by Reyna Grande
Because I couldn’t think of any story of my own to write, I started to write the story of the little tree. But the next day I felt bad about copying someone else’s story, so I threw away the pages and started again. I thought and thought, and finally I decided what I was going to write. The story of my birth.
As I wrote, I closed my eyes and saw Mami lying down on the dirt floor over the straw mat. The midwife came into the shack next to Abuela Evila’s house and saw Mami bending over in pain. I could perfectly picture the midwife lighting a fire under the comal, the big round griddle where Mami made tortillas, and putting a pot of water there to boil. I could feel the heat of the flames.
“Don’t push yet,” I heard the midwife say as she sharpened her knife. “You aren’t ready yet.”
As I wrote, I told about how I couldn’t wait to be born and the midwife barely had enough time to catch me before I hit the dirt floor. “It’s a girl,” the midwife said as she put me into Mami’s arms.
Then came the best part of my story, my favorite part. I wrote about how Mami had turned to face the fire so the heat of the flames could warm me. As the midwife cut the umbilical cord, Mami pointed to a spot on the dirt floor and told the midwife to bury it there. I wrote how even though I was now living far away from Mami and my country, I hadn’t forgotten where I came from.
Mr. López helped me fix my spelling and gave me suggestions for improving my story. When it was as good as could be, he gave me white paper so I could write it nice and neatly. When I was finished, I started my favorite part, drawing pictures.
Mrs. Anderson showed the class how to bind our books. She gave us two rectangular pieces of cardboard and butcher paper to make the cover. By the end of the week we were all done with our books, and Mrs. Anderson picked them up and put them on her desk. Because it was Friday and we had worked hard all week, she put on a movie for us to watch as a reward. She said she would read our books while we watched our movie.
The movie was about an alien named E.T. who wanted to go home. I felt bad for the alien because life in the U.S. was very difficult for him. I could understand his wanting to go home. I was jealous because he seemed to learn English a lot faster than I had all those months.
I couldn’t concentrate on the movie because I kept glancing at Mrs. Anderson. She had put all the books on the right side of her desk. As she read, she began to make two piles. One pile was getting bigger and bigger, and the other pile remained small. I knew the big pile was of the books she hadn’t liked.
I froze when she picked up my book. Here it is. Here is my big chance! She opened it, flipped through the pages in the blink of an eye, then she closed the book shut and put it in the big pile. My eyes began to burn with tears. My book had been rejected. But she couldn’t have read it. No one reads a book in a second! She doesn’t even speak Spanish well, so how can she read it so fast? I wanted to stand up and say something. I wanted to tell her she had made a mistake, and she should look at it again. But I didn’t have the English words to say what I thought, and so I said nothing at all.
E.T. was going home. He was saying bye to his friend and getting into his ship. How I wished I could go home, too, back to Iguala where I could speak to my teacher in my own language. Where I could stand up for what I believed in, not caring if afterward I got hit with the ruler for my rebellion. I didn’t want to be in this country if that was how things were always going to be.
At the end of class, Mrs. Anderson held up the books she selected for the competition. Out of the eight books she chose, not even one was written by one of the kids at my table, the non–English speakers.
“You kids did a great job on those books,” Mr. López said to us in Spanish. “Just because they weren’t chosen doesn’t mean they weren’t good.”
“Just not good enough,” I said under my breath. I put my head between my hands, tears threatening to flow as I felt the disappointment come at me like a huge wave. Don’t let go of me, Papi.
Mr. López looked at me, and then at the other four students at my table. He said, “There is no reason for any of you not to get ahead in life. You will learn English one day. You will find your way. Remember, it doesn’t matter where you come from. You’re now living in the land of opportunity, where anything is possible.”
Mrs. Anderson put all the rejected books around the room to display them. I knew she was doing that so the students wouldn’t feel bad for not being chosen. But when we were dismissed, as I was walking by my book, I took it from the shelf where Mrs. Anderson had put it.
One day, I promised myself, thinking about Mr. López’s words, I will write a book that won’t be rejected, one that will make my father proud.
10
Mami at Exposition Park
IN MAY OF 1986, a year after we’d come to the U.S., Papi fell off a ladder at work and hit his head and injured his knee. He stayed at the hospital overnight for observation, and he had to take a few days off from work until he got better.
Papi wasn’t the kind to stay home doing nothing. Early the next morning, he left for downtown to walk around. He took the bus because the doctors told him not to drive. He came home just as Carlos, Mago, and I were sitting down at the kitchen table to do our homework. He took a sip of the beer he had just taken out of a paper bag and said, “Your mother is not in Mexico.”
We stared at him, not understanding.
“Didn’t you hear me? Your mother is not in Mexico.” I’d thought he was joking. Then I realized that he wasn’t.
“Where is she, then?” Mago asked, lifting her head from her homework. Carlos and I also stopped what we were doing, and we sat there at the kitchen table and looked at our father.
“She’s been in this country for months now, and she hasn’t even tried to contact you kids,” Papi said.
