by Reyna Grande
Freight cars left to rust on the tracks by Abuelita Chinta’s house
Tía Güera and Abuelita Chinta came out to greet us. My aunt had built herself a shack next to my grandmother’s. She had returned to her no-good husband even though he would drink his wages away, beat her, and cheat on her. She held a baby girl in her arms. Then she called out the names Lupita and Angel and two of the kids who had been playing in the abandoned freight car came running.
“Say hello to your cousins and your aunt,” Tía Güera instructed them. I hadn’t recognized Lupita. She was a year younger than Betty, so that put her at eleven. Angel was seven, Leonardo’s age. But both my cousins were so skinny and tiny, whereas by then both Betty and Leonardo were overweight from all that junk my mother fed them. Here, next to my cousins, who barely had enough to eat, that extra weight was even more shameful to look at.
My grandmother’s face was mapped with more wrinkles, her hair was mostly gray now, and a few more teeth had fallen out. But when she hugged me, I breathed in her scent of almond oil and epazote, and I couldn’t believe I was back in my grandmother’s arms. Her scent was all I needed to feel that I was home.
“I have prayed for this moment for so long,” Abuelita Chinta said, squeezing me tight. “God has finally answered my prayers.” By then I had grown to my full height—five feet, zero inches. I was so used to looking up at everyone that I felt awkward having to look down at my tiny grandmother, who was three inches shorter than me. How tiny and fragile she seemed to me now.
We went into the shack with her, and not long after we had sat down to eat the meal Abuelita Chinta had prepared for us, Mago began to complain. “Look at my shoes,” she said. “They’re covered in dust. Ugh.”
“Get over it,” I said, thinking about Abuelita Chinta’s feet. Hadn’t Mago seen the layer of dust on our grandmother’s feet, the dirt caked under her toenails? Abuelita Chinta gave her a rag, and Mago went to the washing stone to wipe her shoes and wash her feet.
After our meal, Tío Gary arrived with his children in tow. I was shocked to see how skinny my uncle was. He had a rope tied around his waist because he didn’t have a belt to hold up his pants. After my cousin Catalina’s death, he and his wife had divorced, and now he had remarried and fathered more children. At that time he had four boys; the youngest would eventually die from leukemia because my uncle did not have the resources to help his child.
Don Lino’s truck
While we sat outside the shack, we heard the familiar sound of Don Lino’s truck. We turned to see it bumping and jerking its way down the dirt road. All the neighbors’ kids, including my cousins, ran out to meet the truck, just as I had done while living there. For a moment, I felt like running to climb on it. As the truck passed by us, I smiled at hearing the laughter of the children on top of the truck. I waved at them, and they waved back.
Mago scrambled out of the way when Don Lino’s truck sent a cloud of dust toward us. “Ugh!” she said, and went into the shack.
“Why don’t you go to El Otro Lado, Gary?” my mother asked my uncle. “You can give your children a better life if you do.” I watched the kids get off Don Lino’s truck. My uncle turned to look at his own children who were making their way back to us. He shook his head.
“I’d rather be poor, but together,” was my uncle’s reply. I didn’t know then that my mother encouraged my uncle to go north every time she visited. I didn’t know that his reply had never changed. I thought about my father, the choice that he had made to go north, and the price we had paid for that decision. But I also knew that something good had come from that decision. As Papi often said, my siblings and I had been given the opportunity of a lifetime. How could we let it go to waste? As I looked at my cousins walking down the dirt road, I thought of my father, of what he wanted our future to be like, and I understood.
I took advantage of being there and quickly set out to look for the friends I’d left behind. Some of them were already married and had children! Others were still living at home and working as maids, or at the U.S.-owned garment factory nearby, or whatever else they could find. But things had changed. When you come from the U.S., people look at you differently. They treat you differently.
The boys looked at me as if they wanted to marry me there on the spot so that I could take them back with me to El Otro Lado. My girlfriends didn’t invite me into their houses like they used to. Instead, they stood outside with me and blocked the entrance to their houses with their bodies, and I knew it was because they didn’t want me to see the poverty they lived in. They didn’t offer me anything to eat or drink because they couldn’t afford to feed themselves, let alone a guest. They didn’t tell me much about their lives because I knew that they thought it could never compare to my life, now that I was living in that beautiful place they all yearned for.
Instead, I awkwardly stood with my seventeen-year-old friend Meche in front of her shack. I didn’t know what to say to her as she held her baby in her arms and tried to wipe the dirt and mucus off his face with the corner of her blouse. She didn’t look at me. She looked past me, at the huizache trees behind me, her cheeks reddened with the shame of knowing that no matter how hard she wiped, the layer of dirt would never come off.
I was determined to make her see that I was still the same Reyna, but I didn’t know how to do that. In the U.S., the only people I spoke Spanish with were my mother and father. With everyone else I communicated in English, with Mago, Carlos, Mila, and my teachers and friends at school. And as I stood there trying to have a talk with Meche, I kept stumbling on my Spanish words. She laughed and said I spoke like a pocha.
