by Reyna Grande
Finally, the day of the Rose Parade arrived, and Mago was the one who got up with me at five in the morning to help me get ready. She walked me over to Franklin and waited with me for the school bus to pick me up. Later, she hitched a ride from a friend and met up with me in Pasadena, where she walked the parade route alongside me with a borrowed video camera. I would glance at her from the corner of my eye, and once in a while I would lose her in the crowd, and I would think she had gotten tired of the walk, but later she would reappear up Colorado Boulevard with the video camera aimed at me. My father and mother were not there. But Mago was. And her presence, as always, filled the void of my parents’ absence.
When the Rose Parade was over and there were no more weekend bus rides to Dodger Stadium, Axel and I would only see each other after school and hang out in places where we wouldn’t be seen.
“Why can’t we just be like a normal couple?” I would ask him.
“I’m just not ready yet,” he would say. I wished he weren’t so afraid of what people might say.
One day after school, while we stood outside the band room waiting for Mr. Quan to arrive and start practice, I overheard the clarinet players say that Axel had asked a cheerleader to the prom.
“And what did she say?” one of the girls asked. I leaned closer to listen, but just then Mr. Quan arrived and we went inside the band room. I glanced at Axel from across the room, and I wanted to go ask him about what I’d heard. I wanted him to tell me it wasn’t true.
“Hey, Axel, I heard Marlene said yes,” one of the trumpet players said. Axel nodded and then looked at me. I looked down at my sax, pretended that I was busy putting it together. I felt my throat tighten and my teeth clench in my mouth. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to get enough air to blow into the sax and play.
“I’m sorry,” Axel said after practice. I shrugged my shoulders and pretended that I didn’t care.
I went home and told Mago about it. She said, “Forget him, Reyna. He’s not worth it.”
I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. It was me who wasn’t worth anything. Why else would Papi treat me the way he does? Why else would the guys at school treat me the way they do?
The day of the prom, I spent the better part of the day listening to music from Les Misérables, especially “On My Own.” I would close my eyes and imagine myself walking by myself on a rainy night, thinking of Axel, wishing he was with me.
“Come on, Nena, let’s go,” Mago said, turning off the music.
She was taking me dancing to distract me. Carlos didn’t want to come because he didn’t like the same music as Mago. He preferred dancing to Mexican music like quebraditas and norteñas, whereas Mago liked house and techno. I didn’t care either way. Since I was a band geek, I was into marching and concert music because that was what we played in band.
We headed over to the Riviera Club in Eagle Rock in Mago’s Toyota Tercel. The car smelled of new plastic and coconut, and for a second I felt a pang of sadness to know what this car had cost my sister. Three months earlier, Mago and Papi had gone to the dealership on Figueroa Street so that she could buy herself a brand-new car. Papi cosigned for her, but he regretted it soon after. A brand-new car comes with a big monthly bill. Not long after buying herself this car, Mago felt the burden of her debt and found a full-time job in the classified department at La Opinión, a Spanish-language newspaper. It was a good thing she had found that job. Mago had accrued too much debt from all the pretty clothes and shoes she was buying. It was as if she were trying to make up for all those years in Mexico when we had only rags to wear. I would go with her to May Co., Robinsons, and the Broadway to make payments on her credit cards, but she would never manage to pay them down. She said she was sick of the old ladies’ clothes Mila would bring home to us from Kingsley Manor. She said she wanted to dress her own way, develop her own style. She’d flick her hair, which was now dyed a dark brown with golden highlights, and tell me that never again would she wear hand-me-downs. Her friends in Mexico would never recognize her now.
Sometimes, I hardly recognized her myself. My sister was becoming a classy young woman, that was for sure. But between the credit card debt and the car loan, Mago had dropped out of college to work full time. I ran a finger along the dashboard as Mago sped up Figueroa Street, wondering if she would ever find her way back to college, if she would ever again care about our father’s dreams for her. I tried not to judge my sister too harshly. Hadn’t she given up so much of herself for Carlos and me? Really, it was only fair for her to have the pretty things she wanted, I would tell myself. And she wasn’t selfish. Even then Mago had still continued to look out for us, give us the things our parents could not or would not provide, like the year before when Carlos had had his heart set on a graduation ring to commemorate his accomplishment of being the second in the Grande-Rodríguez family to graduate from high school. Papi hadn’t had the money, so Mago had bought Carlos the ring. She had also paid for his ticket so that he could go to Senior Grad Night at Magic Mountain. And that wasn’t all she did. She continued to provide the emotional support we needed. Like at that moment, when I was feeling—as Anne of Green Gables would have said—“in the depths of despair,” because of a boy who could only love me when no one was looking.
Mago went into the club first and then her friend came out to give me Mago’s ID so I could use it to get in. Whenever I wore Mago’s makeup and her clothes, I would almost look like her—almost, if you didn’t pay attention to the fact that I was an uglier, unrefined version of her. I danced with her friends, but I couldn’t seem to lose myself in the music, the way they did. I ended up sitting at the table most of the time looking at Mago glide across the floor, the colorful disco lights flashing all around her. I thought about Axel. Is he dancing with the cheerleader now? Or are they sitting at a table together, holding hands? Maybe they have gone somewhere else by now, maybe to the beach where she can lean against him while the wind whips her hair around her face. One thing I knew for sure was this: He wasn’t feeling ashamed at being seen with her.
