a kid,” he told me.  “I was the youngest in the family. I was the only boy left in the house with three sisters. And I believe she was tough on me because she thought my mother was spoiling me.

“They were all mean to me. Not just your mom. They would say something funny, and everyone laughed. I would say a joke, and no one would laugh. Later, one of them would repeat the same joke, the one I had told, and they would laugh like it was the first time they’d heard it.”

That’s when my uncle told me the story of the Kotex box.

“Are you old enough to remember the cuartito next to the kitchen of Grandma’s old house? No? It had two small beds there. Sometimes my parents would sleep there. Sometimes, I would sleep there.

“My mother also did the ironing in that room, and we would all just sit on the beds talking while she ironed. We all liked being wherever my mother was. Whether it was in the kitchen while she cooked or her bedroom while she sewed or in the cuartito while she ironed. We would be talking and talking about anything and everything, and my mother would listen to us and laugh.

“This one time, I must have been in grade school, I remember sitting on one of the beds with my back up against the wall. I noticed that there was a small space between the wall and the bed. Wedged in that space was a box. And on the box, I read the word Kotex.

“I didn’t know what that was. You would think that I would know being that I lived in a house full of women, but I’d never seen the box before. I had no clue what Kotex was.

“My sisters were still talking to my mother, y se me hizo fácil preguntar, ‘¿Qué es Kotex?’ Nobody said anything. They just kept right on talking to each other, and my mother kept right on ironing.

“So I asked again, ‘¿Qué es Kotex?’ Nothing. I’m sure I must have asked a couple of times more, but no one acknowledged me.

“Finally, I remember that your mom stood up, reached over, and took the box from its hiding place. Before I knew it, she swung and hit me on the back of the head with it really hard. Then she walked out of the room with the box in her hand. I assume to find a better hiding place for it.

“I think your mom thought that I was trying to be funny, but I wasn’t! I really didn’t know what was in the box.

“I just remember that my mother continued to iron. Carmen and Dora continued with their conversation. No one said anything about what your mom did. And no one told me que era Kotex.”

I asked Mumu if he’d ever brought up that story to Mom and the sisters now as adults. He said he hadn’t. I told him that he should. Just to see if they would all laugh about it.

However, now that I think about it, I don’t think that would be a good idea. The sisters would probably laugh. They may not remember the story or could have a different take on it, but they’d laugh.

The thing is, Mumu didn’t laugh when he told me about the Kotex box incident. It’s obvious to me now, that it was one of those instances in his life, like we all have embedded in our memories, that left a mark on him.

And if the sisters were to laugh, would he feel they were laughing with him or at him?

After all, you never really stop being the baby of the family. And sisters, no matter how old they are, can still be cruel. Even if they don’t mean to be.