The Distance Between Us

“But when you’re poor, no matter how close things are, everything is far away. And so, until that day, my twenty-nine-year-old mother had never been to the other side of the mountains.”

Reyna was born not only in poverty, but in an isolated valley among mountainous regions where travel is difficult. For her, and for her mother, simply crossing a mountain would be an arduous task. Even upon crossing that distance, Reyna’s family would still be isolated; Acapulco and Mexico City are still a three-hour distance by bus.

“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.”

A neighbor has tried to console Reyna, advising her that her parents left to secure a better future for her. These constant separations, however, cause emotional distress for all of them, destroying the family. Additionally, her parents’ reasons for leaving are not the same, causing more confusion. Her mother leaves various times for various reasons; her father has left in order to work and save money, regardless of the toll it takes on the children.

“That night I had a dream about Mami. In my dream she was washing my hair with lemon water and scrubbing it so gently my body shuddered with pleasure. I awoke with such longing that I felt like weeping. And then I realized that Carlos had wet the bed.”

After witnessing the attention that Grandmother Evila has paid to Elida’s hair and having to endure the pain of head lice treatment, Reyna falls into a dream. Her yearning for her mother is palpable and presented in dream-like detail. On this occasion, as in many others, Reyna’s dreams—or hopes—are destroyed. The unwanted warmth of her brother’s urine and her own sensation of weeping end her dream and force her to recognize her actual situation.

“Whenever I can’t resist the pull of my birthplace, I visit Iguala […] The neighborhood where I grew up is no longer the underdeveloped part of the city. It’s the new neighborhoods encroaching upon the foothills where the poorest people now live.”

Grande reflects often upon her hometown. Narrating now as an adult, she considers how things have changed over the years. She is now able to revisit with a more sophisticated sensibility, and she wonders if the changes in Iguala have been for better or worse. The geography, she suggests, has shifted, but the problems remain.

“Mago didn’t smile. She said that if we looked sad, then maybe our parents would see how much we truly missed them, and they would come back.”

Mago and Reyna have celebrated their birthdays together. When it’s time to pose for photos, Mago attempts to manipulate the photo’s pathos by frowning. Later, when they live with their father, they send happy photos to their mother but feel conflicted about it. The distance is causing the children to resort to unusual tactics to keep the family together.

“Mago loved plucking chickens. She threw herself into it with a frenzy […] plucking so hard sometimes chicken skin would come off along with the feathers, and I wondered what the poor chickens had done to her to earn such fury.”

Reyna, still a child, has yet to understand how repressed anger can lead to violence. Mago, resentful that she has to prepare dinner for her cousin’s 15th birthday, expresses and releases her anger by plucking the chickens with fervor. Mago later hides during the party, angry, jealous, and resentful. She still reeks of chicken feathers.

“But back then, as our little mother, Mago’s job was to take care of us and to shelter us from the reality that only she could fully grasp. I had her as a buffer, but she had no one but herself.”

The children receive a package from their parents. They tear it open excitedly only to see that the clothes in it are all too small. Their parents do not know their size. Grande realizes later that Mago must have understood that the distance was growing emotionally deeper between them and their parents. To protect her siblings, however, she doesn’t comment on it and bears the burden alone.

“My hot-blooded Scorpio sister would never succumb to something as silly as sadness. She reacted in the only way she knew how.”

Reyna’s mother has left, and Carlos becomes ill. While later Reyna would learn that he in fact had hepatitis, her grandmother attributes his illness to sadness. Mago, however, doesn’t get sad. She instead acts out by killing their uncle’s puppies. Mago’s way of expressing misery recurs later; upset that a boy she likes teases her, she viciously beats a girl who is teasing Carlos.

“Soon evening came and he still hadn't told us why he was there. I waited for him to tell us that he missed us. I waited for him to say he was sorry for being gone so long. I watched him sitting on the patio with his new woman, laughing at something she said.”

When her father finally returns, unannounced and with a new woman, Reyna gets her first introduction to her father’s contradictory character. He doesn’t apologize or explain here, nor does he apologize later when he lashes out violently at Reyna and her siblings. At this point, she starts to suspect that her idealized image of her dad—the man in the photo—is a fantasy. She also understands her mother’s anger at him.

“I held onto my father's calloused hand and walked deeper into the water with him […] That was the perfect way to see the ocean for the first time—holding on to my father's hand. As he had promised, never once did he let me go.”

This is a key moment in the narrative, as Reyna’s prayer for her father’s return has been answered. Fearful of drowning as her cousin did, she relies on her father to protect her. This image of holding hands appears frequently in book; at the end, she lets go of his hand as he dies, finally feeling self-empowered and able to release her dependence on him.

“By the end of class, I had managed to create something that sounded like music. I loved playing an instrument because I knew that it didn't matter whether I spoke perfect English or not. It didn't matter that I had a ‘wetback’ accent. Reading music didn't require me to be fluent in any spoken language. And I didn't need to speak, just play.”

As Reyna advances through school, she is a generally quiet person, and her English is still not perfect. During music class, she has made a simple mistake—using the word finger instead of toe—inciting laughter from classmates. Music allows her to express herself emotionally without worrying about choosing the wrong word or pronouncing one wrong. She will later find that writing gives her the same release, as she can document her experiences without fear of mispronunciation and with the ability to double-check her work before sharing it with others who might judge or tease her.

“I recognized the terror in my father's face. I had seen it once before, at the border, during our third crossing as we were running from the helicopter. It was the look of an animal that can sense danger and is ready to protect its young.”