18
Mago and Reyna with Carlos at his wedding
A MONTH LATER, my father came home with an old yellow Datsun he’d bought from a friend. He told Carlos the car was for him. Carlos had just finished his first year at Los Angeles City College. “My Carnal is going to make me proud,” Papi said while looking at Mago in disappointment. The car was old, but Carlos didn’t care. He smiled and rushed to grab the keys from Papi. They went for a drive, and I watched as they drove away. I turned to glance at Mago’s Toyota Tercel. I was glad Papi had thought about getting Carlos a car so he wouldn’t be tempted to buy one himself and get into debt. Mago’s Tercel was beautiful, the color of a calm ocean, but when I thought about what it had really cost her, I would find myself hating it, as if it were the car’s fault my sister had given up her education.
“We’ll see how long that piece of junk lasts,” Mago said.
I hoped that when I started college, Papi would buy me a car, too. Even if it was an old rickety one like the one he’d bought Carlos. As long as it came from my father, I knew I would treasure it, the way I treasured anything positive he said to me during his rare sober moments.
What my father hadn’t been counting on when he got Carlos the car was that now it would also be easier for Carlos to see his girlfriend. Her name was Griselda, and he’d met her at Franklin. She was his first official girlfriend, and Carlos was crazy about her. Mago and I thought it was because Griselda didn’t seem to care about Carlos’s crooked teeth, which were the bane of his existence. Even though he would beg our father to help him get his teeth fixed, Papi would keep telling him no, that it was expensive and he couldn’t afford it. Just like Mago and her scars, Carlos couldn’t see past the ugliness of his teeth.
Between school and his girlfriend, Carlos stayed busy. The summer passed, and the fall semester began with Carlos doing very well in school. His dream was to major in criminal justice and catch bad guy
s. Like Papi, he had no tolerance for gang members. He swore to clean up the streets of Los Angeles and get rid of them. But one day, he came home and told Papi that he was very much in love.
“You mean you think you’re in love,” Papi said. “At your age, what do you know about being in love?” Carlos would be turning twenty in February.
“I love Griselda, and I’m going to marry her,” Carlos said. “I’m asking you to please go with me to ask for her hand in marriage.”
“You’re crazy,” Papi said. “I will do no such thing. I don’t know what you’re thinking. You’re going to school. Do you know what’s going to happen if you get married? You will have to drop out of school and get a job so that you can support your wife. Why would you want to throw away your chance at getting an education to marry some girl you just met?”
“I love her,” Carlos said.
“I don’t know why I even brought you kids to this country, just so you could throw it all away. It was an opportunity of a lifetime, do you realize that?” Papi said. This time, he didn’t just look at Carlos, but at Mago and me. “Do you know how many people would die to be in your shoes? To have the opportunities you have here?”
Back then, I hadn’t really been aware of the many young people who, like us, had been brought to the U.S. as children, but who, unlike us, had not been lucky enough to get their legal residency. My father was right. There were many people who would have died to have the chance that my siblings and I had of going to college. But it wouldn’t be until later that I would finally understand.
“I don’t care,” Carlos said, standing up. “I’m going to marry her.”
Mago and I tried to talk Carlos out of this marriage, but he refused to listen. Next thing I knew, he had asked my mother to go with him to Griselda’s house to ask for her hand in marriage. My mother went along with his plans and just like that, a month and a half after his twentieth birthday, Carlos became a married man, the head of his own household. Just as Papi had feared, Carlos dropped out of college, found a small apartment for himself and his new wife, and got himself two jobs.
Eighteen months—and a son—later, he got divorced, but he never finished college.
19
Cousin Lupita washing dishes in Abuelita Chinta’s backyard
IN 1993, DURING my senior year at Franklin, Mago decided to accompany our mother on her upcoming trip to Mexico. Like my father, my mother was also one of the 2.9 million people who’d gotten their legal residency through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Ever since she had become a legal resident of the United States, my mother had been going to Mexico every year, sometimes even twice a year. By then, she had quit her factory job and once again had turned to selling Avon, although now she sold those cosmetics at the Starlite Swapmeet, where she rented a booth. Even though we had suggested she learn English and find herself a better job, my mother insisted on living the way she had lived in Mexico or the way she had lived when she was still undocumented. She refused to learn English and how to drive a car. She refused to look for a job that could offer her benefits—such as medical insurance and a pension plan, and where she could finally get off welfare.
Whenever she found herself missing her country, she would pull Leonardo and Betty out of Ninth Street Elementary and take them with her. Rey would remain to tend the booth at the swapmeet, because even though he was now a legal resident, he, just like my mother, didn’t take advantage of the opportunities available to him.
