Tumble

“Mom hung each year’s photo on the same wall in the living room. She used a ruler to make sure the photos were even and then had me stand back with her to check that nothing needed adjusting. We had a tumbleweed snowman photo on the wall for every Christmas. Or at least that’s what I’d always assumed.”

Addie reflects on the annual Christmas photo and how she eventually realized that the one from her first year of life was missing. The tumbleweed photograph is an important recurring symbol, serving as a connection between Addie and her paternal family. This passage demonstrates Lourdes’s careful and meticulous nature, which can border on controlling, and emphasizes her outward desire to create a picture-perfect family for her daughter.

“[S]ince the adoption came up, not knowing who my father was had become like an itch I couldn’t scratch. […] I was more than 50 percent like some guy I didn’t even know. Which of my traits did I get from my biological father?”

Addie cannot stop thinking about her biological father after Alex expresses a desire to adopt her. This establishes the context for the theme of Understanding Identity vis-à-vis Family. Despite having a father in Alex—one who is eager to welcome her as his own—Addie wants to know more about her biological father, as there are traits and characteristics she has undoubtedly inherited that she would like to know more about. This presents a question to the reader that will later be answered as Addie learns of and spends time with Manny and the Bravos.

“How much did Manny know about me? Did any of the Bravos care that I existed? Had they ever tried to meet me? What would my life be like, what might I be like, if these strangers had been a part of it?”

Addie discovers that her biological father Manny belongs to a famous family called the Bravos. Her desire to know more about her father connects to the theme of Understanding Identity vis-à-vis Family. Contemplating how the Bravos might have affected her life if they had been part of it not only speaks to her understanding of herself, but also presents the idea that Addie was never given a choice to be a part of that family. This creates a sense of loss as Addie effectively mourns the life she could have had.

“The little yellowed paperback told the story of Francisco Bravo, my grandfather, born in Mexico and raised in Esperanza, who fell in love with a Mexican woman named Rosa Terrones. They had three sons, who followed in their father’s footsteps. A ‘dynasty,’ the book called it.”

Addie learns more about the Bravos from a biography she illegally borrows from the historical society. There is not much written about Rosie in it, except that Pancho married her; the emphasis is on the three sons who also went into wrestling, creating a “dynasty.” The way the Bravos’ story is told is another example of the women’s stories in the Bravos’ history being erased in favor of the men’s accomplishments. Addie has no idea that Rosie was a wrestler, and champion at that, until she meets her; she also has no idea that the twins even exist.

“A twin could be anything. Someone who is like you. Someone you share something with. Maybe even another side of yourself.”

Addie pulls the card of Artemis from the tarot card deck Cy made for her mythology class. Cy explains that Artemis is a twin, foreshadowing Addie experiencing something to do with twins in the near future. In multiple ways, the different explanations Cy offers here come true: Addie meets her twin cousins, but she also meets her father, who in some ways is like her, and with whom she shares DNA. Additionally, Addie discovers a different side of herself during her time spent with the Bravos.

“I had plans for my own life. And then you came along, and I had to be the one to make plans for the both of us. Believe me, you growing up without your father was definitely not part of those plans.”

Lourdes explains to Addie why she left Esperanza. Lourdes’s explanation here signals that when she was young, she was an ambitious and independent woman with clear dreams for herself and her future. Once Addie and the reader learn more about the Bravos and what happened with Manny, it becomes clear that Pancho and the expectations he had of his sons would have stifled Lourdes’s dreams, especially if she had married Manny.

“There was only one thing to do. I scrolled through my phone until I got to the number I needed. I took a deep breath and called. By the time Alex arrived, Manny was almost an hour late.”

Manny does not show up when he and Addie are supposed to meet for the very first time, so Addie calls Alex for help. This incident shows the contrast between how dependable and responsible Alex is toward Addie, who is not his own daughter biologically or legally, and how seemingly uncommitted Manny is, in turn, to the girl he fathered. It highlights the question of what family truly means.

“‘It takes a lot of practice so that you know how to not get hurt and how not to hurt someone else.’ […] ‘And it’s in our blood,’ Maggie added. ‘Yours too.’”

Eva and Maggie explain how wrestling is heavily choreographed and requires a fair amount of training to avoid injuring oneself or others. This reveals how wrestling is as much performance as it is sport. Furthermore, the twins assert that it is in Addie’s blood, too, just as it is in theirs; this underlines the theme of The Weight of Family Expectations and Legacy—there is an expectation that Addie will take to wresting, since it is a Bravo legacy.

“‘The story said you could’ve been a world champion,’ I added. ‘Like your dad.’ ‘Maybe,’ Uncle Mateo said. ‘But I wanted other things. I’m happy doing what I’m doing.’ Uncle Mateo gave me the kind of smile adults give when they’re holding back. I’d seen it on Mom’s face plenty of times.”

