“Abuelita, you said Mario’s eyes were green,” I say. “Were they like mine?”
I had long puzzled over my eye color: seaweed green with yellow around the pupil. My grandmother searches my irises. I see a tremor in her mouth. She looks away.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It was so long ago. I can’t recall.”
“But they were green?” I ask.
My grandmother meets my gaze again. “Yes,” she says, and takes a deep breath. “They were like yours.”
Back in Tijuana, Carolina discovered that her father was sick. While Antonio was grooming horses for a wealthy family in northern San Diego County, his employers had noticed his chronic coughing, which stopped only when he took drags on his cigarettes or fainted. They persuaded him to stop working. Maria de Jesus took a job as a live-in nanny for the wealthy family’s neighbors. Carolina’s return was convenient. She adopted her mother’s role, cooking and cleaning. Not then, nor ever, would her family press her for information about Mexico City. Carolina could tuck the details into a corner of her brain and never revisit them again. And that’s exactly what she did, until half a century later when I asked her to tell me her story.
She bought meat daily; the family lacked a refrigerator. In a corner store on Calle O’Campo, she ordered steaks and chorizo at the carnicería counter. A pale young man with wavy black hair chopped the meat. He was burly, with a thick bull’s head. Standing under the fluorescent lights, his face looked almost translucent, like a ghost. He smiled at Carolina and her baby. What a cute boy, he said, and introduced himself as Jesus. He made her uncomfortable. As Carolina browsed the store’s vegetable section, Jesus followed her with his eyes. By now, she was aware of her looks, of the effect she had on men. She was careful not to encourage Jesus, responding in a flat, indifferent tone.
In December, her second son came into the world, healthy and on time. Carolina named him Alejandro. He looked just like his father, with the same blond tresses Mario had possessed as a child. But he was angelic, innocent, hers.
Carolina started making long, stylish dresses with an old sewing machine an aunt gave her. The neighborhood ladies brought piles of fabric and made custom orders. Carolina charged a dollar apiece and asked the women to spread the word. She was a strong girl with a solid capacity to forget, but still the world around her was a man’s world. The number of dresses she could produce while preparing meals, sweeping floors, washing dishes, doing laundry, folding clothes, dusting surfaces, shopping for produce, bathing babies and changing diapers was negligible. Alejandro started regurgitating her breast milk. She had to ask her brothers for cash to buy formula. They were often out seducing women or sleeping in late. One morning, Carolina waited anxiously for Antonio Jr. to awaken. Noon came, and she grew impatient. She shook him awake. Red-faced with uncharacteristic fury, Antonio Jr. cursed at Carolina as he seized his wallet and hurled coins in her direction. They fell with plunks to the floor. You’re a parasite, he spat. She picked the coins up off the floor, miserable and humiliated.
The December after Alejandro’s birth, Carolina stopped by the carnicería to buy steaks. Jesus asked about her New Year’s plans. She gave him the obligatory curt smile and told him, in a bored tone, that she was making dinner for her family. What about after? I have a car. We can welcome the New Year together someplace scenic. Carolina looked at him. Was he crazy? Not very smart? The last thing she wanted was more children. She learned to sew more quickly. Her toddlers waddled toward her, tugging at her skirts, longing for their mother’s touch. But as soon as she finished sewing, she had to sprint into the kitchen to make dinner. She ignored the boys, growing tenser with each cry and poke. Sometimes, she lost her temper and yelled at them. She sent them across the street to collect coins tossed into the sky during baptisms at the church. She told them to use the coins to buy candy. She had to spoil them somehow.
Marco Antonio and Alejandro were near-opposites. Marco had brown hair, walnut-colored skin and the full lips of his mother. He was observant, sensitive, quick to tears. Alejandro was as pale as a Spaniard, his hair more bleached each day. He was carefree and mischievous. He never cried when he injured himself, and he injured himself often. Carolina let his wavy white locks grow long like a girl’s.
One day, Carolina’s brothers offered to take everyone to the cinema. Marco started sobbing for no apparent reason. Carolina was unwilling to forsake this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Go ahead and cry, she said. She followed her brothers out of the house with Alejandro in her arms, leaving her crying boy alone in the house.
