I left the floor and sat up on the bed next to Abuelita. “Did he tell you why?” I asked turning my full attention to her.
Abuelita looked disgusted. “He wants to reinvent himself! He says he wants a new life. It’s a common story. You hear it all the time around these parts: men go work up North, and after a while, they forget their families because they’ve started a new life en los Estados Unidos. But I never thought my own son would do this. Not to your mamá. Not to Rosalinda.”
“He can’t do that,” Pita said, choking on her words as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
“I’m afraid he’s already filed the papers. I probably shouldn’t have told you, but you all are señoritas now. I think you can handle it,” Abuelita Remedios said.
Juanita blinked, fighting back her tears as she looked up at us. “There’s no hope, then. He’s gone for good?” she asked. “Why didn’t Mamá just tell us what was going on? Did she think we were never going to find out? How long did she think she could keep this a secret?”
Abuelita patted the mattress beside her, signaling my sisters to join us on her bed. She scooted back to let us all snuggle up to her. “I’m sure she thought she was protecting you,” Abuelita explained, putting her arms around us as far as she could.
“Things are never going to get better, are they?” Juanita asked. “Mamá’s never going to get over this. And there’s nothing we can do to change it. Not if he’s never coming back.”
Abuelita pulled Juanita into her arms and held her tight. “Oh, that’s not true. Eventually, your Mamá will get over him.”
“But I always hoped that he would . . .” Velia trailed off.
“ — come back and make things better,” Delia mumbled, finishing Velia’s thought.
Both girls looked absolutely crushed. Papá’s slow, painful abandonment had wounded us deeply at first, but we had managed to get beyond it by telling ourselves we were free spirits and nothing could ever destroy us. However, looking around the room, I could see that wasn’t the case at all. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had never given up on him, because we were all openly crying now.
“Well, I can only pray he reconsiders,” Abuelita Remedios said, looking at us like we were her own daughters. “Lord knows I tried talking some sense into him.”
“But he hasn’t done it yet, has he? He hasn’t divorced her?” I asked, wondering how Mamá was able to keep her sanity with everything that was going on with us. How awful we had been to her!
“There is that,” Abuelita said, reaching out to caress our faces one by one, listening to our unhappy sighs.
“Ay, pobrecita Mamá!” Juanita wailed, giving in to her tears. “What she must be going through.”
Velia’s eyes were suddenly full of rage. “Papá can be such a jerk!”
“I’m ashamed of being his daughter,” Delia added.
“We have to get back to Mamá,” Juanita whispered, looking to the rest of us for support. “Mamá is in a lot of pain right now. She needs to hear that we still love her. Think about it. When was the last time you reached out to her?”
“Well, it’s hard to get close to her when all she does is yell at us or go to her room and cry,” Velia said defensively.
“Well, hello? She’s been abandoned!” I pointed out emphatically. “And what did we do to make things better for her? Were we concerned? Did we make things easier for her? No. We abandoned her too. We stole Papá’s car and took off. No note. No phone call. No explanation.” I paused, wondering if I should voice my previous thoughts aloud, then charged ahead. “Maybe . . . maybe Cecilia and the lechuzas were right about us. Maybe we are wicked children.”
“We are. We took advantage of her state of mind,” Juanita concluded, biting her lip nervously.
“We stopped doing our chores and ran wild and did whatever we wanted when we should have been taking care of her,” I pointed out with disgust.
“We should go home and ask her to forgive us,” Velia whispered, hanging her head.
“For being as selfish as Papá,” Delia finished her twin’s thought.
“We should take her some flowers or something,” Pita said, looking at Abuelita Remedios for approval. Her face was scrunched with wretchedness.
“Yes, we have to go home and find a way of making things right for Mamá,” Delia concluded.
Delia wiped away her tears roughly with the back of her hand. “I think it was actually all our fault,” she declared. “Papá left because we’re pesadas, too much to handle. He left because we didn’t listen to him half the time and we’re always getting in trouble with Mamá. And, well, I think he was just sick of hearing about it.”
