Grace Rappazzo

For my final project, I’ve decided to write a short story that encapsulates the human experience of a family attempting to cross the border into the United States. With so many hardships and prices to be paid, one must wonder: Was it all worth it?

From Darkness to Darkness

It’s late in the evening when I returned to the bus after my shift, feet dragging beneath me. The bus stop was vacant, bathed in the aged, orange light of the flickering street lamp. An oasis in the dark. With an aching back, I slip my backpack from my shoulders and gently to the spot next to the bench. I hear the soft ‘thud’, and think about all of the homework I must get done before bed. The calc equations that I had worked on during my break still swirled about in my head, largely unfinished; I left my calculator at school.

Mama is going to yell at me for staying up, I thought glumly, bumping my head against the glass wall. ‘Why didn’t you do it at school? Why wait until you come home? You know you have a job, you have to keep on top of your schoolwork, Sofia.’ I could hear her shrill tones now, barking at me when she sees the light from my desk spill into the hallway. ‘Your little brother needs a good role model, you must be a good example for Miguelito.’

Cars pass me, a constant steady hum of motion as rubber tires rolled across asphalt powered by beating engines. Some of them are great rumbling pick-up trucks, others are small four-seated vehicles moseying along. A big white pick-up stalked to a stop at the traffic light. The driver, a guy who seemed a little older than me, stared at me from his open window. Glared, actually. I stared straight ahead, ignoring him. Muttered words laced with venom left his lips, but by the time I turned my head the light had turned green and off he went. Gone was the total stranger with blond hair who thinks just because I match the people on the news that I’m a criminal. He was soon replaced by the next wave of cars at the traffic light, the drivers of which paid me no mind. I wish I had a car.

I texted Mama that I would be coming home soon, and that I was waiting at the bus stop. It keeps her mind at peace to know where I am, especially with the recent stories of neighbors and friends of family being taken off the streets and vanishing. At first my parents did not think anything of it, thinking it was just people getting paranoid from the news reports. Then the day came when Papa’s friend was arrested while walking home from work. No one had heard from him since. 

“They hunt us like animals now, mija,” Papa mumbled around his cigarette, the stench of tobacco hanging heavily over the back porch. “Nobody knows where Roberto is, no one has heard from him. Some believe he’s being held, some think he got thrown back over the border entirely. Thing is, we’ll never know…” He looked at me. “Be careful, mija. Please. We cannot lose you…we cannot go through that again.”

I wanted to tell him that I should be fine, that I was protected certain laws that would prevent me from being snatched off the street. As long as I worked and stayed in school, I would not be prioritized for deportation. But I couldn’t, because I knew what he meant: “We cannot lose another daughter.” And it pained me as much as it did him.

My first memories were of my sister, Guadalupe. I had woken up from a nightmare in my bedroom, panicked, and slipped into the hallway of our old house, sniffling. At the end of the hallway, she sat at the kitchen table, most likely doing homework, when she saw me wander out of bed. Her lips curled easily into a smile, and whisper-called to me, “What’re you doing out here, manita?” Then she quietly walked up to me and gently ushered me back to bed, telling me that it was nothing more than a bad dream, and that I was safe, that my big sister and Mama was right there, and tucked me back into bed. She sat with me for a few moments, making sure I was settled, and then slipped back into the hallway, even though it must have been well past her bedtime as well. 

In Mexico, we lived on an old farm by a village I can’t remember the name of. From what Lupita told me, when Papa lived with us in Mexico and Abuelo was still alive, we used to sell oranges, and had been for generations. Abuelo passed a year after I was born, succumbing to his old age, but it was still an unexpected death for my family. Especially when the farm and all of its assets were quickly dropped into my father’s lap, as he was his father’s eldest son. 

My phone buzzed. Mama had responded, her Spanish popping up on my phone’s home screen: ‘Very good, stay safe. Please pick up heavy cream and milk if you can,’ She was making tres leches. It was that time of the year. Sighing, I place my phone back in my pocket and hoisted my backpack back on before leaving the bus stop to the grocery store that was a block down. There would be another bus if I missed this one, but considering the traffic, the bus would take awhile. 

