THE RIO BRAVO DRIFTS through northern Mexico and the American southwest. Bravo meaning wild and bad-tempered. When it crosses the border, its name becomes Rio Grande. We think about diving into the tepid river, then letting the current carry us to the banks of the American Dream. The rio flowing into our lungs as the water pressure squeezes us like a secondhand jacket.
Off the coast of Cozumel, there is a shipwreck. A Spanish priest learns the Mayan dialect and negotiates for the conquistador. This is before the death of Moctezuma. This is before tourists with bone-white legs drink margaritas on the Cozumel beach while tiny atomic orange umbrellas float in their glasses. Cortés and the priest leave the Yucatan peninsula and encounter an indigenous language they do not speak.
We don’t know when we are first told the story of la Malinche. It swims inside us the day we start to take our first steps. La Malinche served as Hernán Cortés’ mistress and translator, then adopted the Spanish name, Marina. This was after the Spaniards took her as a slave but before she brought the fall of the Aztec Empire and gave birth to the first mestizo. Mestizo. Mixed, like corn syrup and milk. The layers prominent like a sedimentary rock. La Malinche let her children drown out of vengeance when Cortés made his return alone. Threw them in the merciless river herself.
In Juarez, we are girls and mothers selling Chiclets. The bright pink, green, and orange gum is separated into neat bubbly squares, tightly swaddled in clear plastic wrap.
Our hair is obsidian. We have babies strapped to our chests with prayer shawls, which are the only things keeping the babies’ heads from meeting the hot asphalt. Cars with American license plates move at a glacial pace as they cross the Ysleta bridge. They buy jamoncillo, caramelized peanuts, marzipan, and portraits of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We collect Mexican pesos and American dollars from them.
In the evening, at the casa de cambio, we learn of the dollar’s strength, its defeat of the peso.
At fifteen, mother and abuela plan our quinceañeras. We are reminded that we are becoming women. Mother picks out white dresses with intricate beading along the sleeves and the bodices. Instead, we want a sports coupe.
We don’t even have our driver’s licenses.
To be called a malinchista is to be called a traitor.
In America, we are called anchor babies. Others point at us, ask if our mother moonlights as a maid, ask if we came like sardines in the back of a box truck. Our skin is honey against their peachy flesh.
Then in the summer, immigration swarms our neighborhood like crows. Mother is sent back and she drags us like Mictlantecuhtli, god of death, to Juarez. There they laugh when we struggle to order breakfast.
“Hablas español mocho,” they say. Mocho like we’re lopsided, like God forgot to include a piece to make us pass quality inspection. We piece words together with the elegance of Mod Podge. Then the Spanish word for waffle escapes us. Laughter erupts. We see a cockroach scurry across the cracking tile.
We’ve lost our appetites.
Mother teaches us the Lord’s prayer, buys us rosaries, teaches us the names of female saints. They double as venerated virgins.
A new portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe hangs in our room. She’s dressed in green and the gold hem of her robe is dusted with glitter. The glitter catches sunlight and for a second the portrait lights up like fire.
“Look, mija,” our mother says to us. “So she can watch over you.”
We wonder if the stoic figure with her hands clasped in prayer will know that we forget to recite the rosary before bed. We wonder if she will know that when abuela took us to the basilica in Mexico City, we were more fascinated by the mechanisms that prevent the temple from sinking than by the shrine built in her name. Ever since, we have wondered if we too can stay afloat.
Finally, we nod and smile, as if this were the greatest gift of our childhood. The truth is, the most memorable gifts are the blonde Barbie dolls our mother gifts us every Christmas and every birthday. Soon we have a gaggle of them, with which we reenact telenovela plots.
In México, they call the United States el otro lado. It means “the other side.” Reminds us of the afterlife, of which there are two: heaven and hell.
As girls in Juarez, we are factory workers who ride the bus home late at night. We are taken and killed. Our bodies discarded in riverbeds like glass coke bottles and worn-out rubber tires.
No one is searching, but we are found with our breasts carved out.
They ask what were we wearing, ask what did we do.
Our last view is the cornflower river with its algae and largemouth bass.
unsplash-logoEdgar Henríquez, LC