Pita used the bottom of her shirt to wipe at her eyes. “You mean he doesn’t love us anymore?” Pita asked.
“Would you? If you had us for daughters?” Delia asked Pita, looking at her sister resentfully.
That’s when I realized the evil of what the lechuzas said about us. We had been bad, yes, but was what Papá did our fault? “Yes, I would still love us,” I said, angry with myself for not realizing the twins had been blaming themselves for Papá’s absence all this time. “The way I see it, we didn’t fail Papá, he failed us. He’s the adult here.”
Abuelita reached into her pocket and handed Pita a handkerchief. Pita took it and blew her nose into it indelicately. “Now, you listen to me, muchachitas!” Abuelita Remedios’s eyes darkened with emotion. “The truth is, adults don’t always make sense. They don’t always do what’s right. Sometimes, they are like children themselves, doing whatever they want. Cada cabeza es un mundo, they have a mind of their own. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Velia whispered, nodding her head.
“Sometimes, men leave, for whatever reason,” Abuelita continued. “Nothing you did or could have done differently would have changed that. So I want you to stop blaming yourselves or your Mamá for the choices your father has made. Instead, I want you to continue taking care of each other the way you’ve been doing so far. I’m so proud of you for standing up for your hermanitas against those evil creatures. I’m sure having to do that has taught you how important it is to stick together and love one another more than anything else in the world.”
With those words, Abuelita Remedios gathered us closer around her. We went into her arms and let her hold us. She held us tight and said, “What’s done is done. The best thing you can do is go home and let your Mamá know you’re all right. You’re all she cares about right now.”
PART III
THE RETURN
How my sisters and I were trapped in Mexico, but with the aid of the ear pendant, we were transported across the border and were taken home by the FBI. How we encountered, rejected, and sent Papá away. And how we eventually gained happiness with Mamá.
EL NOPAL: “Ay, qué nopal tan regio,
coronado con tunas moradas.”
THE CACTUS: “Oh, what a regal cactus,
crowned with purple prickly pears.”
Shortly after breakfast the next morning, we stuffed our belongings into our backpacks and headed home. Abuelita Remedios was sitting at the table drinking coffee when we went into the kitchen. Sitting next to her hand, on the table, was a small pile of tiny homemade envelopes. She took them and placed them in my hand when I sat next to her. “Something to get you started,” she said, closing my hand over them.
“What are they?” I took the sealed rectangles and turned them over to read the hand-printed labels.
“Semillitas — from my garden to yours,” Abuelita said.
I looked through the assortment of seed packets she had put together for me and almost burst into tears. “I’m going to miss you, Abuelita Remedios.”
“Me too,” my grandmother said, pulling me close for a hug.
“I’m going to miss
you too,” Delia chimed in.
Abuelita let me go long enough to hug Delia. I put the seed packets in the left pocket of my shorts and wiped my eyes. “I wish we could have stayed longer.”
Our grandmother pulled a handkerchief out of her dress pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “I know. Me too.”
“Don’t be sad, Abuelita.” Pita squeezed in with us and put her arms around our grandmother’s neck. “We love you. You’re the bestest grandma ever. You are, Abuelita. That’s why we love you so much.”
Velia let out a disgusted groan and rolled her eyes. She looked down at Pita, and declared, “You’re such a kiss-up!”
Abuelita smiled. “Oh, I know you love me, Pita, just like I know you love your mother. That’s why it’s important you get back there. She is going through a very difficult time right now; she needs you as much as you need her.” She patted our cheeks, kissed our foreheads, and caressed our hair before she continued. “Besides, now that you know where I live, you can start visiting me more often — only maybe you can drive with your Mamá next time. You and your Mamá are welcome to come stay with me whenever you want, for as long as you want, especially at Christmas time.”
