Maria: I feel like we have so much lost time, you know, that we, not make up for, but, you know, it’s like we’re starting fresh because all these years, we never really connected because she was trying to move on and live her life, and I was busy struggling and trying to live for my life that we never really had time to create a bond or memories or anything like that. At least I know I don’t have any. So these are just little moments that, you know, even when she comes down here for the museum or just to visit, if it’s dinner coming over, it’s still memories, it’s still time that we never got to spend together before. So it’s nice. Yeah. It’s nice to see how she is with my kids. That is like the best part. And getting to go down there and see like my little cousins, my cousin’s children and stuff like that, it’s not something I ever thought I would really be a part of. So it’s nice. I enjoy it. When I was down there, we went to the beach for just a simple barbecue and it was planned like literally last minute, the night before. And we had like five cars. Yeah. It’s just how we roll. It was Titi Janet’s car, Christina’s car, then Jose was like, oh, let me tell Elvin. And Elvin’s like, oh, okay. I’m gonna tell Vanessa. And Vanessa’s like, I’m a tell… It was all of us there. Improv, barbecue ended up being the best day of my life. Simple things like that. Easter, we did a scavenger hunt, I filled up over a 100 eggs for even the biggest, my 22 year old was on the scavenger hunt looking for eggs. My youngest went fishing with one of his cousins where he just met, they hit it off. It’s the best time ever. Christina’s son, Junior, wouldn’t let go of me, attached at the hip. It was the cutest thing ever. And I’m like, this is beautiful, you know. Where here it’s just always me and my boys. There’s nobody else. Even though I have siblings and nieces and nephews from my dad’s side, we don’t really connect like that. So it’s always just me and them. So when we get to be our own family, we get silly. Yeah. Because we’re clowns. Y la sangre, olvídate, there’s no denying us because I’ll come out of the room acting like a clown, and then my cousin will be coming out at the same time. And I was like, you read my mind (laughs).

Chris: So you’re saying you’re kind of rekindling a relationship.

Maria: Absolutely. There was no relationship there before. It was, yeah, you’re my aunt. Yeah. I see you once a year, you know, for a few minutes, and that’s it. Go on my way. There was never take time out to send you a text, pick up the phone, where now we do that, you know. She doesn’t hear from me for a little bit, she already knows, uh oh, Maria esta en el hospital. What’s going on? If she calls and I don’t answer, she’ll text the kids. Like, she has my kids’ numbers, you know. Like, that to me means something.

Chris: And why for so long? How did that come about, that estrangement and the separation?

Maria: The fires. The fires just broke everybody, you know, broke everybody in their own way. And everybody was scrambling to pick up pieces, but not everybody picked up the right pieces to the puzzle. Everybody’s trying to put everything together and make their own life that we just lost connections. And there was a lot of resentment and anger. I know on my end, I speak for myself. Because I saw you at, you know, for example, with my dad or with my aunt. I saw them move on and raise their children. And, you know, in my eyes, at life where I wasn’t, you know. I struggled with my mom because my aunt was strong enough to pick up the pieces for her children, where my mom wasn’t. My mom lost her son in a devastating way. I can understand that now as a mom. As a kid, obviously, I didn’t understand, and I was very angry at her. And then I was angry at my aunt because you’re my aunt. You’re my mom’s sister. You’re my godmother. You know? You’re not just my aunt. You’re my godmother too. And to me, I was always taught that the godparents’ responsibility, you know, it’s God forbid something happens to your mom or something, they’re there to step up. So you did to me, you didn’t fight hard enough for me. Even though you’re not my mom, you’re my aunt. And you moved away, and you raised your children, and I got left behind and forgotten about. So I was angry.

Chris: You were angry with your mom?

Maria: I was angry with my aunt. I was angry with my mom. I was angry with the world.

Chris: Why were you angry with your mom?