Addie questions why Mateo left wrestling, especially when he could have been world champion, and receives a fairly simple answer in response. Mateo’s explanation for his retirement indicates the clarity with which he lives his life: He is not bowing down to The Weight of Family Expectations and Legacy and feels no discontent at not having lived up to his father’s or other people’s expectations of him. Mateo also appears to be holding back here, but unlike Lourdes—who withholds the truth from Addie for a long time—Mateo helps Addie see the Bravos as they are and is honest with her.

“I’ve always thought of her the same way, year after year. Just my own subconscious bias, I suppose. […] But […] not this year. This year, I said I would push myself to think differently about the show. You’re never too old to change the way you think, you know? And that meant envisioning Marie differently.”

Addie asks Mrs. González to change her role, as she doesn’t envision herself as “Marie.” Mrs. González admits she had fed into the stereotypical perception of “Marie” through her casting year-after-year, a function of her own subconscious bias. Mrs. González casting Addie as Marie is an instance of Using Storytelling to Subvert Social Norms, where she reimagines a classic story in a different way. The assertion that one is never too old to change the way one thinks is also an important message that the book conveys across different characters.

“The family room felt like a museum. […] Mom said museums told stories too. […] She said that the objects in a museum tell a version of a story, and that it’s important to think about who is telling the story, what the story is about, why it’s told one way and not another, and who or what is missing.”

Addie contemplates how the family room at the Bravos’ house feels like a museum and tells a specific story. Addie’s observation yields that the Bravos’ story is presented in the photographs as all glory and no tragedy, with no mention of Speedy’s death, Mateo’s retirement, or Pancho’s illness. Furthermore, photographs are an important symbol that function as a documentation of history. Addie’s reflection of how Lourdes explains what a museum does justifies this, and it presents archiving and history as another form of storytelling.

“Pancho had also said that family would always be there. And that wasn’t true. The twins and I had all grown up without our fathers. How was Manny so sure that I’d always be around, waiting for him?”

Addie reflects on what family means to the Bravos. On one hand, Pancho gives it a lot of importance—he had Rosie sacrifice her career for the sake of the family and asks Lourdes to sacrifice hers for the sake of Manny’s. On the other hand, the expectation of family on Pancho’s part seems to be unidirectional. He expects family to be present despite what investment he, or his sons, put into relationships. This leads to his own absence in his sons’ lives, a distance between him and Mateo, and Manny’s intense desire to please his father at the expense of a relationship with his own daughter. As opposed to Pancho’s assertion, Addie sees family as something that needs to be nurtured, rather than taken for granted.

“I thought about Manny and about wrestling. I thought about Rosie and about Mom. Was it strange for Eva and Maggie that one of them didn’t want to follow in the Bravo footsteps?”

Addie reflects on how, despite growing up in the same household and being twins, Eva and Maggie don’t see wrestling the same way. Eva and Maggie are an example of the nature-nurture debate that is explored in parts in the book: Despite being raised in the same environment and sharing the exact same DNA, Eva and Maggie have responded to their life experiences differently and made different choices. This suggests that one’s inherent nature and one’s environment interact in complicated ways to shape and influence one’s personality. Eva and Maggie are also an example of the power of choice—one is not doomed to make a certain choice by virtue of either one’s inherent traits or one’s life experiences.

“I couldn’t help wondering how much of it was a mask for whatever hurt Pancho’s words or lack of them caused each person—his disapproval of Uncle Mateo’s choices, his disregard of Manny, his dismissal of Rosie and the twins.”

Addie contemplates how the Bravos respond to difficult moments with lightness and laughter, but how this can sometimes obscure a more complex reality. This is the kind of situation that the masks, a recurring symbol in the books, constantly hint at: The Bravos, who are incidentally luchadores across generations, also mask their realities in their personal lives.

“Gus retreated. I studied him and started to think. Maybe there was more to him than what he let us see. Maybe there was a reason he didn’t want to be friends.”

Addie notices Gus retreat during a conversation and begins to think that Gus puts up a barrier between himself and others. Manny and the Bravos are not the only characters who wear masks in the story; Gus is an example of how different people wear different, metaphorical masks for a host of reasons. Addie noticing this is also an illustration of her perceptive and empathetic nature.

“I knew the match between La Lechuza and Marvelous May should’ve been higher on the card. It was a championship match, and it had been a better match than I anticipated this one would be.”

Addie watches a series of lucha libre matches and believes the women’s match, which is a championship battle, ought to have been higher on the cards because of its importance and quality. The way women’s wrestling is treated even in Addie’s time indicates that is still holds an inferior status to the men’s matches. The twins wrestling and Addie entering the ring as “Marie” are all ways to dismantle this hierarchy, demonstrating the importance of Using Storytelling to Subvert Social Norms.

