by Reyna Grande
When Edwin and I got to UCSC, many students were already there moving in. Because I was transferring as a junior, I got to stay at the student apartments at Kresge East, not the dorms. I sat in the car with Edwin while I watched students and their parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters carrying boxes. I saw fathers patting their sons on the back, mothers crying while clinging to their daughters. “Do you need anything else?” I heard them ask their children. “We’ll miss you,” they said.
I thought about my father. I thought about my mother. I thought about Mago, Carlos, and Betty. I wished they were here now, sharing this special day with me. But we were three hundred miles apart, and this time, it was I who had left.
Edwin helped me take my few belongings to my apartment. It only took a couple of trips. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, although I wasn’t sure.
He pulled out of the parking lot and waved goodbye, promising to come back every weekend to visit me. It made me feel good that he wouldn’t be too far. I watched him drive away, and as soon as he was out of sight, I began to walk. It was late afternoon, the sun would be going down, and I wanted to see as much of the campus as I could before it got too dark. I walked and immersed myself in the redwood trees, smelling the pungent scent of their needles. The sky here was the bluest I’d ever seen. The air the purest I’d ever inhaled. I felt all the tension in my body begin to fade. There was a beauty here I had never imagined. I heard the wind rustling the trees. I spotted a family of deer, and I stopped and looked at them as they foraged for food. I couldn’t believe there were deer here! At the sight of them, I knew I’d made a good choice to leave Los Angeles and come here. I felt like Anne of Green Gables and her Avonlea. Like her, I had found my place of beauty.
I continued my walk and ended up by Porter College, at the meadow where I could see the ocean shining blue and streaked with orange. I thought about the first time I had seen the ocean in Santa Monica. I thought about my father holding my hand, about how afraid I had been that he would let go of me.
I looked at the ocean, and I realized there was no need to be afraid. I had gotten this far, despite everything. Now, all I had to do was focus on why I was there—to make my dreams a reality. I closed my eyes, and I saw myself at the water’s edge, holding tightly to my father’s callused hand.
And I let it go.
Epilogue
Reyna at UCSC graduation, 1999
IN JUNE OF 1999, I became the first person in my family to graduate from college. At UCSC I earned my BA in creative writing and in film and video and graduated with college honors, honors in the major, and Phi Beta Kappa. My family was there to celebrate that accomplishment with me: Mago, Victor, and their two children; Carlos, his wife, and their daughter; my mother and my brother Leonardo; Betty, her boyfriend Omar, and their son—and my father.
UCSC has a tradition that seniors are asked to write about a teacher who most inspired them. I wrote about Diana. My essay was chosen as the winner, and Diana was flown up to Santa Cruz so that she could be at my graduation. I gave a speech about her at the ceremony, and that was the first time I ever thanked her publicly for what she had done for me. I haven’t stopped talking about her since.
In 2000, I became an ESL teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District, where I hoped to be like Diana, an inspirational teacher. I taught immigrant children in grades six through eight for four years, and that was when I learned that my story wasn’t unique. Like me, all the children who walked into my classroom had spent time apart from their parents. In fact, studies show that 80 percent of Latin American children in U.S. schools have been separated from a parent in the process of migration. I’ve also gotten to see the other side of that experience. In 2003, I taught adult school for the LAUSD, where many of my students were mothers and fathers who had left their children behind. In them, I saw my parents.
The cycle of leaving children behind has not ended. Nor will it end, as long as there is poverty, as long as parents feel that the only way to provide something better for their children is by leaving.
In 2002, I became a citizen of the United States. I have now been in this country for twenty-seven years. The United States is my home; it is the place that allowed me to dream, and later, to make those dreams into realities. But my umbilical cord was buried in Iguala, and I have never forgotten where I came from. I consider myself Mexican American because I am from both places. Both countries are within me. They coexist within me. And my writing is the bridge that connects them both.
In 2006, my first novel, Across a Hundred Mountains, was published. The following year it received an American Book Award. In 2009, Dancing with Butterflies, my second novel, followed.
In 2008, I received my MFA in creative writing, and unfortunately I’m still the only person in my family to have graduated from college. But between us, my siblings and I have thirteen children. I know that soon I won’t be the only college graduate in the family.
Diana and I are still close. I have known her for half my life. She has seen me become the woman I am today—a wife, mother, and writer.
Carlos, Mago, Betty, and Leonardo are doing well, trying to live as best they can. Ultimately, that is all we can do.
My relationship with Mila is better than it has ever been. She remained by my father’s side up until the day he died. My father’s illness brought us closer together. She also managed to repair her relationship with her children as well, and they are very close. My children call her “Grandma Mila” and like visiting her.
Our relationship with our mother has gotten slightly better, although I have come to accept that there will always be a distance between us. My siblings and I have done our best to forgive her, and accept her for who she is.
As for my father, when he was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2010, there were times when I had to stop outside the door of his house—and sometimes, the threshold of his hospital room—to tell myself that the father I was about to see was not the same father I had come to live with twenty-five years ago. I had to leave my emotions at the door—anger, resentment, bitterness, sadness, frustration, regret—before I could step inside the room and be able to look him in the eye and feel nothing but concern for his well-being.
There were times when my emotions got the better of me, and I would not go to the hospital on those days. It was the same for my siblings. “He’s gotten what he deserved,” we would tell ourselves sometimes. “He chose to drink, and now he has to pay the consequences.” Or we would talk about the way he treated us when we came to the U.S. to live with him. “He’s reaping what he sowed,” we would tell each other on the days we couldn’t bring ourselves to go see him. “Now he wants us around, and when we wanted to be there with him, he pushed us away.”
