I could not get to my schoolwork until late in the evening, but I didn’t mind. I came to like this nightly routine of Mamá, Rosa, and me, sitting by the fire in the center of our one-room, dirt-floor shed behind Mundo’s house. My little brothers, Ricardo and José, then seven and five, would play on a blanket beside us until they fell asleep, while the three of us worked quietly by the fire. Clap, clap, clap, slap, slap, slap.
I felt in my bones that it was temporary and that Papá would return. There had to be a good reason why he did not come back for a visit that summer as he promised. Perhaps he had sent us a message that we didn’t get, and he didn’t know that we didn’t get it. All I knew was that when he did come home, he would explain, and we would all understand, and then this nightmare would be over. How proud he would be of my schoolwork, especially my math exams. How proud he would be to see how I was helping Mamá. So, as we sat there, clapping our tortillas, I felt certain that everything would be okay.
The months passed. December, January, and then February came and went with no sign of Papá. These were the months that he always spent with us, finding odd jobs in Oaxaca before the spring took him back to the farms in el norte. It wasn’t until the following summer that I began to worry when I heard Mundo speak of the increasing dangers of crossing the border. What he said made no sense, for he spoke of the gringos’ anger that men like my father were crossing to work in the fields. Yet he had worked for the same farmers all his life, worked hard and made money to clothe and feed us. Now, Mundo said, they were putting up fences that pushed border crossers east to the desert where many died, or, if they made it, many were arrested and held in a prison called a detention center before they were finally sent back. Was Papá in such a prison, or worse?
While my own spirits began to deflate, Mamá’s beautiful black hair began to show threads of gray, and her soft, round face became thin, as deep lines appeared around her eyes. She began to have headaches that, some days, kept her curled on the blanket with a pillow over her head to block out the light. So, when she told me I could not continue with school, even I did not have the heart to fight her. At least not that second year. Rosa and I took to the streets of Oaxaca by day, selling the tacos and even tamales that we made by night. Seven days a week, we all worked; even my little brothers helped the best they could, day and night, until, one by one, each of us would fall asleep beside the fire.
It was during the summer that marked two years without Papá that Mamá’s distant cousin Tito, who smelled like sour beer, came up from Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico. The two of them, Mamá and Tito, would take long walks in the evenings, leaving Rosa and me to tend to the boys and the tortillas. They sometimes spoke in the Tzotzil language of her family, a language I did not understand, so their murmurings in this foreign tongue added a secret intimacy that infuriated me. Mamá rarely used her native tongue, for she left Chiapas at a young age after her mother died. Papá spoke only Spanish and some English. Only Rosalba, who was her firstborn, and whom I called simply Rosa, was taught a few words of Tzotzil, even a little poem or song, I believe, but when I was born two years later, Mamá never used Tzotzil. In fact, she rarely talked about her life in Chiapas, only that she came to Oaxaca to take care of an old aunt, who died shortly before she met my papá. This last fact was always part of her answer whenever I asked how she and Papá met; the old woman died, and she met my father at a wedding shortly after. It had always struck me as odd to link the two so purposefully, but as I watched events unfold, it began to make sense.
Over the next weeks, Mamá’s headaches slowly disappeared. Two months later, she told us we were moving with Tito to Chiapas.
I hated Tito. I hated Mamá, and I hated the thought of Chiapas. As long as we stayed in Oaxaca, I felt there was hope—hope that Papá would return from el norte, and we would live once again in a cinder block house with a cement floor. Mamá would smile and decorate the walls with colorful fabrics—and I would go back to school.
“Go!” I shouted at my mother the morning she began to gather our few belongings. “I am staying right here. And when Papá returns, I will tell him where you are and what you have done!”
Mamá turned slowly, her shoulders hunched forward. “Papá is gone, mi hija. He is not coming back. Either he is dead or dead to us.” She could not look me in the eye, but kept her head down.
“What does that mean . . . dead to us? Papá loved us. He worked hard for us. Everything he did was for us!”
“Not just for us,” she said, finally lifting her eyes to mine.
She was referring to Diego, his son by a first marriage. Diego lived in Los Angeles with an aunt who had raised him after her sister, Papá’s first wife, died in childbirth. I remember hearing Mamá and Papá arguing once about money, and Mamá saying that if Diego had a better life in el norte, then why did Papá have to give him any of our money. Papá’s voice had cut sharp in response. “Because he is my son!”
“So, you think Papá is in Los Angeles?” I asked, my heart racing at the possibility, yet breaking at the same time, until I remembered. “But Rosa spoke with the aunt twice, Mamá, and they are as worried as we are! No one has heard from Papá since he left!”
“That is what she says, but people do not always speak the truth.”
“Like Tito?” I couldn’t stop myself. “Do you believe Tito speaks the truth? He’s your cousin for God’s sake!”
The disgust in my eyes was met with a hand slap across my face as she hissed, “Tito is here, now, with me! And you’d better treat him like the step-father he will be to you. ¡Con respeto!”
Before I could recover, my sister Rosa, who had been standing behind me, grabbed me by the arm and yanked me outside. I was about to spit fire, but Rosa released her grasp and leaned in as if to tell me a secret. I held my breath, thinking of the secret that I had, but she said very simply, “Mamá needs us; she needs us more than she needs Tito, only she doesn’t know it.”
She didn’t say, Papá is gone and he’s not coming back. She didn’t say, Stop being so difficult and stubborn. She didn’t say, You can’t live alone here in Oaxaca, because I’m not staying with you. She said, “Alma, we must make a home for Mamá and the boys. We must keep our family together. That’s what Papá would want.”
That’s what Papá would want? I looked at Rosa, so much prettier than I, slender and graceful. She wore her long braid wrapped up in a bun like a ballerina, accenting her swan-like neck. Boys always looked at Rosa when they passed, a slow, lingering look. Yet I was Papá’s favorite. Everyone knew that. So I should be the one who knew what Papá would want.
But I wasn’t so sure. Not when I thought about the letter. So many times, I almost told Rosa, but something kept my lips sealed. My secret—in a way Papá’s and mine—a letter neatly folded and tucked in the corner of his wallet. I had opened his wallet to place a school photo of me in the front. That’s when I saw the folded paper. I never got to read beyond the first few sentences:
Forgive me, Juan. I am so deeply sorry. There is no easy answer for us. What else can I do? I never thought I was capable of such a thing, but love can overpower our reason and lead us down unexpected paths.