“‘They told me they wanted to, but I didn’t fit the gimmick. They were hung up on the idea that there were no Black Founding Fathers. Said it wasn’t believable.’ ‘This from a business that is all about illusion.’ Uncle Mateo rolled his eyes.”

Carter, Mateo’s friend and a wrestler, explains why the Pounding Fathers, a wrestling group, refused him entry. Carter’s experience, especially how he manages to convince the group to admit him, is yet another example of Using Storytelling to Subvert Social Norms: He points out the fallacy of refusing him admission on the inaccurate basis of there being no Black Founding Fathers, especially in a medium, as Mateo points out, that is less concerned with accuracy than appearances. Mateo making this observation is also an illustration of his characteristic ability to see through falseness and separate the truth from illusion.

“‘Why did you want to be like him? […] Couldn’t you just be yourself?’ ‘I am myself,’ Manny said. He seemed surprised by the question. […] ‘But he’s my dad. Isn’t that enough of a reason? People all over the world loved him. He was a giant. Isn’t that what everyone wants? To be like their old man?’ Not really, I thought.”

Addie questions Manny’s blind reverence for and desire to emulate his father. Manny, for his part, seems to need no reason to feel this way beyond Pancho being his father, though Addie struggles to connect with this. It is ironic that Manny feels this way about a father who was never present for him growing up; it is further ironic, but also perhaps understandable, that he then expects his daughter—from whose life he has been absent—to feel the same way.

“‘I like going to Esperanza,’ I said. ‘What do you like about it?’ she asked. […] ‘It’s really different than being in Thorne […]. I feel like there’s another side of me that comes out when I’m there. Like with The Nutcracker. Gus and Brandon are going to do a wrestling scene, but Cy and I have been learning the moves too.’”

Addie describes to Lourdes why she likes going to Esperanza, despite the disappointments with Manny. Addie discovering a different side of herself away from Thorne underlines the theme of Understanding Identity vis-à-vis Family. There is a part of Addie that inherently enjoys and can relate to wrestling and performing on stage. This can be seen in how she eventually gets a thrill out of doing so in the production. She also gets to know the people in her father’s family, which means learning more about the culture that half of her comes from; this is less to do with inherited traits and more to do with expanding her own world view.

“I walked away, leaving behind the poet and any notion that I’d get to hear all the things Manny knew and loved about me.”

At the Christmas market, Manny is unable to come up with anything substantial to tell the poet for him to compose a poem for Addie, which disappoints her. This instance indicates how, despite the number of opportunities Manny has now had to spend time with Addie and get to know her, he has not made enough of an effort to do so. In retrospect, Lourdes’s warnings about Manny are beginning to make sense to Addie.

“‘Even when he was home, he didn’t really spend much time with us unless we were training,’ Uncle Mateo said. ‘He had a one-track mind that way. Wrestling was his work, but it was also an obsession, and anything that got in the way was just a distraction.’ This was all sounding familiar to me. My stomach ached. ‘Like Manny.’”

Mateo’s description of how all Pancho cared about was wrestling sounds achingly familiar to Addie, as she can see how Manny has gone the same way. Mateo’s advice for her to not wait around for Manny will take on more significance a short while after this, when Addie learns of Manny’s new job. Despite being a mask maker, Mateo is the only one willing to take the mask off the Bravos and the dynamics within the family.

“‘Maybe it would be easier if life really was like wrestling and you knew who the good guy was and who the bad guy was.’ 'But even in wrestling it is never certain,’ Rosie said. ‘We’re all a little of both sometimes, no?’”

Addie is upset when Manny doesn’t show up at her show, and she talks about her parents and their choices with Rosie; Rosie acknowledges that both Manny and Lourdes have made mistakes. This conversation demonstrates Rosie’s ability to see things with empathy and without judgment, making her more accepting of her own life circumstances and the people in her life.

“‘I don’t have a choice,’ Manny said, leaning into the table toward me. ‘Like you didn’t have a choice before.’ I remembered my conversations with Rosie and Uncle Mateo about choices. I knew it wasn’t that he didn’t have one. It was just that he wasn’t choosing me.”

A heartbroken Addie learns that Manny is going to leave again and is angry at his assertion that he doesn’t have a choice. Unlike Manny’s belief that he is bound to this career and this life, Addie sees that people always have a choice, and Manny’s decision is an illustration of what he truly prioritizes. She is finally able to see that Manny hasn’t changed much since Lourdes knew him. This is not to say that people can’t change—once again, the power lies in choices, as Mateo has chosen differently for himself since Lourdes last knew him.