Maria: Because she lost a child, and I can understand that. She lost my brother in a fire, she lost her mom and her brother and her uncle. I understand that. But you still had a daughter. You still had one child left. You still had yourself. You know, you were still alive. You still had your daughter. There was ways you could have coped. But instead, to me at the time, you cowered behind drugs and behind this completely different lifestyle and forgot about me. You know, she would get high and talk to, like, these little figurines and, you know, and say that that was my brother and tell me why couldn’t I burn in the fire instead of him. So those things stick with you. So I was angry at her. I grew up angry. I grew up angry that I would have to go to school for a meal. And kids would make fun of me because I wasn’t bathed. I was dirty. I had lice, you know. I’ve gone to school barefoot just for a meal just to have breakfast because we were homeless. Where was my aunt? Making a life, raising her children, which is expected and understood, but as a child, you don’t understand that. You just question why are you struggling so much? Why you don’t have anything to eat? Why are people doing things to you, why or why is your mom sitting there, you know, doing drugs and not raising you, pretty much. So I was angry at everybody. But once I had my own kids, that is what matured me. That is what taught me. She did what she had to do to survive. She was healing and, you know, she was in pain as well. And, you know, it was my mom’s way of coping with her pain of losing her family, but I was just really angry at her for a long time.

Chris: You grew up with your mom? You were raised by your mom?

Maria: I was with my mom all the way until, like, on and off because she would go and drop me off by my grandfather for a weekend.

Chris: Where?

Maria: Here in Paterson. She would go to drop me off with my grandfather for a weekend, and I’d come back for, a month or two, and that was like the best time of my life. I would get cleaned up. I would go to school. Teachers always knew the difference of when I was with grandma and grandpa because they would keep me clean and take me to church and instill values and morals into me that my mom wasn’t doing. So that is how I was raised. On the street doing whatever I had to do to survive. Raising my mom. I was the parent as a child. I was the one making sure that she wasn’t lighting herself on fire because she was, you know, doing crack or she was too sick to fix her pipe, so I had to do it for her and stuff like that.

Chris: When did your mom begin using, do you know?

Maria: Right after my brother passed, right after the fires. When the fires occurred, my mom already smoked marijuana here and there. She already had dabbled in it, but it was just something recreational, like, never, vicio, you know? But once my brother passed away and the fire happened, she turned to self medicating with marijuana first, and then marijuana led to cocaine, then cocaine led into crack. Crack stood for a while, and amongst these, she’s still dabbling with other stuff, you know, ecstasy and, you know, still smoking her marijuana, still drinking, but it kept going up and up. And I was with my mom all the way until I was about 10. I just couldn’t take it, no. 8, then Difus took me away because she beat the crap out of me and then sent me to school. And when I went to school, the teachers are already all new, but they needed me to say it in order to help me, and I would always deny it. But that day I couldn’t deny it because I had my mom’s handprint across my face. So they called DYFS, and when DYFS came, I just broke down and told them, and they immediately removed me from her and the remorse that I had because I felt like I was abandoning her. Who’s gonna take care of her now? And they sent me to my grandfather. My grandpa had me for a couple of months, and then they couldn’t take care of me, so they shipped me to a foster care. But my grandfather kept working to take me out of there. Speaker1: And he sent me to my aunt, his sister in Puerto Rico for two years. I lived with them. Complete strangers to me, but it was my grandfather’s sister. She was willing to take me in and raise me. I lived with them for two years. And when I was about 12, came back to my grandparents. And then at 16, I met my dad for the first time. And no. At 15, I met my dad. And by 16, my grandmother shipped me off to my dad because I was starting to be a little rebellious in school and stuff like that.

Chris: 16…

Maria: Exactly. 16. So I think I know it all. You know? So she sent me to live with my dad, and my dad put a little too much trust and faith into me and gave me a freedom, something that I didn’t have with my grandparents. My grandparents were super strict. Yeah, and I lived there directly across the street from the school, my grandmother would wait from me on the porch, there was no running around playing. So if I wanted to hang out, had to go to the library and see friends where my grandma would come in and check on me every now and then. There was no freedom. Like, there was no boys calling you or no I couldn’t even get phone calls. Like, there’s no friends coming over, nothing like that. So when they sent me to my dad, my dad was very free, very I could go and do whatever I wanted.

Chris: Thats here in Paterson still?

Maria: Hoboken.

Chris: Oh Hoboken, you went back to Hoboken to live with your dad.

