B0061QB04W EBOK

by Reyna Grande

  Mami turned and saw us standing there at the entrance of the store.

  “You startled me!” she said, clutching her chest. She rushed to the stereo and turned down the volume.

  “Mami, we want you to let Betty come with us,” Mago said as she pulled me into the store with her. “We can’t leave her behind.”

  “Well, as you’ve always said, Betty is my daughter, not yours, so I get to decide her fate,” Mami said.

  “Why would you separate us like that?”

  Mami took a deep breath. “Mago, I don’t want to fight with you. If your father wants to take you with him, then you should go. Going to El Otro Lado is a good opportunity, for you, for your brother, for Reyna.”

  “So, why won’t you let us take Betty, too?” I asked.

  Mami looked away and didn’t answer. Later, I would come to realize that her decision had come from stubbornness. Pride. If she had allowed my father to have Betty, it would have meant that he had won.

  “Come on, Nena, let’s go,” Mago said. We went out into the busy street, and I turned to look behind me. Mami stood there at the door of the record shop and waved goodbye. Too soon, I couldn’t see her anymore through the crowd of people rushing down the sidewalk. In my head I could still hear the song Mami was listening to. I could still see her dancing in the record shop, her lips curved into a smile. I pulled my hand from Mago’s and stopped walking. What if I stay? Could Mami be that woman, the one in the record shop, when she was with me? Could she finally start being the mother she was before she left? Maybe she could, maybe she would, but if I leave, then I’ll never know.

  “Nena, you coming or what?” Mago said as she stood there holding out her hand to me. I turned to look at Mago, and at the sight of her I knew I could not survive being separated from her. Back then, she had still been my Mago. Hers was the first face I saw when I woke up and the last when I fell asleep. How could I think of staying, when knowing that if I did, I would lose the one person who had always stood beside me?

  I ran to take my sister’s hand, choosing not to follow the crumbs back to my mother.

  I thought of Mami dancing in the record shop, and I promised myself that was how I would always think of her, and I would try to forget that other mother, the one who left and left and left.

  20

  Helicopter over the U.S.-Mexico border

  OUR FIRST TWO attempts across the border were failures.

  Even now I blame myself. I was not used to walking and running so much and so fast. To make things worse, I had woken up with a toothache on the morning of our first attempt, and my father didn’t have anything to give me for the pain. Around noon I began to get a fever, and the pain became unbearable. My father ended up carrying me on his back, but still, it wasn’t long before a cloud of dust rose in the distance, and before we knew it a truck was heading our way. We rushed into the bushes, but the truck pulled over and border patrol agents got out and told us to come out from our hiding places. We were sent back to Tijuana.

  The second time we tried to cross, we had the same bad luck. Again, I couldn’t keep up with the rest of them, and the heat of the sun’s rays beating down on my head gave me a headache. Once, when we sat down to rest, I walked away to relieve myself in the bushes and found a man lying not too far from me. I thought he was asleep, but when I got closer to him, I saw the flies buzzing over him and the big bump on his forehead.

  I screamed for help. Papi arrived first, followed by the coyote, and then Carlos and Mago. Papi told Mago to shut me up before la migra heard me.

  “Is he dead?” I asked Mago as she took me away. “Is he dead?”

  “He’s sleeping, Nena. He’s just sleeping,” she said.

  We got caught shortly thereafter, and I was glad because I couldn’t get that dead man out of my head.

  I am grateful now that back then I was too young to fully grasp the extent of the danger we were in. I am glad I did not know about the thousands of immigrants who had died before my crossing and who have been dying ever since.

  After getting sent back twice, Papi said, “This is the last time, mijos.” He sent us off to bed even though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon. But that night we were attempting our third—and final—border crossing, and Papi said we needed to rest as much as possible. We would be running through the night.

  Papi lay down on the floor beside our bed and said, “If we don’t make it this time, I’m going to have to send you back. And I will send you to my mother, since your own mother isn’t doing a decent job of caring for you kids.”

