Flat, Hot Visalia … Abby Reid

by Abby Reid My mother grew up in Visalia, California—the city in-between everything. The city you don’t notice you pass by on your road trips up north. Another one of those “cow towns.” The speck of dust you flick off of your Google Maps screen. While it reigns as insignificant to many, it inhabited a great deal of my childhood. My family would visit as much as they could—or, rather, my mother prompted us to visit as much as she could. We would venture up several times during the summer, and spend all of our Christmases there. My grandmother lived there for about five years before moving back to Southern California. I guess she sensed a sort of instinctual duty to remain in the place that caused her family so much pain. Or, perhaps, she wanted to uphold the seldom sweet memories (the tidbits my mother doesn’t share with our family). Visalia has an average poverty rate of 20.3% (2020), where one out of five residents live in poverty. Compared to the 16.4% (2020) of individuals across California living below the poverty line, Visalia has a significantly higher than average percentage of residents below the poverty line. According to the 2020 census, Visalia has a total population of 128,904 residents, and 26,159 of those residents were reported to have income levels below the poverty line. Factoring in COVID and Visalia’s smaller population (compared to my hometown, Corona, which yields almost 200,000 residents), the numbers are exacerbated. Visalia has carried a large population of residents living under the poverty line for years, and my mother was one of them during the eighties. Born and raised in the church, my mother did what

pastor’s kids do best: start fist fights at school. I remember when she told me that she smoked cigarettes when she was in high school. We were at my grandparents’ house (dad’s side), and my sister and I had a big quarrel, so my mom took us to the car to cool off. Instead of scolding us, she told us about her delinquency during her youth. She said her parents had to send her to an all-girls private school to curb her behavior, but it only instigated her actions. “My friends and I would skip class and smoke cigarettes behind the science building,” she said as her eyes flicked back and forth between my sister and I, soaking in our shock. “But it was a Christian school!” we would exclaim. “That didn’t mean anything,” she chuckled as we sputtered in disbelief, now carrying the burden of knowledge that was: Mom Smoked Cigarettes in High School (which, in reality, she probably smoked through, at most, ten sticks amongst three friends in a span of four years). She never told us anything past her fist fights and cigarette-puffing stories. I know she did more, but she has a reputation to uphold. Her family’s socioeconomic status certainly did not prompt her behavior. There were several more pressing issues festering inside of the walls of that home. Although my grandmother was a stay-at-home mom, she had to pick up her husband’s duties in the church because of his tendencies to run away on hiatus. Both my mom and uncle became latchkey kids, which allotted them too much free time. My uncle rode dirt bikes and my mom ran off with her friends—I think. I would list her hobbies, but she’s never spoken in great length about what they were when she was younger. What she has told our family about were

the silent nights she spent alone with her mom and brother after their father left with an oppressive flourish. All of her stories of her absent father are doused in layers of dark humor and irony—she cackles right after she tells them, which makes me laugh. There is a hint of truth in each joke told, which leads me to believe that flecks of pain still drift around the cavities of her heart. But because of the new memories we made as a family in that place, I know that flat, hot Visalia still owns a tender space in my mother’s heart.