“Oh yes! We’ll bring presents, and eat tamales, and stay up every night,” exclaimed Pita, not at all sounding like a kiss-up, but like her true generous self, the Pita that Mamá knows and loves and babies more than the rest of us.
“That sounds like a plan,” Abuelita Remedios said, hugging each of us in turn again. “We’ll do that then. Every Christmas. Every holiday. But especially in the summertime.”
I hated to break up this moment, but it was getting late. “We should get going,” I whispered.
Immediately after breakfast, Abuelita drove us in an old four-door ranch truck. She hadn’t driven in almost ten years, she said. Mostly, she kept the vehicle for emergencies. Everything that needed to be driven to and from the hacienda was taken care of by either Roberto or his son, Arturo, who loved to go into town. But today she’d decided to drive us to the border herself because there was only room in the pickup for six people. Her driving was a little rusty, which made for an interesting ride. Sometimes she’d veer out of her lane for a second or slow down so much, she’d be driving way below the speed limit. But all in all, I felt confident in her ability to get us to the Frontera safely.
During the ride, the girls were somber, almost distant, but Abuelita Remedios was full of spunk. She talked all the way up Highway 57, giving us advice about how to handle questions we might encounter about our adventures in Mexico. She didn’t believe in lying — was against it in fact — but she also didn’t feel we should go around telling people things that would make them think we were fibbing.
“Nowadays, people are too cynical and don’t believe in magic anymore,” Abuelita Remedios said as she drove us down the road. “Best to keep all those supernatural experiences to yourselves. No use trying to convince people of things they can’t understand, much less believe.”
It was good advice, and we all agreed Mamá would be the only one who would ever believe us. Because to be honest, if I hadn’t lived it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it either.
Halfway up to the border, Abuelita stopped to buy us new outfits before we drove on. She said she didn’t want Mamá to see us dressed like limosneras and think we’d taken to begging for food in the streets during our stay in Mexico. We slipped into our new clothes in the dressing room of a quiet little dress shop on the outskirts of Monclova. Pita was especially joyful to be wearing a new dress, although she rejected the one with a silky red bow at the collar, saying she was too old to wear moños.
We all smiled gratefully and thanked our grandmother when she pulled the tags off our new outfits, handed them to the saleslady, and said, “They’ll be wearing these out.”
After the morning’s shopping, Abuelita Remedios bought us some lunch. We stood on the sidewalk on Avenida 4 in Monclova eating taquitos off an old vendor’s cart. Looking around the busy streets with their modern buildings, I thought Mamá would be enamored of this place. Monclova looked as beautiful and as cultured as any large city in the United States. I relaxed and ate jícama dusted with chili powder from a tall fruit cup and told myself we could move here if Papá never came back and we lost the house.
Soon after that bittersweet moment with our newfound grandmother, we got back on Highway 57 North and drove straight through Sabinas and Nueva Rosita. We stopped in Allende for some aguas frescas at a puesticito, but other than that, we stayed on the road.
We arrived in Piedras Negras at three in the afternoon. The sun cast golden rays lazily upon the quieting city from its low point in the sky. Abuelita pulled over and parallel parked in front of the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. She got out of the vehicle and stretched her legs as she looked around.
“Now who wants a raspa?” she asked, eyeing us with mischief in her eyes. “Well come on, don’t be shy.”
After Abuelita Remedios treated us to raspas and campechanas, those delicious puffed pastries we all loved so much, we walked back to the truck. We sat in the pickup and tried to enjoy our last moments with our beloved grandmother.
“Well, girls. It’s time we say good-bye. I wish I had a green card, or even a worker’s visa, but I haven’t had much need for those things, not with my own place to run. So this is as far as I can go with you. You’ll have to take a taxi across. Here,” Abuelita said, reaching into her purse and handing me a small wad of American bills. “Where are your papers? We’ll have to show them to the driver.”
