THE PART WHERE MARLENE LEARNS
THE TRUTH ABOUT HER FATHER.
Ready to Find Out Your Family History?
Yes.
Enter your father’s name...
Entered.
Enter his place of birth...
The same rancho my abuelitos were born on in Sinaloa.
Enter his birthday...
Same as his dad’s.
Click on the branch.
Click.
...
There must be another man with the same name. The same birthday. The same place of birth. My father would not have another family. He is not recently divorced. He could not have other children.
This is what keeps replaying in Marlene’s head. The moment she found out her father had another family. A wife and a son. A son and a wife. A wife that is not named Laura. Marlene’s mother is Laura. Laura has one daughter with Doroteo Hidalgo. Marlene. They do not have a son. But here, on this website that promises to reveal your genealogy, your family history, Marlene learns that Doroteo Hidalgo has a son named Diego. He is almost two years older than Marlene– nineteen years old. Doroteo Hidalgo, from Riverside, California, was recently divorced from one Lourdes Hidalgo. Marlene is confused. And then she is not. In a short amount of time, she has learned much family history.
Things become painfully clear. Now, there are answers to questions she forgot she’d been asking since she could speak: Why are you gone for so long? Why won’t you be here for Christmas? Who is the boy in your wallet?
Marlene confronts her father. And then her mother when she learns that her mother has known the whole time. Things do not go well. These things never do. There is crying. There is blame. Doors are slammed.
MARLENE GETS TO THE JAIL AND WAITS OUTSIDE
FOR MEMO BEFORE THEY TAKE OFF.
She’s watched this happen in movies many times. At the end of Ocean’s Eleven when Tess is waiting for Danny. Or when Karen waits for Henry in Goodfellas. But neither of those films really encapsulates how it feels to wait for someone you love to be released from a cage.
Tío Reynaldo had been put in a cell, once, too. This was years before the government steadily detained children, when the country hung on more faithfully to the facade of justice and equality. His face was never blurred in an article written by a journalist clamoring for humanity. Or attention. No, Tío Reynaldo had had too much to drink one night and had been pulled over. Bad luck. Mala suerte, her mom had lamented. He was eventually released and did some community service. Marlene was very young then and couldn’t fully understand what it meant to be locked away. Not the way she does now.
Fuck, it feels like I’ve been waiting forever. Marlene wipes sweat from her eyebrows again. When she looks at her watch she realizes she’s been waiting for only twenty minutes.
It’s hot outside the jail in Banning. The desert greedily and mercilessly absorbs the California summer. Even this early in the day the sun is not kissing her skin as much as biting it. If her mom were here, she’d have a hat on and would probably be reapplying sunscreen. Most likely she’d go back in the car and turn on the a/c, because her pale ass doesn’t tan, just burns. Marlene, who takes after her dad, likes the way her skin turns a deeper shade of brown in the summer when she spends most of her time outside, swimming or hiking or walking her dog. She still applies sunblock though. Too scared of melanoma and its cousins. Marlene once looked up skin cancer because her mom had a strange mole on her arm and she was panicked it was cancer. It wasn’t. Nonetheless, Marlene went down a skin cancer rabbit hole, self diagnosing until Memo pointed out that her mom had always had that mole on her arm. When we were little and your mom walked us to the library, I remember holding her hand and thinking how it looked like a tiny crescent moon and star, he’d said. So, it couldn’t be cancer. Memo was good at reassuring her when she’d overthink.
Finally, Marlene can’t take the sun anymore and gets in the car. The a/c has barely started cooling her off when Memo walks out the door. Memo, tall, brown, dimpled, and smiling, plastic bag in hand. Marlene can’t make out what he’s saying, some joke, probably, because he’s laughing. She opens the door and runs to meet him.
Why you cryin’? Memo jokes.
Shut up, Memo.
Kali Uchis’s “Ridin Round” starts playing on the car stereo as Memo closes the door to the car. As if on cue. As if to get the road trip started.
What up, mija? We going on an adventure or what?
Just like that, Marlene is at home and free and all her problems seem solvable. That’s what Memo does. He gives her the possibility of possibility.
She hands Memo a paper sack with his favorite snacks: a bag of mango chile paletas, several Reese’s, Baby Ruths, Takis, and two ice-cold cans of Arizona Green Tea with Ginseng.
You really do love me, Memo teases.
He hands Marlene a mango paleta, pops one in his mouth, turns the radio up, and jokes Let’s go, before they know I’m missing.
Neither of them bother looking back at what they’re leaving behind as they race towards the 10.1
THE PART WHERE YOU LEARN ABOUT HOW
TÍO REYNALDO AND MARLENE ARE REALLY
EXTENSIONS OF THE SAME LONGING.
Decades before, upon first arriving in the United States, Tío Reynaldo had taken that same 10 all the way to Florida. He made stops