When they returned, the front window was shattered. Marco had smashed it with a shoe in a claustrophobic panic. He sat on a wooden bench down the street, palms bloody, staring straight ahead, tears drying on his face. Marco stopped crying after that. He started sleepwalking. At night, as he dreamed, he often walked to that same bench—the one where his tears had stopped flowing. Carolina always knew where to find him if he went missing in the night. He remains a sleepwalker as I write this.
At work, Irma had met a Mexican man named Pablo. She urged Carolina to consider the butcher. You should accept the carnicero’s invitations, she said. That way, Papi will let me go out with Pablo.
No sé, Irma, Carolina said.
Andale, it will be fun, Irma said. You don’t have to kiss him or anything.
Jesus drove them to a drive-through restaurant. When Carolina mentioned her mother’s work as a live-in nanny, he offered to pick her mother up on Fridays. Maria de Jesus had the weekends free, but didn’t have a car to travel back to Mexico. Jesus obtained visas for himself and Carolina at the consulate, then drove them across the border with Carolina’s two boys in the back seat. He let Carolina roll her window down. Wind in her hair, she turned to look at her sons. Marco Antonio and Alejandro slept peacefully, unaware they had made their first crossing into los Estados Unidos. Carolina felt exhilarated, the way she did when she was surrounded by nature in el campo. In spite of the asphalt here, this place was sprawling, and she could see the sky.
They arrived at a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe. A blonde German woman opened the door. Mi casa es tu casa, said Mrs. Roland-Holst, taking Carolina’s hands in hers. The house was a labyrinth of cavernous rooms and halls. Outside, Maria de Jesus was playing with two angelic blonde girls amid rosebushes and chubby trees. They were fluent in Spanish, thanks to their nanny. Marco Antonio and Alejandro played with them.
Jesus drove Carolina there every Friday. He started taking her sightseeing on Sundays, his only day off. They went to La Presa, the city’s main dam, and to the plazas to buy churros and ride a Ferris wheel. Carolina began to look forward to these outings. Jesus seemed to accept her as a friend. Perhaps he felt a kinship. His own mother had tried to raise him and his sister alone. In the early 1900s, Ramona Guzmán, a freckled eighteen-year-old redhead, had fallen in love with a married merchant named José Guerrero. Ramona bore him two children—Jesus and his little sister, Consuelo—but Mr. Guerrero refused to leave his wife. Heartbroken, Ramona migrated to Tijuana with her children to find work. She married a construction worker, Francisco Maldonado. He padlocked the windows and forced her to sleep naked, to keep her from slipping away to have nocturnal affairs. He beat his stepson without mercy or reason. Ramona bore him four biological children, hoping his new children would distract him. He used Jesus to provide for them. Francisco put Jesus in charge of a herd of goats. Jesus watched the herd behind the house, adjacent to a stretch of border without barriers. The goats crossed into the United States to devour wheat and vegetables, and sometimes Jesus played marbles—his only toy—to pass the time. One day, he looked up from his game to discover some gringos loading his goats onto a truck. He ran toward them, heart bucking in his chest. The men informed Jesus they were confiscating the goats for damage to U.S. property. Francisco nearly cracked Jesus’s skull with a hammer. Streams of blood poured down the boy’s face as Ramona begged Francisco not to kill him.
But Jesus did not resent his stepfather—he respected him. When he was twelve, he helped him build bungalows on the Rosarito coast. Francisco secured Jesus a job at a carnicería mopping floors, scrubbing toilets, preparing chorizo using a special recipe the owner taught him: California pepper, chili powder, cumin, onion and garlic powder. Jesus gave almost every cent to his parents, saving a small percentage for a shoe-shining business. He bought a brush, shoe polish and a footrest to earn extra pesos on weekends.
One day, at the age of seventeen, Jesus was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the carnicería when a drunk pedestrian shoved him. Jesus lost his temper and punched the man. The blow knocked him unconscious. The owner of the carnicería witnessed the impressive force of Jesus’s fist. He encouraged Jesus to enroll in the city’s amateur boxing league. Jesus was reluctant; sports appeared to be a waste of time. But his boss insisted. Jesus agreed to try. He proved to be a natural fighter. His skull seemed tougher than steel. He won municipal championships, then accumulated trophies in states across the country, competing on weekends he could afford to travel. They called him El Chivero—the goat man.
Ramona was begging him to abandon his destructive hobby and start a family when Jesus met Carolina. From his last boxing matches in faraway states, Jesus sent Carolina postcards with short, straightforward messages: “All is going well for now, many hellos, tomorrow I start the championship.”