Maria: For two years. And then I met my oldest son’s father and got pregnant. I met him and everybody tried to warn me like, you know, this man is a creep, he’s disgusting, his whole goal is to have as many babies as he can. And they’re like, don’t you know? And I’m like, listen. This man is willing to get me an apartment. And I was angry at my dad. I just wanted to give my dad hell. I wanted to make my dad’s life impossible. He would drive around two, three in the morning looking for me. I would be, like, peeking down from my friend’s house.

Chris: Pero for what? Why give your dad hell?

Maria: Why? Because he raised children that weren’t even his. I have seven brothers and sisters, and meanwhile, I’m sleeping in the street. So I was angry at him. It took you sixteen years to look for me. Y mientra tanto tu estas creyendo niňo que no son ni tuyo. But your own daughter, your own flesh and blood, which you denied, you know, you did nothing for me in my eyes. So when he took me in, I’m like, oh, okay. Let me give you hell. And I sure did. I really did. And at 17, I met my son’s father. I met him, and I got pregnant for the very first time. Very first time I got pregnant, and I was ecstatic. I was ecstatic. My dad said, oh, you’re pregnant? Get out. I said, get out? Duces. You don’t gotta tell me twice. I was already out anyway. I would only stay a couple of days there at a time. I was always sneaking out. So I came back to live with my grandparents because I had nowhere else to go. My grandparents have always been my rescue, and my grandfather was always my shining armor. My grandfather passed away in 2007, and my grandma, my step grandma is still alive in Florida. So I came back to my grandparents because they always take me in. They never turn their backs on me. When my son was about two months old, my grandparents when he was when I gave birth, my grandparents moved to Florida, and I didn’t wanna go back to Florida. So I stood here, and I moved in with a friend because I didn’t have anywhere to go. And now I have a newborn baby, and now I’m homeless. So I’m like, what the fuck do I do? My grammar school best friend said, my sister lives on her own and she’s willing to take you in, but you would have to, like, you know, cover all your own expenses and stuff, and she’ll help you. And I’m like, okay. Sure. So I was living with her for about a month, less than a month, and I met my son’s father through her best friend.

Chris: Did you ever reconcile with your mother in her life?

Maria: Yes.

Chris: How so?

