I had finally agreed, however reluctantly, to collude in my own kidnapping, which took place at noon on Wednesday, December 10, 1975. Early that morning in my father’s house outside of Detroit, I ate my Frosted Flakes at the breakfast table as if it were any other day. Holding back tears, I said good-bye to my father and Rosalind as casually as possible. “See you later,” I called back as I headed toward the door to catch the school bus.
“Have a good day at school,” my father hollered after me, taking a sip from his coffee cup and momentarily lifting his head from reading the Detroit Free Press. He was the picture of a 1975 working dad—dark corduroy slacks, Harris Tweed sport jacket, brown sweater-vest, and a fat, striped tie—and was about to start his forty-five-minute commute into the city.
“Maybe we can play canasta again after dinner tonight,” Rosalind added as she took a last bite of her breakfast.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound calm. I glanced back at the two of them sitting there at the table. I paused and took a deep breath. The faint clean smell of my father’s aftershave and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the air.
I shut the front door behind me and was gone.
I had been extra careful this time with my mother’s kidnapping plan. As my father and Rosalind sat nearby in the living room, my mother and I had gone over it on the phone in Spanish. I’d screwed it up the first time, a couple of weeks earlier before school one day, when I had asked my father for my allowance in advance.
My father was puzzled. “You know you always get your allowance at the beginning of the week. What’s the rush?”
I fidgeted and stared at the floor.
“Peter? Is there something wrong?”
I hesitated and then said, “It’s just that, well, I’ll need it.”
“But why?” My father was growing suspicious.
“I’m leaving for South America with my mother,” I blurted out, not having prepared a lie.
“What? When?”
“Today. This afternoon, I’m meeting her at school, during recess.” The confession brought an immediate sense of relief, but this quickly gave way to feeling intense guilt for having botched my mother’s plan.
After a long silence my father said, “Peter, you’d better stay home today.”
My father and Rosalind kept a close eye on me that weekend as I helped sweep leaves off the deck.
“What if my mother got me?” I asked Rosalind as she made dinner.
“Well, we’d try to find you.”
“But what if she took me out of the country?”
There was a long pause. “Always remember that our love goes with you wherever you are.”
“My dad isn’t happy if I don’t live with him, but my mom isn’t happy if I don’t live with her.” I sighed.
“Just remember, Peter, you’re not responsible for your parents’ happiness.”
I nodded, unconvinced. I’d been getting the opposite message my whole life.
As much as I loved my mother, it was hard to imagine giving up the security and stability of my new suburban life and returning to the never-ending political squabbles between her and Raul. But if I declared a decision to stay, I’d be letting her down and abandoning everything we’d fought for together. I didn’t want her to give up on me and I didn’t want her to think of me as a sellout. My mother’s faith in me was worth sacrificing everything else.
Right after that first failed escape, my mother wrote me a letter:
To Peter,
They say you would be missing something if you were with me.
Yes! Missing alienation.
Missing the privileges of having a nice home, family, riches.
Missing respect for the terrible laws that bring injustice to the poor.
Missing racism that makes one think white skin is superior to colored skin.
Missing sexism that makes one think women should serve the vanity of men.
Missing the pacifism that makes one think the poor should be patient with the rich, waiting for the poor to solve the problems created by the rich themselves.
They say it is right that you now know the patriarchal family, that it is right that you now know the authoritarian perspective, the piety of the church, that you should experience a life inhibited and restricted by cleanliness, elegance, the English language, the bourgeois language.
Bullshit, Peter!
The truth is that we are suffering from the repression of male pigs that still control this society. We are suffering from the disappearance of a free spirit, and the rampant consumerism that confuses a child—who is bought off by smiles and gifts and personal attention.
We are suffering from the domination by the rich who always punish those who are fighting to change the system.
We are suffering from your betrayal, my child, because you are very young and you do not yet understand the value of what you have lived.
My mother never sent me the letter. She put it away in her diary once she was sure I wouldn’t choose my father over her. Reading it now takes me immediately back to the impossible choice I’d faced. I wanted to be with both of my parents, but it was clear that could never happen. It was one thing to disappoint my father and Rosalind, quite another thing to lose my mother’s love. I knew my mother would blame me if I stayed with my father in Michigan, whereas I knew my father and Rosalind would blame my mother if I went with her back to Peru. If I told my mother I wanted to stay in Michigan, she would see my decision as the ultimate personal and political failure. She would never forgive me, or herself.
And so, that chilly December day, I kept my promise to my mother. When I sneaked out of the schoolyard during the lunch recess, she was waiting for me outside the playground in a red VW Beetle, the engine running. She had disguised herself in oversized dark glasses and a thick black wig. I would not have recognized her if she had not waved to me from the driver’s seat. I walked quickly toward the car and got in, and we sped off. Despite the cold, my mother’s forehead was sweaty, and she looked pale against the heavy winter coat she’d wrapped around her slender frame. The faint odor of sweat was familiar, comforting. She had never worn deodorant, preferring her own human smell to flowery chemicals.
