Over the next weeks, Mamá’s headaches slowly disappeared. Two months later, she told us we were moving with Tito to Chiapas.
I hated Tito. I hated Mamá, and I hated the thought of Chiapas. As long as we stayed in Oaxaca, I felt there was hope—hope that Papá would return from el norte, and we would live once again in a cinder block house with a cement floor. Mamá would smile and decorate the walls with colorful fabrics—and I would go back to school.
“Go!” I shouted at my mother the morning she began to gather our few belongings. “I am staying right here. And when Papá returns, I will tell him where you are and what you have done!”
Mamá turned slowly, her shoulders hunched forward. “Papá is gone, mi hija. He is not coming back. Either he is dead or dead to us.” She could not look me in the eye, but kept her head down.
“What does that mean . . . dead to us? Papá loved us. He worked hard for us. Everything he did was for us!”
“Not just for us,” she said, finally lifting her eyes to mine.
She was referring to Diego, his son by a first marriage. Diego lived in Los Angeles with an aunt who had raised him after her sister, Papá’s first wife, died in childbirth. I remember hearing Mamá and Papá arguing once about money, and Mamá saying that if Diego had a better life in el norte, then why did Papá have to give him any of our money. Papá’s voice had cut sharp in response. “Because he is my son!”
“So, you think Papá is in Los Angeles?” I asked, my heart racing at the possibility, yet breaking at the same time, until I remembered. “But Rosa spoke with the aunt twice, Mamá, and they are as worried as we are! No one has heard from Papá since he left!”
“That is what she says, but people do not always speak the truth.”
“Like Tito?” I couldn’t stop myself. “Do you believe Tito speaks the truth? He’s your cousin for God’s sake!”
The disgust in my eyes was met with a hand slap across my face as she hissed, “Tito is here, now, with me! And you’d better treat him like the step-father he will be to you. ¡Con respeto!”
Before I could recover, my sister Rosa, who had been standing behind me, grabbed me by the arm and yanked me outside. I was about to spit fire, but Rosa released her grasp and leaned in as if to tell me a secret. I held my breath, thinking of the secret that I had, but she said very simply, “Mamá needs us; she needs us more than she needs Tito, only she doesn’t know it.”
She didn’t say, Papá is gone and he’s not coming back. She didn’t say, Stop being so difficult and stubborn. She didn’t say, You can’t live alone here in Oaxaca, because I’m not staying with you. She said, “Alma, we must make a home for Mamá and the boys. We must keep our family together. That’s what Papá would want.”
That’s what Papá would want? I looked at Rosa, so much prettier than I, slender and graceful. She wore her long braid wrapped up in a bun like a ballerina, accenting her swan-like neck. Boys always looked at Rosa when they passed, a slow, lingering look. Yet I was Papá’s favorite. Everyone knew that. So I should be the one who knew what Papá would want.
But I wasn’t so sure. Not when I thought about the letter. So many times, I almost told Rosa, but something kept my lips sealed. My secret—in a way Papá’s and mine—a letter neatly folded and tucked in the corner of his wallet. I had opened his wallet to place a school photo of me in the front. That’s when I saw the folded paper. I never got to read beyond the first few sentences:
Forgive me, Juan. I am so deeply sorry. There is no easy answer for us. What else can I do? I never thought I was capable of such a thing, but love can overpower our reason and lead us down unexpected paths.
It was written in Spanish, in small, round, perfect script, clearly not Mamá’s writing. Mamá barely knew how to print her name, and even then, it was in large, childlike letters. What unexpected path had Papá taken? Did his disappearance involve this letter?
Rosa was stroking my hair like the little mother she was to all of us. “Don’t cry,” she whispered, wiping tears I didn’t even know were falling down my face.
“But I don’t want to leave Oaxaca,” I sobbed. “It’s our home. It’s where Papá will look for us. Please stay with me here. Please!”
Rosa’s face hardened; her eyes, like slits, were barely visible. This was the extent of any signs of anger that she ever showed. She didn’t shout or rage, not even when the boy she liked made a baby with another girl and quickly married. No, she held it all in. Though she would never speak the words, I know she blamed herself because she would not let him do the things that made the baby. That’s when I realized there was another reason Rosa didn’t mind leaving Oaxaca, for to see him again with his new family was too much for her.
I had no choice but to pack my things and say goodbye to Oaxaca.
I sat in the back of the small dirty bus, away from them all, and cried until my chest ached from dry sobs. Like Mamá with her headaches, I