Every year, Mama insisted on celebrating our escape from Mexico into America. Tres leches was the usual cake she liked to make after an extraordinarily large dinner, and Papa would bring home alcohol for him and Mama to indulge in afterwards on the back porch. Miguel wasn’t born yet when we had crossed the border, so Mama made sure from the time he could speak that he understood what we were celebrating. I hated everything about it.

I walked into the parking lot, navigating the maze of parked and moving cars, trying to stay as discreet as possible. When the automatic doors whirred open, I felt the air suck out of my lungs as I walked under the blasting AC. The lights on the high ceiling were as pale as ever, making the vast room beneath it look cold and sterile. 

I don’t really remember much of what Mexican grocery stores looked like, or if they even had any that were like American ones. I have faint memories of a market, and remember when Lupita tried to sneak some sweets without paying, shushing me with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Mama rained down hell when she figured out what Lupita was doing, and punished her by grounding her in her room for the rest of the day, complete with a quick smack of her stirring spoon. Lupita, while she moped at the initial punishment, was not deterred — when I snuck into her room later that night, she dumped a few candies Mama had not discovered into my hands and shushed me once more, smirking. 

I remember going to school. I had some friends, like Mercedes and Luisa, but I only saw them at school, for they lived too far from me. Once I came home, I would have to help out around the farm. Lupita would accompany me on the way home. Eventually, she stopped coming to school, but she would still be there at the end of the day to take me back to the farm. Right after, she’d take the family truck and drive to town for work, coming back in the late hours of the night. She was sixteen.

Walking past the produce aisle to the dairy section, I look upon the mounds of oranges and lemons. I remember how the oranges would smell on the family farm when a particularly warm breeze would blow through. It was calming, making me think of the warm summers back in Mexico where Lupita would chase me through the rows of orange trees, trying to tickle me. However, I also couldn’t help the subtle note of anxiety that crept across my skin, as a waft of oranges hit my nose. Whenever those men showed up at the house, Mama would usher me outside and told me to ‘go play’ in the further reach of the fields. I was always happy to be given this free time, but as these became more and more frequent, I realized that she was doing this because she was afraid of those men.

Around the time Papa first started owning the farm, cartels began operating in our area. At the time, I was too young to know this, but now I know that the strange men who showed up to the house every now and then were actually members. When he still lived in Mexico, they threatened Papa into giving them a specific percentage of his sales. Every once in a while they would come to the house to collect it from him, asking for more and more with each visit until they were practically crippling the family with the percentages they required of my father. Unable to support both the family and the ‘deal’, he left home before I was three to go to America. He did this to find work so he could send money back to the family in order to help us survive. Mama was left to keep up with the ‘deal’ and to look after Lupita and I. I only knew my father by his voice and the photos on the wall for the first years of my life.

One night, Lupita came home sobbing hysterically. Mama was consoling her outside of my room in the hallway. I lay in bed, eyes open, listening to her cries. Lupita’s friend had been kidnapped by the cartel and found dead in a ditch outside of town. She wheezed through her gasping sobs, “Mama, I want to leave. I cannot do this anymore.” Tears gathered in my eyes, but I remained still. I wanted to comfort my sister so badly, but what could I have said? I didn’t realize the danger our family had been in, and I too was suddenly full of fear. That night, when I finally fell asleep, was nothing but anxiety-ridden nightmares of strange men and gunshots too reminiscent of the ones I’d sometimes hear echo from beyond my window.

It was around then that I noticed some of my classmates disappearing. Mercedes stopped showing up to school, leaving Luisa and I confused and afraid for our friend. There were whispers of families packing up and leaving in the middle of the night. Luisa told me that her Papi came home last night and urged her to never go to the police, that they were ‘greedy and want nothing but your money’. A week later, she told me quietly that her family was leaving, because “Papi’s in trouble”, and that’s all she knew. I never saw her again. 

I came back inside after picking some of the oranges to find my mother sitting at the table, the muffled sounds of my father’s voice faintly heard from the phone to her ear. She saw me and snapped her fingers at me to go to my room, so I quickly scampered out of sight and leaned against the wall to eavesdrop. 

“I know…I know…”

“Yes, Lupita has been saving some money for it…”

“What day? What time?”

“I know, mi amor. But it’s not safe for them here. There have been many deaths, and lately I’ve been afraid that they’ll need more money…”

“No, what you’ve been sending is enough.”

