Enrique's Journey (29 page)

Rosa Amalia, who raised Enrique's sister Belky, has seen the effects of these separations. She advises María Isabel to wait until Jasmín is older, when Enrique might be able to bring them both together.

María Isabel devises a plan to stay. If she doesn't have any more children and she works hard, she can give her daughter a shot at a good education. “It's not impossible. With one child, I can give her what she wants,” María Isabel says.

“I'm not leaving without Jasmín,” she tells Gloria.

Belky has secretly been seeing a new boyfriend, Yovani. Eventually, Yovani goes to Rosa Amalia, who has raised Belky, to
pedir la llegada—
ask for permission to date. Rosa Amalia agrees after Yovani vows chastity. Rosa Amalia wants Belky to stop living in limbo, always fixating on reunifying with her mother. She hopes she will finish her studies in business administration and eventually form her own family in Honduras.

Belky begins to think that if she doesn't see her mother soon, she will never see her. “I just want to give her a hug. A bunch of hugs. I just want to be by her side—even if it's for a short while,” she says.

One night Yovani proposes as they sit outside her cinder-block hut. Yovani is not handsome. He lives with his mother, a tamale maker, in a tiny wooden shack. But he is kind, drinks rarely, and buys her little presents. He treats her like a queen. She loves him. Belky asks Lourdes to provide a few thousand dollars to build a tiny house on land beside her grandmother's home—land reserved for the house Lourdes was to build upon her return. When she marries, her mother won't be there. Her aunt and uncle will walk her down the aisle.

UNITED STATES

Lourdes works on a cleaning crew, then on a factory assembly line. It is hard living with so many people jammed into her apartment, especially because the men don't help. When she arrives home, the kitchen trash is full, the floors are dirty, and she must cook and clean for everyone.

Although the men come home at different hours, Lourdes waits up to serve each of them dinner. On her day off, she takes the men's laundry—six baskets—to the Laundromat. On Sunday, she buys $300 in groceries, enough to last the clan a week. Having seven people split the cost of the three-bedroom apartment, which costs $800 a month, allows Lourdes to send money back to her daughter and mother in Honduras. To Lourdes, it seems as though every relative in Honduras who has money troubles thinks they can ask her for help.

One night, Enrique and a friend start talking about gangs in Honduras. Lourdes says that Honduras is a horrible, lawless place. Enrique chafes at such talk, especially from Lourdes. It is your country, he says. “Mom, I don't know why you hate your country so much.”

“I'll never go back,” she says.

The discussion devolves into another big fight. For the third time since he arrived, Enrique accuses Lourdes of abandoning him in Honduras. He tells her his true mother is his grandmother María. Enrique has hung a picture of the Last Supper above the headboard of his bed. It reminds him of her. His grandmother had several pictures of the Last Supper hanging in her hut. He misses the beans and spaghetti she made for him. He misses going to church with her as a child.

Lourdes believes that Enrique's comments reveal a fear: If he goes back to Central America, his mother will not follow him. They will once again live apart.

Lourdes's boyfriend tries to find a way to alleviate the sadness he sees in Lourdes.

“
Mira,
honey,” he says, “
tome la distancia.
Look, honey, put some distance between you.” It's no use arguing and fighting with Enrique, he tells her. It's a fight you will not win. You're both equally stubborn. Neither of you likes to be contradicted or told he is wrong. You have to control your anger when Enrique baits you.

If Enrique does something she doesn't like, Lourdes ignores it. She still cooks his dinner but no longer serves him his plate of food. She stops doing his laundry. They no longer routinely go out to dinner on Saturday night or grocery shopping on Sunday.

With the new year, Lourdes, her boyfriend, and their relatives decide to leave North Carolina. The paint firm where most of the men work is in financial trouble and has cut back on everyone's hours. Jobs are scarce.

They move to Florida, where a cousin of Lourdes's boyfriend gets everyone painting jobs. Lourdes and her sister Mirian start as hotel maids for $6.50 an hour. Each cleans sixteen to eighteen rooms per shift. Eight people cram into a small two-bedroom apartment. Enrique sleeps on the living room sofa. He hates it. He misses his friends in North Carolina. He has to get up before dawn to be painting by 6:30
A.M
.

Lourdes's sister Mirian toys with the idea of bringing her children to the United States but quickly dismisses it as too dangerous. She switches to a job washing dishes for $9 an hour. She focuses on saving enough to return to her children in what she hopes will be another two years. She needs to save $10,000 to $15,000 to add a beauty salon to her mother's house and send her three children to school. So far, she has banked $1,200.

Enrique constantly nags Mirian to go back. “Why are you going to abandon your kids?” he asks her. After fights with his mother, Enrique always has a warning for his aunt Mirian. “This will happen to you, because you left your children when they were young. You think that filling our bellies is the same thing as love.”

As Enrique mulls over returning to North Carolina, he becomes more loving with his mother. He hugs and kisses her often. Finally, he decides to go.

Lourdes begs him to stay. She tells him she will not follow him back to North Carolina. She has a life now in Florida with her de facto husband, daughter, and sister. “You've never acknowledged me as a real mother. I have to work at my life with my husband now,” she tells Enrique.

Enrique quietly packs and leaves.

Lourdes wants to enjoy her life more and worry about Enrique less. She and her boyfriend go out Saturday nights to a buffet dinner. Lourdes relishes moments with her daughter Diana. She teases Diana when she flubs a phrase in Spanish. Diana helps teach her mother English in a southern drawl.

