B0061QB04W EBOK

by Reyna Grande

  The next day, Mami sent Carlos to the neighbor’s house to buy water from them on credit so that she could bathe. For the first time since she’d been back, she stood in front of the mirror to put on makeup. She pursed her lips, and I imagined that she was kissing Papi through the mirror. With the bright red color on her lips, hot pink cheeks, and dark blue eye shadow, Mami became a different woman, and I could almost see that other mother—the one she was before she left—peeking through.

  She combed her black hair with her fingers and wrapped a bandana over her head to cover the area where the doctors shaved her hair to stitch up her cuts. She opened the dresser and took out the nicest dress she had, the burgundy dress she wore that bittersweet day when she picked us up at Abuela Evila’s house after she’d arrived from El Otro Lado. Then she sprayed on perfume that smelled of jasmine.

  “Well, wish me luck,” she said to us as she left the house, and the four of us knelt at my grandmother’s altar and prayed for Mami to find a job.

  She came back with a smile on her face. Don Oscar, her former boss, had given her back her old job at the record shop, although she would have to work the afternoon shift. “But a job is a job,” Mami said, smiling, “and beggars can’t be choosers.” Even Betty, only three, seemed to know it was a time to celebrate because when Mami reached out for her, Betty jumped into Mami’s outstretched arms.

  Mami said, “Let’s go to el zócalo.” We washed our dirty feet and faces as quickly as we could and then went to the main road to catch a taxi. Unlike Abuela Evila, Abuelita Chinta would take us there once in a while. She never made us feel as if we were her prisoners. But we hadn’t been there in years with our mother.

  Mami asked the taxi driver to drop us off at my aunt’s house. She lived downtown, close to everything. Tía Güera and my cousin Lupita came with us to el zócalo, and while she and Mami sat on a bench and talked, we played hide-and-seek with the other children. Across the street was the San Francisco Church, and food vendors lined the sidewalk, shaded by the tamarind trees. People sat on the benches located around el zócalo, some reading the papers, others talking, some watching us children play. I thought about how painful it had been to go there with Abuelita Chinta because I would see all those mothers and fathers sitting on the park benches watching their kids play.

  How different it felt that day! While I ran and laughed and chased the kids around el monumento a la bandera, I would glance at the bench where my mother was sitting with my aunt, and I would wave at her because I wanted to make sure I was not just imagining her. When she waved back, I felt as if I were flying because it was so good to know that I was not dreaming.

  On Mami’s first payday, she came home and said, “Let’s go to a matinee.” I’d never been to the movies, and I was still sad about the day we didn’t get to go see La Niña de la Mochila Azul with Tía Emperatriz, but that day we hurried to put on our best clothes.

  We went to the theater, and Mami bought us a bag of popcorn smothered in chile sauce. We sat in the middle section, and we fought over who was going to sit next to Mami, but the fight didn’t last long because Mami said the youngest kids got to sit by her, which meant Betty and me! So I sat on her left, Betty on her right, and Mago and Carlos sat farther out. I knew Mago was mad because she stuck out her tongue at me right before the movie started.

  The movie we watched was called Mamá, Soy Paquito. It was about a boy who was very poor and lived with his mom, who worked very hard to take care of him. But one day his mom died, and Paquito was left all alone and everyone treated him badly because he was a little orphan. His father didn’t live too far, but he might as well be living as far away as El Otro Lado for all the good it did to Paquito to have his father so close. His father was very rich. I thought about the distance between me and Papi, and I thought it was the same for Paquito. My father was far away, but Paquito was a world apart from his father because that is the way things are, between the rich and the poor, even if they live side by side.

  I cried when Paquito went to his mother’s grave and sang her a song and promised to be a good boy. I glanced at Mami and saw that her eyes were as watery as mine. She reached up to touch her bandana. I wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking. If she had died in that car crash, what would have happened to us?

  I leaned my head against Mami’s arm, and she reached out and played with my hair.