The question, like a hit to the temple, jostled something loose in my head, and suddenly my heart was in a panic. “Papers? Wait a minute! Did any of you bring your birth certificates? I know I didn’t.” I’d run out of the house in such a panic to stop Juanita driving away that the thought never occurred to me.
“Yeah,” Juanita said. “I got all of them. They’re in Velia’s backpack.”
Velia put her hands on the bench seat beside Juanita and pulled herself forward in her seat. “No they’re not.”
“What do you mean? Where are they?” Abuelita asked, turning sideways to give Velia her full attention.
Juanita stopped eating her raspa. “What are you talking about? I gave them to you, when you were getting ready. I sat them right there, on your dresser, next to your clothes.”
“Juanita,” Velia whined. “I never saw them!”
“You mean you didn’t bring them?” Juanita asked, putting a hand to her forehead and shaking her head in disbelief. “Oh my God. I can’t believe this.”
Velia slid back into her seat like a turtle trying to get back in its shell. “I’m sorry! We were so focused on leaving that I didn’t even notice them.”
I picked Juanita’s backpack off the floorboard, unzipped it, and started pulling everything out of it. “Are you sure you didn’t put them in here?”
“I’m sure,” Juanita said, pushing her hair out of her face in frustration.
I unzipped every zipper and looked through every pocket of Juanita’s backpack, making sure no documents were hiding there. “Delia? Pita? Did you bring anything else? Your school IDs, anything that might prove we are who we say we are.”
“School IDs aren’t going to help us. You need state IDs or birth certificates to get across,” Delia said. “And, no, I didn’t bring mine either.”
I dumped Juanita’s backpack onto the floorboard and sat with my back pressed against the truck’s door, looking at Abuelita as I rubbed my forehead. Suddenly, I had a massive headache. “I can’t believe this. After everything we’ve been through, and now we can’t go home.”
“Now hold on, let’s not get melodramatic,” Abuelita said. She pointed behind me, to the other side of the plaza. “All we have to do is go in there, to the aduana offices, and tell them everything. Well, not everything, remember what we talke
d about. None of that magical, mystical stuff. We don’t want to lose credibility. Anyway, they’ll get in touch with the authorities on the other side and someone will get a hold of your mother. It will take some time, but they’ll sort it out. It’s in their best interest to get the matter resolved as soon as possible, especially with all the media attention you’ve been getting, so I’m sure you won’t be waiting too long. You’ll be home sometime tonight. I’m sure of it.”
Pita sat forward on her seat and poked her head over Abuelita to look at us. “Do you really mean tonight? Where would we wait while they cleared things up?”
“Oh, I’m sure they have some kind of facility where we can wait,” Abuelita began.
“You mean like a detention center?” Delia’s high-pitched voice echoed the horror in her wide eyes.
“Oh, I’m not staying in a detention facility on this side of the border,” Velia said, shaking her head. “Cecilia said the police are corrupt, and you’ve heard the stories! People have to pay huge bribes just to see their family members when they’re detained on this side of the border. Mamá can’t even afford to pay the phone bill. There’s no way she’d have the money to get all five of us back.”
“Not all rumors are true,” Abuelita said, a frown marring her forehead. “Not everyone is corrupt.”
“Let me see that,” Juanita reached back and pulled on Velia’s backpack until Velia wiggled her shoulders out of the straps and handed her the bag. Frantic, Juanita rummaged through Velia’s bag like her life depended on it. “Regardless, I don’t think we should take any chances by going to the authorities. Even if they were to do right by us, the whole thing would create an international incident. The media would catch wind of it and things could really get out of control then.”
She had a point. It was already bad enough that we’d gotten all the media attention we’d gotten so far. The police couldn’t let that kind of thing slide if a reporter were to wonder who was at fault and maybe call for someone’s punishment. “Child Protection Services would probably get involved,” I said. “Mamá would definitely be in trouble then.”
Summer of the Mariposas Page 21