Confused, and beginning to lose interest, I went back to my room. 

I found the heavy cream and milk and brought it up front to the self-checkout, relieved. I wasn’t keen on talking to anyone. Afterwards, as I was leaving the grocery store, I texted Mama that I had grabbed the two items and was going back to the bus stop.

“Hey! Sofia!” A girl was waving to me. I immediately recognized her. It was Liz, from my calc class. Awkwardly, I shuffled over to her, grocery bag crinkling as it swayed side to side from the momentum. She beamed at me, her electric blue eyes large from behind her glasses. “What’re you doing? It’s pretty late to be getting groceries.” I blinked at her.

“Well what are you doing here then?” She laughed at my question as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

“Just here to pick up a prescription, forgot to do that before practice.” I noticed her muddy knees and shorts partially hidden by the large hoodie she was wearing. “How’ve you been doing? Did you get all your applications done? Deadlines are coming up.” My stomach twisted.

“No, not yet. Not sure what I want to do,” I lied easily, gripping the bag even tighter. 

“Understandable. I’m not sure which school I wanna be going to either. I’m pretty sure I’ll be accepted by most of them, but then I have to choose,” she groaned, her upper body flopping like she suddenly undertook a great burden. “Senior year sucks, doesn’t it? So much to do, so much to decide…”

“Yeah. Sorry Liz, I gotta go. See you at school.” I briskly walked away, not even waiting for her goodbye, although I heard it called after me. Frustration tore at my stomach, and I felt myself shaking. 

“Lupita, why aren’t you going to school anymore?”

Lupita looked up at me from her book, her lamp aimed to where she lay in bed so she could read. I saw a strange emotion flicker in her face, but it was gone as quickly as I had noticed it. She smiled at me.

“Well, we all have to start working eventually, right?” She patted the spot next to her, beckoning me to sit beside her. She still smelled of her perfume, which smelled like sweet pea. “Besides, it’s good to have money.” 

“Then why do you keep annoying me about doing my homework so I can go to university?” I mumbled, slumping against the head of her bed. She laughed, but not her usual loud, rambunctious cackle whenever I’d say something she found hilarious — it was forced.

“Well, I want you to go to university.”

“But don’t you want to go too?” She didn’t answer me for a while, turning to the next page. I knew she wasn’t reading anymore. Her eyes weren’t moving.

“Yes…I did. But I can’t right now.” She turned to me. “Go to bed you worm.” She playfully shoved me off of her bed.

Now I guess I won’t be going either. I walked back to the bus stop, my backpack almost growing heavier and heavier with each step I took. Not only can we not afford most schools, but a lot of their scholarships I can’t even apply to. Liz’s situation felt menial in comparison. She had so much to choose, but I barely have anything to choose from. Community college would be my first step, but that also requires money that we just don’t really have right now. Papa started saving up money for me and Miguel, but it was still practically pennies in comparison to university tuition. 

Would Lupita have even been able to go back to school here? I stared at the caution-orange hand on the traffic sign, barring me from the crosswalk. Cars roared past in the intersection, gliding over the white lines with ease as they made their way to their respective homes. The hand kept me.

I was torn from sleep, Lupita shaking my shoulder roughly without care. 

“Fia, wake up,” she ordered, her grip like claws. “Get dressed. I packed a bag for you already.”

“Wha…?” I grumbled. It was still pitch black outside. The sun was nowhere to be found. “What is it?”

“Get up,” she lifted me out of the bed and onto my feet. “We’re leaving now. The car is outside. Get dressed.” I started getting changed as she left the room quickly, my small pink backpack in her hand. Where were we going? I looked around our room in the dark, blindly trying to find the clock. It was four. Lupita came back into the room, and before I could ask anything else, she picked me up and carried me into the hall and out the front door, our house by the farm getting smaller and smaller as she walked.

“I can walk!” I hollered but she hushed me so harshly I fell silent immediately. She did however put me down. I turned around and saw a minivan perched at the end of the driveway, headlights illuminating the dunes in the dirt road and the sparse bushes nearby. Mama was talking to the driver, her back turned to us. She too had a backpack. When she saw us she told us to get in the van, so we did. She hopped into the passenger seat, next to a man I had never seen before. 