Carolina was in the kitchen, as always, when a ceaseless honking perturbed her. She wiped her hands on her apron and threw open the front door, planning to tell the noisy driver to have respect. She froze. Across the street was the father of her children. He was slamming his fists on his claxon. She thought she was going to faint. She couldn’t make her lungs expand to breathe. Ven, he hissed. Come. She found herself taking steps toward his green-and-white taxi, pulled by a monstrous magnetic force she feared she could not fight. She stopped and asked: ¿Qué quieres?
I want to see my sons, he said. Carolina walked into the house with newfound strength. She scooped her sons into her arms, and asked her brother Jaime to follow.
Why did you bring that mocoso?
Oh, did I offend you? Goodbye then.
Carolina turned on her heel. She heard him scrambling out of his car. She clutched her boys against her hips. Jaime sprinted ahead. They ran through the front door, slammed it, locked it. She leaned against a wall as Mario pounded on the door. She was no longer a prisoner. She was free. She was free.
As Abuela Carolina recalls these moments, she refuses to use Mario’s name, calling him El Hombre Que No Voy A Nombrar. The Man I Will Not Name.
When Carolina told her father about the incident, Antonio drove to the address of his old business partner, Mateo, Mario’s brother. Days later, a divorce was finalized in civil court. A judge ordered Mario to pay Carolina the equivalent of about ten dollars a week in child support. When he came over to deliver the money, he parked on the opposite side of the street, forcing Carolina to cross to collect it. Once, he tried to drag her into his car. Carolina screamed and slapped, fighting back for the first time. She returned to the house disheveled and out of breath. Her father asked what had happened. The next week, Antonio marched outside to greet the taxi driver with a knife in his fist. He dragged Mario out of the cab, placed the edge of the knife against his gut and informed him he would be more than pleased to kill him if he returned. Carolina never saw him again.
One afternoon, Carolina’s neighbor Margarita came over to help her cook. Jesus is giving rides to some other girl, she whispered. I’ve seen him do it. Carolina felt startling indignation. He picks her up across from the carnicería after work sometimes. Let’s go catch him. They hid under a shady awning near the corner. That’s her! Margarita said, pointing at a made-up brunette. Jesus pulled up next to the girl. She crawled into his vehicle. They kissed passionately. How disgusting, Carolina said. Hurry, let’s pass in front of his car so he sees me. Let’s see what he does.
Elbows interlocked, the girls passed quickly, but it was as if time had slowed. Jesus looked up. His eyes met Carolina’s. His face contorted. He stumbled out of the car. Shouted her name. Carolina kept walking.
That night, music wafted in through the walls. Everyone looked at Antonio. But Antonio hadn’t hired a serenata—he was sober. Irma went to the door. It’s for you, sister! It’s the butcher! Carolina stood up, mortified. Jesus was standing in front of the mariachi with a bouquet of flowers in his hands. Carolina, that girl you saw me with means nothing to me. I was afraid to admit it before, but I love you. I want you to be my wife. She shut the door in his face.
Jesus came back the next day to speak with Antonio. Jesus told him he was willing to provide for Carolina’s two sons. He asked Antonio for his blessing. He’s a good man, Antonio told Carolina. He works hard and he takes you seriously. Why not marry him? You need help.
Her father’s words convinced her, once and for all, that she had been fooling herself. She couldn’t provide for her children alone. She was a woman.
Jesus suggested the civil registry. The thought of once again marrying in such an informal way, outside of the church, made Carolina cringe, but she shook this feeling. I’m not entitled to a ceremony, she thought. I don’t deserve to wear a white dress. The next morning, the couple went to the civil registry with Antonio as a witness. They signed a piece of paper dated December 6, 1960. Jesus was chopping meat at the carnicería again less than an hour later.
Carolina changed her sons’ last names and told them to call Jesus “Papá.” Marco was four and Alejandro was two. For years, they would believe Jesus was their biological father. She obtained a birth certificate for Marco that said he was born in Tijuana, legally erasing his past in Mexico City. Jesus found an apartment across from the carnicería, with a single bed and a sofa. Where will the boys sleep? Carolina asked. On the sofa, Jesus said. This was not the upgrade she had imagined for her sons. But she didn’t want Jesus to think she was ungrateful. She kept her lips sealed. Quickly, the friendly mood of their relationship altered. Jesus forbade her from going out without him, even to her mother’s. He was at ease only when she was in sight. She was ruled by fear of her dependence; he was ruled by fear of her beauty. Carolina had married him to devote more time to her sons. But she had to make lunch for Jesus and his three brothers separately every day. They took turns crossing the street in bloodstained aprons. Each wanted his food to be hot. Each wanted company as he ate. Carolina cooked first for one, then the other, then the other. One often cracked open books. His food would cool and he would request that she reheat it. She found herself with less free time than ever.