When a gang member is shot in front of their house and Reyna’s father refuses to help, she is at first disappointed, thinking he’s a coward. Looking at his face, however, she understands that he is acting on a natural protective instinct as he did in the desert. He fears that if he helps, another gangster will come by, possible killing Reyna or her siblings.

“In the evenings at five-thirty, I would look at Papi's bedroom door and wonder if that day he would finally come out with his notebook under his arm, ready to go back to school. But the door remained closed. After two weeks of looking at his closed door, I realized that the dream house wasn't the only thing he had lost.”

Following the incident with the gang violence, Reyna’s father decides to study English in the evenings so that he can earn more money and move to a better house in a safer neighborhood. However, when he learns that his sister has stolen his house and property in Mexico, he quits his English classes. He has lost not only his dream but his hope for the future.

“From then on, I started to smile in the pictures, and I didn't think about my fear of being punished for lying to the priest. Mago was right. We were already living in some kind of Hell in this strange place of broken beauty.”

In order to arrange her 15th birthday party, Reyna has to claim that she had her first communion, when in fact she hasn’t. Having lied to a priest, she expects to be stricken down, but Mago tells her that she’s being superstitious—there is no Hell, and no devil. In fact, if Hell exists, Mago says, they are already in it. Also, she tells Reyna to use her imagination for better things.

“I touched my belly button, something I hadn't done in a long time, and I once again felt the yearning from my home country, although it shamed me to realize that the yearning wasn't as strong as it used to be.”

Planning a return trip to visit family in Mexico, Reyna recalls the story Mago told her about her umbilical cord being an eternal connection to her mother and to her place of birth. Though Reyna insists that she would never forget where she comes from, she has gotten accustomed to life in America. Her family ties are not as strong as before. She feels ashamed but later overcomes that shame by embracing both her Mexican and American identities.

“I didn't know what to expect when I returned to Mexico […] I was seventeen years old. I thought I was no longer that little girl who had once lived there, although now I realize that little girl will always be inside me.”

Now accustomed to her new life—and having been away from Mexico for so long—Reyna feels conflicted, wondering not only how things there have changed, but also how she has changed. She understands that her childhood experiences—often terrifying—will always be a part of her, for better or worse.

“I thought about my father, the choice he had made to go north, and the price we had paid for that decision […] As Papi often said, my siblings and I had been given the opportunity of a lifetime. How could we let it go to waste?”

Reyna recognizes that her father made the sacrifice for her and her siblings, and not only for himself. The emotional cost of the separation was heavy; her father suffered as well, succumbing to alcoholism. He has invested, for better or worse, in her future. Reyna has also seen cousins and childhood friends, in Mexico, still living in poverty.

“Even though my umbilical cord was buried in Iguala, I was no longer considered Mexican enough. To the people there, who had seen me grow up, I was no longer one of them.”

Reyna’s visit to Mexico provides her with some uncomfortable insight. While she longed for home, and wants to reconnect, she is ultimately worshipped by boys wanting to marry her and go to America. Her old female companions, ashamed of their poverty and envious of Reyna’s imagined wealth, will not even let her visit their homes. Although she feels unwelcome, she will come to terms with her experience.

“I thought about Abuelita Chinta, my mother, and now my sister. The void inside me became bigger and bigger, as I realized that the women I loved most in my life were far away.”

Reyna has left her favorite grandmother behind. Her mother has abandoned her time and time again. Mago finally escapes the oppressive household, leaving Reyna alone. With no male figures to look up to, and her female influences gone, she is left stranded. While all three woman are still alive, there are distances both geographical and emotional that will prevent them from regaining intimacy.

“I hadn't been exposed to Chicano Latino literature before. I spent too many years reading the wrong kind of books, like Sweet Valley High and the Harlequin romance novels I got addicted to in high school. I hadn't even known until then that Latino literature existed.”

Now in college, Reyna meets a new teacher. While she is not Latina but Greek, she introduces Reyna to a world of books and experiences she has never known. Reyna recognizes that the unsophisticated literature of her childhood formed her interest in books in general. With her teacher’s recommendations, however, she can explore not only new books but new potential for her own life.

“I thought about the border that separates the United States and Mexico. I wondered if during their crossing, both my father and mother had lost themselves in that no man's land. I wondered if my real parents were still there caught between two worlds.”

The border between the two countries is both literal and metaphorical, and Reyna wonders where that exact line is—between two worlds. On the one hand, the border is a simple cartographical delineation. She wonders what happens on that line, the line exacted by a map-maker. Who made that line? And where is the line? And what happens when you cross from poverty to the supposed land of plenty?

“The cycle of leaving children behind has not ended. Nor will it end as long as there is poverty, as long as parents feel that the only way to provide something better for their children is by leaving.”

Early in her professional career, Reyna teaches ESL classes to both children and adults. In the children, she sees herself. In the adults, she sees her parents. While she finds some relief in knowing that she is not the only immigrant child to suffer, she laments the fact that the cycle continues. Poverty is to blame, not the ill-will of the parents.

“I consider myself Mexican-American because I am from both places. Both countries are within me. They coexist within me. And my writing is the bridge that connects them both.”

Dispelling the entrapment of an either/or fallacy, Reyna can claim two blended identities. Although it’s difficult to answer if someone asks if she is Mexican or American, this answer is the most accurate and honest. Others in her situation can follow her example and experience her coexisting identities by reading her works.