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arriving home in the middle of the morning. My sisters and I were not expecting anybody until the end of the day. We got so excited when we heard a key in the lock, thinking it was you, Mamá, returning home. We tried not to look too disappointed when it was only our uncle at the door.
    After that, Tío Felipe was afraid to go out on the streets and be picked up for a theft he had never committed.
    I offered to call the old lady, since my English is almost perfect now. I would explain how our uncle never even takes something out of the refrigerator that he has not bought himself without asking first.
    But Tío Felipe shook his head. That
viejita
was not going to believe a Mexican. My uncle hadn't meant to hurt my feelings, but it made me feel the same left- out feelings as when the children at school called me names.
    “I'll call her,” Ofie offered. “I'm American.”
    “I'm American too,” Luby said. “I'll let her play with my doggie, Tío Fipe.” Luby held out this little stuffed puppy our uncle had bought her at the Wal- Mart.
    Even Tío Felipe smiled, though his eyes were
    sad.
    (Later the same day—as I had to stop.
    Sometimes I get so sad,
    even if I'm just writing things down.)
    Papá and my uncles decided we should travel by bus, just as for that first journey when we came from México. I was only four. So I do not know if I truly remember, Mamá, or if it is your stories that have become my memories.
    I do remember how hard you cried when we left Las Margaritas. “I cried so much that for years I had no tears,” you once told me. I do not understand how that can be, Mamá. Since you left, I have cried and cried into my pillow so as not to upset Papá or my sisters over your absence, and every night there are fresh tears.
    Those last moments in Las Margaritas, you told me you clung to Abuelita, and your sisters and younger brothers clung to you, and Abuelito looked down at the earth that could no longer feed his family. “My daughter,” he said in parting,
    “if we do not meet again in this world, we will meet again in the next life.” This only made you cry harder.
    You told me, or perhaps I remember that long bus ride for days and days until we reached the border with the United States. You had not known our own country of México was so vast and beautiful. Last year in geography class, I found Las Margaritas on the map at the very tip of México in the south, and with my finger I traced our route to the northern border at the very other end. What a long journey to make to a place that does not welcome us but instead sends us away!
    Your face was pressed to the window of that bus, you told me, and so was mine. Sometimes when we passed a town and saw a child or an old person, we waved, and they waved back at us. Sometimes that made you sad, as it reminded you of your mother and father and the loved ones you left behind.
    Those times when the sadness made you want to turn back, Papá would remind you that a new life was about to start for our family. We would be joining Tío Armando, who was already in Carolina del Norte and had sent money for our passage. Tío Felipe accompanied us, and sometimes, sad as you were, he could make you smile with his boasting: “I will come back a richman with a big car and throw a fiesta with piñatas full of dollars!” To think he was only fourteen and already beginning his life as a man, leaving school and his home to help support his family.
    We arrived in the border town and found the smugglers that Tío Armando had recommended. “But where are the coyotes?” I kept asking. Papá had said
coyotes
would be crossing us to this country, and so I had expected animals dressed in clothes and speaking Spanish!
    But they turned out to be men, not very kind ones, always barking at us as if
we
were animals. We were to carry only a small bag that would not slow us down or take up room in the van that would meet us on the other side. I remember you gave everything away to the