“Everything go okay?” My mother squeezed my hand as we turned the corner. “No one suspects anything this time?”
I shook my head and squeezed her hand back. I didn’t say anything, fearing my words would betray my ambivalence.
We drove in silence. As we approached the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which runs under the Detroit River and links the United States to Canada, tears started rolling down my cheeks.
My mother pulled over to the side of the road. “Do you want to go back? We’re almost at the border.” She was trying hard to seem calm, but I heard the wobble in her voice.
“No,” I replied, wiping away my tears with my coat sleeve. I wanted to be in the car with my mother right then—but I also wanted to still be running around the playground back at school. I did not look at my mother, fearing she would see the indecision in my eyes. She did not press me. She maybe realized she’d get a different answer if she asked again.
I changed the subject, teasing, “You look really goofy with that big puffy wig and those ugly glasses.” I had never seen my mother in glasses, and the wig made her head seem huge.
She laughed and started the car again. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll take this thing off as soon as we’ve crossed into Canada.”
We made it to Toronto by evening, and checked into a downtown hotel.
“Now you should call your father,” my mother said as we sat on the edge of the bed together, staring at the black phone on the nearby nightstand. “Tell him you’re with me and you’re fine, that you’re not coming back, and that he shouldn’t look for you. No need for a lot of details.”
I glanced around at our hotel room. My mother reached for the receiver. “Here, I’ll dial for you,” she said impatiently. She seemed more eager than I was to get the phone call out
of the way. Anticipating the sound of my father’s sad voice filled me with dread. She handed the phone to me as soon as it started to ring on the other end. The receiver felt heavy in my small hand as it reconnected me with the life I had just left behind.
My father answered. “Hello?” I knew exactly where he was standing in the house—not far from the kitchen table where I had said good-bye to him for the last time that morning.
“This is Peter, I’m with my mother. Please don’t try to find me, I promise I’ll write you from South America.” My mother nodded and smiled as I spoke. I tried to sound confident.
“Peter, we’ve been so worried about you all day.” My father sounded relieved to hear my voice, but then began to plead with me. “Please, just come home. Can’t we sit down and talk about this together?” He kept repeating, “Let’s all sit down and talk about this and work it out, okay?”
I didn’t reply, fearing I might start crying if I did.
Rosalind got on the line. “Peter, is your mother there? Let me talk to her.” I handed the phone over, glad to be rid of it and feeling sick with guilt.
“I don’t care if the police are looking for us, we’re out of jurisdiction,” my mother snapped. “Good-bye.” And she hung up.
That was the last time I would speak to my father or Rosalind for more than three years.
My mother turned to me. “Peter, I know that was hard, but it was the right thing to do. I know part of you liked living with them, but you really didn’t belong there.” I choked back tears as my mother, satisfied that we’d done our duty, picked up the phone again and quickly dialed Raul at his El Paso, Texas, hotel room.
“Peter’s with me now,” she announced triumphantly when Raul answered the phone. “Yes, yes, everything went as planned. You’ll be there when we arrive tomorrow, right? I assume you mailed the boxes to Lima before you left Denver. It’s a good thing you got out of there yesterday, the cops are probably knocking at the door as we speak. You have all the money with you, right? Okay, then we’ll see you tomorrow!”
Early the next day, my mother and I flew to El Paso, our gateway to Latin America. Raul was waiting for us at the airport, waving his arms over his head as we stepped off the plane. He blended right into this gritty southwest border city where Spanish seemed to be as common as English.
Raul greeted us with his signature backslapping hugs. “We’re all together again!”
I hugged Raul back stiffly.
My mother gave him a kiss and squeezed both of his hands. “We made it.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get across the border then,” Raul declared, as if he were now in charge, and then proceeded to lead the way, not even looking back to make sure we were following. He was clearly eager to head south as soon as possible. He had waited for this day the whole year the three of us had been in the States. He’d never gotten comfortable there, just hanging around with little to do, knowing hardly any English, while my mother battled my father over my custody and squabbled over their shared property.
From Denver, where he and my mother had been living while I was in Michigan, Raul had taken the bus down to El Paso with my mother’s savings, all in cash, including the nearly $40,000 that had just been released from the property settlement agreement with my father. My mother had sown pockets inside our pants to hide the money and keep it safe. Stuffed with cash, the three of us walked across the border bridge from El Paso into Juarez. I was flattered by my mother’s trust in me, but the bulky pile of crisp $100 bills in my pants, poking out around my waist, made me self-conscious. Could the Mexican border guards standing lazily to the side as we went through the metal gate and walked across the bridge tell I was moving awkwardly? Fortunately, unlike entry to the U.S., there was no inspection of any sort going into Mexico.