As she nears eighty, Abuela Carolina has a housekeeper, Julieta, who works part-time, cooking and cleaning. But in the evenings at around 7:30 p.m., after working all day in the Butcher Block, Carolina must serve Jesus his dinner. It is their custom. She pours the frijoles and tinga de pollo that Julieta has made onto a plate, heats it in the microwave, places it in front of her husband. She doesn’t sit down until he has finished, in case he needs anything: more juice, another serving of beans, a slice of cake for dessert. He wants his maíz tortillas to be fresh, so she must walk over to the stove every so often to warm up another. She dines only when he is done. It doesn’t matter how tired she is from counting money all day. “Lo tengo que atender,” she explains.
In 1961, at the age of twenty-three, Carolina became pregnant with Jesus’s first child. Jesus sought to drown his insecurities in alcohol. At night, he went out to gamble and play cards. He returned reeking of tequila, stumbling over the furniture.
In November, Carolina’s father walked across the border to see a doctor in San Diego. She and her mother went to visit him a day later, not realizing how sick he was. Antonio glared at them. He looked colorless, corpse-like, bloated as a frog. Que ingratas, he croaked. The two women tried to cheer him up, but he was inconsolable. He coughed up blood and pus. Carolina went back to Tijuana. The next day, Jesus answered the phone at the carnicería. He walked across the street to tell Carolina her father was dead. She fell to the floor, remembering his last words to her. Her water broke as she mourned. Carolina’s first child with Jesus was born two days later: Jesus Jr., or Chui.
One night, as she breast-fed Chui, she realized she had nothing to feed her older boys. Jesus had not come home after work. She poured coffee grounds into milk and fed them the mush. The next day, Jesus still hadn’t returned. A storm raged outside. They were out of milk and everything else. Carolina closed Alejandro’s small fists around a dollar she had saved from the sale of a dress. She told him to buy milk and bread. As Alejandro ran in the storm, the wind tore the bill from his hands. The darkness swallowed it whole.
Carolina started smoking cigarettes. She had quit making dresses when she married Jesus, determined to devote herself to domesticity. Now she made several. Carolina planned to spite her husband by looking more beautiful than ever. She would fuel his insecurities on purpose. She took driving classes. She obtained her driver’s license.
Jesus became violent. Don’t you realize how lucky you are to have a husband? he cried. He punched Carolina and threw furniture at her. Carolina defended herself by hurling dishes. Jesus directed his anger at Marco and Alejandro, too—whipping them with his leather cinturón. Most of the time, he acted as if those two boys didn’t exist. Carolina relied on her mother, Maria de Jesus, for money to buy clothing and shoes for Marco and Alejandro. Marco began to suspect that Jesus was not his biological father, and asked his mother to tell him the truth. She refused.
At a family gathering, Jesus didn’t like the flirtatious way Carolina said goodbye to a male cousin, referring to him as papasito. He charged at her like a bull. Marco Antonio stood up to block Jesus’s path. His stepfather hurled him across the room with a single arm. Then he turned toward the crumpled boy. Carolina screamed, scrambling to defend her son. Run, she hissed. Marco stood in time to sprint past the drunken Chivero. Jesus stumbled outside, but the boy had disappeared in the darkness. Marco slept on a dirt road in the cold, curled up, hiding from his stepfather—as Jesus had, once upon a time.
Carolina bought anti-pregnancy ovules and inserted them inside herself two or three at a time. She dreaded having any more children with this volatile man. But when he caught her using contraceptives, he started taking her by force when she least expected it. She got pregnant again.