It was an awkward conversation. I tried to think of something else to talk about beside school, marching band, my writing, books, and the colleges I had applied to the semester before. I was afraid to admit that perhaps I might not be the same little girl who used to make mud tortillas and whose only dream of the future was to one day have her parents back.
As I walked away from Meche’s house, I realized there was something else I had lost the day I left my hometown. Even though my umbilical cord was buried in Iguala, I was no longer considered Mexican enough. To the people there, who had seen me grow up, I was no longer one of them.
When I returned to Abuelita Chinta’s house after visiting my friends, Mago was angry at me. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I’m the one who brought you here, remember? You can’t just do what you want. I wanted to leave for Acapulco today. I’m so sick of this place. Now look at what time it is.”
“I wanted to spend time with my friends before we left,” I said.
She pointed to the shacks on the other side of the canal where Meche lived and said, “I don’t know why you want to be over there with that trash.”
“What do you mean ‘trash’? Have you forgotten this is where you come from?” I was so furious, and before I could stop myself, I pushed her.
“Just because I used to live here, it doesn’t mean that I still need to be friends with these people,” she said, pushing me back. “Let them dare call me a little orphan now.”
“You conceited brat,” I said, pushing her even harder.
Next thing I knew, Mago and I were pulling at each other’s hair and tumbling to the ground.
“Reyna, Reyna, leave your sister alone!” Mami yelled. But I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know why I was so angry at my sister. How could she just sever the ties that bind us to this place, to these childhood friends of ours who weren’t able to escape this poverty like we did? I was so angry at her for quitting college and ruining her chances for a successful life. Now I realized that we owed it to them, our cousins, our friends, to do something with our lives. If not for us, then for them, because they would never be able to. I understood so clearly now why Papi said there were so many people who would die to have the opportunities we had, who would kill to get their hands on a green card. Mago’s and Carlos’s refusal to see that angered me more than anything.
“Stop! Sto
p!” Mami said. And finally I did. Mago looked at me as if she didn’t know me. I ran into my grandmother’s house crying and feeling ashamed. For the first time in my life, I had raised a hand to my sister.
How could I stop myself from feeling sad that Mago no longer cared about Mexico, that she didn’t think of this place as special because it was once our home? Her home was now the United States. Unlike me, she had no accent when she spoke English. Now I knew why that was. Even in her speech, she was trying to erase Mexico completely.
I didn’t know if I ever could. Or would want to.
20
Mago, Reyna, and Betty
A COUPLE OF WEEKS after we’d gotten back from Mexico, Mago said, “Gaby and I are looking into renting an apartment together.”
“Really?” I asked, looking away from the TV where I had been watching Anne of Green Gables on the Disney Channel. “You aren’t leaving me, are you?”
She shook her head and threw a pillow at me. “How can you think that? Of course I’ll take you with me. We can leave here and finally be in a place where we can be happy.”
I threw the pillow back at her so that she wouldn’t see how relieved I was. I knew she had forgiven me for the fight we’d had in Mexico. She said she understood, but for a second there, I thought she was going to tell me she was leaving without me.
I turned back to the TV and continued to follow Anne Shirley on her adventures. I wanted to be like Anne, strong, adventurous, pretty, and smart. I wanted to have her imagination and her way with words. But most of all, I wanted to live in a beautiful place like she did. Like me, Anne had lost her parents when she was little, and as a little orphan, her childhood had been very difficult. But Anne got lucky when she was adopted by a brother and sister who let Anne be who she wanted to be, who learned to love her and praise her for her talents, and who were not afraid to tell her that they were proud of her.
Sometimes, I would imagine getting adopted by Marilla and Matthew, too. I knew they would have been proud of my accomplishments. Like my latest one—where I had been chosen to be the assistant drum major of Franklin’s marching band now that I was in my senior year. Since the drum major was a Jehovah’s Witness, and his religion didn’t allow him to participate in most of our events, it was me who designed the field formations to the music Mr. Quan had chosen for us to learn. It was me who led the band to second place in a competition held at Wilson High School. It was me who led the band at the 1992 Highland Park Christmas Parade on Figueroa Street. Even though the parade route was only a ten-minute walk from my house, my father had not come to see me march.
This is why I was jealous of Anne. Because, unlike me, she had people who noticed even the smallest of her accomplishments.
The weeks passed with no news about an apartment. That spring semester of 1993, I enrolled in track and field. I didn’t really like running, but Mago did. On the weekends we would go to Franklin to jog around the football field, and she always left me in the dust. I thought that if I practiced every day at school, I would get faster so that I could keep up with my sister. So far, track and field hadn’t made me faster, but it had gotten me a boyfriend!
His name was Steve, and he was two years younger than me. He was fifteen, and I was seventeen. But he was so cute I didn’t care what anyone said about me dating a freshman. Even though he was younger, Steve tried to act older than me. He would tell me he wanted us to make love, to be each other’s firsts. I would tell him no, absolutely not! I wanted to be a virgin when I got married, as Mago wanted to. Besides, I told him that soon he and I might not be together anymore. If Mago rented an apartment too far from Franklin, I knew I would have to transfer, never mind that I was in my last semester of high school. I would follow my Mago to the ends of the earth if I had to.
