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At first, none of us wanted to move because we feared that you would come back and not find us where you left us. But since friends have taken over our apartment in Durham, and we left word where we are, and soon you will be receiving this letter, that worry has been put to rest.

Even so, it is difficult for Luby and Ofie to
leave the one place they have known as their home. The place they were born. As for me, Mamá, it is the place where I have been waiting. Waiting for you to return. Waiting for the laws to change so I can visit my birthplace in México and be able to come back into the United States again.

But Papá explained to us how our lives would be better in Vermont. We would all be together, living on the farm where he and our uncles worked.

Ever since you left, Mamá, he doesn't want to let my sisters and me out of his sight. And now, there are so many of us in Carolina del Norte that he could not always find work, and when he did, he had to go where the
patrón
sent him. The jobs were only for two, three weeks, and then back to a street corner with a crowd of other Mexicans, hoping he would be picked. And always fearing that
la migra
would pick him up first and deport him back home, where he'd have to find the money to pay for the dangerous crossing once again. Papá worries most about what would happen to my sisters and me if he was taken away, especially with you not around to at least be one parent in the family.

“Do not worry,” Tío Armando reminds Papá. “I would take care of them like my own children.” Our uncle has not seen his wife and kids since he
went for a visit three years ago. His littlest daughter he hasn't even met. Papafón, she calls him, because she only knows him from hearing his voice on the telephone.

“And what if they take you, too?” Papá always replies. “What then?”

Our uncle Felipe strums his guitar to remind Papá that he can take care of us, too. Wilmita, he calls her. “I will treat them like
princesitas,
“ he sings as he picks a tune. “I will dress them in diamonds and pearls and take them to Disney World.”

“How about we dress them in sweaters and boots and take them to a farm in Vermont,” Papá says, smiling. Tío Felipe sure knows how to make us all laugh. Without him, we'd be a family of the well half dry, that is for certain.

Another thing that is for certain: Papá will be so much happier working on a farm! He often speaks of being a boy, helping our grandfather, Abuelote, farm in Las Margaritas. But that was before the family had to give up farming because there was no money in it. In Carolina del Norte, all he did was construction, and often the jobs were far away, and Papá could not come home for weeks at a time, and then just for a short weekend.

Don't worry, Mamá, I have taken good care of my little sisters when he is gone. You will not
believe how tall Luby has gotten! She is up to my chest, and Ofie is almost as tall as me! A lot of people guess they are older than five and seven, which Ofie especially loves to brag about. Often those same people can't believe I'm really eleven going on twelve. “Good things come in small packages,” they say to console me.

I understand why I am not very tall, because I resemble you and Papá. But where did my sisters get their height? In school, we learned about genes, how we become what our parents put in us.

“Genes?” Tío Felipe makes a joke when I explain it to him. “Jeans are to wear!” He says it is food, lots of it. When I was in your belly in Las Margaritas you were not eating as well as when Ofie and then Luby came along in this country. When he sees the sad look on my face, Tío Felipe tries to make another joke. “All those McDonald's and Coca- Colas!” He smiles his wonderful smile that is so hard to resist. Papá says that when Tío Felipe returns with his pockets full of money and his good looks, all the girls in Las Margaritas are going to throw themselves at him like girls do here at the movie stars. That makes Tío Felipe smile wider.

It is difficult to be the one different from my sisters. Some boys at my old school made fun of me, calling me an “illegal alien.” What is illegal about me? Only that I was born on the wrong
side of a border? As for “alien,” I asked the teacher's helper, and she explained that an alien is a creature from outer space who does not even belong on this earth! So, where am I supposed to go?

Even at home, I feel so alone sometimes. I cannot tell Papá about the boys making fun because he would pull us out of school, especially now that he is so protective after you left. I cannot speak to my little sisters, as I don't want to worry them any more than they are. Besides, Ofie has such a big mouth, I am afraid she would tell Papá whatever I tell her. And how could any of them understand why I feel so lonely? I am not like my sisters, who are little American girls as they were born here and don't know anything else. I was born in México, but I don't feel Mexican, not like Papá and my uncles with all their memories and stories and missing it all the time.

If only you were here, Mamá, you would understand. Now that you are gone, Papá says I am to be the mother to my little sisters. “But who will be my mother?” I ask him. He just bows his head and gets so quiet for days on end. I'm not going to make him more sad by asking him that again.

That is why I am writing, Mamá. Not only to tell you where we are moving to, but also because I have nowhere else to put the things that are in
my heart. As you always used to tell Papá when he found you writing letters, or just writing in a notebook,
“El papel lo aguanta todo.”
Paper can hold anything. Sorrows that might otherwise break your heart. Joys with wings that lift you above the sad things in your life.

Mamá, you know what I have missed most of all? Your stories! What wonderful ones you always told my sisters and me even before they could understand why you and Papá had come from Las Margaritas to Carolina del Norte, the dreams that drew you here so you could give us a better life and help our grandparents and aunts and uncles back home.

Since you left, Mamá, I have continued to tell them those stories. Luby and Ofie do not have as many memories of you as I have. So I am always adding mine to theirs so that you will not be a stranger when you come back. And I write you for the same reason, so you will know me through these words. So when you see me I will not be an alien to you, too, Mamá. For that would break my heart, even if I also write it down.
I love you with all my heart and with

my
corazón,
too,

Mari

19 agosto 2005

Queridísima Mamá,

I am writing to tell you that we arrived safely. I hope by now you have returned to Carolina del Norte and will find this letter as well as the first one waiting for you.

