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said, “A year, two at the most.” It’d been almost seven already. Elena seemed resigned now to staying, as if she’d finally gotten used to the idea. If I told her what Don Clemente had offered, to send us north, she’d just feel worse, right? What good would it do?
    â€œBesides,” I said, “I can work when I get to California. There’ll be more money if I’m working, too.”
    â€œPor favor.” Elena rolled her eyes in disgust. “You know Papá will insist you go to school.”
    I knew the big plan as well as she did. I would be the first hombre in the family to graduate from school. Elena would be the first mujer. Even after Papá and Mamá left, the plan hadn’t changed one bit. We just had to travel through half a continent and learn a whole new language to make it happen. Up to now, Elena and I just accepted that whatever Papá said, we did.
    But I’d been nothing but a dumb kid. ¡Menso! I’d believed everything I’d been told. I held the knowledge about Don Clemente’s offer tight inside me. The wasted years of waiting!
    I cut off the goat’s head at the base of the skull. Elena moved close to me to help with the next part. She took the knife from me and cut open the goat’s belly. The stomach and the intestines rolled out, and together we removed the bladder, the liver, and the gall bladder. All of these we threw in the bucket.
    We took turns sawing through the bone to get at the heart and lungs. We pulled them out, washed the carcass with cold water, and wiped it dry. We cleaned the tools and rinsed our hands. Finally, Elena picked up the bucket with the discarded organs and walked slowly toward the door. She would take it to the far side of the property and burn it with the rest of the garbage.
    At the door, Elena turned. “Don’t worry, Miguel. Go ahead. Vete al norte. I know what to do. I can take care of myself.”
    Then she walked slowly across the field. The weight of the offal in the bucket made her list to one side, but she didn’t stop until she got to the burn site. She bent and kindled the embers with a handful of dried-up cornstalks.
    She threw the organs, one by one, onto the flames. With each throw, she stood straighter and straighter. She watched until the organs had turned to ash and drifted off in the breeze that blew toward the North.

CHAPTER 8
    My going-away party was small. There were Tío Esteban and Tía Cristina and my little cousins, José and Daniel. There were our closest neighbors, los Gonzalez, and Doña Maria, my Abuelita’s comadre.
    Elena sat apart from us, with her best friend, Fátima, whispering and telling secrets. Fátima flirted with Chuy, but he paid her no attention. Instead, he served Elena a big plateful of barbacoa, then moved to stand right behind her.
    We ate goat until we could eat no more. Tío Esteban drank some Modelos Especiales, crushing each drained can with his fist. He settled himself on the makeshift bench with his guitar, tuned it, and strummed the chords to “El Rey” and “Cucurucucú Paloma.” We got ourselves settled and comfortable around the fire. And then the storytelling began.
    â€œJuanita’s husband never returned,” Señora Gonzalez announced, as if this were news. She’d told this story about her cousin a hundred times.
    â€œWe never heard a word from him. Some say he was lost in the desert. But I believe he found a new wife up north.”
    The part about a new woman had the ring of truth. We all knew Juanita. She was famous for her mean spirit and bad humor. Any one of us would’ve done anything to escape her.
    â€œPancho Sanchez told us that his nephew’s friend was kidnapped up north, right on the border,” said Señor Gonzalez. “They drugged him, and when he woke up, he had a row of stitches in his stomach.”
    He always began his story in the same way. I leaned