Lourdes and her boyfriend can finally afford their own apartment. She'd like to open a paint store with him someday, maybe buy a double-wide trailer. Mostly, she prays for an amnesty for immigrants so she can become legal and bring her daughter Belky to the United States.

“God, give me my papers. I want to be with my daughter,” she says. “I ask God to give me this before I die.” She begins to sob. “Is that so much to ask of God? I don't ask God for riches. Or other things.”

In North Carolina, Enrique focuses on working, on saving money, on cutting down even more on drinking and drugs. He'll need $5,000 for a smuggler to bring his girlfriend north.

Enrique gently tries to convince María Isabel to commit to the move. “María Isabel, you know I am very good to you. I give you everything,” he tells her on the telephone. He loves her. He misses her serene, calm nature, how much she would cry and giggle, how simple she is. He misses walking her home from school holding her hand.

If they live apart too long, Enrique fears, María Isabel will find someone else. “If you find someone who loves you as much as I do, go with him,” Enrique says. “I left you. I understand.”

In truth, he desperately wants to hear her protest such talk, to know if she is interested in anyone else. She tells him she loves him for life. Why doesn't she tell him she wants to come be with him? He is reaching his breaking point. He resolves to call her and ask point-blank: Are you coming or not?

He knows María Isabel has been stalling, that she is anxious about leaving Jasmín. He's been stalling, too: he wants to learn English and get his vices totally under control before bringing her to the United States. Yet the sooner María Isabel comes, the easier it will be for both of them to save money and return to Honduras. The sooner he will see his daughter. He is resolved to be with her by the time she is five, six at the latest.

If not, Jasmín won't embrace him as her father. “She'll see me as a stranger,” he says. He'll go back to Honduras when she is six, even if it is for a brief visit and he has to make his way back through Mexico illegally again.

“I need to see her. To be with her.”

As time passes, Enrique sees other things with equal clarity. He knows now that his mother will never offer an apology for leaving him. He tries to put the love he has always felt for Lourdes above the resentment he has harbored all these years. He gives his mother his first gift: $100 for her birthday. She uses it to buy a dress and a bottle of lotion.

Enrique and Lourdes start to call each other two or three times a week to talk. Enrique has long called his mother
señora.
Now, he says,
“Ma.”
With each call, he is more loving.

“
Tan bonita mi mami, la quiero mucho.
My beautiful mother, I love you so much,” he says.

Lourdes teases, “
¡Mentiroso viejo!
You old liar!”

He even begins to make plans to move from North Carolina to Florida. He does not want to live apart from his mother anymore.

Lourdes is sure that God is answering one of her prayers: that Enrique straighten up, stop drinking, and no longer feel so bitter toward her. “It's like a miracle,” she says. It is as if all the hurt he felt inside had to come out and now he is ready to move on. She feels the same warmth and love from Enrique as when he first arrived on her doorstep in North Carolina.

“He always wanted to be with me,” she says.

María Isabel and Jasmín in Tegucigalpa, 2003

THE GIRL LEFT BEHIND

It is spring 2004. Enrique has been gone for four years. Enrique and María Isabel have not spoken for more than four months, since last Christmas. Enrique calls his sister Belky. Go find María Isabel, he tells her. Tell her she must call me.

María Isabel dials from the Internet store.

“Why don't you call me?” he asks. She answers curtly that she doesn't have anything to talk about.

“Are you ready to come?” he asks.

María Isabel tells herself he is joking. When he was sniffing glue in Honduras, he often said things he didn't really mean. Even if he's serious, she can't leave until Jasmín is at least five years old. She promised.

You must make a decision, Enrique says. Now. If not, he vows, he will remake his life, find someone else.

“I don't want to leave,” she tells him.

Enrique cajoles. I've changed, he tells her. I drink, but just a little now. I don't use glue. “I'm not the same person.”

She doesn't budge.

If you come, he tells her, it will be the best thing for Jasmín. Together, we'll provide her a better life. We'll both be able to return to her sooner.

Now she is listening. “I'll think about it,” she says.

Her answer fills Enrique with hope. He starts calling María Isabel constantly. I need you, he says. You're the mother of my child. You're the only one I want to marry.

Day and night, María Isabel turns it over in her mind. If she stays and marries, her husband would never treat Jasmín as if she were his own.

María Isabel decides: In the long run, leaving will help Jasmín. Eventually, she will be with her real mother and father, everyone together. She strikes a deal with Enrique: Jasmín will live with Belky but spend weekends with her mother. “I will do it for my daughter,” she says.

A few days later, word reaches María Isabel from a smuggler. He will call next week, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday. She must be ready.

María Isabel hauls all of Jasmín's clothing and dolls over to the cinder-block hut where Belky lives behind her grandmother's home. She waits next door at Gloria's for the smuggler to call Rosa Amalia, who has just gotten hooked up to phone service. She hugs her daughter over and over. She cries and cries.

Jasmín asks, “Why are you crying so much, Mommy?”

María Isabel tells Jasmín her arm hurts. She tells her a cavity in her mouth aches.

“Don't cry,
mami,
” Jasmín says. Saddened by her mother's tears, Jasmín cries, too.

“Why are you crying?” Rosa Amalia asks the girl.

“Because my
mami
is crying. My
mami
cries all the time.”

María Isabel hasn't told her daughter she is leaving. She can't. Still, Jasmín is bright.

A neighbor asks María Isabel, “Are you leaving already?”

Jasmín asks, “Where is my mother going?”

She asks her mother why she has moved all her clothes from her grandmother Eva's to Belky's hut across town. Why, she asks her mother, has María Isabel packed a white backpack with her own clothes?

“I'm going out,” María Isabel says. “I'll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I'm going downtown.”