B0061QB04W EBOK (4 page)

Mago pointed to a spot on the dirt floor and reminded me that my umbilical cord was buried there.
That way
, Mami told the midwife,
no matter where life takes her, she won’t ever forget where she came from
.

But then Mago touched my belly button and added something to the story my mother had never told me. She said that my umbilical cord was like a ribbon that connected me to Mami. She said, “It doesn’t matter that there’s a distance between us now. That cord is there forever.” I touched my belly button and thought about what my sister had said. I had Papi’s photo to keep me connected to him. I had no photo of my mother, but now my sister had given me something to remember her by.

“We still have a mother and a father,” Mago said. “We aren’t orphans, Nena. Just because they aren’t with us doesn’t mean we don’t have parents anymore. Now come on, let’s go tell our grandmother we have no needle for her.”

I took Mago’s hand and together we left the shack. “She’s going to beat me,” I told her as we headed to the house. “And she’s going to beat you, too, even though you didn’t do anything.”

“I know,” she said.

“Wait,” I said. I ran out of the gate before I lost my nerve. I ran down the street as fast as I could. Outside the store, Don Bartolo’s daughters were playing again. They glared at me the moment they saw me. Suddenly, my feet didn’t want to keep walking. I put a finger on my belly button, and I thought about Mami, and about everything my sister had just said. It gave me courage.

“I’m sorry I hit you with the coin,” I told the older girl.

She turned to look at her father, who had just come out of the store to stand by the door. She said, “My papi says that we’re lucky he has the store because if he didn’t, he would have to leave for El Otro Lado. I wouldn’t want him to go.”

“I didn’t want Mami to go, either,” I said. “But I know she’ll be back soon. And so will my papi.”

Don Bartolo took my grandmother’s coin from his pocket and handed it to me. “Don’t ever think that your parents don’t love you,” he said. “It is because they love you very much that they have left.”

As I walked home with the needle for my grandmother, I told myself that maybe Don Bartolo was right. I had to keep on believing my parents left me because they loved me too much and not because they didn’t love me enough.

3

É
LIDA’S HAIR WAS
so long, it tumbled down her back like a sparkling black waterfall. Every few days, Abuela Evila washed Élida’s hair with lemon water because, according to her, lemon juice cleans the impurities of the hair and makes it shiny and healthy. In the afternoons, she would fill up a bucket from the water tank, pick a few lemons from the tree, and squeeze the juice into the water.

Mago, Carlos, and I would hide behind a pink oleander bush and watch their ritual through the narrow leaves. Abuela Evila washed Élida’s hair as if she were washing an expensive silk rebozo. Afterwards, Élida would sit under the sun to dry her hair. My grandmother
would come out to brush it in small strokes, beginning with the tips and working her way up. She spent half an hour running the comb through Élida’s long hair while we watched.

Our hair was louse-ridden, our abdomens swelled with roundworms, but my grandmother didn’t care. “I can be sure that my daughters’ children are really my grandchildren,” Abuela Evila often said to us. “But one can’t trust a daughter-in-law. Who knows what your mother did when no one was looking.”

It was my mother’s bad luck to have been the only daughter-in-law. My father had a brother who died at seven years old. His name was Carlos, and my brother inherited his name. My grandfather would take Tío Carlos to the fields to work, and since they left very early in the morning, Tío Carlos would be too sleepy to stay awake during the ride to the fields. My grandfather would tie him to the horse to keep him from falling. One day, the horse lost its footing and fell, crushing my uncle beneath it.

But my uncle’s death didn’t save my father from the fields. When he was in third grade, he left school to harvest crops alongside my grandfather. If only Tío Carlos had lived and married, my mother would have had an ally, and we would have had cousins to share the burden of my grandmother’s mistrust.

“Your mother is not coming back for you,” Élida said to us one afternoon while lying in the sun to let her hair dry after Abuela Evila’s lemon treatment. Mago and I were scrubbing our dirty clothes on the washing stone. “Now that she’s got a job and is making dollars, she won’t want to come back, believe me.”

Three weeks before, Mami told us she got a job at a garment factory where she worked all day trimming loose threads off clothes. She said she was finally going to help Papi save money for the house and promised to send us money for Abuela Evila to buy us shoes and clothes. We couldn’t tell Mami not to bother, that the money they sent disappeared by the time my grandmother made it home from the bank. My grandmother hovered above us while we talked on the phone, and if we said anything bad about her, she would spank us afterward.