  “No, Papi, please!” I said. The thought of going back to Abuela Evila’s house filled me with dread. But I knew it was my fault. If I hadn’t gotten sick the first time, we probably would have made it. If I had walked faster, run faster, not complained about the heat or my hunger, or hadn’t constantly asked for water, maybe then we would have made it. If my molar hadn’t been hurting me so much and had I not whined about the pain, maybe then we could have made it.

  “I’m sorry, mijos. I’m going to lose my job if I miss any more days.” He said he didn’t have the money to keep paying for food and the motel. He had barely been able to borrow the money for the coyote to take us across the border, and there was almost no money left. Some of it had also been spent on our trip, which had been a very uncomfortable two-day bus ride where we had suffered from endless motion sickness. I don’t remember how many times my siblings and I threw up.

  “Don’t make us go back there again,” Mago said in a voice so soft I didn’t think he’d heard her. But after a minute or two, Papi finally looked at us. I grabbed Mago’s and Carlos’s hands and squeezed them. I thought about going back to Abuela Evila’s house, back to being an unwanted, parentless child, back to waiting, always waiting, to hear from Papi so far away in El Otro Lado.

  He sighed and said, “This will be our last time. If we don’t make it, you’re going back. Now, go to sleep. You will need all your strength tonight.”

  But I couldn’t sleep. I thought about the past seven days and how quickly they had passed. I thought about Mami, little Betty, my grandmother, and I couldn’t help feeling torn about our situation. I was so happy that my father had not left me behind, but I was also sad about leaving my little sister. I felt as if we had abandoned her. The day we left for the bus station she had cried as we walked away. Abuelita Chinta had cried, too. I stopped at the canal to wave goodbye to them and part of me wanted to tell Papi I had changed my mind, that I did want to stay. But then I thought about Mago, and I knew I couldn’t be without her. And I wanted to have a father. Why does it have to be so hard? I had to leave my mother, my little sister, my grandmother—so that I could have a father. But even that was in jeopardy. If we didn’t cross that third time, I would lose him.

  Please God, give me wings.

  Papi woke us up at sunset, and we took a bus to the meeting point where the coyote was waiting for us. We crossed the dirt path, slipped under the hole in the fence, and immersed ourselves in the darkness that had quickly fallen around us. “Remember,” Papi said, “this is the last time.” He followed the coyote. We followed our father in single file: Mago, me, and Carlos at the end. We walked along a small path, the thin moon curved into a smile, and I thought that if the moon was smiling at us, it must be a good sign. Far in the distance, I saw two red lights, like evil eyes. I shivered.

  “They’re just antennas,” the coyote said when Carlos asked about the lights.

  I thought about the church pilgrimages we had taken with Abuelita Chinta a couple of times. If I once made it through nine days of walking, surely I could make it now, couldn’t I? But hard as I tried, I couldn’t lie to myself. This journey was similar to the pilgrimages because we were walking through bushes and hills, but I hadn’t been afraid back then. At this moment, every muscle in my body was tense. Every noise, like the chirping of crickets, the wind rustling the branches of the bushes, the sound of our labored breathing, frightened me. I thought those
sounds were coming from la migra. I thought that somewhere in the endless darkness, la migra was there, ready to capture us and send us back to Tijuana, and ultimately, back to Abuela Evila’s house.

  I kept my eyes on Mago’s back as I sang the songs from the pilgrimage in my head. I thought about Abuelita Chinta, her gaptoothed smile, and I felt a pang of sadness just thinking about the fact that with every step I took, I was getting farther and farther away from her, Mami, and little Betty.

  “Reyna, apúrate!” my father hissed. I sprinted to catch up to the group. I didn’t even notice that Carlos had passed me.

