B0061QB04W EBOK by Reyna Grande Read Free Book Online

She stood below us waving a branch. “Malditas chamacas, you better get down right now!” But we didn’t come down. She finally tired of yelling and went back into the house. “You’ll come down soon enough when you’re hungry,” she said.
    We were there for so long Élida and Carlos came home from school. Carlos couldn’t get us to come down either. So instead, he climbed up the tree and sat with us. “Élida was right all along,” Mago said. “Mami won’t be coming back. Neither is Papi. They’re going to have new children over there and leave us here for good.”
    “No, they won’t, Mago,” I said.
    “They’ll come back,” Carlos said.
    “Why would they want us now, when they’re going to have American children?”
    Even though I was little then, I knew what she’d meant. Every time someone mentioned El Otro Lado, there was a reverence in their voice, as if they were talking about something holy, like God. Anything that came from over there was coveted, whether it was atoy, or a pair of shoes, or a Walkman, like the one Élida had gotten the month before from her mother. She was the envy of the whole colonia. Wouldn’t it be the same for my mother then, if she had a baby who was made in that special place?
    Carlos tried to make Mago laugh by telling us his favorite jokes about a boy named Pepito. He said, “One day, Pepito’s brother, Jesús, took Pepito’s leather sandals. When Pepito woke up, he didn’t have any shoes to wear to school. Pepito went from street to street trying to find his brother Jesús and get his huaraches back. As he was passing by a church, he heard the priest chant, ‘Jesús is ascending to Heaven.’ Then Pepito burst into the church, screaming, ‘Stop him! Stop him! He’s stealing my sandals!’”
    Carlos and I laughed. Mago cracked a hint of a smile, but when Carlos started on his next joke, Mago told him to shut up. The sun went down and soon the fireflies were out and about. Mosquitoes buzzed around and bit us, but it was too hard to see them and scare them off. Our bottoms were numb from sitting on the hard branch of the guamúchil tree. From up there, we saw Tía Emperatriz come home. We called out her name.
    “Ay, Dios mio, niños. What are you doing up there in that tree at this hour?” We told her what we did, and even though she tried to stop Abuela Evila from giving us a beating, she didn’t succeed.
    Abuela Evila made us each cut a branch from the guamúchil tree. She hit us one by one, beginning with Mago because she was the instigator. Mago bit her lips and didn’t cry when the branch whistled through the air and hit her on the legs, back, and arms. Carlos did cry—first, because he didn’t do anything and, second, out of humiliation because Abuela Evila made him pull down his pants, saying that if she hit him with pants on, he wouldn’t learn his lesson. As the branch whipped my legs and butt, I wailed like La Llorona herself and called out for my missing mother.

5
    Mago cutting her and Reyna’s birthday cake
    A MONTH LATER on September 7, just as the rainy season was coming to an end, I turned five, but my birthday came and went without notice. Since Mago’s birthday is in late October, Abuela Evila said our birthdays would be celebrated together. That meant I had to wait a month and two weeks. That whole time I was angry at Mago because it was easier to take it out on her than to rebel against my grandmother’s decision. Why did Mago have to be a hot-blooded Scorpio and not an easygoing Virgo, like me? Why couldn’t it be she who celebrated her birthday early, instead of me celebrating mine late?
    Finally, one Saturday morning, my grandmother reluctantly handed Tía Emperatriz the money my parents had sent to buy usa cake. My aunt did more than that. She came home with a roasted chicken, two cans of peas and carrots, which she used for a salad, and small presents for me and Mago: shiny ties and barrettes for our hair. This was the third