When my Cooking badge finally arrived, I sewed it with pride onto my sash, right next to the Science badge.
* * *
By the time I got the Cooking badge, in the fall of sixth grade, I wasn’t the only member of my family who had joined a Girl Scout troop. Mami had been in charge of my troop’s cookie sale for two years, and she’d seen how the Girl Scouts had changed my life. They had changed her life too. Why couldn’t Laura be a Girl Scout? she wondered.
We all knew Laura was different from everyone else in our family, and she knew it too. She probably didn’t remember her life before she got meningitis, but she knew that she had trouble learning. She often got frustrated when she saw other children learning the alphabet or doing things that were hard for her. She loved to draw, but she had difficulty with motor skills, such as inserting a straw through the top of a drinking cup. Not long after she enrolled in Alameda Elementary School, the teachers called Mami in for a meeting: Laura couldn’t keep up with the other first graders.
The teachers suggested that Mami enroll Laura in a school for children with learning disabilities on the other side of Las Cruces. Laura soon came to love her new school, and, now in second grade, she was even learning the alphabet. We all tried to be sure nobody made fun of her, but sometimes it happened anyway. Still, Laura was always good-tempered and loving.
Mami decided it was time for Laura to enroll in Brownies, just like I had. She formed a small troop of girls from Laura’s special-needs school, with Mami as their leader. I would come to their meetings and help when I had time.
All the girls in Laura’s troop were in her class at school. Some of them, like Martha and Tina, were her good friends. Some of the girls had Down syndrome or other developmental disabilities.
Mami had to make sure the girls in Laura’s troop had more time than the girls in my troop had to complete their activities and craft projects, and many of the girls needed extra help. Maybe they didn’t do as much as we had when I was in Brownies, but they did go on a trip to the park that first year, and they wove sit-upons, the way my troop had.
Best of all, when Laura put on her Brownie uniform, and later, when she was a Junior and then a Cadette, she was a regular kid. She was a Girl Scout, as I was before her, and just like all the other Girl Scouts we knew. Even Papá could see how happy that made her.
One time, years later, after Laura had crossed the bridge into Cadettes, Mami did something for Laura’s troop that even got into the newspaper. Every year on various holidays, a Girl Scout troop would post the colors—raise the United States flag—at the local adobe courthouse. Why couldn’t Laura’s troop do this? Mami asked herself.
My mother lobbied for Laura’s troop to post the colors. The people at the courthouse were skeptical. The girls in Laura’s troop were from the “other” school. They sometimes behaved oddly. Children and occasionally even adults who didn’t know any better made fun of them.
But Mami insisted that Laura’s troop could do it. She trained them like a drill sergeant.
Tina was selected to carry the American flag, which really upset my sister. She wanted the honor of posting the flag, but my mother did not play favorites. Laura did lead the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance, her hand proudly over her heart.
The day they posted the colors, the girls in my sister’s troop were beautifully turned out, with pressed, immaculate uniforms. They marched in perfect unison with the flag held high. At the courthouse, they presented the colors and everyone cheered. It was one of the proudest days of Laura’s life—and of Mami’s.
That day, when I saw my sister and her friends doing such a normal thing, being good citizens, I cried tears of joy. They weren’t the special kids that day, the ones who couldn’t learn in the same way or keep up with everyone else. Instead, they were just ordinary Girl Scouts performing their civic duty. I have never forgotten that.
Over time, the Girl Scouts were good for all three of us: Mami, Laura, and me. We each conquered new skills, gained confidence, and learned how to be more involved in the world around us. Because Mami needed to know about bank accounts to run the cookie sale, my troop leaders helped her learn about the banking system. As she grew more self-confident, Mami even opened her own savings account. In those days, women needed their husbands’ permission to open a bank account, and many married women didn’t have their own separate accounts. Papá was annoyed, but in the end he gave his permission. At the end of my time in Junior Girl Scouts, I loved the way my sash looked, with its rows of colorful badges. I was proud of what the badges represented, each one showing that I’d mastered a new skill. Every badge reminded me of the community to which I belonged. I could look at the badges and remember the conversations I’d had with my troop leaders and with other girls about skills we were learning. Whether those skills belonged to the kitchen or to the outdoors, we were all gaining confidence in our own abilities.
Laura in her Girl Scout uniform, 1972
Chapter 13
Planning for Survival
When I was young, I could never understand how my mother calculated time. At school, the day was divided into blocks of minutes. At 9:30, I knew we’d put down our books to stand and stretch at our desks. At 12:15, we’d have lunch, and afterward, recess at 12:45. I liked stacking my books when the bell rang and lining up at the front of the room at the same time each day.
But at home, time moved differently. “We’re going to the store,” Mami would say. As soon as she said that, a neighbor would drop by, and Mami would offer her a cup of coffee and a slice of cake. They’d start chatting about somebody’s niece who was getting married, and an hour later, nobody had gone to the store. Then Armando, the baby, would wake up hungry, and we’d be out of milk, and Mami would just laugh and send Mario or me to the Piggly Wiggly.
In my parents’ culture, people were a priority. So Mami would always choose visiting with a neighbor or relative over running an errand or getting somewhere on time. To treat people any other way would be rude.