Marco Antonio led his brothers on mountain expeditions, searching for snakes and tarantulas to place in empty jars. He built things for his siblings—wagons, chests, slingshots. He lassoed a wild horse in the desert and brought it back home. Carolina watched her son galloping on the stallion. Marco was growing into such a curious, self-sufficient boy. He had lost his fearful nature. He was different from other children: pensive, inventive, intrepid, but also full of love. He regularly told his mother he appreciated her. She sat with him as he did homework, determined not to let his intelligence go to waste. You must do well on your exams; you must not let me down, she said. He nodded. Cuentas conmigo, Mamá, he said, his face totally serious, as if he understood the gravity of her command. She walked him to school, ignoring the frightening men who whistled at her.
Two days after the birth of the fourth child—another boy, Miguel Angel—Jesus launched his own carnicería in northern Tijuana. Jesus’s mother, Ramona, insisted that Carolina participate. Carolina stayed up all night conducting inventory as her newborn screamed against her chest. Ramona informed Carolina the couple would move to a warehouse behind the new carnicería. Carolina awoke each morning to work at the shop, just as Jesus returned from drinking to sleep. His siblings took pesos from the cash register and beers from the refrigerators. When she told her husband, he accused her of attempting to sow discord. Ramona complained about her “bad attitude.” Carolina’s brother Joaquin came to visit in a fancy convertible he had purchased in San Diego. He had a green card and was working in El Norte. Come with me to the old house. I’ll help you. She threw her scant belongings in her brother’s vehicle and hopped in with her sons.
Jesus came and begged forgiveness. He bought a house in La Mesa, a new neighborhood on Tijuana’s rural outskirts, far from the carnicería. It was a wooden shack with a single bedroom. It lacked water, electricity, even a toilet. Carolina felt she had won the lottery. It was miles from the matriarch Ramona and the chaos of urban life. And it was hers. For the first time, she had her own space in which to breathe. It reminded her, just a little, of Unión.
Carolina kept overdosing on contraceptives. She got pregnant a fifth time. Aimee, a girl, was a novelty. Carolina and Jesus kissed and cuddled her. She was the only child they both felt safe caressing. Jesus developed a remarkable capability: no matter how hungover or intoxicated, he woke up at sunrise to work. Jesus abandoned the family carnicería and launched his own in La Mesa, selling milk and canned goods in addition to meat. Jesus’s hope swelled, and with it, his ambition.
He put Marco Antonio, age ten, in charge of the cash register. Jesus scrutinized racetrack records with a friend in the back of the store, marking up booklets with a pencil. The Agua Caliente resort was famous for its 5-10 betting option, with a prize of up to $100,000 for selecting the winning horses for the fifth through tenth races. Jesus always went for the 5-10, picking numbers on half-page slips that track employees checked by hand and stamped. One day, after the races, the two friends gaped at each other in the grandstand. They had guessed every winning horse in order. They were rich! All their problems were solved! Jesus couldn’t wait to tell Carolina. Stumbling toward the register to claim their money, the two men checked their pockets for their winning slip. Which of the two friends had it, again? Where had he put it? Neither could find it. Neither ever did.
Marco Antonio watched as the merchandise at the carnicería dwindled. People arrived for beans; there were no beans. They wanted tortillas; the tortillas had run out. Clients stopped coming.
Carolina started plotting a move to the United States. She wanted to earn U.S. dollars in San Diego like her brothers, the way she did as a teenage girl. She flirted with the idea of taking her children away from Jesus. She was hearing stories about successful female breadwinners. In 1967, she took the bus across the border for a job tailoring men’s suits. After a few days, she was able to hire a nanny with the money she earned. When the tailoring factory closed, she washed clothes at a laundry facility.
Jesus continued to take his anger out on his stepsons. In the summer, Carolina bought Marco Antonio and Alejandro plane tickets to Unión de Guadalupe. She felt they would be safe there while she worked. Marco Antonio wrote her a letter in July 1968, in Spanish:
My beloved mother,
I am here at aunt Lydia’s house. I am well. Every day I wake up at 6 in the morning and we go to church….We came to Unión on a very long road….Alejandro sometimes pees [the bed] but he almost hasn’t anymore recently….I don’t have anything more to write to you.
Marco Antonio who adores you.
My grandmother keeps his letters in a royal blue chest in her closet. She shows them to me. They are perfectly preserved amid pictures and postcards. Marco informed her about his adventures in el campo, of salamanders in streams and creamy milk straight from cows’ udders. On torn fragments of paper, he included two- to three-sentence messages for his half siblings, promising bags of candy if they behaved well with nuestra mamá. His handwriting is neat, with clear curves, randomly alternating between capital and lowercase letters, expressing joy in tracing the shapes of the alphabet. His handwriting was identical to my childhood script.