“This is Toni,” she told us. “He’s an old friend of mine and Papa’s. He’s taking us as close to the border as he can.” The man turned to nod at us, a tired smile under his dark mustache. 

I was too exhausted to really acknowledge him, or the words that came out of Mama’s mouth. In all honesty, I thought I was in a strange dream. I felt Lupita’s hands lean me onto her lap, her fingers stroking my hair. Within minutes, I was back to sleep, rocked by the wheels of the car as it jumbled back onto the main road, unaware that in those moments I was leaving my home behind for the last time.

The hand shifted into the walking man, glowing white as a star. I began to cross, watched by the drivers waiting at their red light, feeling their eyes on me. I always had a slight fear of crossing the road, my eyes roaming amongst the cars and their lanes. A car could always come streaking down the road and slam into me, unaware of the red light as they make quick work on my frail fleshed frame from the impact of its cold, unforgiving metal. On the road on my own two feet, I was purely at the mercy of both the watchful and the unobservant drivers…and those who may one day decide to just simply look the other way.

When I woke up, the sun was out and we were driving through country I had never seen before. Great sloping hills, mountains in the distance, thin clouds overhead. Lupita would point out parts of the landscape that she thought looked cool or pretty. 

“Where are we going?” I asked finally.

“We’re leaving, mija,” Mama told me from where she sat. “We couldn’t stay at home any longer. We’re going to America.”

“…Oh.”

As if sensing my impending distress, Lupita took out a bag of snacks that she packed and opened them up. “Are you hungry, Fia?”

By the time I get back to the bus stop, there are a few others there. A couple adults, an elderly man and woman, and a girl who looked to be a few years older than me. Seeing that the bench was full made my back ache, but I had no other choice but to stand beside the bus stop, a bag full of books and problems and another bag of ingredients for a sweet dessert. We all stood and sat there, staring everywhere yet nowhere as the cars marched by, unaware of the people waiting to join the transport. We were all waiting to go somewhere else.

I woke up to the crunching of pebbles and gravel beneath me and a darkening sky. Lupita was awake, peering out the car window with drooping eyes. Her eyes twitched downward at my awakening, and she looked down upon me. She didn’t smile. 

Mama turned in her seat to face us. “Mijas, we’re only gonna be in this car for a few more hours.”

“Where are we, Mama?” I asked groggily, sitting up to stretch. Lupita looked back out the window again, somber.

“We’re in Chihuahua, in the desert,” Mama answered me. I looked out the window, and I could see the looming shadows of mountains and plateaus against the horizon, hovering over vast stretches of land covered in sparse, spindly bushes. With the way the sun was setting, painting the sky fantastical shades of blue, purples, pinks, and reds, I would have called it the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. “We’re still a few hours out, but we’ll be at our stop later in the evening, before midnight.”

“Are we stopping by Ciudad Juarez?” Lupita asked. “I know it’s right next to El Paso in Texas.” My eyes grew wide. We were going to Texas?! Isn’t that where Papa lives?

Mama shook her head. “We’d be off by 160 kilometers. I wanted a more isolated location to cross, less chance for us to be spotted. By the way,” Mama turned in her seat to address us, dark eyes full of determination. “Where we are stopping is about 16 kilometers out from the border. We will be walking through the Chihuahuan Desert.” I gaped at Mama. A sixteen kilometer walk? Through desert? 

“It is quite a long walk, no?” Tonio said softly, glancing over to Mama. I had almost forgotten he was in the car, despite being the driver. “Especially for the little one. Are you sure you do not want me to try to drive up any closer? I could maybe scratch off a kilometer or two, save you some time and sore feet.”

“We’ll be fine,” Mama said sternly. I sat there, dumbfounded.

“We’re walking?!”

“Mija,” Mama’s voice was dripping with ice, “we’ve been driving for almost an entire day. Some people walked for hundreds of miles to go where we are going. Some hopped from train to train. Some hitchhiked from stranger to stranger Not only is that much longer, it would be much more dangerous for us. Cartel and the police alike take advantage of those less fortunate than us who could not take a car, and we are lucky we have not run into any trouble on our way here as it is. Not to mention having to cross hundreds of miles on foot through the wilderness. Would you have rathered to follow their lead, mija? To walk through deserts and forests for days on end, only to either be apprehended by police or worse, taken by the cartel? What would you rather do?”

