The Distance Between Us: Book One: Chapters 14–20

I remember he came home that night looking suspicious. Mami had put us to bed earlier than usual, and of course we had protested. But she insisted that we must be good kids if we wanted Los Reyes Magos to bring us presents.

“Your mother was a tough girl,” Abuelita Chinta said. “Tough but also very impulsive. I guess that's the way she still is.”

The neighbors put a few of their belongings out to dry, too, although their houses hadn’t flooded as much. Their homes were made of concrete and brick, whereas Abuelita’s house, with its flimsy walls made from bamboo sticks, was like a sieve.

The neighbors put a few of their belongings out to dry, too, although their houses hadn’t flooded as much. Their homes were made of concrete and brick, whereas Abuelita’s house, with its flimsy walls made from bamboo sticks, was like a sieve.

People navigated through the streets in makeshift canoes, and the corpses of their chickens, pigs, dogs, and cats floated in the water.

Abuelita Chinta opened the door and we stood behind her, wondering what other havoc the floods had caused.

The waters had receded enough to be contained within the river bank, but the current was still swift and strong, dragging with it branches, broken chairs, clothes, pieces of wood.

Tía Lupe said, “There’s still hope. Catalina might have survived. She might have gotten hold of something to float on. She might have been saved by someone down the river.” No one contradicted her.

I was gripped with a fear so great, it made my stomach churn.

She was chosen to be a flag bearer, an honor given to the sixth graders with the best cumulative grades.

"We have a few weeks yet,” Abuelita Chinta quickly said at seeing Mago’s crestfallen face. “We’ll come up with the money, somehow.”

“I thought you were leaving me,” I told her reproachfully.

It was excruciating getting deloused by her. She seemed to get too much pleasure out of hunting for the little suckers, and she would pull out whole strands of hair along with the lice.

Francisco would be her way out of the sorrow and fear that threatened to engulf her every waking hour.

On Mami’s first payday, she came home and said, "Let’s go to a matinee.” I’d never been to the movies, and I was still sad about the day we didn’t get to go see La Niña de la Mochila Azul with Tía Emperatriz, but that day we hurried to put on our best clothes.

By then, my memory of Papi had become a wisp of smoke.

But the thought of my mother living apart from me made my body tremble, my teeth clench in my mouth, my eyes burn as they did whenever we had no money to buy gas and I would have to fan the hot coals in the brazier as our meal slowly cooked.

We were left behind to comfort our little sister, to hold her while her tears subsided, to make funny faces and stick out our tongues, do cartwheels and handstands, sneak into the neighbor’s yard and steal juicy guavas and mangoes to sweeten the bitter memory of the one who came and went.

I would find myself not gawking at their two-story brick house because by then I would have set foot in similar houses in the United States.

Mago, however, had no qualms about ruining our meal. We hadn’t been sitting for a minute before she started to cry.

He hugged me too briefly, too hesitantly, the way one would hug an acquaintance’s child, as if out of obligation.

Mago, who was going on fourteen and claimed to be too old for baby dolls, was more than happy to play with Betty and me, just to spite Élida.

Later, he inspected the house he had built for us. We were surprised to see it almost finished; it just needed the windowpanes installed.

But destiny had also made her become my little mother, and unlike my mother, Mago’s maternal instincts won over her need to save herself.

I had to leave my mother, my little sister, my grandmother—so that I could have a father. But even that was in jeopardy. If we didn’t cross that third time, I would lose him.

We crossed the dirt path, slipped under the hole in the fence, and immersed ourselves in the darkness that had quickly fallen around us.

Every noise, like the chirping of crickets, the wind rustling the branches of the bushes, the sound of our labored breathing, frightened me.

I thought about Abuelita Chinta, her gap-toothed smile, and I felt a pang of sadness just thinking about the fact that with every step I took, I was getting farther and farther away from her, Mami, and little Betty.

I had never seen so many palm trees, and there they were, on either side of the freeway, whizzing by. The freeway was amazing, so enormous compared to the tiny dirt roads in my colonia. And the cars were clean and shiny, so different from the rusty old cars back home.

I’d never eaten a hamburger before, but I heard this was what people in El Otro Lado liked to eat. My stomach rumbled in anticipation.