“He was so sweet back then,” my grandmother says. “He changed as a teenager.”
“Why do you think he changed?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “He’s always been serious. How can I say…he was different. He had brilliant ideas. I think he’s traumatized because…because he lived a false life. Because I lied to him about what kind of a family he was from. Maybe that’s why. I made a mistake.”
“Is that what he tells you?”
My grandmother’s lip trembles. She tells me that when she tried to hug my father a few days ago, he shrugged her off angrily and asked why she bothered to touch him now that it was too late. “No sé. No sé. No sé,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “I feel a solitude that is so…” She stops, because she can’t continue. We return to the couch, and she begins again with the old story.
Autumn came, and Carolina sent for Marco and Alejandro. She had saved enough money to install running water in the house. When a perfect stream first gushed from the kitchen faucet into her hands, she was so happy that she let out a shrieking laugh. She washed the dishes in ecstasy. Inspired by Carolina, Jesus started working at a carnicería in Los Angeles, then another in San Diego. He added a room to the house. For the first time, the Guerreros began to experience luxuries.
In 1969, Carolina went to the consulate to apply for a green card. She asked the Roland-Holst family for a recommendation letter, which she included in her application. Carolina was granted legal status months after the United States became the first country to send men to the moon. The lunar landing had proved that el sueño americano had no earthly limits. She requested permanent residency for her children, taking advantage of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allowed family reunification. Carolina and her children stood in a never-ending line in the hot sun outside the U.S. consulate in Tijuana. She had dressed them in the nicest clothes they had. Marco Antonio had a gaping hole in his sock and complained that the sidewalk’s heat was seeping through his shoe and burning his foot. Alejandro lost consciousness. His skull hit the concrete with a crack. Carolina cried out and kneeled beside him. Alejandro woke up, dusting himself off, insisting he was fine. Inside the consulate, a woman at the desk shook her head. If they wanted visas, the man of the house needed to be present.
A few days later, Carolina found out she was pregnant again. She would now need to migrate not five children but six. Please, God, let me have this last child and no more, she prayed. Her sixth child was a boy they named Joaquin.
Abuelita celebrates her birthdays with mariachis. Listening to the trumpets and guitars, she claps her hands and sways. A beautiful smile illuminates her face. I filmed her once, backlit by the sunset in an ocean-view Tijuana condominium she purchased, surrounded by men singing in charro outfits. She is radiant in a beige suit, wearing a pearl necklace. She has a list of songs she asks them to play: “Cielito Lindo,” “Guadalajara, Guadalajara,” et cetera. But her favorite is “La Ley del Monte” by Vicente Fernandez. The Law of the Mountain. In the song, a man describes carving a woman’s name on a maguey blade, interlaced with his own. When the woman falls out of love, she cuts off the maguey blade. The man is not disconcerted by her action. He knows something she doesn’t: the maguey plants in their desert are enchanted. “I don’t know if you’ll believe the strange things my eyes see,” Fernandez sings in Spanish. “Perhaps you’ll be amazed—the new limbs that bloom on the maguey carry the carvings of our names.”
The teeth of Carolina’s children tell a cross-border tale. All of my father’s molars are missing. Marco was losing teeth as a teenager. Carolina couldn’t afford toothpaste back then, let alone fillings or root canals. Friends merely tore out his troublesome teeth. Alejandro and Chui are missing about half of their molars. The three youngest siblings, raised largely in the United States, have mostly healthy teeth.
The family migrated in 1973. They escaped Mexico just as its economy suffered the blow of a global oil crisis. Carolina had decided not to leave Jesus after all. She felt her efforts to migrate alone had been thwarted by God because He did not want her to break her vows twice. She prayed Jesus would stop drinking. The Guerreros moved into subsidized housing in southern San Diego—everyone except Marco, who at the age of seventeen dreamed of becoming a surgeon in Mexico. In the United States, the family’s apartment had a boiler. Her children enjoyed the opulence of warm showers for the first time in their lives.
