Recollections of Houston’s historic Gulfgate Mall triggers memories of my younger brother’s troubled existence, mental health, and a harrowing life altering incident which occurred a block away from the theater.

Having lived the better part of my life in the Houston’s southeast Golfcrest subdivision, I spent a lot of time in the vicinity of the Mall as an adolescent. In the summers before and during my high school years, like many teens, I frequented the arcade and bowling alley at Gulfgate Mall regularly, to pass the time on hot summer days. In the afternoons, we played football on a field at an apartment complex for low income families. In the evening, along with playing basketball at a park by the neighborhood elementary school, we participated in impromptu picnics on the front yard of a house located a short two-block walk from Gulfgate Cinema. It was an innocent activity which was probably more than irritating to the neighbors because the picnics took place in the late-late evening. Those are joyful memories that actualized daily for children in the working-class neighborhood within the shadow of the Mall.

There are also painful memories. My younger brother was leading a life with scenes straight out of the Latino coming of age film “Blood In, Blood Out” which made it being around him hazardous. The movie told the story of three family members that the circumstances of an incident led them to choose different paths in life. One joined the military; one became an artist and one wound-up in prison. The movie was released about 13 years after I experienced an unforgettable moment in my life.

I was walking with my brother to Gulfgate Cinema with our summer crushes, one early afternoon. Without warning, a Camaro full of dudes abruptly stopped in front of us, a block, and a half away from the theater. Armed with knives, clubs, and guns, they exited the car making threatening gestures. Apparently, they had an on-going dispute with my brother and wanted to settle it. The girls discreetly walked away. Tracing their steps back to their house which was seconds away, they alerted friends of the brewing trouble. I did not know what to do. There was no time to be afraid. There was no time for judgments or rationalizations. I just knew that the person next to me was family. I could not leave him alone.

As I stood beside my brother, the leader of the group kept poking him on the chest with a weapon saying, “what you going to do now mother@&$?!.” The back and forth expletive filled jawing seemed to go on forever. Suddenly, a big Ford LTD made a screeching stop behind us. The driver’s door opened, and I witnessed my brother’s acquaintance cock a 12-gauge shot gun and retort “C’mon, let’s get it on $&@?!.” The commotion escalated. Right when it looked like the situation was about to blow up, the sound of sirens getting closer caused everyone to stop. Everyone left before the law arrived, preventing someone from getting hurt.

Despite all the misadventures, my brother was the only person of the crew with whom he associated that did not end up in prison. Metaphorically, he did do hard time. As an adult, karma, and the law caught-up to him. He accumulated enough misdemeanors that Uncle Sam took his legal residence status away and removed him from the US. While in the custody of the immigration service, he was diagnosed as being bipolar. I now wonder if the high anxiety that afflicted my brother is what transformed a smart personable individual into a rebellious unhinged spirit sometimes too committed to living by the gringo creed ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll.’ Unwittingly, he was probably self-medicating, like people who drink alcohol with the intent of calming their unbalanced moods and forgetting their troubles. In retrospect, it did not work.

My brother spent the rest of his life in a continued struggle with his mental health. He would call our mother often amid spiraling into a deep depression, manifesting his angst. Having first come to the United States as an infant, he never got over being exiled to Mexico, a land that was foreign to him. He would tell mom he wanted to go to the port of entry in Laredo and speak to law enforcement agents and come clean about things he had done, even if it meant immediate protracted incarceration. The veracity of the claims were taken as a skewed manic longing to come home.

My brother died in 2009, the day after American Independence celebrations, 21 days before his forty-fifth birthday. The day after, I was alerted of stories on the website of several Spanish language newspapers based in Monterrey speculating about the circumstances surrounding his death. The stories included distressing pictures. In one, he is being placed into a body bag. In another, he is being carried off on a stretcher. In another, he is just lying on the ground, as if he had been discarded in the middle of a bunch of junk. One story had video showing a gurney being wheeled onto an ambulance with his lifeless body. The reporter suggested that foul play was suspected. But, the print newspaper version of the tragedy noted that authorities concluded that his heart had just given up.

As I read the different media accounts of my brother’s death, I could feel my hands shake and tears roll down my face. Images of my brother at different stages of his life raced through my mind. I wondered if he felt any pain in the last seconds, and how and where he was living. I thought about the pain he caused many people, including my mother, a daughter who grew up without him and all the strangers with whom he had run-ins. Overwhelmed, I gasped, breathing through my mouth because I was stuffed up by the emotion.

Almost forty-years ago, after the incident behind Gulfgate Cinema, I decided that I did not want to hang around my brother. I realized that I did not want to be someone who led his life directed by uninhibited primeval instincts. Still, I loved my flawed brother. And, fearing for his well-being, he was never too far from my mind. In the initial hours of living through the grief of my brother’s end, I became cognizant that the weight of his death was not as heavy on my conscience as the suffering in his life. Yet, the circumstances of his fate left a recurring sense of culpability and helplessness.

Gulfgate Cinema no longer exists. The memories of the incident behind the theater are in the distance. Still, my brother’s restless tortured yet colorful spirit remains forever etched in surreal images and distorted sounds echoing like a DJ Screw track and Ozzy Osbourne Crazy Train mashup playing inside my head:

“Mental wounds not healing…Who and What’s to blame…I’m going off the rails on a crazy train.”