At my grandmother’s house there was a mother duck that had just had eighteen ducklings and a chick, because me and my brothers and sisters had done an experiment: We put a chicken’s egg in with the rest of her clutch so she would incubate it, and the duck didn’t notice. She had a little chick which thought it was a duckling, because it could see that all its brothers and sisters were ducklings. But then one day when we weren’t watching, our biggest dog ate the mother duck and left the chick and all the little ducklings orphans.
This was before my brothers went to the United States. First my older brother went, then I was going to go with my younger brother, but in the end only my younger brother could go, and I had to stay and wait some more. But now it’s almost my turn. My mom promised us this when she went to the United States.
“Now, don’t you think I’m going to forget you,” she told us. “If I don’t come back, I’ll send for you.”
Now it’s only me left. I’m waiting for the phone call: My grandmother says it’ll come soon and that when they call me she’s going to cook me a special meal to say goodbye, and she’ll invite all my aunts. I lived with my aunts before coming to live in my grandmother’s house. At first, I lived for two years with my mom’s brother’s wife, my mom’s sister-in-law. Then I lived for one more year with my mom’s youngest sister.
“Mommy, what are you going to cook?” I ask my grandmother, because I call my grandmother Mommy. I call my mommy Mommy, too, obviously.
But she won’t tell me.
“It’s a surprise,” she says.
Sometimes I try to imagine my mother living in the United States, and now my brothers, too. But I can’t, really, because I don’t know what things are like over there. I want it to look like those commercials on TV, those before-and-after ads. Like someone who had no hair, and now they do. That kind of thing. I don’t know how my life is going to change when I go to the United States, but I’d really like to know what I’ll be like in a few years’ time.
In my grandmother’s house all the animals are loose except for one, a rooster my grandmother keeps in a cage because when it sees a stranger go into the house it runs out and starts trying to peck them. One time it pecked me a couple times, and my grandmother decided to put it in a cage, because it’s so fierce. It’s practically a dog, minus the barking.
“That rooster’s a lot like your dad,” says Mommy, my grandmother, I mean.
I don’t know that much about my dad. All I know is that he left. That he’s married to another woman and now he takes care of his stepchildren and a couple of his own kids. He lives in Guatemala, though I don’t know where, and I don’t know what he does, either. He used to come and see me only when it was my birthday, but my mom had to send him money to make him come and see me, otherwise he wouldn’t show.
When my two brothers were still here, the thing we liked most was to go exploring up on the hill. We’d go out with my two cousins and we’d take salt and lime to eat with the fruits we’d pick up there. Soft green mangoes. And green jocotes, too. We didn’t do much else, just went to school or sat around at home. We couldn’t buy much because we didn’t have any money, only enough to get by.
My mommy here in Guatemala used to work by helping out at a restaurant, and I don’t know why but whenever she was paid, there were always some people who’d take the money from her, like they knew the date she was paid, and they’d follow her home. Sometimes she didn’t even notice: She’d reach for her bag and realize she was just carrying the handles, that they’d simply sliced the rest of the bag off.
Here in Guatemala you can’t really have luxuries because people notice you’ve got nice things and they demand a payment from you. You can’t have earrings or necklaces. Once my mom sent me earrings from the United States and then they disappeared. I never saw them again.
My mommy lives in New York now, and she’s with someone else and she’s already had two other kids with him. Before that she lived in Miami and worked in a hotel until she met this man there, who my mom says will be my stepfather when I go and live with them. My stepfather is from Guatemala, too, and he has two kids who live here. He and my mom have been together for a few years now and he’s the one who sends the money back, because my mom doesn’t always work.
The other day my brothers called me on the phone and I asked them what our stepfather was like. They told me he treated them well, but that he didn’t let them watch TV in Spanish. They only watched TV in English so they’d learn the language more quickly. I know I’ll learn English quickly. At school I always have the highest grades. The teachers say I’ve got something in my head that means I can understand numbers quickly. I’d like to be an accountant when I grow up.
My dream has always been to study, to be someone important—not to be famous, but just to be able to get by.
My grandmother says I’m leaving tomorrow. A woman is going to come for me and first I have to stay with her for a few days until all the people in the group who are going to leave together are there. She called my aunts and my cousins to come and eat with us so that I could say goodbye. She made a delicious soup, with vegetables, chicken, and rice. Later that evening when I was putting things in my backpack for the journey, I realized that the rooster had escaped. I looked for it, but it wasn’t in its cage. I looked all over the house, but I couldn’t find the rooster anywhere. I went to look for my grandmother.
“Mommy,” I said, “I can’t find the rooster.”
She chuckled before replying.
“Did you look in your belly?” she said.
I remembered the soup and started to cry.
It was nearly Christmas the day my stepfather came into the house and gave me the letter. He told me it was from a university. My mom was there, too, and she stood waiting for me to open it. I’m still in high school, but I graduate next year.
“What are you waiting for—open it!” said Mommy.
It was a letter from Harvard inviting me to visit the campus, to see if I’d be interested in studying there. My mom and stepdad were really pleased, although they know I can’t go and study there because I don’t have any papers. Plus it’s really expensive, and I don’t have social security to apply for a scholarship. My mom told me she was so proud of all my hard work. I do want to go to a college, just not one that’s expensive.
Some people from a local college came to my high school and asked to speak to the twenty students with the highest grades, and from there they picked fifteen of us. They asked me if I wanted to start university early. And so now, as well as high school, I study for a few days a week at this college. I’m studying to be a doctor. I can either carry on studying there or use the credits to study somewhere else. If I do another two years then I’ll be a nurse, or I can carry on to be a family doctor, or for a bit longer still if I want to specialize.
The day I received the letter, we were about to put up the Christmas tree. It wasn’t a big tree and we didn’t have that many decorations, but it looked really pretty. We can’t have a tree like the ones on television because we’re poor, but we’re decent poor people.
When we were decorating the tree I remembered the home. I’d been caught when I crossed the border on December 23 and I had to spend my first ever Christmas in the United States in the freezer. Then they sent me to a home where, every now and then, they’d take us outside for a walk. In between Christmas and New Year’s, we went to look at other houses in the neighborhood. We went to see how they were decorated. They got a van and put a few of us in it, and they drove us around. We sat in the van and looked at those houses from a distance: the lights, the decorations, the statues of Santa Claus, the reindeer. As I looked at all those lights, sometimes I felt sad thinking I’d never be inside a house like that. But now I am inside one, and I’m happy. And I hope that no one ever makes me leave.