Maria: When I was pregnant, like I said, I was living with my grandparents right here on Market Street, 732 Market Street. And my mom, if you know Patterson, Alabama projects was not very far from right there from Market Street. Alabama projects was just a few blocks away, and my mom used to run them projects. I mean, like everybody knew Mita, and everyone that saw me, oh, that’s Mita’s daughter. So anytime I wanted to know from my mom or see my mom, because I would always keep in contact with my mom, even though our relationship was estranged, I always loved my mom. I was always obsessed with my mom, like she’s beautiful, absolutely stunning. When she would clean she had times where she would, like, try to clean herself up, and it was just it was just beautiful. So even though I was angry at her, I still admired her in certain ways. So when I got pregnant, I was living with my grandpa. And one day, she came to see my grandpa because she needed money. She was sick. She needed to get high. And at the time, she was already shooting up. So she comes, and she’s, like, nodding out in front of the fence or whatever, in front of the house. And my grandma comes, Allí esta ti mai, I go outside. I go to see her, she sees the baby bump. Speaker1: She just broke down crying. And just something just came over me, and I just hugged her, and we’re just sitting there, and we’re talking, and, you know, we never had we had… we had an estranged relationship, but we were still close, if it makes sense? She still looks for me and I still look for her. But at that moment, there was no past for me. I’m about to be a mom, and I need my mom. I got my grandma, but I need my mom. So we, from that point on, we just became so much more closer, but still not connecting the way we did once she got clean. We continue to have a relationship, like, the high and bi type of thing. I met my husband, and he saw the times, he would drive me around looking for her. He would see me crying, you know, because I don’t know where she’s at. I don’t know if she’s okay, you know, if she’s dead or anything because of her lifestyle. She’s shooting up drugs. She’s soliciting. She’s doing anything she can for her drugs. So long story short, we lost contact for about a year and a half, two years. I didn’t know anything about her. And I was looking for her. Would go to welfare. Would go to the shelters. I would go to hospitals looking for her. And, me dió con, to this straight and narrow program that’s a detox program. And I was just questioning them, seeing if, you know, if they’ve had this person, and they’re like… And the reason that I did it was because my son downstairs from this program is a day care, and I was putting my son in this day care. So I decided to ask about, you know, do you have people that are in this halfway house for, you know, all kinds of reasons, or is it just people that come, like, from jail or something? They’re like, no. All sorts of, you know, anybody that needs help. So, okay. Have you ever had a person of name Noemi Vasquez or whatever? They’re like, we don’t know, but, you know, we can ask a social worker. I got a call that same day, that same day. And they’re like, you know, there is a woman here that’s named Noemi Vasquez, and coincidentally, she works in the kitchen that makes the lunches for the children, and she is always with your son. She didn’t know who my son was. She had no fucking clue, Chris, when I tell you. She had no clue, but she just knew that there she had a connection to this child. So I go into the day care to meet who this woman is. This woman is holding my child on her lap. That woman was my mom, and she was in detox, and she was clean, and she was connected with my son. And from that point on, we were like this, best friends, literally best friends. I got pregnant a couple of years later, and my mom was like… I would go crawl into her bed. She was working. She would feed me. We would go out to eat. When I tell you this was my best friend, I’ve never had a closer friend than my mom. And it just stood like that, but then she relapsed. I trusted her so much that she was babysitting my child while I worked because I took him out of daycare because she was doing so good. But then she met a girl, and the girl, it was someone that she has sponsored for treatment, and she was their counselor. And the girl relapsed, and she took my mom down with her while she had my son babysitting him. And I came home one day early and found them. And we had a big altercation, big fight, I took my son. We didn’t talk for a little bit, and then my mom got sick. She almost died. And that brought us back again. And then from there on, white on rice. There was Mita, there was Maria. That’s just the way we were. It’s and the more I got closer to my mom, the more for some reason, we just started having problems at home in my marriage. My mom lived with me. I lived with my mom. Me and my husband had problems, I moved in with my mom, Me and my mom, we really hashed things out and she asked for forgiveness, I asked for forgiveness, and we just let it go. And every now and then we would sit down and have our talks and break down, if there was anything that would bother me, I would talk to her and she would, she would tell me, you know, this is what my mind was at at the time, this is what I was going through. She got clean, she never went back, she did it on her own. When my grandfather passed away, she kicked everything on her own, sick as can be. No no detox, no nothing, she did it all on her own. The only thing she never gave up was her smoking her marijuana, which I don’t care. I smoked it with her. Like, mommy. Yeah. Mommy, que estas haciendo? Esperando que me traen el…voy ahora! What are we doing today? Lets just go to the mountains and smoke a blunt. Sounds good, mom! I’ll pick you up right now!

Chris: Lets go to the what?

Maria: La Montaňa

Chris: What’s that?

Maria: La montaña, Garret Mountains. Just go sit there in the mountains, enjoy the breeze, and just smoke and eat and go hang out. My best friend. And if mommy and me and Titi were together, forget it.

Chris: Janet

Maria: Yeah, forget it! Us three together, a mess!

Chris: You were alive when the fire happened?

Maria: Hmm

Chris: How old?

Maria: I was just under two. I was, a year and a half

Chris: How old was your brother?

Maria: Three, like three and a half. I was supposed to be there. My grandma was supposed to babysit both of us. But I was a spoiled little brat attached to my mom, and I didn’t wanna leave her. And she was going out with my stepdad at the time, and I started crying and throwing a tantrum that I wanted to go there, she took me and she left my brother.

Chris: The exhibit was hard for you.

Maria: Very

Chris: Why?