A week later, while we were getting ready for bed, Mago said that she and Gaby had found an apartment in La Habra. I didn’t know where that was, and how far from school it would be, but before I could tell her that anywhere was fine with me she said, “Nena, I won’t be able to take you with me.”
I sat down on my bed and looked at my feet, not knowing what to say. I thought about my quinceañera, about receiving communion when I wasn’t supposed to. Here it is, I thought. Judgment Day. Please, don’t take away my Mago, God. Punish me in another way, if you must. But don’t take her from me.
“Why?” was all I managed to say.
“The manager doesn’t allow extra people in the apartment. Gaby already has her son, and her aunt is also going to be living with us so that she can babysit. With me that makes four.”
“But I could share a room with you, just like we’ve always done.”
“I know, but they won’t allow more than four people in the apartment.” She stood up from her bed and came to sit with me. “Besides, Nena, you have two and a half months to go before you finish high school. It wouldn’t be right to pull you out now and transfer you to another school. I’m sorry, Nena. I really wanted to take you with me.”
“Then stay,” I said, clutching her hand. “Like you said, I’m almost done with school. In June I could start looking for a job, and we can rent a place together. We can even take Betty with us. Be a family.”
She stared at the floor and shook her head. “I can’t stand being here anymore. I feel that I’m going to go crazy. I want to live my life in peace, do what I want without having to explain anything to anyone.”
I thought about her new boyfriend, Victor, whom she had met at La Opinión. I knew she hated it that Papi didn’t let her go out much. Now that Carlos had married and left home, Papi had been even more vigilant with us girls. I knew Victor was one of the reasons why Mago was so desperate to get out. Like Carlos, she was also in love, too in love to put up with our father’s restrictions and house rules. But how could she not wait for me to graduate so that we could leave together? She put her arm around me, and we stayed like that for a long time. She didn’t say when she was leaving and I didn’t ask. I kept hoping that maybe, just maybe, things would change.
A few days later, I knew that it was for real when Mago broke the news to Papi. “You’re such an ungrateful daughter. After everything I have done for you, ¿así es cómo me pagas?” He said that she just wanted to be able to go out with as many men as she wanted without anyone telling her what was right or wrong. He banged his fists on the table and stood up. “If you leave this house,” he told Mago, “you will be dead to me. I won’t ever want to see you again.”
Mago didn’t say anything. We stayed at the kitchen table long after Papi had left.
“Stay with us, Mago,” I said, grabbing her hand. “Stay with me.”
Every day I would come home from school, wondering if that was the day she would leave. But in the evening, Mago would come home as she always had. Papi didn’t talk to her, but by the second week it was as if nothing had happened. Mago didn’t bring up the subject anymore and Papi ended the silent treatment. All of us even went out to dinner at Papi’s favorite restaurant—La Perla in East L.A.—when I received my acceptance letter from the University of California, Irvine, which I would be attending in the fall. Although I knew that a university was much more expensive than a community college, my guidance counselor had encouraged me to apply to universities. He’d said that I couldn’t waste my good grades. All the extracurricular activities I had done, like marching band, creative writing, art, and track and field, would only help me to get in. He’d been right.
Mago told me how proud she was of me. Papi didn’t say anything like that, but the fact that he took us to his favorite restaurant said a lot, especially because he hardly ever took us anywhere. I loved the murals at La Perla. My favorite was one of a little fishing village. I didn’t know what magic the artist had used to make his murals change from day to night as the lights hanging on the ceiling changed color from red to blue. We sat there and listened to the mariachi, and I sang along with them. Papi sang along to “Volver, Volver.” I looked at his smile and I smiled, too. Nothing
made him happier than to listen to the songs of Vicente Fernández. Mago and I sang along and I got lost in the beauty of the murals at La Perla. I imagined living in the perfect little village with all my family. Always together.
Two days later, I came home to an empty bedroom.
If I had known she was leaving that day, I would have stayed home, convinced her not to go. But she had not said a word when I left for school. Instead, after hanging out with Steve after school, listening to him harass me yet again to have sex with him, I came home at four thirty, an hour before Papi got back from work, enough time to tidy up the house and pretend I had come home a lot earlier.
But when I opened the door of the bedroom, the first thing I saw was the empty closet. All of my sister’s clothes were gone, all except for a pair of overall shorts I often borrowed from her. A farewell present? I dropped onto her bed. I looked up at all the posters she had taped on the wall, photos she had torn from magazines, many of which were of Adela Noriega and Thalía, her favorite actresses ever since she had watched the soap opera Quinceañera. I couldn’t believe she would leave like that, without telling me goodbye. I thought about when my mother left with the wrestler without saying goodbye. Perhaps, like my mother, Mago didn’t want to see my tears. Maybe she thought it was better this way. But I didn’t think coming home to an empty closet was better than saying goodbye and watching her go out the door.