  Then a few weeks later, Mami came home full of excitement. She said, “The government is giving away land!” and hurried to gather the things she thought we would need to become squatters.

  So Mago carried Betty, Carlos carried a rope, I carried a blanket, and Mami led the way with a shovel and a flashlight in her hands.

  We hurried to keep pace with Mami as we headed to the river. On the other side of the river was a grove of mangoes and tamarind trees. We came to a big meadow. There were people there already staking out their piece of the land the government was going to give away. Mami chose one of the few available spots, and she had Carlos gather some branches to use as posts. Once they were in the ground, we tied the rope from one post to another to create one big square. Mami walked into the middle of the square, put a blanket down, then sat and smiled. “Here is where we’re going to live,” she said. “I’m going to show your father that I can build my own dream house, too.”

  Mago, Carlos, Betty, and I sat next to Mami. All around us were families, who, like us, were there because they also had a dream. They were building tents out of torn sheets, cardboard, branches, and pieces of corrugated metal. Some had a fire going and were cooking a meal out in the open. I caught a whiff of beans, and my stomach growled. We hadn’t brought a single thing to eat.

  “So what happens now?” Mago asked.

  “We wait,” Mami said. “They didn’t say when exactly the government officials are going to be coming by to give us the deed to the land, but it shouldn’t be long. For now, we can’t go anywhere or we’ll lose our spot.”

  I turned to look behind me. The river was only about fifty feet away. I thought of my cousin Catalina. I didn’t want to live this close to the river that cut my cousin’s life short. I thought of La Llorona, and how she always roams rivers, canals, and creeks. I didn’t want to live anywhere close to water.

  “I’m hungry,” Betty said.

  “Me, too,” Carlos said.

  “Me, too,” Mago and I said. Mami shook her head at us.

  “Think of this as an adventure,” Mami said. She grabbed a stick and got up. “Here is where my room will go. Where do you kids want your room to be?”

  Mago got up and ran to a spot. “Here, over here, so that I can get a nice view of the river.”

  Carlos said he wanted his room to face the mountains.

  “Do I get my own room, or do I have to share it with Mago?” I asked.

  Mami said, “You can have your own room.”

  So I got up and walked around and thought about where I wanted my room to be. I chose the spot next to Carlos because I didn’t want a view of the river. But I did love the mountains.

  “And here is where the kitchen will be, and the living room,” Mami said, tracing the lines on the dirt with her stick.

  But we could not be adventurous for long with an empty stomach. We sat under the hot sun with nothing to eat or drink. Finally, Mami couldn’t take our complaints anymore, and she got up and said, “Let’s go home so you can have your dinner, but only you girls. Carlos, you will stay to guard our land.”

  Carlos groaned. “But I’m hungry, too.”

  “Don’t you dare go anywhere, not even to use the bathroom. I’ll come back with food and water for you.”

  As we headed down to the tracks, I turned to wave goodbye to Carlos. He didn’t see me. He was sitting on the ground scratching the dirt with a stick. I wondered if he was drawing the furniture for his bedroom. He wiped his forehead once and kept on scratching the dirt.

  Because he was the only male in our little family, Mami appointed Carlos the head squ
atter, which meant he was responsible for watching our land. On the days that followed, Mago and I went to school while Carlos stayed by himself down by the river. He built himself a tent using branches, an old blanket, and pieces of cardboard Tío Crece found outside Doña Chefa’s store. As soon as we got back from school, Mago and I rushed over to Carlos with food. By the time we got there, Carlos was about to pee himself. He rushed into the nearest bushes while we laughed.

  “Why won’t they hurry up and give us the land?” Carlos asked. “I don’t want to be here much longer.”

  “Is it really scary?” I asked him. Carlos had been sleeping out there by himself at night. Mami wouldn’t let Mago or me stay with him because we were girls. Sometimes, Tío Crece would come over with his dog to keep him company, but he never spent the night. He said he might be crazy, but he was not crazy enough to be sleeping out in the open and on the ground where a scorpion, a centipede, or a tarantula could crawl on him and sting him. “I have my hammock at home,” he said.