Sometimes this confused me. I could never tell what would happen next. We would go to Chihuahua, in Mexico, to visit Mami’s family. But when we got there, Mami didn’t seem to be in any rush. “We’ll meet up with them later,” she’d say.
“Where?” I always wanted to know.
Mami would just shake her head. “You’ll see,” she’d say. Then she’d repeat, “We’ll meet up with them,” leaving me puzzled.
Later in the day, we’d be shopping downtown or enjoying a fruit drink in a café, and sure enough, a couple of our aunts and cousins would come around the corner. Everyone’s face would light up, and they’d rush over to us. It was like magic, I thought while being enveloped in warm hugs. But I was still mystified about how Mami had known this would happen.
My friends from Anglo families never had this experience. Their families always planned when and where to meet. I loved the way Mami welcomed people into our lives without seeming to plan in advance. I could see how much she valued our friends and relations and how much they loved her for that. I knew it must be part of my culture. But I was beginning to realize how my family’s world was different from that of my classmates. I didn’t know why that was. It just was.
* * *
On our yearly summer trips to see Mami’s mother in Chihuahua, Mexico, or on Papá’s trips to El Paso every other week to see his papá, Papá drove a series of used cars. We’d own one for a while, maybe a year or two, and then it would break down, so Papá would sell it and buy another from a neighbor or a relative.
By the time I was nine, Papá had gotten fed up with cars that broke down. “They’re lemons,” he said. “All of them.”
I knew “lemon” means a machine that doesn’t work well, but I didn’t see the connection to the fruit. Was a broken car sour? Full of juice? I sometimes heard gasoline referred to as juice, even though gas was poisonous.
Soon after Papá’s comment, he and Mami bought a new car, a two-door Pontiac LeMans. It was a big, beauti
ful coupe, painted aqua—the color of the ocean—with an enormous, graceful chrome bumper. The car had bucket seats up front, a roomy back seat, and a powerful V-8 engine. It wasn’t the most practical family car, but my parents were very proud of it. I was proud of it too. And I was happy to see Mami and Papá working together to get such a nice car for us.
At first, our new car had plenty of pep, but over time, the engine would sometimes stutter and it wouldn’t speed up when we got on the highway. Papá would pump the gas pedal or shift the gear, and after a few seconds, the car would surge ahead. It didn’t occur to him to have the car serviced, or even to change the oil. When one of our cars stopped working, it was a mysterious process. All we knew was that it occurred too frequently, and at the most inconvenient times.
By the summer of 1968, when I turned eleven, we’d had the LeMans for a couple of years. The seats were a little stained, and there were some dings in the paint, but it still looked sporty, like a car on television, and not like our other jalopies.
When school started that August, everyone in my sixth-grade class was talking about the Olympics. They would be starting the next month in Mexico City.
Mami and Papá were filled with pride that the Olympics were in Mexico, and they decided that our family should attend. One day, when I came home from school, Mami told me we’d be leaving the next morning. We would be out of school for two weeks, and I would miss two Girl Scout meetings! But I knew how important this trip was to my parents, who ordinarily would never let us skip school unless we were very sick.
Mexico City was one thousand two hundred miles away—even farther away from Las Cruces than South Dakota! We would start with a long drive through the Chihuahuan Desert to visit my grandmother and some of Mami’s sisters in Chihuahua. Then we’d continue on to Mexico City.
Much as we had for our previous trips to Mexico, we packed the night before leaving. The next day was Saturday, and Mami woke us up before sunrise. We dressed in our good clothes, since we’d be visiting family first. Mario, Laura, and I climbed into the back seat, and Papá got behind the wheel—he always drove on our family trips. Even after she got her license, Mami never drove when Papá was in the car. She sat up front holding Armando. Back then, most babies and small children didn’t sit in car seats. Our car had seat belts, but we didn’t use them.
That morning, my mother had packed a breakfast so we could eat on the way. She never let us eat in the car, so we made a quick stop to eat our breakfast.
* * *
In the back seat, Mario, Laura, and I usually bickered over who had to sit in the middle. Mario and I played games to see how many different license plates we could spot, and Laura liked to look for children in the back seats of the cars we passed. We were used to the forty-five-minute drive to El Paso and familiar with the six-hour ride to Chihuahua, but I wondered what the long journey to Mexico City would be like.
Mami and Papá were proud to be attending the Olympics in the country where their families were from, but they hadn’t planned ahead. Neither of them had thought to order tickets, arrange for hotels, or prepare the car for a round trip of nearly two thousand five hundred miles, much of it through the desert.
Still, we were excited as we crossed into Mexico and received the TURISTA sticker on the windshield, branding us tourists in the country where Mami was born. Driving away from Juárez, the border city, we ventured onto the road that would take us into the desert.
We’d pass a few very small towns on the way to Chihuahua, but most of our trip would take us through open desert. My mother had packed a little water and a few snacks, which we ate in Juárez. Mami planned to stop in some of the towns to buy cheese and other local provisions.
