Amá, Your Story Is Mine: Walking Out of the Shadows of Abuse

Mexicali

~ 36 ~ money and claimed he was going to either find a house or put the money in the bank. But he didn’t come back. And Amá was sick with worry, afraid some tragedy had happened to him.” Joe smiled wryly as he continued, “We didn’t hear from him for weeks. In fact, that same weekend he was picked up by the border patrol for trying to smuggle prostitutes into the United States. Apá’s immigration papers and right to stay in the country were taken away. “While this was going on, Estella was three years old and quick and sharp, which often ended in disaster. She got hold of some matches and started a fire in the house.We were unable to save any of our belongings; all that was left of the house was rubble. Again the neighbors came to our rescue. The landlady gave up her garage to provide us a new start. These were days of great hardship for all of us. I learned to take care of the bills when I was twelve. I took care of you girls after I got home from school. Your Teresita helped with whatever I didn’t know how to do. But regardless of the hard times, we were happy because, finally, our apá wasn’t around hitting Amá.” Mexicali ~ As we began to adjust and learn to enjoy life without fear, our father decided to repent and fulfill his duties as a husband and father. He contacted Amá from Mexicali, a city just across the ~ 37 ~ border in Mexico, by way of the neighbors’ telephone, or sent letters with people who came our way. He persisted every way he could, until he got to Amá’s heart again by promising to build a house. He told her that the Mexican government was making it very easy to purchase land, and that we now owned a piece of land, but he would not build if he didn’t have his family with him. Our neighbors, Teresita and Timo Marquez, warned Amá about Apá’s sweet-talking and his false promises. They told her that Mexicali was peor que un infierno (“worse than hell”). They encouraged her to stay in Salinas for her children’s sakes, telling her she would soon be getting a job in the canneries. Teresita and Timo reminded my mother how Apá’s mother, the hateful Doña Demetria, had mistreated her.They told her that her hateful brothers-in-law were also now living in Mexicali. But she turned a deaf ear. Once again we were on the road with another neighbor, Dino Roberto, driving us to Mexicali. Amá did absorb some of the advice she was given by the Marquezes, such as renting a room on the U.S. side of the border, so we could have an address to prove we were residents of the United States, and so Mary and the rest of us could attend school. We crossed the Mexican border, and the first block was full of vendors slapping wares in front of the tourists’ faces, blocking their view. It might have been a pair of sandals or a pan dulce (“sweet roll”). Darting children hung onto people’s shorts, one offering his chicles (“gum”) and another begging for a dollar, both at the same time. There were men offering the deal of the day: colorful wool serapes.The crazy taxi drivers wouldn’t take no for an answer and followed so closely that it was impossible to get away from them. Confused and lost, people were running into one another, not knowing when to cross the street.The lights meant one thing to the pedestrians, another to the drivers. In spite of all this, we were drawn like small magnets to our ~ 38 ~ Apá’s eyes when we saw his smiling face. Don Roberto stopped the car and we all jumped out. It felt like we were all one again. We pulled Apá into the car and sat on top of one another to make room for him. Don Roberto drove us into many different neighborhoods where the houses had no numbers ; the streets were narrow and full of holes.We drove on to the outskirts of town and down to the end of the road to old, open cotton fields, where Apá said, “We’re here.”Don Roberto rolled the big black 1940...