“Mama, don’t scare her,” Lupita spoke up, her voice cracking. “She didn’t even know we were leaving until this morning. This is a big change for her.”

“It’s a big change for all of us, mija. She needs to know how fortunate we are that we could have Toni here to help us. Not many others, especially girls, are so lucky when they try to do what we’re doing.”

“…Are we going to see Papa?” I asked, sniffling. 

Mama’s mask of anger gave way, her eyes softening at the sight of her youngest daughter so shaken. “Yes, mija. We’re going to Papa.”

Headlights beam onto us. The bus comes hurtling down the road, growling and humming like a big dog running to investigate a disturbance in its yard. It shrieks to a stop, the doors whining open. We all shuffle on, relieved to finally be getting away. I follow the wave of the crowd until I could sit down in a vacant seat, placing my swollen backpack onto my lap and the groceries by my feet. Just as I suspected, another person took the seat beside me. I held my backpack against my chest as the doors hissed shut and the bus took off once more. I was finally on my way home.

It was completely dark out by the time the car pulled to a stop on the side of the road. We piled out of the car, nothing but backpacks, the clothes on our backs, and the shoes on our feet to our names. Toni tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a water bottle.

“It’s a long walk. Take this, you will need it.” I shyly thanked him and tucked it away into my backpack. He turned to the others. “Do you have everything?”

“Yes. Thank you so much Tonio,” Mama said graciously, giving him an envelope. “Here is the money. If you ever need anything, please, please let us know.”

Tonio took the envelope, putting it on the passenger seat. “Don’t worry about it, it’s no problem to help my friend’s family. I’m sure Carmen and I will leave eventually, whenever the money is right. Maybe one day we will all see each other again, yes?” He turned to us. “Take care, chicas. Take care of your Mama, your Papa, each other, and yourselves. You have a long way ahead of you.”

With that, he hopped back into his car, gave us a final wave, and drove back the other way. We watched his van go further and further, smaller and smaller, until he was a dot in the horizon. Then he was gone.

Mama turned to us. “Okay, mijas. We’re almost there. Follow my lead, stay close, and stay quiet. If you see a car here or over the border, hide any way you can. It’ll take us about three hours to reach the border. Once we cross and make it to the nearest town, I’m going to call Papa and he’s going to come get us.” 

“Aren’t we going to use a flashlight?” Lupita asked as we started walking after Mama. Mama took out a tiny one and turned it on, a small orange dot on the desert sand.

“Yes, but only one. However, once we see the patrols, I’m going to turn it off. Like I said, stay close to me.”

I grabbed Lupita’s hand, trembling at the dark expanse before us. 

“Where are you from?”

I jolted. The older woman who sat beside me looked at me with curiosity, her brown hair peppered with gray. She wore a navy blue sweatshirt, the front emblazoned with the name of a local high school. I remembered our team playing them several times, and the way they cheered crudely at the fields when I’d walk by to get to work. Their mascot was a dingo. 

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

“Where are you from?” she repeated, curiosity quickling lending to irritation. “Do you not know English?” There was a mix of condescension and pity in her tone. It boiled my blood.

“I’m from here, ma’am.”

“You have an accent though,” she said. 

“So do you,” I responded calmly. 

She huffed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“You’re Hispanic, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Mexican?”

My heart skidded. “Yes.”

“How long are you here?”

“I live here.”

“Are you from Mexico?”

“Yes.”

“Are you legal?” she spat the word incredulously, as if she knew it couldn’t be true.

“Yes,” I lied, smiling serenely as my guise. “My parents came here legally, and I came with them as a baby.” This was the cover story my parents gave me, and I made myself believe it to the point that my heart couldn’t possibly quiver if I took a lie-detector test. The woman glared at me in disappointment.

“Oh.” She wasn’t going to feast upon self-righteousness tonight. She didn’t talk to me again, and when the bus came to her stop, left in silence. No more questions, no anecdotes of ‘Oh I went on my honeymoon to Cancun’, no apologies. She departed, disappointed she couldn’t antagonize another being.

My heart raced for the rest of the ride.

The moon was high in the sky when we finally saw the border fence. 

