Beyond the Ties of Blood by Florencia Mallon

Author:Florencia Mallon [Mallon, Florencia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The call from Boston came at the beginning of March. Laura knew her mama had been interviewed by phone two weeks before, but her school had just opened back up so she hadn’t been home. Since then they’d been working hard at school, trying to catch up on the materials from the first semester of sixth grade. Between the math and the Mexican history, Laura felt her head spinning every night as she tried to finish her homework.

Her mama took the call in her bedroom with the door closed. Laura could hear only the cadences of her mother’s voice, its rise and fall with the moods of the conversation. But then there was a loud shriek, and the door flew open as her mother came barreling out into the living room, then into her bedroom.

“Laurita! I got the fellowship!!” Her mama pulled her up from the bed and hugged her tight, scattering Mexican Independence heroes right and left. “I start in September, m’hijita! We’re going to the United States!”

Laura busied herself picking up the notes for her history test. Then she looked up. Her mother was still standing there, an expectant look on her face. But she couldn’t share the happiness that was burning in her mother’s eyes.

“How soon do we have to move?” she asked. She gave up trying to put the papers back in chronological order through the fog that had come over her eyes and sat down. “Do we pack everything up? Can I take Paco? Will Inocencia come with us?”

Her mother sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I got so excited, I was only thinking of myself. Of course you can take Paco, but Inocencia can’t come with us. We can’t get her a visa. Even us, there are no guarantees we can stay once the fellowship is over.”

“Then why are we going, if they might throw us out?”

“I don’t think they’ll throw us out, mi amor. Your tía Irene has permanent residency, and besides, the school said the teaching position can be renewed, especially if the students like my classes. So there’s a good possibility we can stay for a while.”

“Where will I go to school?”

“I don’t know yet, but your aunt is looking into that. She says that the neighborhood schools are pretty good on the west side of the city, and she’s going to try and get us an apartment in one of the neighborhoods over there.”

“Will we have a bougainvillea?”

“I don’t think so. The climate is very different from here. Irene says it snows a lot in the winter and for months the temperature is below freezing. That would kill a bougainvillea. But there will be other trees and other flowers. And in the fall, around your birthday, Irene says the leaves on the trees turn beautiful colors—red, orange and yellow—and then fall off. She says it’s a wonderful time of the year. We’ll get to see it when you turn twelve.”

And they did.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.