When I was four years old, my mother and I left El Paso, Texas for Tijuana. We were going to live with my father, she told me, on a big house right on the beach. When we got there, it was just like she said it would be. The house was big and every wall was painted a different color. There big plants growing from every corner, even inside. Everything smelled good, and my room had two bg doors leading to a balcony; I could hear the sea foam splashing on the shore at night.
At night, sometimes I would sleep in my parents’ room. I would sneak through the dark house to wide spot between them. I think I did it for comfort, but I often found that even from there, the shadows of the trees and lamps resembled witches and strange men.
During the day, my parents would take me to the beach and teach me to fly kites. They would let me ride the horses you had to pay for, but I was never allowed to swim in the water. On some evenings, my father would play his guitar and my mother would sing; she always looked at me when she sang, and smiled so big.
Sometimes my father would leave, and while he was gone, my mother would cry. Then he came back, and my mother would take me to grandparent’s house down the street for a couple of days. One day my mother picked me up from my grandparent’s house and took me straight across the border to San Diego.
“We’re going to make a little change in our lives, okay?” She told me as we drove through the sunset through the streets of La Jolla. She stopped several times to use payphones and make calls, every time she came back to the car in tears, though she tried to hide them.
We pulled up to a two story yellow house where she got out and went inside to talk to the people who came to the door. After a short while, an elderly man came to the car and pulled our suitcases from the trunk of the car. He was followed by an elderly woman who opened the car door and smiled in at me.
“Bonjour, mon petit,” the woman crooned, “what’s your name?”
I didn’t answer. She kept smiling anyway and scooped me out of the car while my mother helped the man with the suitcases.
“My name is Suzanne, and I live here. How would you like to stay with me here for a little while?” I looked at my mother who smiled and pinched my cheek. We stayed in the yellow house for three days during which my mother spent a lot of time on the phone.
“Mija? I have something to talk to you about.” It was sunny day; I had just come inside with a jar full of lady bugs. “I’m going to have to go away for a little while.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Pheonix, your Tio Chuy has a restaurant there where I can get a job and work to make a little bit of money so that we can have our own house again. Wouldn’t that be great?”
“I can’t come with you?”
“Well, no, not right away sweetie. But I’m going to take you to a very special place I know about, somewhere that I spent a lot of time when I was a little girl your age.” She picked me up and hugged me to her breast. I could feel her tears falling into my hair.
“Where is it?”
“It’s a school for girls; it was the first school I ever went to. It’s just outside Guadalajara, Jalisco, where there are flower fields as far the eye can see! And guess what? The journey there is almost as beautiful as the destination; we’re going to have a fantastic vacation before I head to Pheonix. Pretty cool?”
I nodded my head and sucked my thumb.