“Barbed wire, just as we suspected,” Mama murmured. “Lupita, get the carpet out of my backpack.” Lupita unzipped and withdrew a fold of carpet, flopping with ragged ends. I recognized it as the carpet from Mama’s bedroom. “We’re going to throw this over the top so we don’t cut ourselves.”

“Mama.” Lupita warned. “A car is coming.” Mama turned off her flashlight. A white truck drove slowly along the fence on the other side, a splash of green on its side-door. We immediately ducked behind a thick bush, watching its wheels from between the branches. It came to a stop, like a coyote who caught the scent of its next meal. After a painfully long minute, it continued down the road.

“There should be another car coming in fifteen minutes,” Mama informed us. “When I say go, we’re going to run to the fence, throw the carpet over the top, and climb over. Fia, you’re gonna go up first and Lupita will follow right behind you and help you. I’ll take the rear. As soon as you hit the ground, you must run as far as you can. Understand?” We nodded, too afraid to speak. Mama sighed. “I love you, mijas. We will make it.”

I began to tremble, watching the truck stalk further and further down the road, the tail lights red eyes leering. My throat felt so dry, I couldn’t swallow. I held my breath.

“Go!”

We burst into action, scrambling to our feet and darting to the fence. Lupita’s grip on my hand was of iron, launching me after her like a flimsy banner, Mama right after us. We bounded towards the fence until it was right before us, a shadow passing over me as Mama threw the carpet at the fence to cover the barbs. Lupita grabbed my ankles and fired me upwards until I could scramble over the scrap of carpet, the last remnant of our home in Mexico, and tumbled over into America. My feet slammed onto the ground and I fell forward, my hands clapping against the sand. I sprung myself back upright before continuing to race further into the desert, not daring to look back to see if Lupita or Mama was following. I ran so hard my lungs felt like they were ablaze, scorching my chest and my throat, but I kept going. I had to.

A strangled scream exploded somewhere to the left behind me. I crashed to a halt, my blood running cold as I whipped around to see my mother suddenly vanish beneath the ground, Lupita nowhere to be found. I jogged back to them to see what was going on. 

There was a large ditch several feet deep, with twisted and pin-straight metal bars at the bottom. Mama was crawling quickly to a dark mound, whispering strings of words frantically. It took me until Mama turned on her flashlight to realize the mound was Lupita, skewered by a rod through her leg. A pool of red, so deep it was almost black, spread around her and soaked into the sand. She was crying, voiceless screams under her breath as she tried to move back up, but the rod held her in place with agony. Mama was frantic, trying to help her move the leg up and off the rod but the tortured shrieks that came out of Lupita’s mouth made her stop. Mama sat there, frantically grasping onto Lupita’s hand and squeezing it.

“Mija, I have to get you out of here.”

“Mama, I can’t get up. I’ll die.” Lupita saw me standing at the edge of the ditch, terrified. “Tell Fia to keep running.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of light.

“Mama! Car!” I called, rolling behind a mound of dirt and rocks to hide as another truck was passing through. Mama sat there, saying nothing, staring at her oldest daughter bleeding in a ditch in the middle of nowhere America, immobile. “Get Lupita out so we can go!” I cried to her. I didn’t understand what was happening. My legs, sore from hours of walking through desert, were screaming for action, to pump blood once more to vault me out of there, out of the darkness, away from the menacing lights gaining on us. 

Mama turned to look up at me. She looked back at Lupita. The truck got closer and closer.

“I’m sorry mija,” she said. What she said next was too quiet for me to hear, as she whispered it to my sister. She climbed back up the ditch, joining me behind the mound.

“Mama…?”

“When I throw this rock, start running.” The car was close enough for us to hear its engine. With few more seconds, the wheels. “Don’t look back. Run to the hills.” Before I could ask why she was doing this, and why Lupita couldn’t come with us, she grabbed the closest stone to her hand and threw it at the truck. It bounced off of its hood. 

“Go NOW.”

We bolted, tears running down my face as Mama snatched my wrist and hurried us away. I tried looking behind us, to find my sister who needed help and to see if the border patrol had spotted us, but I saw nothing but the still truck, its headlights, and the lone carpet still hanging from the fence. Lupita was swallowed by darkness, nowhere to be seen from beyond the ditch that yawned at the night sky with teeth of iron.