But there were also days when I would think of the other father—not the violent, alcoholic one, but the one who left for the U.S. because he wanted to give me something better, the one who did not abandon me in Mexico, the one who would tell me about the importance of an education, the one who taught me to dream big. Whenever I thought about that father, I would spend hours researching liver cancer on the Internet and at the public library hoping to keep him alive as long as possible. I would read books about alternative medicine. I would take him to my neighborhood supermarket which sells organic fruits and vegetables, hormone-free meat, and health products such as milk thistle and stevia. I would cook dandelion soup for him, put it in containers, and then drive over to his house to drop them off.
Then, when he had been in the hospital for two months, when I weighed more than he did, when he needed dialysis every other day and his stomach fluids drained, when his only hope of getting out was by receiving not only a new liver but new kidneys as well, my research and my soup were no longer needed. What was needed was my presence. What was needed was my conversation to help him pass the time.
What was needed was something I was struggling to give—my forgiveness.
The day be
fore my thirty-sixth birthday, I found myself at my father’s hospital bed as his life support was turned off. As I held my father’s hand, and my life with him flashed through my mind, I thought about that question I had often asked myself: If I had known what life with my father would be like, would I have still followed him to El Otro Lado?
You made me who I am, I thought as he took his last breath. And I knew then that the answer to my question was yes.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank my editor at Atria, Malaika Adero, for her unwavering support and her belief in this work even before it was finished, and my agent at Full Circle Literary, Adriana Dominguez, for her invaluable guidance and friendship.
Writing this book was particularly challenging for me in many ways, and I might not have completed it had it not been for the generous support of the following people:
Cory Rayala, my wonderful, supportive husband whose keen insights I could not have done without; my mother-in-law, Carol Ruxton. I thank my lucky stars that I have you in my life. My siblings Mago, Carlos, and Betty, because this is your story as much as it is mine. Thank you for your memories, and for filling in the blanks when I couldn’t remember. My parents, Natalio Grande and Juana Rodriguez, for giving me something to write about. Diana Savas, my mentor, my teacher, my friend, my hero.
My most sincere gratitude to all the people who critiqued the manuscript, in part or in whole. Thank you all for your contributions:
The Macondo Writers Workshop 2011 participants—Ruth Behar, Emmy Pérez, Estela Gonzalez, Marcela Fuentes, Jessica Viada, Rachel Jennings, Nancy Agabian; my Macondo teachers—Manuel Muñoz and Helena María Viramontes; my former writing teachers—Micah Perks, Leonard Chang, and Leslie Schwartz. My writer friends—Laila Lalami, Nicole Mones, Michele Serros, Thelma Reyna, Patricia Santana, Melinda Palacio, Sarah Cortez, Zulmara Cline, Lara Rios, Margo Candela, Jamie Martinez, Stella Pope Duarte. My friend Janet Johns. And finally, the lovely ladies in my writing group—Jessica Garrison, Sonia Nazario, Ann Marsh, Lara Bazelon, Lisa Richardson, Toni Ann Johnson, and Tsan Abrahamson.
I am deeply grateful to you all.
Photography Credits
Courtesy of Reyna Grande: pages 14, 30, 75, 103, 118, 119, 274, 278, 279, 316
Courtesy of the Grande Family: pages 3, 5, 18, 23, 32, 39, 42, 47, 55, 58, 61, 69, 77, 84, 89, 94, 112, 129, 134, 141, 143, 146, 165, 168, 176, 182, 188, 192, 198, 202, 205, 211, 215, 219, 226, 227, 229, 233, 234, 240, 245, 250, 257, 258, 263, 265, 271, 283, 293, 299, 307, 308
Courtesy of Grad Images: page 319
© istockphoto: page 153
REYNA GRANDE is the author of two award-winning novels. Across a Hundred Mountains received an American Book Award, and Dancing with Butterflies was the recipient of an International Latino Book Award. Reyna lives in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.reynagrande.com.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
• THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS •
Facebook.com/AtriaBooks
Twitter.com/AtriaBooks
JACKET DESIGN BY JAMES PERALES
JACKET PHOTOGRAPH (DREAMY SKY) © GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR/LUIS MONTEMAYOR
AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY IBARIONEX PERELLO
COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER
ALSO BY REYNA GRANDE
Dancing with Butterflies
Across a Hundred Mountains
A través de cien montañas (Spanish)
We hope you enjoyed reading this Atria Books eBook.
* * *
Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Atria Books and Simon & Schuster.
C LICK HERE TO SIGN UP
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2012 by Reyna Grande
Photography credits are on page 325.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Atria Books hardcover edition August 2012
and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Designed by Kyoko Watanabe
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grande, Reyna.
The distance between us: a memoir / Reyna Grande.—1st Atria Books hardcover ed.
p. cm.
1. Grande, Reyna—Childhood and youth. 2. Mexican Americans—Biography. 3. Immigrants—United States—Biography. 4. Abused children—United States—Biography. 5. Mexico—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects. 6. United States—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects. 7. Mexican Americans—California—Los Angeles—Biography. 8. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Biography. 9. Mexican American women authors—Biography. I. Title.
E184.M5G665 2012
973'.046872—dc23
2012001634
ISBN 978-1-4516-6177-4
ISBN 978-1-4516-6180-4 (ebook)