“But how can she be here?” Carlos asked.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Of course I’m sure,” Papi said. “I ran into her today.” He told us that he’d waited for the bus to come back home. When it arrived, the last passenger to get off was our mother. She lived downtown on a street called San Pedro.
“Your mother never ceases to amaze me,” Papi said. He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. It was a laugh of bitter disappointment.
“And Betty?” Mago asked.
“Didn’t I just tell you? Your mother never ceases to amaze me. Where do you think your little sister is?”
Mago, Carlos, and I looked at one another. Where else could Betty be? With Mami of course.
“Your mother,” Papi said, squeezing the empty beer can with his hand, “your mother left your sister in Mexico and came here with her boyfriend.” He threw the can against the wall and grabbed another one out of the paper bag.
“Can we go see her?” Carlos asked.
“Did she tell you where exactly she lives?” I asked.
“You want to go see her?” Papi said. “Don’t you kids have any pride? Your mother doesn’t care about you. If she did, she would have called you when she got here. She’s been here for months. Months. Why would you want to go see her? Have some pride, pendejos!”
“But she’s our mami,” I said.
Papi looked at me, and I could tell in his eyes that I had disappointed him with those words. He shook his head. He touched his bump and winced. He got up and said he was going to go lie down. At the door, he turned and said, “Just so you know, your mother has a new child. A boy, not three months old.”
He left us there in the kitchen. I felt as if I were the one who had hit her head. I felt an intense pressure building up, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. All I heard in my head were Papi’s words: Your mother doesn’t care about you … Your mother doesn’t care about you …
But even when the dizziness stopped and I could breathe again, I found that I could not stop myself from yearning to see her.
During the weeks following Papi’s discovery, we couldn’t convince him to allow us to go see Mami. The more we aske
d, the more he withdrew. He would simply say, “I’m the one who brought you here,” and then would lock himself up in his room. With those words, he was asking us to choose between him and her. We didn’t know how to tell him that it shouldn’t be a matter of choice, that they were both our parents.
It hurt me to think of Betty all alone in Mexico. When Papi and Mami left us there, at least we’d had one another. But Betty, who did Betty have over there? She was like Élida, with no one there to love her except our grandmother. I thought about all those Polaroid pictures we’d sent, of how it must have hurt our little sister to see us here, together, while she was over there all alone.
“Your mother is so selfish, that’s why she wouldn’t let me bring Betty,” Papi said to us. “She used your sister to get back at me.”
Mila said to Papi, “We couldn’t afford another mouth to feed anyway. It’s difficult enough as it is, with the three you already have here, and with the three I have. Even though they aren’t with me, I still have to support them.”
“Yes, but what if I went back—?”
“We’re not going through that again,” Mila said. “I will not take responsibility for raising yet another child!”
“Papi is right,” Mago said to us. “Why should we go see her after what she did? How many times will she continue to abandon us?”
Carlos and I didn’t answer.
But regardless of what Mami had done, the fact remained that Betty was still in Mexico. Mago wrote a letter to Abuelita Chinta to inquire about Betty, and we waited anxiously for a reply. It wasn’t until the end of June that a letter arrived from Tía Güera. She told us our little sister was fine and not to worry. She said that in the summer, she would be leaving Iguala to come here to the U.S. Tía Güera had decided to leave her no-good husband and try her luck in this country. Mami was taking that as an opportunity to bring Betty here. So Tía Güera and Betty would both be making the long journey north together. The only thing was, Tía Güera said, that she would have to leave her own daughter behind with Abuelita Chinta. It made me sad to think of my cousin Lupita, of how now she was the one being abandoned, and I hoped that one day the cycle of leaving children behind would end.
We finally convinced Papi to let us visit Mami when we learned Tía Güera and Betty had safely arrived. We told him—and ourselves—that we really weren’t going to see her, we were going to see our sister. But of course we knew it was a lie. We were once again following the crumbs back to Mami.
We took the 83 bus to downtown L.A. As we walked east on Seventh Street toward San Pedro Street, we were taken aback by what we saw. This was another side of this country I hadn’t seen before. For a moment, I felt as if we had just crossed over into another world.
There were winos everywhere sitting on the ground asking for handouts. Homeless people covered in dirt and dressed in rags pushed shopping carts filled with dirty blankets, old shoes, and plastic bags filled with junk. Women stood on corners dressed in skimpy clothes. Trash littered the sidewalks. Plastic bags whirled up in the air like miniature parachutes. The air was filled with the stench of urine and a rancid smell that was almost overpowering. It made me gag.
We could not believe this was where Mami lived.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would think we were back in Mexico,” Mago said.
“I didn’t think there were places like this in the U.S.,” Carlos said.
In Mexico everyone I knew always thought of the U.S. as the most beautiful place in the world, as close to Heaven as you could possibly get.
We found the address Tía Güera had given us and we knocked. Someone came down the stairs and opened the security door. We didn’t know who the woman was, but we told her we were there to see our mother.
“What’s her name?” she asked.
“Juana.”
“Oh, yes, she lives in Room A.” She started back up the stairs and we followed behind her. The door to Room A was open. We saw Mami before she saw us. She was sitting on the bed holding a sleeping baby in her arms. Her hair was permed into tight curls and cut short. She had put on a bit more weight, and as always, most of it went straight to her stomach. When she saw us, Mami stood up and came to the door.