The bus came to my stop. I grabbed my bookbag, weighing down my shoulders once again, and made my exit. I bid the bus driver goodnight, who mumbled a response but slammed the door shut as soon as my feet met the asphalt. It was gone in seconds. Exhausted, I began the last leg of my journey home. I walked by the gas station, the ‘OPEN’ sign glowing red and blue on the store window. I decided then that one day, I would be able to use the gas station for both snacks, cigarettes, and gas for the car I will own. 

Town gave way to sleepy suburbs. I walked past driveways full of parked cars, with random lawn decorations. Multiple homes bore an American flag beside their garages. Some even had flagpoles. Red, white, and blue. Stars and stripes. America. Freedom. Dreams. I remember the first Fourth of July we experienced in America. Mama gave me a small flag she got from a parade, emblazoned with the red stripes and the blue stars spanning across a blue night sky. 

I hated her for years. I remember the building resentment I felt in the days following our arrival, waning only when I finally got to meet Papa, who met me with tears of joy. Yet in those tears I could sense the grief that tore him apart from within — I heard Mama tell him what happened on the payphone we found when we finally got to a town. When he sobbed into my hair, I was both in grief and pure anger. My mother had left Lupita. She had abandoned her. 

I only forgave her a few years later, when I finally felt brave enough to ask her. She had looked at me with such pain in her eyes that all of those years of resentment within me immediately vanished. She hugged me, her arms strong around me and holding me tightly as if she were afraid a wind could take me away.

“I regret leaving her every day, mija. But it was either stay with her and have us all captured, or leave her to die. I only tried to get the attention of the truck because I knew they’d take her to a hospital and get her treatment. I thought we could get back in contact with her eventually, but I didn’t know what hospital she went to. She knew Papa’s number, so I waited for days for her to contact us. I called Toni, and he came back up to see if he could find her. Not a single sign of her, mija. Not even one.” Tears ran down her worn face. “It’s as if she vanished off the face of the earth.” She then wiped the tears out of her eyes and went to go put Miguel to bed, then three years old.

When I got home, I heard the TV from the living room. Miguel was up, watching some sci-fi movie, his big eyes glued to the screen. His black hair was a wild, unruly mess. Papa said he got it from Abuelo. He jumped up when I walked through the door.

“Oh, thank God, I thought you were Mama.” He flopped back down onto the couch. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed right now?”

“Yeah, but Mama and Papa are gonna be late tonight.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I told him. “You should go to bed. If you don’t, I’ll tell Mama.”

“No! Don’t! She won’t give me any tres leches if you tell her! Please!”

“Then go to bed.”

Groaning and stomping his feet, he turned off the TV and stormed to his room, door slamming after him. I rolled my tired eyes. Once my bedroom door closed behind me, I put down my backpack and dropped onto my bed, staring at the ceiling. I still had some homework to do, but my eyelids grew heavier and heavier as time passed. The more tired I became, the more I began to think about Guadalupe.

We should have never left you, Lupita. Now that I’m here, thousands of miles away from home back in Mexico, from the farm, where I have little to no opportunities to move forward, I would have much rather stayed beside you on that night. What if there was another way we could have avoided the cartel, their deal? Because coming to America feels more and more like a mistake with each passing day. People are being taken off the streets and deported, despite living here for years. We all do our work, we don’t do crime, we’re not criminals, yet every other person on the street look at me like I’m a roach in their kitchen. I can’t apply for scholarships, I can’t afford college, all because I wasn’t born here. Miguel is the only US citizen of the family, and therefore, he’s the only one to reap the benefits. Yet he’s completely unaware of what we had to go through, what we had to sacrifice, to get here, to do this for him. 

What happened to you Lupita? You promised me you’d always be there, looking after me. You used to be such a prominent figure in my life. I looked up to you. I wanted to be just like you. I wanted you to see me grow up. Now I can barely remember what your laughter sounds like, or how your hands felt, or what your smile looks like…Where are you? Mama and Papa miss you. I miss you. Miguel only knows of you, Mama and Papa barely tell him anything about you, only that you were his beautiful sister who never came back and that he would have loved you, and that you’re the reason we have tres leches every year because it’s your favorite—

My heart stopped.

I left it behind.

The milk.

The heavy cream.

I burst into tears. Gut-twisting, face-contorting, agonized sobs. 

What do I do?