Entering Juarez, a bustling, grimy Mexican border city that dwarfed El Paso across the Rio Grande, was like entering another world. The toxic smell of exhaust fumes, the sight of shantytowns crowding the hills, and the constant noise of the traffic congestion overwhelmed my senses. Only the weather was a welcome change, a relief from the transition to early winter back in Michigan. We checked into a small hotel near the main bus station, and ate tacos al carbon from one of the many vendors lining the streets. Then we celebrated our escape across the border by going to a movie. Raul insisted we see Jaws, which was fine by me—my father certainly would not have let me go to such a violent movie at age ten—but the gory scenes gave me nightmares for days and left me with a permanent shark phobia. Still, the movie was a useful distraction from thinking too much about my father and Rosalind and the comfortable life I had left behind.
The next morning, the three of us huddled in the back of a packed bus for the two-day ride to Mexico City. The driver kept everyone awake with nonstop mariachi and corrido songs blaring from the radio, his crucifix dangling from the windshield bopping and swinging to the beat.
In our hotel room in downtown Mexico City, we washed off several days of sweat and dirt, grabbed a quick bite to eat on the street, and headed to the local theater. This time my mother chose the movie, El Fin del Mundo—The End of the World—a Japanese film about the hazards of industrialization that were destroying the planet, and its apocalyptic message terrified me even more than Jaws had.
I kept my mother awake with questions late into the night. “Are we really going to die from pollution?” I asked as the three of us tried to fit together in the hotel room’s one double bed. Exhaust fumes and the noise of traffic seeped in from the busy street below. Raul was already snoring, apparently not perturbed by either the noise or the fate of the planet.
“Industrial capitalism is killing this planet, but we still have time to save it,” my mother murmured. “One more reason we need a real revolution, and not only in one country—it has to be worldwide. Otherwise we’re all doomed.” She rolled over, toward Raul, with her back facing me. “Now go to sleep,” she mumbled. “The revolution won’t come overnight, but don’t worry, the planet won’t die overnight, either.”
I insisted we sleep with the lights on, as if that would keep the pollution at bay.
From Mexico City, we kept moving south by bus, to the Guatemalan border, a remote jungle crossing that bore no resemblance to the hustle and bustle of the El Paso–Juarez border. We had to walk across the border to switch buses. I paused for a minute at the border demarcation sign that read MEXICO and GUATEMALA, and hopped back and forth—one foot in Mexico and the other in Guatemala. “Look at me,” I yelled to my mother and Raul, who were walking well ahead of me. “I’m in two countries at the same time!” They turned and laughed, and I hurried to catch up to them. The next bus would take us to the capital, Guatemala City. I was starting to have fun again being on the road with my mother—we had always been good traveling companions—even if I was less than happy that Raul was with us. At least they seemed to be getting along.
The following day I sent my father and Rosalind a brightly colored postcard from Guatemala City with a picture of majestic Maya ruins. I made sure my short scribbled message on the card was light and upbeat, as if I were on a fun, extended vacation abroad. At the end of the card I wrote in caps, “HAVE A GOOD NEW YEAR, LOVE PETER.”
We made it to Lima by Christmas, some two weeks after we fled Michigan. I was back in Peru, but in my mind I was still straddling two worlds. I imagined the little red-and-white-checkered birdhouse ornament I had made just a month earlier in fourth-grade art class hanging on the Christmas tree in my father’s living room. The brightly decorated tree would have many carefully wrapped presents underneath it, spread neatly on the tightly woven gray wool carpet, but none would bear my name. My wool stocking, if it hung above the fireplace, would be empty and our color TV would be tuned to my father’s ABC evening news.
We spent that Christmas dancing and lighting fireworks with Raul’s family—his mother, Berta; his sister, Victoria; and his three brothers, Lucho, Carlos, and Juan—at their small home on the outer edge of Vi
lla El Salvador, a sprawling shantytown of several hundred thousand inhabitants on the southern outskirts of Lima. My mother and I were warmly welcomed. Their home had no Christmas decorations or tree with presents underneath, but this did not dampen the family’s festive mood, lubricated by beer and aguardiente.
A few years earlier, Villa El Salvador had been nothing more than an empty desert when squatters from Lima’s overcrowded slums organized a nighttime takeover in bold defiance of the government. When the police came to try to evict them and tear down their makeshift shacks, the squatters refused to move. Wishing to avoid a potentially bloody confrontation, the government eventually relented, and the trickle of new squatters turned into a flood as thousands of people rushed to stake out plots of land. Though the sandy, harsh terrain was not exactly welcoming, squatters were attracted to the prospect of open land not far from the capital.
Villa El Salvador had no electricity or running water. Tanker trucks came by once a week to fill up the two rusting fifty-gallon metal barrels in front of Berta’s straw-mat shack. The toilet was a hole in the sand in a screened-off area, with old newspapers for toilet paper and a can of lime powder to dissolve the shit. With no streetlights to illuminate the sand streets and keep the muggers at bay, it was dangerous to go out at night. We all slept together on straw-filled mattresses and woke up with our legs covered in itchy fleabites. I intensely missed my flea-free bed, Saturday-morning cartoons, and Frosted Flakes, but I resisted saying that to my mother. And this time, unlike our first arrival in South America more than three years earlier, I knew what to expect and adapted without complaint.
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