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

Apá

~ 65 ~ that he would take full responsibility for his family and that he would remain in the country for a period of time without crossing the border. He was offered this opportunity because of Amá’s illness, because we needed him more than ever for economic support. It is still unbelievable to me that he refused the opportunity . How could he be so heartless? He had taken us to the hell of Calexico from Salinas, from a land that had provided us with everything we needed, only to abandon us once more. Now it was an easy choice for him. He simply replied, “Nobody can keep me away from my tierra.”When he made that clear choice, right then and there, the officers promptly revoked his visa. His selfish desire for his homeland brought his children to shame and poverty in ImperialValley. Apá ~ The day Apá rejected his wife and children for his country, he became dead to Mary. Amá was too sick to take care of us, and Apá had been given the chance to come back and provide for us, but he refused. From that day on, his name was never on her lips. Whenever any adult or friend would ask her, “Mary, where is your papá? We haven’t seen him,” she would look that person straight in the face and answer, “My papá died in the war.” And quickly change the subject. Estella and I still kept our apá alive, but it wasn’t for very long. We went to Mexicali and looked for him where he said ~ 66 ~ he would be, but he never showed up. For a while, we didn’t mind playing hide-and-go-seek with him because it was the only hope we had of getting new shoes or other things we needed.We knew Amá could not give them to us. Once, when we finally did catch up with him, he showed us a happy face and took us to eat and listened to us recite all our needs. When we were through eating, we all shoved away from the table as he searched through his pockets, pulled out some change, and handed it over to us. “Here’s money for candy. Tomorrow meet me atTía’s house and I’ll give you the money for the shoes you want.” We ran home anxious for tomorrow to come. Amá asked us, “Did your papá give you the money?” “No,” we answered, “he said for us to meet him at Tía’s house and he would give it to us.” Amá warned us, “Why trust him when you know what he’s like?” This still meant nothing to us. We began counting the hours until we would meet him. In our minds we would go over and over this meeting, when and where it would occur. But when the hour came and we appeared, my tía reported , “He just left.” Estella and I followed him, as we had before, to the trashiest part of the barrio, down behind the market, behind the food stands and the street vendors to the street of bars. It needed no address; it was announced by the dark smell of generations of lost souls. Repulsive odors arose from the ground and the walls. To the people outside, the street of bars was enclosed in darkness . It seemed like a curse was cast upon this street, slowly transforming everything in it into trash. Men lay in doorways with dry vomit in their mouths.There were young ranch girls who were known by housewives of the town as “decertoras del metate, mujeres resuscitadas que vienen muy mansitas del rancho y después sacan las uñas” (“floozies who come from the ranches shy and timid but who later put out their claws”).They stood squeezed into their tight dresses with half their breasts exposed, look- ~ 67 ~ ing like stuffed sweet potatoes.The drunken men, pants hanging halfway down their backsides, played with their breasts. Musicians strolled from one end of the street to the other, hoping to make their quota for the night. This time the swinging doors of the cantina opened and a pair of drunks came flying out, landing heavily on the ground in front of us, one bleeding from the mouth, the other with one black eye. Estella and I stood beside the door looking for somebody safe...