memories of the 1863rd regression turn

'I didn't know my father was in prision, because no one told me. But one day Tía (aunt) Concha and Tío (uncle) Jesús, the ones who truly raised us, bought some train tickets and brought my mother, Tía Angelita [her sister] and I to Alcalá de Henares to visit my father. And they let us get into the prision! There, with all the inmates, all the locks... And we went inside, and when my dad came out to see us, I didn't recognize him, I was one day old when they took him away! And I was just staring at him, and grandma [her mother] says to me: 'look, Ana María, that's dad'. And I go: 'I don't know him' [in Spanish she said 'conozo' instead of 'conozco' (know) which is baby speech]. I'll never forget that word.'

'Q: And you know all of this... because your mother told you? Like days later? A: My mother didn't tell us anything... grandpa told us everything, all I know is because of what he told us, and what he wrote down. But she would tell him: 'hey, don't tell the girls any of that, it's quite unpleasant!' And he would reply: 'they have to know'. And I know everything from him. And when we were outside, and 'friends' would say - they weren't really friends: 'don't talk to her, her father is in prision!'

'When they baptized me... They baptized us four cousins together: my sister, who was the eldest, then my cousin Angelita, then me, and then her sister Juani, who lives in France now. And when they went to inscribe us, they asked my mother: 'were you married in a church?'. And grandma went: 'no'. Because they married during the war, and there were no priests, so they married the civil way. 'Then these girls don't have a father!' And we had my mother's surnames until Tía Angelita married. [...] Q: So, in Tía Angelita's wedding, what they had to do was... A: Marry before the wedding. But they didn't tell us anything, and they went to the sacristy, and got married there, and when they told me they were now married, I got very angry with them [...]. And then they had to go to the register and change our surnames, so that Tío Juan [Tía Angelita's husband] and his family wouldn't find out that they weren't married on a church.'

'Well, when I was ten years old, if he had to get test suits for his clients to try them on, we didn't go to school that day. Then we placed the test suit by the window, and when the clients came, grandpa would get them to try them on, and then we started sewing. And I stopped... when I was ten I stopped going to school. Because this happened every few days, so...'

'I remember walking on the street with my father, we used to wait for him at the workshop where he worked. When it was time, we went up Main Street to wait for him. He would get out, held each of our hands like this... And I remember one day, (we saw) one who had been his friend, and grandpa went: 'Hey, so-and-so, how are you doing?' And he went: 'I don't know you at all'. I'll never forget that!'