Soon we had passed the last buildings on the outskirts of Juárez. The landscape became largely flat, broken up by gullies and small hills. We saw shrubs and cacti but few other signs of life. We settled back in our seats, Armando dozing in Mami’s arms up front, Laura chattering about a bird circling overhead. An hour passed, and I felt sleepy.
Suddenly, we heard a loud squeal from the engine. Red lights flashed on the instrument panel, and Papá quickly pulled over to the side of the road. Something was very wrong. We all piled out of the car, and my father opened the hood. Peering into the workings of the motor, we all saw the torn fan belt. I didn’t know much about engines, but I knew this wasn’t good.
As my parents talked about what to do, we stood huddled by the car. It was a scorching desert day, and few cars or trucks were on the road.
I knew Papá couldn’t fix the car. And nobody in those days would have expected a woman like Mami to understand how a car’s engine worked. Besides, we didn’t have a spare fan belt or tools.
After a while, Mario and I grew bored and went to play in the sand dunes. Mami wasn’t happy about our doing so, since we were dressed in our good clothes, but she soon relented, since there was nothing else for us to do.
Aside from the cacti and other plants, the desert looked empty of life. But as I sank to my knees, running my hands through the hot sand, I saw a scorpion, its tail curved over its back. We spied a smooth path in the sand, so we knew we’d better stay on the lookout for snakes, too.
After a while, we grew hungry and thirsty, but we didn’t complain. There was water for Armando in his bottle, but there was nothing for anyone else to drink, since we’d planned to buy drinks en route. And there was nothing we could do about that. I wiped the sweat off my brow, thinking about our Girl Scout trips, which we always planned ahead. We always brought along enough food and water too.
At home, my mother assumed that my father would manage the exterior of the house, the lawns, and the car, just as Uncle Sam did in Tía Alma’s family. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen: Papá wasn’t interested in home maintenance. In his free time he watched the news on television or read or talked with my brother or uncle about politics. But he just wasn’t a handy guy.
Papá still took for granted that he was in charge of our family. But that day in the desert, he couldn’t fix the car. He didn’t have a solution to the problem we faced, and we all knew it would get worse if we stayed where we were.
We had only one option. Stranded in the desert, hungry and thirsty, we started walking along the road to Chihuahua, over the hot asphalt. I wondered how we would ever get out of this jam. This was not the first time one of our cars had broken down, although it had never happened this far from home. I knew it didn’t have to be this way.
Even though we hadn’t gone too far, we were all hot and tired when a bus finally appeared on the highway. My parents waved frantically, and it stopped.
My mother and father decided that Papá would have to go back to the car and wait for someone to come along and help. Mami herded the four of us kids into the bus, and other passengers moved over and made space for us to sit. Taking pity, some of them offered us drinks and food.
Luckily, the bus was going all the way to Chihuahua. We made it to my grandmother’s house that night, and the next day, my father joined us. He said the highway patrol had stopped and fixed the car.
The following morning, Papá drove the LeMans to a mechanic in my grandmother’s town and had it inspected. The new fan belt was working fine. We’d been lucky: the engine wasn’t damaged. We were off to Mexico City and the Olympics!
* * *
After a day of driving with no mishaps, we spent the night in a magnificent old hotel in Zacatecas. Back on the road, as we approached Mexico City, we saw bright colors and flowers everywhere. We learned later that the government had provided paint and flowers so people could spruce up their homes and streets and the country could put on its best face for the world’s attention.
Mami and Papá had said we would be staying in a hotel, but as they discussed where to go, it became clear that neither of them had made a reservation. Mami thought it was Papá’s job, and Papá hadn’t thought it was necessary. Now we learned that every hotel in the city was fully booked for the Olympics. Where would we
stay?
We tried a few hotels in downtown Mexico City, and people looked at Papá as if he were crazy even for asking if a room was available. Then he got lucky. At the desk of the next hotel he tried, a clerk said that a customer with a reservation had been delayed. We could have his room, as long as we understood that when he arrived, we would have to leave.
Everything was going to work out, I thought. Before that trip, I had stayed in a hotel only once before, in Phoenix, Arizona, and I couldn’t wait to see our room. In the lobby, while we waited for Papá to finish checking us in, a man with very dark skin was staring at my family. He asked me a question, and I couldn’t believe that he was speaking with a British accent. I thought all British people were fair-skinned. The man said he was from Bermuda, an island in the Atlantic Ocean near North Carolina. He told me that he was staring because he was surprised that a brown-skinned family like mine was speaking English and not Spanish. He gave me an enameled pin that Bermuda had manufactured just for the Olympics.
After we registered and left our suitcases in our room, we walked outside. There was so much to see! In the park near our hotel, there were Olympics displays and people selling all kinds of goods—and there were swans swimming in a pond. The weather was beautiful, and my whole family was happy to have reached our destination.
It turned out, though, that to attend the Olympics, we needed to buy tickets. That hadn’t occurred to my parents before we left on our trip, and by now, tickets to the popular matches and games were sold out. At last, Papá was able to purchase tickets to a sport we’d never heard of—water polo. We watched teams of men from Greece and Yugoslavia in an enormous swimming pool, competing to score points by throwing a ball into a goal.
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