Marco’s medical school dreams failed to materialize for reasons he preferred not to discuss with his mother. He followed his family across the border, moved in with them and began working in the shipyards. One night, he awoke sweating and sobbing. He had had a terrible dream. He was certain, somehow, that this dream had been more than just a dream. He had seen into the future. But it was all blackness, melting blackness. It was so horrible it was inconceivable. Carolina found him in bed, shaking and weeping. He tried to put words to what he had seen: All I know is that it was the future, and that it was the worst thing, it was so traumatizing, he told her. Carolina believed in premonitions; her grandmother had peered into parallel worlds. She took her first son to a curandera in Tijuana. Carolina didn’t much trust that woman; she had read Carolina her fortune and said: I see you surrounded by piles and piles of one-hundred-dollar bills. Money, money, everywhere! Carolina had walked out laughing. Clearly, the woman was deranged. But she didn’t know of anyone else. Perhaps she could give her son a cleansing?
The woman took one look at Marco Antonio and shuddered. He has the veil of death over his soul. I have to tear it down, but it is going to be very, very difficult. Marco Antonio refused. Her fee seemed absurdly high; he was convinced she was a con artist. He was determined to transcend the darkness on his own. He started meditating. He read Eastern philosophy books. He kept stacks of notebooks, writing thoughts and queries. He told his siblings he was shutting himself up in his room to drift to another dimension. He warned them not to disturb him and bring him back into his body. He disappeared for weeks on solo camping trips, taking a homemade survival kit into the mountains.
In 1980, Carolina spotted a small filet-mignon supply shop for sale in downtown Chula Vista. She suggested that Jesus take a look. He purchased it, following Don Roberto’s advice. The meat came from local slaughterhouses in halved, juicy carcasses hanging from metal hooks. In red aprons, Jesus, Alejandro, Chui and Miguel chopped the bloody meat by hand. Marco Antonio was busy at the shipyard from 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., but came in the evenings and on weekends to help. Jesus prepared chorizo with the recipe he had learned as a boy. The wealth of the Robledos and the Guerreros exploded in tandem. Carolina, in charge of payroll and accounting, purchased her own car. She found herself surrounded by piles and piles of $100 bills.
It was more money than she knew what to do with. In 1980, Carolina obtained a license from the California Social Services Department to operate a foster family for abused children. But the orders at the Butcher Block mounted so quickly that she had to start assisting with deliveries—dozens in a day, sometimes as far away as Escondido. Carolina picked up Aimee and Joaquin from school, then drove her meat-loaded car to restaurants. She was forced to give up foster care. Don Jesus continued drinking prodigiously, grasping the flask of liquor in his pocket with bloodstained hands. He was polite and attentive with customers, but it was not unusual to find him passed out on the floor after hours. One evening, Miguel—or perhaps it was Chui—kicked him as he lay drooling. Eres una desgracia, one of them said with disgust. That’s all it took: the contempt of one of his biological sons. Jesus quit drinking cold turkey.
Marco Antonio counseled Jesus to invest in German slicing machines, which could slice in twenty seconds what hands sliced in five minutes. His brothers found it humanly impossible to finish chopping in time for the afternoon deliveries. They were taking methamphetamines to work faster in the near-freezing temperatures of the plant. When the USDA shut down the Butcher Block, Jesus asked Marco Antonio for help building the new one. My father agreed.
The business had grown so lucrative that when Carolina drove by a home-construction site with ocean views, she stopped and asked to see the blueprints. She made an appointment to return with her husband. The houses look so beautiful, she told Jesus. But I’m sure we can’t afford them. They’re $250,000.
The gringo real estate agent sighed when he saw the Mexican couple, who could hardly speak English. We don’t have more terrains, he told them, enunciating each word as if speaking to children. Just this one, and it’s the most expensive one: $300,000.
Jesus, in his broken English, asked the man why that house cost more money than the others. Because of the oh-shen veeh-you! the man cried. It’s too ex-pen-sive for you, the best oh-shen veeh-you!
Jesus turned to Carolina. If you like it, we’ll buy it. She brought her hands to her face. He turned toward the real estate agent and informed him that he could make a down payment of $100,000—he had that in the bank.
Abuela Carolina’s lovebirds go silent in the evening. My grandmother stops talking, and we stare at each other for a while.
“How difficult it all was,” I say, finally. “But you achieved so much.”
She sighs slowly. “Ay mija,” she says. “I don’t know if it was worth it.”
Carolina pauses, then continues: “It was so much working, working and working, day after day. And at the end of life you ask yourself, why? For what? What was the value of everything I did, if I did not experience my children, if I could not enjoy them?”