  Mami checked on Carlos as often as possible. She would bring him caramel candies, lollipops covered in chili powder, comic books, and a bag of little green soldiers to help him pass the time.

  “Any time now, mijo, just be patient,” Mami would say.

  “I’ll be patient, Mami,” Carlos replied. Now that we had our mother back, we wanted to make sure that this time we would keep her with us.

  Then Abuelita Chinta said, “Juana, this is ridiculous. It’s been two weeks already. How much longer are you going to keep that boy out there in the middle of nowhere?”

  “For as long as necessary,” Mami said. “A thing like this requires sacrifices. You know that, Amá.”

  Soon, Carlos got sick with a cough and Abuelita Chinta said it was the midnight chill and the morning dew that was getting into his lungs.

  “What will you do if he catches pneumonia?” Abuelita Chinta asked.

  “He won’t. Any minute now, we’ll get the deed and we’ll have our own land.”

  Mami sat at the kitchen table with us as we did our homework. She asked me for a piece of paper and my coloring pencils. Then, just like a little girl, Mami drew a picture of a house. She even drew sunflowers and trees and a rainbow over the house. She proudly showed us her artwork and then she went over to the wall to hang her picture.

  I thought about the three little pigs story, of that brick house that had kept the third pig safe. I wanted so much for Mami’s dream to come true. What if she were right? What if she really could show Papi that she could build a dream house of her own?

  “Any day now,” Mami said to no one in particular.

  But the next day Carlos was worse. He coughed so much the other squatters complained they couldn’t sleep at night because of his coughing. “Take the boy home,” they would tell Mami. She bought him some cough syrup and a little jar of VapoRub and every day before going to work, she would check on him. Abuelita Chinta watched with worried eyes, until finally she said, “Come on, mijas, let’s resolve this problem once and for all.” We went with our grandmother to the river and by then Carlos was burning up with fever. He was sleeping on the ground on top of his blanket and his arms were wrapped around his legs. He had wet himself and flies buzzed all around.

  “Come on, mijo, let’s go home,” Abuelita Chinta said as she picked him up. Even in his feverish state, Carlos refused to get up.

  “No, no, no. I want to help Mami with her dream house.”

  I wanted to stop my grandmother from ruining our chance at such a house, but at the sight of my brother I knew that the price would be too high if anything happened to him. He was so weak it wasn’t hard for us to pick him up. Between my grandmother, Mago, and me, we took my brother home where my grandmother immediately set out to cure him.

  When Mami came home, she ran over to the river to save her land, but by then new squatters had moved in. She came back home in tears.

  “I’m sorry, Mami,” Carlos said. He buried his head in the pillow and coughed for a long time.

  “Maybe we’ll get it next time,” I said.

  Mami didn’t say anything. She yanked her drawing off the wall where she had hung it on a nail and looked at it for a long time. Just as I fell asleep, I thought I heard the sound of paper being torn to shreds.

  17

  Betty, Mami, Mago, Tía Güera, and Lupita at Mago’s graduation

  MAGO AND I stood by the tracks watching the train rumble past us. Mago said, “That train could take us to El Otro Lado.”

  “Really?” I asked, taking her hand as we started walking toward downtown. Carlos walked on the tracks, bending down once in a while to pick up bits of gravel.

  “You should see, Nena,” Mago said, “how many people at the train station are heading to El Otro Lado. I’ve asked them about the journey, and it doesn’t seem so bad. They ride the train to Mexico City, transfer to another train, and ride it all the way to the border. We could save up some money, buy the train tickets, and go.”

  “But how would we find Papi?” Carlos asked, joining us.

  “We’ll ask around when we get there,” Mago said.

  “My teacher says Los Angeles is very big,” Carlos said, shooting a rock at a bird with his slingshot. He missed.

  “But what about Mami?” I said. “Would we leave her here?”

  “Why not?” Mago said. “She’s left us again, hasn’t she? She won’t care whether we leave or not.”

