That’s how I keep my youthful glow, Tío Reynaldo joked.
No pos wow, Marlene responded. I just thought it was the not having kids and being single.
That too, he added. But mostly it’s the curiosity.
Haven’t you ever been curious about that?
About what?
Being married and having kids?
Ay, Marlene, let’s not talk about sad things, he said and quickly went back to the wild donkeys.
THE PART WHERE YOU LEARN ABOUT MEMO’S
AND MARLENE’S FAMILIES.
There are people who are born to sit. To stay in one place. Whose eyes do not wander, much less their minds. Who live in fear of the unknown and who haven’t been curious since the first time they fell off a tree and never attempted to climb again. People who when there are no real, physical, fences or barriers, will quickly erect imaginary ones so as to reassure themselves that they are safe. However, that assurance is also imaginary because there is no such thing as real safety. That is an illusion.
Memo and Marlene have parents who are both from this country and from another country. They do not come from families of sitters or stay-putters. They come from a family of fence hoppers and explorers. Some, like Reynaldo and Marlene, are patas de perro and were born to wander. Others left out of necessity. In either case, their families are a mix of people who can come and go as they please to the country of their birth and ancestors, and of people who are trapped by an inefficiently run and racist system. A system that has enacted laws and physical structures that get people killed for simply trying to leave poverty and reunite with family. Marlene had an uncle die in the desert and Memo had a cousin drown in a river, crossing to El Gabacho. Marlene’s father was born on a rancho in the middle of Sinaloa and her grandmother finally left her husband, Marlene’s grandfather, for good when Doroteo was four years old. His brothers, much older than him, were already in Gilroy with Reynaldo, working in restaurants and a tire shop. Trying to find their place in their new country. Marlene had visited the left-behind grandfather a few times in her childhood. The once big man lived small in a haunted apartment in Celaya, Guanajuato. He was old and lonely, and rarely left his couch, where he watched courtroom dramas and telenovelas with his cat, Petra.
To have families in two countries is to have part of yourself missing. Perhaps this is not the case with people who, if they have the money, can jump on a plane and cross borders without fear. But for much of Memo’s family, and some of Marlene’s, leaving is never easy. Marlene thinks about how her tía in Sinaloa will never see the house her brother built or come over for Sunday carne asada. How she has cousins she will never be close to, because their parents decided to have sex in a different country and this country is a closed border for most Brown and Black people—and Brown and Black people is exactly what their families are made of.
So maybe this journey to find her brother is not just about her father lying and confronting that lie. Maybe this journey is also about keeping all the family you can together, desperately gathering them like sticks to start a fire. Because, often, that’s what it feels like we are: the kindling that keeps everything warm in a country made of water.
1For those non-native Californians: whereas in most parts of the US folks say, “Interstate 10” or “I-10” when talking about an interstate, in California we usually say, “the 10” or “the 91” or “the 405” aka “the freeway from hell.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Isabel Quintero is an award-winning writer and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She lives and writes in the Inland Empire of Southern California. Gabi, A Girl in Pieces (Cinco Puntos Press), her first YA novel, was the recipient of multiple awards, including the California Book Award Gold Medal and the Morris Award for Debut YA Novel. She is the author of the chapter books, Ugly Cat and Pablo (Scholastic, Inc.) and Ugly Cat and Pablo and the Missing Brother (Scholastic, Inc.). In 2016 Isabel was commissioned by The J. Paul Getty Museum to write a nonfiction YA graphic biography, Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide (Getty Publications), which went on to be awarded the Boston Globe Horn Book Award. Most recently, My Papi Has a Motorcycle (Kokila), her latest book, earned the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Award.
HARD TO SAY
Sharon Morse
There’s so much I don’t remember about where I was born. Venezuela is just a few hazy scenes in my mind, so loosely tied together that they feel like dreams instead of memories. I don’t remember my school, except for the sweet, smiling face of one of my preschool teachers. I don’t remember our home, except for the balcony off the living room where I could feel the tropical breeze brush across my cheeks and whip my hair into a halo around my head. I don’t even remember the language—my first language. It, too, got lost to the haze of dreamlike memories.
My sister remembers it all. She was ten when we moved—old enough for her memories to stay intact. I had my sixth birthday just after we got to the States.
I try not to get jealous as I walk into the kitchen to the sweet smell of cinnamon pancakes and the sound of Clarísa speaking Spanish on the phone with our grandmother. My sister laughs and asks how she and our grandfather are