Her children have not lived the happy, healthy lives she wanted for them. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the Butcher Block became a multimillion-dollar enterprise, allowing her to buy properties on both sides of the border, she thought for sure the American dream was real, that los Estados Unidos had made all of her sacrifices worthwhile. But most of her children struggled with vices. All divorced or remained single; each still relies on her and her husband to some extent. Doña Carolina dreams of retiring, of traveling to el campo and walking amid maguey plants, inhaling the smells of wet tierra, forgetting her troubles. But Jesus has no plans to retire—he needs to move, move, move, constantly, to avoid thoughts, to chop and package meat until he drops dead. And he needs Carolina. No one could fill her role. Jesus doesn’t trust anyone else with the Butcher Block finances.
“I’m roped up, I’m really chained,” she says. “If I say I’m not going to work one day, the next day I have to stay double time.”
My father tells her she has oceans of blood on her hands because of the Butcher Block. Countless slaughtered pigs and cows. My grandmother wants to be rid of the business as soon as possible. She has begged Jesus to sell it. Jesus refuses.
“Why don’t you just retire?” I ask. “Who cares if they need you? Let them deal with it. You should be enjoying the fruits of your labor. Taking vacations.”
Tears well up in her eyes and she begins to cry. She shakes her head. “Let’s go outside,” she says. We walk into her backyard to watch the sun dipping into the ocean. The backyard is a mess. Two years ago, Papi offered to renovate Abuela’s backyard: installing drip irrigation, a new fence, a garden and a drain in the cage of her mil pájaros to make it easier to clean. He knows how much she loves el campo and wanted to create a little piece of it in her San Diego home. Abuela could have hired a team of renovators, but she was touched by her son’s offer and agreed. He tore her backyard to shreds, digging deep holes, pulling down an old fence, creating mountains of soil. Her backyard became cluttered with tilling machines and piles of fertilizer. Papi did and undid and redid everything, unhappy with anything that was less than perfect. He succumbed to depression after depression. “That’s how he is: he progresses, then he slips backward—no sé por qué,” she says. “At least the fence ended up so beautiful, so lovely.” Solar-powered lights adorn the vinyl posts. The fence is made of tempered glass, providing a view of the Pacific Ocean, resisting the force of strengthening winter gusts.
I receive a text message from my mother: “Carolina is going to be admitted to the Sharp hospital for chest pain I let you know more details as soon as I have them.” I call my grandmother. She is in the emergency room. She hasn’t told anyone where she is except her daughter, Aimee, and my mother. She doesn’t want to give Jesus a heart attack. I speed to the hospital. Abuelita lies in a dark room, not a strand of scarlet hair out of place. Her nails are French-manicured. Her makeup is perfect. But her lids hang low on her eyes. She smiles and grimaces when she sees me. I don’t let myself frown or express concern; she is almost shaking with fear.
“Dios me dijo que me quiere,” she says, her voice a little girl’s.
“God does love you,” I say. “You’re going to be just fine, Abuelita.”
Suddenly, she says: “Have I ever told you about my accident?”
“What accident?”
“The one on the bicycle. When I was fifteen,” she says. “I think I forgot to tell you when you were interviewing me.”
“Tell me now,” I say.
Carolina was fifteen, riding a bicycle a neighbor had lent her. The wheel jolted against an object on the street. She found blood in her underwear when she came home. She wasn’t menstruating.
I know why she is telling me this. “You didn’t bleed when Mario took your virginity, did you?”
She shakes her head.
“I didn’t bleed the first time, either,” I say. “It’s normal.” I search her eyes and am relieved to find relief. I tell her about my first time, wondering what kind of secrets the world is whispering—about mirrors and mortality, about the womb that makes the bodies coursing with blood that cycles and cycles.
A catheterization clears up her clogged artery. My father persuades her to become a vegan with him; he has decided it’s the healthiest diet. Doña Carolina, co-owner of the Butcher Block, stops eating meat, against the protestations of some of her other children. Marco brings her powders and potions, prescribes minerals and vitamins. He makes green smoothies and cooks delicious healthy meals. Her knees, which previously hurt all the time, stop bothering her. The pain in her stomach vanishes. She becomes more beautiful still. “Your father would have been a great doctor,” she says, her skin aglow. “No sé por qué no lo hizo. No sé. No sé.”