The Distance Between Us: Book Two: Prologue–Chapter 11

I wanted to remember him how he once was. Robust. Strong. Proud.

Cancer had taken so much from him already. It had humbled him in a way I never imagined him being humbled.

During the interminable twenty minutes that it took for my father’s heart to stop beating, the years I spent with him flashed through my mind, from the moment I first laid eyes on him after our eight-year separation, to the first day I came to live with him, to the day I left his house for the last time, to now.

Our new home in the U.S. was in Highland Park, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles.

When we arrived at the beach, Carlos, Mago, and I took off running to the shore and stared at the endless ocean before us. The few pictures I had seen in books or magazines couldn’t capture its immensity.

But early the next day, when Mago, Carlos, and I stopped at the corner to say goodbye, my apprehension returned.

"Me llamo Reyna Grande Rodríguez,” I said.
He glanced at his roster and then looked at me. “Here in this country, we only use one last name. See here,” he said, showing me the roster. "You’re enrolled as Reyna Grande.”

As I helped her clean it, the smell of chicken poop and feathers reminded me of Abuelita Chinta’s doves. The smell made me even more nostalgic for Iguala.

I no longer had any reservations about putting on the costume of that girl named Rainbow Brite. Whoever she was, all I cared about was getting my free candy.

Mago and I had been taking turns waking Carlos up at night so he could use the bathroom. Papi would spank Carlos when he had his little accidents, and because we didn’t want our brother to get spanked, Mago and I would try to help him. But the previous night, neither of us had awakened him, and the inevitable had happened.

Mila’s whole family shunned her for breaking up her marriage and leaving her children.

Now that I’m a mother, I can understand the predicament she found herself in back then—leaving her own children, only to have to raise another woman’s offspring.

She had a faint scar from her nose to her upper lip because she was born with a cleft lip, but that didn’t take away from her looks.

“We’re almost done, Cindy,” the dentist said, and maybe it was the grogginess from the anesthesia, but I really liked the sound of that name.

The harshness in her voice was very subtle, but I could hear it clearly.

But Mago and I were intrigued by Mila, the woman who, in part, was responsible for breaking up my parents’ twelve-year marriage. We wanted to know what it was that had made Papi prefer her over Mami.

For going out she had nice sets of skirt suits and silk blouses. Her jewelry box had faux pearl necklaces, pearl earrings, gold chains, fancy watches.

She wasn’t afraid of Papi. She didn’t cater to his every whim as women in Mexico are taught to do, as Mami had done while living with him.

Sometimes Abuelita Chinta would give Mago, Carlos, Betty, and me unripe guavas blended to a pulp. We would drink this concoction unwillingly because sometime later the pains would come.

It was a hideous scar. Raised and swollen, the stitches like the legs of a crawling centipede. After that, we hadn’t balked at the remedies Abuelita Chinta would give us.

She listened intently, her eyebrows pulling together as she concentrated.

He came barging into the house, and without asking for an explanation, he took off his belt and gave my sister the biggest lashing any of us had gotten thus far, right there on the couch where she had been writhing in pain all day.

I clutched my sister’s hand and looked at the angry welts.

My father, the one who inflicted pain with his belt or his words, the one who had shown little tenderness toward us, who had hands hardened and callused from so many years of hard manual labor, was very gentle when delousing my hair.

After I pestered her relentlessly, she finally put her notebook down and came over to me.

My aunt would visit him daily, and they would spend hours reminiscing about times gone by and lamenting their broken relationships with their children.

As soon as we opened the door, I became intoxicated with the smells of incense, melted wax, and flowers.

She also claimed that her teachers had trouble saying her real name, Magloria, and her history teacher had started calling her Maggie. So now she was known as Maggie everywhere but at home. But there was more to the story than that. It was the beginning of her assimilation.

Only Hello Kitty had escaped, unscathed.

The air was filled with the stench of urine and a rancid smell that was almost overpowering. It made me gag.

Despite the measly salary Mami earned at the factory, she always had enough money to take us out, like to Exposition Park to see the roses, to the Alley to buy us underwear or socks, to Placita Olvera to see the folklórico dances and have a churro.

But whenever we went anywhere with Mami, she would bring along a plastic bag and would pick up cans from the street or rummage through trash bins.

Also, ever since President Reagan approved an amnesty program eight months earlier, in November of 1986, Papi had been going through the process and was hoping to get his green card through that program.

My last class was something called band. Carlos said it was an elective, but I hadn’t chosen it. All the electives, except metal shop and band, were already full, so when the counselor was filling up my schedule, he said, “I’ll put you in band,” without asking me if that’s what I wanted.

Reading music didn’t require me to be fluent in any spoken language. And I didn’t need to speak, just play.