THE ARMY OF HUNGRY SOLDIERS HAD RETURNED TO HER FAVORITE BOSS Melissa’s backyard.
Lettie had made the same preparations for Zacarias’s Version Two You! party, which now seemed so long ago. A time of innocence Lettie longed for, when she had believed she might be able to fix her problems. Or be saved, like Blanca Flor, when all hope was lost and the woodsman’s sharp axe lifted above the princess’s pale neck.
But Lettie was no princess. Melissa’s house no enchanted fairy-tale cottage, though Lettie had enjoyed living there those past few weeks, sharing the guest bedroom, which was bigger than their entire apartment, with Andres. And, sadly, Melissa’s big house with its iron gates and stone walls and alarm system whose many buttons glowed red and green in the dark house at night had not been enough to keep Lettie safe. ICE had found her there. The immigration police in their bulletproof vests and ICE jackets had come for her in the middle of the party, pounded angry fists on the front door, shoving the notice of deportation at Lettie like she had done something to hurt them—they looked that angry. How could this be when Lettie had never once laid eyes on these strange men?
Happiness can only exist in acceptance, she told herself as her family made a wall around her in the Goldbergs’ house, keeping her safe. Melissa and Regina; Zacarias and Andres. A family as mixed-up as the menudo soup her abuela made with the pig parts, intestines and feet, which most people tossed in the garbage.
In Zacarias’s arms, Andres tightened himself around her brother’s body, gripping even with his ruined leg, as if he would never let go, and Lettie wished she could live in this moment forever. Her son protected by his uncle’s strong arms—she so close she could smell Andres’s little-boy scent: hair gel and peanut butter and sweat. The scent of innocence. Of a life unspoiled.
“Zacarias,” she began. “I mean to say Zack.” Her brother looked up at her, his white smile as bright as the California sun. “He is adopting Andres. Making him his son.”
The past was the past. There was only life moving forward, and Lettie would enjoy every minute of the twenty-seven days she had left with Andres, with her family, before the American government shipped her back to Mexico.
As a little girl, she’d watched the women around her work. Their bodies absorbed blow after blow. Her mother, her abuela, all her aunties and older cousins. Oh, the pain those bodies endured. From the agony of childbirth to their husband’s clenched fists. The back-breaking work that kept a little food on the table and shoes on their children’s feet. She had once watched her mother end a pregnancy, the sharpened tip of a coat hanger dripping blood. Women’s work, she’d learned, was the hardest work there was, and work was what the women she knew did best. Their superpower, as Andres might say, Lettie thought, as she watched her son hug his dear tío Zacarias. Right in front of all her bosses.
In Melissa’s hallway, surrounded by the two women who had helped her make a better life in America—women now at war with each other, she knew—Lettie had finally been seen.
In America, her mother, Gloria, had repeated again and again that year Lettie had readied herself to cross the border, saving every penny she made cleaning the hotel rooms of wealthy tourists visiting Oaxaca. In America, her mother had said, no one goes hungry.
In America, every child learns to read.
In America, every person has a chance to be king or queen.
My America, Lettie thought, began with Andres. The little boy whose future, she still believed, overflowed with possibility. Who knew, maybe there was a President Andres Manuel Mendoza in America’s future.
Her body was strong. She’d taken the blows. From Manuel, from the silver-haired comic book store owner, from the judge in court. Even from the Big Cheeto.
And also, from those she had adored—Regina, Mel, and even Zacarias, whose broken promises, though only made of words, had once stung as much as Manuel’s slaps.
She would return someday and start her American story anew. What was Zacarias always yelling at his students at the gym? Your body can stand almost anything! It’s your mind you have to convince!
She’d go back to Mexico and make her mind strong again. And when she was sure her heart was as hard as stone, the heart of a woman who would not dare believe in promises again, she’d cross the desert, a second time, and be with her boy. Forever.