Papá had always said that nothing is impossible. He had learned this as a teenager, when he first began working the fields in Central California and met the leaders of the farmworkers’ movement, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Oh, how he talked about Dolores! He had never seen a woman quite like her before—small, but mighty, and so determined. He would often tease, and instead of calling me Alma, he’d call me his pequeña Dolores . . . his little Dolores, which made me feel very proud. But because of what he saw over those years, the long struggle and ultimate success of the farmworkers, he had learned that with patience, hard work, and a deep belief, anything could be achieved. And so, he had encouraged me to pursue my dreams—of course, I could become a teacher one day.
Because of this, staying in school was a must for me. But that year, unlike previous years, I had to hurry home to help Mamá and Rosa prepare tortillas. Mamá had found work with a taco vendor named Mundo, who was also an old friend of Papá’s. The more tortillas we made, the more money he paid. So, we worked late into the night, mixing the masa, rolling a ball, and then flattening it between hands with a pat, clap, slap. Mine came out perfect each time because I measured the ball’s diameter using my finger as a ruler. Then, after clapping each back and forth exactly ten times, I would finish with three slap, slap, slaps and onto the fire. Once done and stacked, they were wrapped and packed to go.
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
