Kissing Arizona by Elizabeth Gunn Read Free Book Online

number he had carried all the way from Ajijic. Soon they were picked up by Tío Rafi, who was not really an uncle but close enough – a friend of an old family friend. He gave them food and sleeping space on his floor for three days till they found a cousin of a cousin.
    Victoria couldn’t really remember the trip, but felt she knew all about it because her parents told her the story several times, embellishing the details as she got older. It was the biggest adventure of their lives, and they were proud of it. Her mother remembered especially how thirsty she got after the water ran out – she was already pregnant with Victoria’s sister and was afraid the baby would die before they found water. But Luz was born, healthy and squalling, a few weeks after the trip ended, and gained the lifelong advantage with which she always taunted Victoria: Luz was an American citizen.
    Her father’s version of the story was the one Victoria liked best. He told her she was so heavy that the canvas backpack she rode in wore big holes in his shoulders.
    â€˜You grew heavier as the trip went along,’ he said, ‘and you were without pity even then. You beat on me like a demon child and demanded I go faster even when I told you I was exhausted.’
    â€˜Why do you tease her like that?’ Marisol would say, shaking her head. But she could see that the grotesque joke worked in some way for both of them. Pablo liked playing the martyred father, more and more as he became a mostly absent one in reality. And Victoria enjoyed the feeling of power it gave her to imagine she had once dominated her father, forcing him to carry her quickly across a desert.
    â€˜Did I yell at you?’ she would ask him. ‘Was I fierce?’ And when he answered, Yes, yes, you were the very devil, she would cackle with glee.
    She was six by then, walking to school every day with the children who lived in the other half of their small house in South Tucson. Pablo had a job with a gardening service that managed the grounds at big resorts – a distant cousin on the crew helped him get the job and the fake work permit. Marisol stayed home and cared for the children of all the maids and housekeepers who lived nearby, until Victoria and her sister Luz were both old enough for school. Then Marisol too got a green card and a job on a house-cleaning crew.
    The crew was run by Tía Luisa, Marisol’s mother’s sister. She had left home long ago and was presumed lost because the family never heard from her. Luisa was illiterate in both Spanish and English, and too ashamed to admit it. She would never ask for help with letters, as many others did. She worried about this a great deal for the first year she was in Tucson, but as she saw how much trouble and expense many immigrants went to for later-arriving relatives, she began to think it was not such a bad thing to be out of touch. When Marisol found her by accident in a market, Tía Luisa was rather cool at first. But when Marisol told her all the news from home she began to cry, embraced her niece and invited her for a meal. Soon they were close.
    The girls learned English fast in school, and when she heard them beginning to speak English to each other at home, Marisol said, ‘Teach me,’ and tried to keep up. But with work and her own housework she was usually too tired to study. She quickly learned the names for most vegetables and several bus stops, and took Vicky along when she needed something more complicated than groceries or a ride to the store.
    The family had a couple of golden years, then. With two paychecks they got a TV set and a futon that made into a bed at night so the girls no longer slept on the floor. They got good clothes, too, and some toys, and learned to behave like American kids, critical and demanding.
    Pablo made new friends among the groundskeepers, who were mostly single and hung out in the bars. It felt good to sit in the sun with them