The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande

Author:Reyna Grande
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Biography
ISBN: 9781451661781
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2011-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

1

Mago, Reyna, and Carlos, recently arrived in El Otro Lado

IT WAS SEPTEMBER 1985. We had been in the United States for three months. The following day, I would be starting fifth grade, Carlos seventh grade, and Mago eighth grade. We didn’t speak a word of English, and we were frightened. But Papi wasn’t worried about our lack of English. He was worried about something else.

“Don’t tell anyone you’re here illegally,” he warned us.

“We won’t, Papi,” we said.

“I’m serious,” he said. “If you tell anyone anything about how you got to this country, you can kiss it goodbye. You understand?”

Papi said we had broken the law by coming to the United States, but back then I didn’t understand much about laws. All I could think of was why there would be a law that would prevent children from being with their father. That was the only reason I’d come to this country, after all.

“And you three better do well in your classes, because if you don’t, I won’t wait for la migra to deport you. I’ll send you back to Mexico myself!”

“We won’t disappoint you, Papi,” my sister, my brother, and I promised while nodding our heads.

Papi leaned back on his chair and took a swallow of his Budweiser. He put it down on the kitchen table and looked at us. First at Mago, then at Carlos, and then at me. I leaned closer to my sister, cowering under my father’s gaze.

“I brought you to this country to get an education and to take advantage of all the opportunities this country has to offer. The minute you walk through the door with anything less than As, I’m sending you straight back to my mother’s house.”

Oh, no, not to Abuela Evila! I clutched my sister tighter.

“Don’t worry about us, Papi,” Mago said. “We won’t tell anyone we’re illegals, and we’ll get good grades. We promise.”

Carlos and I only nodded, too frightened to say anything.

“Está bien,” Papi said as he finished his beer. “Well, off to bed. You have to get up early tomorrow. And I wasn’t kidding about what kind of grades I expect from you.”

We left the kitchen and went into the living room, where my stepmother was watching TV. Seeing us come in, Mila got up and headed to the bedroom, the only one in the apartment. Mago, Carlos, and I had been sleeping in the living room since we arrived from Mexico.

Our new home in the U.S. was in Highland Park, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles. Mila and my father owned a fourplex apartment building on the corner of Granada Street and Avenue 50. We lived in the one-bedroom unit because Papi said he needed the rent money from the bigger units. “The first thing I have to do is pay back all the money I borrowed for the smuggler,” he’d said.

Mago and I pulled out the sofa bed and lay down. Carlos slept on the floor. That night, though, because he was also anxious about the next day, he snuck into our bed.

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