The Temple of My Familiar

Content Warning: This section contains mentions and descriptions of racial and gender oppression and the attendant isms and discriminatory language; rape and sexual violence; and substance addiction.

Carlotta, Zedé, and Arveyda

Carlotta’s grandmother, Zedé, was a seamstress in a South American country. She made capes out of feathers, worn by dancers and priests at traditional village festivals, until the latter were banned. Carlotta’s mother, also named Zedé, is bright and goes to university on scholarship where she is training to be a teacher. Her father passes away while she is gone, and the university eventually shuts down due to riots in Zedé’s final year. She is offered a job teaching a class in the hills but is arrested there six months later for being a Communist.

Carlotta doesn’t know anything about her mother’s time in jail, which is where she was born. She doesn’t know how they escaped to America, either. Carlotta’s first memories are of San Francisco, where she grew up. Zedé begins working in a sweatshop, before transitioning to making feathered capes, like her mother, which is all the rage among the rockstars of the time. Carlotta delivers these capes to the rockstars who pay exorbitant amounts for them but look through Carlotta completely.