ELBA AND PINI ON NOSTRAND AVE

Elba was a badass broad in every sense of the word. Despite having to rely on immigrant English, she succesfully petitioned Congressperson Kirkpatrick to demand her son, Jose Antonio, be released from the prison where he had been since turning 16. I was in the room when she passed and I can't tell you what it means to me yet, but her ascendancy is assured because she was the tia with the pad on Nostrand Ave. Elba was the reason I was born in a Jewish hospital named for a 13th century seer in Brooklyn. She's the catalyst for my parents forging ahead in parenthood by having my sister. Without her maybe my folks don't leave on a freight ship, they stay in Argentina and get caught up, disappeared, and I don't exist. In fact, the fact you are reading this on this side, and we can share this conscious sentence means Elba overstays her tourist visa with Pinino. Pinino is my Uncle, Elba's husband. He's part goat and part toothpick, and will not be easily surprised by any of the rhetoric you might want to fantabulate towards his earholes. Pinino grew up poor in Buenos Aires and spent a whole year in a cast because of scoliosis. Pinino was no stranger to adversity; he lived near Fort Apache, one of Buenos Aires most notorious slums, and all during high school had to carry a zip gun for protection. But this tale ain't about Pinino, it's about Elba, and what Elba saw in Pinino enough to convince her to immigrate to the blackest part of Brooklyn in 1973.