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  • Adelina
  • Rigoberto González (bio)

The summer after we moved in with my grandparents, the idea was born to bring back "una muchacha"—a young woman—from Mexico. The purpose was to find a caretaker for my father, recently widowed, and a nanny for my brother and me, recently orphaned at ages ten and twelve. Abuela, the only female in the small two-bedroom cinderblock apartment, had become exhausted managing a household that had doubled overnight. It seemed like a good solution though I couldn't imagine where they were thinking of housing this seventh body. My grandparents slept in one bedroom, and my father, brother, and my bachelor uncle slept in the other. I slept on the couch in the tiny living room. This didn't bother me much because I had never had my own bed (that wouldn't happen until my freshman year in college), and sleeping in the apartment's most open space gave me the impression I had a room of my own or at the very least a place to breathe, to daydream, and to cry in complete privacy when I remembered my mother. When I couldn't sleep I'd simply pull a chair into the tiny kitchen and read under its dim light, the only light that didn't bother Abuelo, who always kept his bedroom door ajar in order to keep track of our movements. In any case, I didn't dare ask the obvious questions: Where would she sleep? Would I have to give up my couch?

The plan wasn't discussed with me, but I picked up snippets of conversation over time. Since I was a reader, I became invisible behind a book, and somehow my grandparents thought I also became deaf because they would speak frankly in front of me about subjects that would make them hush whenever anyone else walked in.

"She won't be expensive," Abuelo assured Abuela, who nodded in agreement. The long pause that followed made me wonder where their minds had drifted. Perhaps to the convenience of the situation: that a young woman from Mexico would be easy to control, perhaps even easy to take advantage of. [End Page 21]

I couldn't imagine what young woman would accept such a position, traveling so far away just to live with a family of farmworkers in a compact unit of southern California housing projects. I had seen a few Mexican films that touched on the subject of poor young women who left their small villages for an opportunity to thrive, but in all cases, they went to live in big-city apartments or suburban homes owned by lawyers, doctors, or businessmen. But in the film narratives, the poor young women didn't have to leave the country. It dawned on me then why this was an especially important detail: the young woman we'd be bringing back would be undocumented, making her even more vulnerable.

Locating a coyote who could smuggle a young woman across was a relatively easy search. We lived a few hours from the border. Over the years reports traveled through the streets about so-and-so's cousin or so-and-so's nephew arriving safely, and the community took note of the coyote's reputation and his contact information to pass along in the most clandestine of referrals. Crossing her over was not the problem. Finding her, that was the sticking point. Or so I thought.

Every summer my grandparents traveled to Michoacán, Abuelo behind the wheel of his truck, annoyed and exasperated after the first day on the road. I had made the trip a few times before so I knew the code of conduct in the camper. Basically, become invisible, inaudible—something I was very good at around Abuelo, who snapped at the smallest things. He held a particular dislike for my brother, who hadn't learned to be silent. Given a choice, Alex would not have joined us on that trip, but he didn't have a choice. Not anymore. As soon as my father moved us into our grandparents' domain we were expected to surrender completely. So there we were the following July, lying...

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