  “Yeah, but—” I said, ready to defend Mami. I was still thinking about that drawing she had torn into shreds.

  “But what?” Mago said.

  “I don’t know. I just wish things were different,” I said.

  We walked the rest of the way downtown in silence, on our way to Mami’s work.

  Not long after the government had finally given away the land Mami so desperately wanted, she decided it would be best if she went to live with Tía Güera. Back then my aunt had lived downtown, a few blocks away from my mother’s work. Mami started staying over at her apartment a day or two during the week. Then it became three days, then four, until finally she packed up her clothes and said she was moving in with my aunt. Since she would get out so late from work, the public minibuses weren’t running by then, and Mami had to take a cab home. “The cab fare is seven times the bus fare. That’s money we can use to buy food,” she would say. “Also, I’m frightened of walking home at night on these dark streets. What if something happened to me?”

  “I can walk you home,” Carlos said, holding tightly to his slingshot.

  “Mijo, you’re only ten years old. I don’t think a robber would be frightened of you and your slingshot,” Mami said.

  We begged her to stay with us. We promised we would be good, but Mami shook her head and said it was for the best.

  By then, my memory of Papi had become a wisp of smoke. Sometimes I would forget that I had a father, and whenever I remembered him, the memory of him did not hurt. It did not take the breath out of my body or sting me and fill me with pain like the venom of a scorpion.

  But the thought of my mother living apart from me made my body tremble, my teeth clench in my mouth, my eyes burn as they did whenever we had no money to buy gas and I would have to fan the hot coals in the brazier as our meal slowly cooked.

  If she hadn’t returned from El Otro Lado, Mago said I would have already forgotten her, the way I’d forgotten Papi. Little children are blessed with short memories. But my mother’s constant comings and goings wouldn’t let me forget her. Instead, they increased my longing for her even more.

  She visited us on Sundays, and every time she left us, Carlos, Mago, and I would keep ourselves from running after her. Betty chased after her like a little duckling. We were left behind to comfort our little sister, to hold her while her tears subsided, to make funny faces and stick out our tongues, do cartwheels and handstands, sneak into the neighbor’s yard and steal juicy guavas and mangoes to sweeten the bitter memory of the one who came and went.

  Since
my grandmother didn’t have a refrigerator, we had to go to el mercado every day to buy the ingredients for that day’s meal. But first we had to stop at Mami’s work so she could give us money.

  Whenever we walked there, we would be out of breath and our feet would be hurting. It would take us forty-five minutes to get there and another forty-five to get back. Mago could get there by herself on the combi, but she didn’t like going alone and we couldn’t afford the bus fare for us all, so we walked. Mago thought I should stay home, that it was too far for me to walk, but I wanted to see Mami more often than four days a month and so I would come. And I wouldn’t complain about my feet hurting because if I did Mago would stop bringing me. She had been less patient with me. With us all.

  Usually Mago would go in there and wouldn’t even talk to Mami. She would just hold out her hand for the money and then quickly leave the record shop, and all I could do was turn around and wave a quick goodbye to my mother.

  But one day, when we went inside, Mami wasn’t alone. Her boss, Don Oscar, was there, and his son was there, too. I knew he was his son because he looked just like Don Oscar, and Mami was always talking about Don Oscar and his family, about the three record shops they owned and the money they had. I saw Mago wiping the dust off her face with her hand. But she couldn’t do anything about the dust that covered her feet.

  “Hola, niños, how are you?” Don Oscar said. We said good afternoon to him and his son, who was about Mago’s age. “Mago, your mother tells me you’ve done very well in school. I’m very proud of you.”

  “Thank you, señor,” Mago said.

  “Mago, I asked Don Oscar to be your godfather for your graduation, and he’s accepted. Isn’t that great news?” Mami said. She came and put an arm around Mago’s shoulders. My sister tried to skirm away from Mami, because even though it was the most amazing news we’d heard in a long time, Mago was still too angry at Mami for leaving us again.