  At first, it sounded like a kitten purring. Then the sound got louder, and the coyote yelled, “¡Córranle!” In the darkness, I saw him take off without us. My father grabbed my hand and ran, too. I couldn’t keep up with his long strides, and I fell flat on my face. He scooped me up and ran with me in his arms. Mago and Carlos followed close behind.

  A light shone in the distance, and the purring got louder.

  “What’s happening, Papi?” Mago asked.

  “Helicopter.”

  Carlos tripped on a rock, but Papi kept on running and didn’t wait for him to get up. “Wait, Papi!” I said, but Papi was like a frightened animal. He scampered through the bushes trying to find a place to hide.

  “Get down!” the coyote yelled from somewhere in the darkness. Papi immediately dropped to the ground, and we became lizards, rubbing our bellies against the cold, damp earth, trying to find a place to hide. Pebbles dug into my knees. I couldn’t see Carlos in the darkness, and I cried and told Papi to wait, but he pushed me into a little cave created by overgrown bushes. Mago and I sat by Papi’s side, and he held on to us tight while we listened to the roaring of the helicopter right above us.

  The beams of the searchlight cut through the branches of the bushes. I yanked my foot back when a beam of light fell on my shoe. I wondered if the people in the helicopter had seen my foot. I tried to hold my breath, thinking that even the smallest sound could give us away. Please God, don’t let them see us. Please God, let us arrive safely to El Otro Lado. I want to live in that perfect place. I want to have a father. I want to have a family.

  Finally, after what felt like hours, the helicopter left. We could hear the chirping of the crickets once more, the howling of a coyote in the distance, and then we tensed up when we heard the sound of branches breaking.

  Papi poked his head out of the cave and sighed in relief. “I’m sorry, Carnal.” We came out, and Carlos and the smuggler were standing outside our cave. Carlos smiled, proud of himself for not getting us caught.

  “You should have seen him crawl under the bushes,” the smuggler said. “He’s a real iguana, this one.”

  When we finally got across the border to a place called Chula Vista, we headed to the house of the second smuggler, the man in charge of driving us to Los Angeles. We got there early in the morning.

  My father got in the passenger side of the car, and my siblings and I sat in the back. The smuggler, who was called El Güero, told us to lie down and stay out of sight. Papi said that even though we had succeeded in crossing, the danger was not over yet. We could easily get pulled over by la migra on our way to Los Angeles. So Mago and I lay down on the backseat like spoons and Carlos had to lie on the floor. My stomach growled. We had gone the whole night without food.

  As we drove from Chula Vista to Los Angeles, I wished I could get up and see what El Otro Lado looked like. I wanted to see with my own eyes the beautiful place where I would be living from then on. I started to get motion sickness, and the only thing we could look at was the roof of the car, which wasn’t very interesting. Then Carlos threw up and for the rest of the trip the car stank of vomit. Finally, the smuggler said we could get up for just a minute, to stretch, and what amazed me the most were the palm trees. I had never seen so many palm trees, and there they were, on either side of the freeway, whizzing by. The freeway was amazing, so enormous compared to the tiny dirt roads in my colonia. And the cars were clean and shiny, so different from the rusty old cars back home. I wanted the smuggler to slow down. I’d never been in a car that traveled so fast, and I knew that in a few seconds I would have to lie back down again. I wanted to take everything in. The last thing I saw when El Güero said to lie down was a pair of golden arches, and I wondered what they were.

  “Can’t we stop to get some hamburgers for my kids?” Papi asked the smuggler.

  I’d never eaten a hamburger before, but I heard this was what people in El Otro Lado liked to eat. My stomach rumbled in anticipation.

  El Güero shook his head. “Too risky.”

  He took out a bag from the glove compartment. I saw him put his hand in the bag and then put something in his mouth. He opened the window and spat. He did that several times, and my curiosity grew more and more, but I was too embarrassed to lean closer to see what he was eating. He must have remembered we were hungry because he said, “You kids want some?”

  Mago said, “What is it?”

  “Sunflower seeds.” He rolled down the window and spat again.