Maria: Because it took me a long time to be able to, you know, grow this thick skin, Chris. It took me a long time to sweep things under the rug and just not look back. So the exhibit is reopening all these cans of worms that, you know, I work so hard to not feel. Not feel those feelings or deal with things that I don’t like to have to think about. You know? I don’t like to think about how my mom probably felt. I don’t like to think about how I felt because it took me a long time to put those feelings aside. It’s hard to deal with feelings that hurt. If they were good feelings, then yeah, who doesn’t like having good memories, you know? But they’re not good memories. I have no good memories as a child. That’s not fair, so I’d rather not think about it. Now I’ve made sure, and I tried my damnedest to make sure that I make good memories for my kids, and those are things I think about. But you know how people sit there and like, oh, man, I remember when I was a kid… I don’t wanna remember when I was a kid. There was nothing good or nothing positive about it. It was just struggle and after struggle after struggle. There were no my no like, you know, my kids have their graduation, their kindergarten graduations or eighth grade graduations or, you know, prom or, what do you call them? Doing their communions. I make sure my kids did their communions. They do confession. Like, all of that stuff, those are memories that my kids have that they can always go back and think about. I remember when my mom would wake us up and drag us to church to do this or do that. I don’t have that. I remember not sleeping because I’m afraid of the people that are in my house. My memories are my mom waking me up 2, 3 in the morning and make me go on the street. My memories are watching my mom solicitate herself for drugs and making me sit there and watch it. My memories are all bad memories. There’s no good memories. All because of a fire, all because people wanted to be miserable and get these people out of the buildings. Like, because of that, you destroyed so many people’s lives. People’s lives that to this day, 2023, are still having repercussions, still dealing with that.

Chris: So what I was saying is is the conflict that I battle with is is that the reason that I do what I do is because I feel, I refuse to let the people who died, die in vain. But on the other side of that, to bring that back up, and the only way for me to do this thing…

Maria: Is to reopen it.

Chris: Is to reopen a wound. One question I ask myself is what do I owe the dead? And I answer that question by saying I owe them my life. Because without theirs, I don’t have mine. And I mean this within my own family, but even the greater family.

Maria: Beyond

Chris: Yea beyond

Maria: Hmm

Chris: And then, you know, on the other hand is, well, what will this reopening of this wound do? Is that right? I have no answer for that.

Maria: I’ll answer that for you. Yes. It may be, yeah I’m sorry if it doesn’t make sense, but in my head, it makes sense because you may be struggling seeing, asking yourself why such interest? Why am I doing this? But, yeah, you’re opening up for me. I’m gonna speak for myself. Yes. You’re opening a can of worms for me. Yes. You’re making me relive things that I don’t wanna relive, to be honest. Yes. But every time I have met with you, Chris, you have put me in a state where, yes, I’m in my head for the rest of the day. I’m in my feelings for the rest of the day. But once I move past that, the next day, I feel so much lighter on my shoulders. I feel like, yes, he opened this, but I just dealt with a little chapter or a little something that it took me forever before that I always sweep onto the rug. But you know what? Now I dealt with that, and it hurt. But now I can get past it and move on. And that just gives me a little bit more freedom and a little bit of more peace in my heart. And not just for me, but for my mom because the only reason my mom was not the best mom that she could be was because of what she lived. My mom did not choose to be the mom that she was. My mom would have done anything and everything to be the best mom she could have been, but she was robbed that opportunity, and you have helped me see that. So, yes, you may feel that what you’re doing is you’re opening and you’re having people relive things that, no, we don’t want to relive, but you’re also helping us solve them or see things in a different light. Speaker1: For example, my aunt has lived all these years thinking that her family didn’t even try to get out of the bed. She thought that they died in their bed. You showed, you have the actual prints that show that my family fought for their life. My family tried to get up the building, and that gives me peace. That makes me feel like, damn, they fought. They went down, but they went with a fight. That to me helps me. I’m sorry. Someone else, it may not help them, but for me, that helps me. That helped my aunt. I don’t know if she told you, but that helped her because she expressed that to me. And she told me that, and that is something that has brought us even closer together. This whole project has brought my aunt so much. It’s bringing me with my aunt, like the way I was with my mom. I never thought I would have that with my aunt, and this project that has brought us closer. Yes. It’s opened wounds, but we’re dealing with them. Something that we should have dealt with sooner, but we couldn’t. And no one else cared to find out or try. And the fact that someone that wasn’t even personally affected by that fire took the time and the initiative, I thank you. You didn’t have to, but you chose to. We had no choice. We were affected by the fire. We didn’t choose, but we can choose to keep going. We can choose to make a difference. We can choose not to let the decision of one miserable piece of shit make us ugly like that. I will always try to put my best foot forward no matter what I’ve gone through in life.