“I can’t believe you kids are here,” she said, smiling. “Look how much you’ve grown!”
We entered the room and we said hello to Rey, who was sitting at the table. Next to him was Tía Güera. We gave her a hug and told her it was nice to see her. Then my eyes fell on little Betty, who was sitting on the dirty carpet playing with a doll. We rushed to our sister to hug her and cover her in kisses, but Betty pushed us away and rushed to my aunt’s side. “A year is a long time for a little kid,” Tía Güera said.
“Give her time,” Mami said.
“Betty, it’s me, Reyna. Don’t you remember me?” I said, kneeling down to look at her. Betty hid her face in Tía Güera’s chest.
I glanced at Mami, and I thought about Papi, at what he’d said. He was right. It was because of Mami’s selfishness that now Betty didn’t know us. It was her stupid, stupid pride.
I looked at my five-year-old sister and wondered how long it would take for us to finally feel like a family.
Mami lived in a tiny room big enough for a bed, a dining table, a refrigerator, a TV stand, and boxes of clothes piled against the wall. They had to share the kitchen and bathroom with the rest of the tenants on their floor. I thought about the fourplex Mila and Papi owned. He made three hundred dollars a week. Mila didn’t make much more. Between them they had six kids to support, and their many expenses didn’t allow them to give up the rent of the larger units. We had to stay in the one-bedroom unit until things got better. But even though we slept in the living room, we at least had the bathroom and kitchen to ourselves, and we didn’t have to share them with complete strangers. We also had a backyard to play in. Our carpet wasn’t dirty. There weren’t roaches scurrying around the walls like here at my mother’s.
We crammed into the little room as best we could.
“So how did you end up here?” we asked Mami.
She sat at the table holding her sleeping son in her arms. I tried not to look at him. I didn’t want to feel anything for that baby, that brother of mine whose name was Leonardo. Even though he was three months old, I could tell, even then, that he was going to look just like his father. Mago, Carlos, Betty, and I were a mixture of the Grande-Rodríguez genes and anyone who saw us could tell right away we were related. But Leonardo looked nothing like us, and that made it even harder for us to like him.
Mami told us her journey to the U.S. with Rey had happened by chance. A friend of hers had a son who wanted to come here, but he was afraid of making the journey alone. Since Mami had already been here once, her friend asked Mami to accompany her son and to help him once he got here. She even offered to lend Mami the money for her smuggler’s fees. Mami didn’t think twice about it. She and Rey and the young man set out on their journey, but she couldn’t bring Betty, so she left her behind with Abuelita Chinta until she got settled here. In the meantime, though, she started another family with Rey, a boy whose existence we would not have been aware of if Papi had not run into her that day.
Both Rey and Mami worked at a garment factory. Rey operated the steamer, Mami trimmed loose threads. “They pay us miserable wages,” Mami said. She must have seen the look on our faces when we’d first walked in because she added, “As you can tell by where we live.” She glanced around the room, just as we had done. A roach scurried across the wall, and she hurried to squash it with her sandal. She turned to us and said, “But no poverty here can compare to the poverty we left behind. And at least now I am closer to you, my children.”
Mago asked her the question we had all been dying to ask. “Why didn’t you tell us you were here?”
Mami took a deep breath and said, “I wanted to give you kids a chance to get to know your father, and for him to know you, without me coming in between you. Do you understand?”
&n
bsp; Strangely enough, we did understand, although we didn’t believe that was the only reason. Looking back on it now, I think it was at that particular moment in our lives that our relationship with our mother finally hit its lowest point. It was then that I finally understood the kind of person my mother had become. And how little space she was willing to make for us in her life. The only thing I could do was to accept her, although I never—even now—stopped hoping that one day she would change.
We began to visit Mami every other Sunday, and although Papi wasn’t happy about it, he knew we needed to see our little sister, so he didn’t stop us. One thing we soon came to like about visiting Mami was that she always had soda, chips, and candy at her house. We were jealous that Betty—and later Leonardo—had an unlimited supply of those snacks. With Papi all we drank was water, and we never got junk food unless he gave us a dollar to buy some. He never took us to McDonald’s, which was one of Mami’s favorite places to eat, or any other fast-food place. It wasn’t until years later, when both Betty and Leonardo were extremely overweight, that I realized how lucky Mago, Carlos, and I had been.
Despite the measly salary Mami earned at the factory, she always had enough money to take us out, like to Exposition Park to see the roses, to the Alley to buy us underwear or socks, to Placita Olvera to see the folklórico dances and have a churro.
But whenever we went anywhere with Mami, she would bring along a plastic bag and would pick up cans from the street or rummage through trash bins. Sometimes she would even make us pick up the cans for her, even in public places. It was so embarrassing for Mago, Carlos, and me that we soon started to say no, absolutely not! Betty would end up being the one to run around picking up the cans without Mami even having to ask her to do it. She would run back to Mami with her find, laughing while beer trickled down her bare arm.