We have not yet gotten our own telephone number, but you have the number of the
patrón
we left for you and I will write it down here, too: 802-555-2789.

Our journey to Vermont was not as long as our journey to this country. At first, the plan was to buy a used car and Tío Armando would drive us, a voyage of about three days. But Papá feared that the
policía
would pull us over and find out that there were four of us without papers, including one driver without a license, and two little American- citizen girls whom we had obviously kidnapped.

There was the added problem that Tío Felipe thought the police might be looking for him. No, Mamá, he did not do anything wrong. But the old lady he worked for had two little dogs, and part of Tío Felipe's job was to feed and walk them. Tío Felipe said those animals ate better than most of the people in Las Margaritas. Several weeks ago,
one of those little dogs disappeared, and the lady was sure that Tío Felipe had sold it, as those
perritos
are very valuable. But as Tío Felipe said when he told us the story, “Then why didn't I sell them both?”

But Tío Felipe could not defend himself because he does not know enough English. He did understand when this lady said the word
police.
So, after she went back inside her house, Tío Felipe ran off, arriving home in the middle of the morning. My sisters and I were not expecting anybody until the end of the day. We got so excited when we heard a key in the lock, thinking it was you, Mamá, returning home. We tried not to look too disappointed when it was only our uncle at the door.

After that, Tío Felipe was afraid to go out on the streets and be picked up for a theft he had never committed.

I offered to call the old lady, since my English is almost perfect now. I would explain how our uncle never even takes something out of the refrigerator that he has not bought himself without asking first.

But Tío Felipe shook his head. That
viejita
was not going to believe a Mexican. My uncle hadn't meant to hurt my feelings, but it made me feel the same left- out feelings as when the children at school called me names.

“I'll call her,” Ofie offered. “I'm American.”

“I'm American too,” Luby said. “I'll let her play with my doggie, Tío Fipe.” Luby held out this little stuffed puppy our uncle had bought her at the Wal- Mart.

Even Tío Felipe smiled, though his eyes were

sad.

(Later the same day—as I had to stop.

Sometimes I get so sad,

even if I'm just writing things down.)

Papá and my uncles decided we should travel by bus, just as for that first journey when we came from México. I was only four. So I do not know if I truly remember, Mamá, or if it is your stories that have become my memories.

I do remember how hard you cried when we left Las Margaritas. “I cried so much that for years I had no tears,” you once told me. I do not understand how that can be, Mamá. Since you left, I have cried and cried into my pillow so as not to upset Papá or my sisters over your absence, and every night there are fresh tears.

Those last moments in Las Margaritas, you told me you clung to Abuelita, and your sisters and younger brothers clung to you, and Abuelito looked down at the earth that could no longer feed his family. “My daughter,” he said in parting,

“if we do not meet again in this world, we will meet again in the next life.” This only made you cry harder.

You told me, or perhaps I remember that long bus ride for days and days until we reached the border with the United States. You had not known our own country of México was so vast and beautiful. Last year in geography class, I found Las Margaritas on the map at the very tip of México in the south, and with my finger I traced our route to the northern border at the very other end. What a long journey to make to a place that does not welcome us but instead sends us away!

Your face was pressed to the window of that bus, you told me, and so was mine. Sometimes when we passed a town and saw a child or an old person, we waved, and they waved back at us. Sometimes that made you sad, as it reminded you of your mother and father and the loved ones you left behind.

Those times when the sadness made you want to turn back, Papá would remind you that a new life was about to start for our family. We would be joining Tío Armando, who was already in Carolina del Norte and had sent money for our passage. Tío Felipe accompanied us, and sometimes, sad as you were, he could make you smile with his boasting: “I will come back a rich
man with a big car and throw a fiesta with piñatas full of dollars!” To think he was only fourteen and already beginning his life as a man, leaving school and his home to help support his family.

We arrived in the border town and found the smugglers that Tío Armando had recommended. “But where are the coyotes?” I kept asking. Papá had said
coyotes
would be crossing us to this country, and so I had expected animals dressed in clothes and speaking Spanish!

But they turned out to be men, not very kind ones, always barking at us as if
we
were animals. We were to carry only a small bag that would not slow us down or take up room in the van that would meet us on the other side. I remember you gave everything away to the poor beggars outside the cathedral where we stopped to pray before setting forth. Then the
coyotes
stuck us in a little room with dozens of others, waiting for darkness, to take us in small groups across the desert.

It was very dark. Sometimes I walked alongside you, but mostly you and Papá and Tío Felipe took turns carrying me. I could hear your heart beating so hard in your chest I was afraid it would burst out, and so I clung even tighter, like a bandage to keep it inside. That journey seemed to go on and on, for days. I remember the fear of serpents, the sharp rocks, the lights of
la migra.
And always, the terrible thirst… I am not sure
even this paper can hold such terrifying memories.

But we arrived safely, Mamá, and that is what I wish for you now after eight months and five days of traveling. I know Papá blames himself for letting you go back to México alone. But the passage was too expensive to think of taking any of us with you when the phone call came that Abuelita was dying. My sisters and I didn't even know that night when you put us to bed that by morning you would be gone. I still remember how after you tucked in my sisters, you lingered by my bedside. “Promise me,” you said, your voice so urgent that my sleepiness instantly faded away, “promise me you will always take care of your
hermanitas.
“