“She’ll be back. I know she will,” Mago told Élida. In the two and a half months we’d been there, my parents had called us every other weekend, but Mami had yet to send us the letters she promised she would write. But every time she called, Mago would be sure to remind her of her promise—that she would return within the year.

“Don’t lie to yourself,” Élida said. “They’re going to forget all about you, you’ll see. You and your brother and sister are always going to be Los Huerfanitos.”

“Speak for yourself. It’s your mother who’s not coming back,” Mago said. “Doesn’t she have another child, over there in El Otro Lado?”

At being reminded of her American brother, Élida looked away. Abuela Evila came out of the house carrying a large plastic comb. She sat behind Élida and combed into shiny black silk her long hair that smelled of lemonade. Élida was quiet, and she didn’t answer Abuela Evila when she asked her what was wrong.

An hour later, Élida was back in the patio. She lay down on the hammock and watched us do our chores. Mago swept the ground, and I watered Abuela Evila’s pots of vinca and geranium on the edges of the water tank. Carlos was in the backyard clearing the brush, a chore my grandfather had given him. As always, Élida didn’t have to do any work.

She rocked herself on the hammock eating a mango on a stick she had bought at Don Bartolo’s store. It was a beautiful mango cut to look like a flower. Its yellow flesh was sprinkled with red chili powder. My mouth watered at seeing her take a big bite. Élida was always eating goodies she would buy with the money our grandmother gave her, and she never shared them with us. But when our other grandmother, Abuelita Chinta, would visit, bringing us oranges, cajeta, or lollipops, we had to share them with Élida or Abuela Evila would take them away.

“My mother loves me,” Élida said. “That’s why she sends me everything I ask her for. That’s why she writes to me.”

“¡Ya cállate, marrana!” Mago said. She turned the broom to face Élida and started to sweep toward her.

“¡Pinche huérfana!” Élida yelled, scrambling to get away from the cloud of dust Mago had just sent her way. “¡Pinche piojosa!”

“So what if I have lice?” Mago said. “And if you aren’t careful, I’ll give them to you, and we’ll see what happens to all that hair of yours.” Mago pulled me to her and started parting my hair. “¡Mira, mira, un piojo!” she said, holding an imaginary louse toward Élida.

“¡Abuelita! ¡Abuelita!” Élida yelled, her eyes opened wide with fear. She ran into the house clutching her thick long braid. Mago and I looked at each other.

“Look what you’ve done. We’re really going to get it now,” I said to Mago.

I thought we were going to get a beating with my grandmother’s wooden spoon, or a branch or a sandal, the usual choices. I would have preferred a beating to what we got.

In the evening, when Tía Emperatriz came home from work, Abuela Evila told her to take care of our lice problem.

“Can’t it wait for the weekend?” Tía Emperatriz asked. “It’s been a long day for me.”

“They’re going to pass their lice on to me, Abuelita,” Élida said, still clutching her braid. “Please, Abuelita.”

“Do as I say,” Abuela Evila said to my aunt.

Tía Emperatriz glanced at Élida, who was smirking behind Abuela Evila’s hunched figure, and I caught a glimpse of anger, a hint of jealousy in my aunt’s eyes. She gave Mago some pesos and sent her down to Don Bartolo’s store to buy lice shampoo and a fine-tooth comb.

“That’s not going to work,” Abuela Evila said. “Get kerosene.”

“But Amá, that’s dangerous,” Tía Emperatriz said.

“Nonsense,” Abuela Evila said. “In my day, there was no better remedy than kerosene.”

The last rays of the sun were gone, and the world became wrapped in darkness. My grandmother turned on the light in the patio, but it didn’t work. There was no electricity that night, so she brought out her candles and set them on the water tank.

When Mago came back with the kerosene, my aunt had us sit down one by one.

“What if that doesn’t work?” Élida asked.

“If the kerosene doesn’t work, I’m shaving off their hair!” Abuela Evila said.

At hearing my grandmother’s words, I stopped squirming. I sat so still I could hear the mosquitoes buzzing around. They bit my legs and arms, but the thought of getting my head shaved kept me from moving. My aunt gently tilted my head all the way back and in the dim candlelight combed my hair with the fine-tooth comb for five minutes. The comb kept getting caught in my curls, and I felt as if needles were digging into my scalp. Tía Emperatriz soaked a towel in kerosene and then wrapped it around my head, making sure every strand of hair was tucked in before tying a plastic bag over my head to keep the towel in place. The smell was overpowering, and I had to struggle not to scratch my scalp, which was throbbing from the sting of the kerosene.

“Now off to bed,” Tía Emperatriz said when she was done, “and stay away from the lit candles in the house.”