  Mago, Carlos, and I looked at one another. Sunflower seeds? Here we were, coming to the richest country in the world, and this man was eating bird food? In my town, I had never, in my whole nine years, seen anyone eat bird food before. I would have preferred one of those hamburgers.

  “They’re almost like pumpkin seeds,” Papi said, urging us to take some.

  To my amazement, Mago reached out her hand. She grabbed the bag El Güero gave her and then put a pile of seeds into Carlos’s and my cupped hands. She took some for herself and gave the bag back to El Güero.

  “Look, there’s the exit to Disneyland,” El Güero said, pointing out the window. Then he remembered that we couldn’t see anything because we were still lying down. “You can get up now,” he said. “I think we’re safe now.”

  Mami had mentioned Disneyland and how sad she was that she never got to go while she was here. I hoped one day we would get to see it. I hoped one day I would get to do everything people said you could do in El Otro Lado, like speak English. We sat up and got ready to eat our sunflower seeds. I let Mago go first. She put the seeds in her mouth and chewed them. When she swallowed, she started to choke.

  “You’re supposed to remove the shell,” El Güero said. “I forgot to tell you that.”

  I put a seed in my mouth and did what El Güero said to do, to crack the shell with my teeth and eat only the kernel inside. I wondered if it was my hunger, but those sunflower seeds tasted delicious. I sucked the salt off the shells before cracking them and eating the inside. My first breakfast in the United States was bird food.

  Not too long after, Papi pointed to the tallest buildings I’d ever seen and said that was downtown Los Angeles. I thought about the map Mago had once showed me. I remembered that little dot labeled Los Angeles. It suddenly hit me that Mami and I had switched places, but the distance between us was just as big as it had been three years before.

  “How far are we from home?” I asked Papi. “From Iguala.”

  “Home?” Papi said. “This is your home now, Chata.”

  I could hear the anger in Papi’s voice, and I wished I could tell him that even though this was my home now, my umbilical cord was buried in Iguala.

  The smuggler said, “Guerrero is about two thousand miles or so from here.”

  Two thousand miles was the distance between us and Mami. Between me and the place I had been born. Between me and my childhood, however painful it had been. I turned to look behind me as the car sped on. Mami had once said she didn’t want me to forget where I came from.

  “I promise I’ll never forget,” I said under my breath. We exited the freeway and arrived at our new home.

  Book Two

  THE MAN BEHIND THE GLASS

  Prologue

  IN 2010, TWENTY-FIVE years after my new life in the United States began, my father was diagnosed with liver cancer. By then, my siblings and I had little communication
with him. By then, he’d managed to chase us away. But as is often the case with terminal illnesses, broken families put themselves back together, and I began to find my way back to my father, although the journey—like the one I took across the U.S.-Mexico border—was not at all easy.

  On Tuesday, September 6, 2011, the day before my thirty-sixth birthday, Mago, Carlos, and I found ourselves around my father’s hospital bed listening to the doctor tell us he had done everything he could for him. The doctor said we should let our father go.

  He didn’t know about all the times I had already lost him. Back in Mexico, there was always the hope that he would return. But now there was no hope to cling to. If we let him go, he would not be coming back.

  I turned to look at my father. He lay on his hospital bed, only 130 pounds of flesh and bones. His face was sunken in. His skin sagged from all the weight he’d lost. Once, his skin was the color of rain-soaked earth. Now, it was a dull grayish color—like in that black-and-white photograph of him I so cherished. I could tell that he was not here. His eyes were slightly open, and they were glazed over, looking into space, looking at nothing. I wanted him to see me. I had always wanted to be seen by him.

  I couldn’t follow all the cords and hoses that came in and out of him. I couldn’t understand all the numbers on the monitors next to him. But the wavy lines that represented his heartbeat told me of the conflict within him. His mind had already gone elsewhere. Yet, his heart struggled to hold on. It was fighting a losing battle. His blood pressure was now down to sixty.