Unlike my father, who was a tyrant when it came to school and who had demanded nothing but perfect attendance from us, my mother didn’t really care that her youngest children were losing out on their education. Even though both Leonardo and Betty had been born in this country, they hardly spoke a word of English. Their education at Ninth Street Elementary was in Spanish, and they were put in classes along with the rest of the immigrant children. Their lack of a good early education—because of both the bad school and my mother’s unwillingness to value education—would put my younger siblings at a disadvantage. So it would come as no surprise when later Betty and Leonardo would both drop out of high school, and Betty would get involved in gangs and end up a teenage mother.
Back then, Mago, Carlos, and I had yet to visit Iguala. When Tía Emperatriz stole my father’s house, he said he would no longer return to the place of his birth. “What for?” he’d said. “I have nothing there.” He did return once, when his mother died four years later in 1997, but he never went back after that. And years later, on his deathbed, he would still mourn the loss of his house and continue to beg Tía Emperatriz to give it back.
I soon found out that the reason Mago wanted to go to Mexico was because her best friend Gaby (whom she met at La Opinión) wanted to go to Acapulco, which is a three-hour bus ride from Iguala. “I’ll just go with you to Iguala for a few days,” Mago told Mami as we drove over to the travel agency. “Then I’ll join my friend in Acapulco.” I’d thought she wanted to go to Mexico because she missed our family and the place that we had once called home. I know I did.
As we were sitting with the travel agent and going over the details of the airfare, Mago surprised me when she asked me if I wanted to go. “I don’t have any money,” I said.
“When do you ever?” Mago said, rolling her eyes. “I’m offering to buy you the plane ticket. Do you want to go or not?”
I touched my belly button, something I hadn’t done in a long time, and I once again felt that yearning for my home country, although it shamed me to realize that the yearning wasn’t as strong as it used to be. I thought about all those credit-card bills Mago had, her car payments, the bills for the telephone line she’d installed in our bedroom, the money she had to give our father for household expenses. I thought about the student loans she still had to repay for a college education she had given up on.
“I don’t know,” I said, ashamed of myself for not being able to tell her that no, I didn’t want her to spend any more money because I would rather she used it to return to school.
“I know you want to go,” she said. She handed her credit card to the travel agent and purchased our tickets.
Mago, Mami, Leonardo, Betty, and I went to Mexico a few weeks later. Carlos couldn’t come because of his new responsibilities as head of his own household. Papi was furious when he found out I would be missing a week and a half of school to go on the trip, but Mago told him he was going to have to let me go because our tickets were nonrefundable. I felt awful about having to miss school. I could count the times I had missed on one hand: in fifth grade when I had lice, seventh grade when I had the chicken pox, eighth grade when we had to go to the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana to process our paperwork for our legal residency, and now, a visit home in my senior year. In the end, Papi gave in when I came home with the assignments my teachers gave me so that I wouldn’t fall behind while I was gone. As much as I hated missing school and not getting that perfect attendance certificate I loved to get at the end of a semester, I was desperate to return to the country of my birth.
I didn’t know what to expect when I returned to Mexico. Two months from then, I would be celebrating my eighth anniversary in the United States. I was seventeen years old. I thought I was no longer that little girl who had once lived there, although now I realize that little girl will always be inside me.
As we made our way to Abuelita Chinta’s house, we drove over the bridge above the river in which my cousin Catalina drowned. It was no longer much of a river but a dumping ground for trash.
“That’s gross!” Mago said as we got hit with the smell of stagnant, putrid water.
We passed by the train station, and I was shocked to see it completely empty.
“Where are the vendors? Where are the travelers?” I asked the taxi driver.
He told us that a year before, the Mexican government had privatized the railroad system, and the service to Iguala was suspended. There were no more passengers coming through every day. There were no more vendors who sold t
heir wares and food. There were no more people from neighboring towns who would go there to catch the train. Men like my uncles, who had unloaded the freight trains to make a living, had found it even harder to survive.
As we sped down the road, I turned to look at the train station, feeling my eyes burn with tears. It was no longer one of the most important places in Iguala. Now, it was just a relic, an open wound that would never let the community forget that there once had been such a thing as progress.
Since we had too many suitcases, the taxi driver had no choice but to leave us at Abuelita Chinta’s doorstep, instead of dropping us off at the main road. But that meant he now had to drive over the unpaved road that was full of holes and jutting rocks. I felt as if we were on a ship being tossed around by a storm.
“Jesus Christ,” Mago said. “I can’t believe these roads. They would ruin my Tercel for sure!”
As soon as we got to the tamarind tree by Doña Chefa’s house, I knew we were almost there. My heart started to beat faster. We pulled up in front of my grandmother’s little shack. I knew that I had been in the U.S. for too long when the sight of my grandmother’s shack, with its bamboo sticks, corrugated metal roof, and tar-soaked cardboard, shocked me. Had I really lived in this place?
A few feet away from the house was an abandoned freight car left to rust on the tracks. There were five children playing in it, and I felt a pang of sadness that they would never know the Iguala I had known, the lively place travelers would visit. They would never hear the whistle of the evening train or taste the wonderful chicken quesadillas that Mago had once sold at the train station. Seeing those kids’ dusty bare feet, dirty hair, and torn clothing, I knew how my father had seen us those many years ago when he’d returned. I wondered if he had also felt his heart break.