The Same Sky(61)

I have worked hard to learn your language. Most of my relatives speak little English. I go to places where Americans congregate and speak loudly—shopping malls, Starbucks coffee bars, Subway sandwich shops. For the price of a drink, I listen to the way Americans speak, and there is even a clean, free bathroom. I can record the voices around me to play for myself later, the way as a child I played the songs of Stevie Wonder even after my batteries died.

I know how privilege sounds: haughty, a bit loud, incensed by imagined slights. Americans don’t seem to laugh as much as we do, in my family. Maybe they haven’t been forced to see the worst of human nature, to know the true value of joy.

On The Beast and in the shelters along its rails, people traded stories about their experiences. We talked about bandits, robbers, rape. We agreed that people were kindest in Veracruz and Oaxaca. Once, as I rode the train, a very old woman threw a blue plastic bag that landed in my lap. I opened the bag to find six rolls, a bottle of lemonade, and a sweater.

“Thank you!” I called, waving.

I heard her voice ring out in the distance: “May God watch over you!” And so He has.

Now that we are here, we do not talk about The Beast.


I will finally answer the essay question you have posed: What was the worst day of your life? You might be surprised to hear that the worst day of my life did not take place along the journey from Tegucigalpa to Austin, Texas. The worst day was not losing my brother Junior, though that was a very bad day. Being raped more than once was … I have no words. But it was not the worst.


I gave birth to a baby girl on November 3. The hospital was clean, and already decorated for Thanksgiving. Paper turkeys lined the hallways along with paper cutouts of cornucopias, which I learned the word for later and hope never to see again. My mother was very angry with me, but when my contractions began, she helped me to her boyfriend’s truck and drove us south, to the address on the papers I had been given.

The labor pains were like a drill, boring to my very center. I was offered an epidural and I refused it, wanting to feel everything, knowing what was to come. But then the agony increased, and again I was offered an epidural, and I said yes. A doctor with a white mask covering his white face told me to push, push, and I pushed. But it was not enough. My mother spooned ice chips into my mouth. Her hand on my forehead. Her fingers in my hair. My mother: in spite of everything, she would take care of me.

My daughter was born in the hours between the middle of the night and the dawn. Her face is burned into my eyelids: whenever I sleep, or even blink, I see her. She had curls, night-black. Her eyes were a very pale brown, and her eyelashes were long and dark. She looked shocked to be in the world. She parted her lips and screamed.

They cleaned my daughter and wrapped her in a blanket with a pink cap on her head. Then they gave her to me. I kissed her, tried to take in her smell, to remember. A wave of longing caught me in its fist. You can do it! the wave told me. It is not too late! And I let myself have the fantasy of taking my daughter home to the Ace Motel, sleeping next to her (and my new sister and my brother) in my Dora the Explorer sleeping bag. Making her dinner in the parking lot, watching her run between the cars, dancing in the Texas sunshine. My mother pulled us both into her arms. “It is a mistake,” she whispered. “Do not give up your child.”

But I knew a different future was possible. I thought of opening a book in a circle of light next to a cream-colored building. I felt a backpack full of books on my shoulders, imagined a takeout cup of tea. Even in the hospital, moments after giving birth, I saw this version of myself and prayed that God would understand my decision.

And my daughter! She would not grow up in a room that smelled of sweat and beer and frustration and beans. She might even have her own room, all by herself, with a crib and a mobile from the Pottery Barn catalog I had once picked up at a Starbucks coffee bar. A crib that cost eight hundred and fifty U.S. dollars! And soft, thick blankets. And a mother—one of these American women—who did not have to make terrible choices. My girl would not have to struggle. She would not be hungry. No one would hold her down on the top of a train, shoving his seed into her, thrusting with anger and pain. I brought my lips to my baby’s perfect rose of an ear. And like the old woman in Veracruz who had thrown me a bag of bread and lemonade, I said, “May God watch over you.”

And then I gave her to the waiting nurses and signed the papers. I ate a hospital breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and a fruit cup. I slept for a while, and then I got out of the metal hospital bed, my breasts on fire, full of milk for no one. My mother helped me dress myself and settle into a wheelchair. We left the room.

As my mother pushed me toward the elevator, an American couple entered through the doors at the end of the long hallway. They hurried toward the viewing room, and I knew. I saw them exchange a smile; the woman reached for the man’s hand and they clasped fingers. The man wore a T-shirt that said “University of Texas.”

As we passed them, the woman looked at me. Her face was clear and untroubled. She was shining with happiness.

And I was free.

I climbed into my mother’s boyfriend’s truck and she drove us home to the Ace Motel. No one spoke to us as we hurried into Room Sixteen. The men had gone to work, and my mother bathed me in the cracked tub. I can still remember the feel of the warm washcloth on the back of my neck. I tried to remind myself that I would recover, go to school, and make a bright life for myself in America. I would go to university and become a lawyer or a doctor. I would buy my mother a wonderful house. Maybe someday I could see my baby again. I had checked the box on the paper that said she could contact me. My body felt liquid. My daughter was gone. As my mother washed my hair, I cried with abandon, letting go.