Divided by Borders. Joanna Dreby
“Do you remember anything about them?”
“Just from pictures.”
“Why do you think they left?” I asked.
“To go where the money is,” Germán explained.
Germán said he spoke with his parents often, usually once a week, and that he liked talking with them on the phone. “I mostly [talk] with my mom, not so much with my dad because he works.”
“How do you feel when you hang up the phone?”
“Sad . . . because they are on the other side.”
Germán told me he wanted his parents to come back to Mexico. When I asked, “Would you like to go over there to be with them?” he answered decidedly, “No, I don’t want to go.”
“Why not?” I wondered.
“Because it is cold.”
“What’s that about? When it’s cold, you wear gloves, a hat . . . ”
“It’s just that I am used to living here,” Germán explained.
“So you prefer that they come back?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t want to go there?”
“Nah, I am all right here with my grandma.”
I asked Germán about his sister; other children had complained about their U.S.-born siblings. Germán denied feeling jealous, said he loves his sister, and even talks with her on the phone. He could not tell me how old she was, however, and called in to his grandmother for an answer. I asked him, “Do you feel closer to your mother or your father?”
“Both the same.”
“Do you feel like you need your parents, or are you okay the way you are?”
Germán did not hesitate in answering, “I feel like I need them.”
“Why?”
“Yes, I need them because they are my parents.”
Doña María told me later that Germán did feel uncomfortable about his U.S.-born sister and that this was one reason he did not let his parents send for him and insisted that they come back to Mexico if they wanted to see him. “Once he said to me, Gram, I think my parents love Stacy more than they love me.” Doña María confirmed repeatedly on both my visits that Germán did not want to join his parents in the United States. “[Germán] talks to his mother about once a week. You know, they want to take him there. His father says they are ready to send for him. But he doesn’t want to go.”
I was not sure if Doña María was holding on to Germán. After all, Germán seemed highly affectionate with his grandmother, especially given his rather independent manner. Moreover, Germán seemed to enjoy being the only child in his grandparents’ home. Clinging to Germán, however, did not seem to be Doña María’s style. Doña María had many friends in town and a clear identity independent of caring for her grandson. She often chatted and joked with those who passed her store and was frequently out doing errands. On a day-to-day basis, she often acted indifferent to Germán, going about her daily routine with little oversight of Germán’s activities. For example, during the town feria, Doña María was not concerned that the ten-year-old went to the rodeo with some friends. And on the evening of the dance, Germán meticulously ironed his own pants and shirt to get ready to go out on the town. Doña María’s hands-off style did not seem to match Ofelia’s concerns that her mother would feel lonely and abandoned if Germán left for the states. Wondering about this, I asked Doña María how long she thought the current arrangement would continue. “Of course I will be sad for him to go,” she answered. “But I cannot stop it, because they are his parents, and they should be with the boy. I know it is not the same to be [raised] by grandparents as to be with your parents. I am always conscious of this.”
STANDING STILL
July 2005. Back in New Jersey months later, Ofelia stopped at my house to pick up some pictures of Germán I had brought her from Mexico. She sat at the edge of my sofa that afternoon, shaking her head with a nostalgic smile while looking at her son playing on the beach. “You know, he doesn’t want to come,” she said abruptly while flipping through the pictures yet again. “We tell him to come, but he doesn’t want to. I have wanted to bring him since the first year we were here, but he never wanted to. He is like resentful that we left him. Sometimes on the phone he says, ‘Mom, why did you leave me?’ ”
I asked, “What do you tell him?”
“I tell him, so that we could have more things, that he wants us to buy him lots of things, and this way we can buy him whatever he wants. I tell him that if I hadn’t come, maybe he wouldn’t have the things that he has and that he likes his things.”
“And what does he say to you?” I asked.
“He says it is okay. Then I tell him that if he comes here, I am going to buy him lots of things too. But he tells me that it is better that I send the money there to buy things there. He says that I should go back there to get him.”
“Maybe you can win him over if you go.”
“Yes, that is why I tell Ricardo to go. He was going to go this month to get him. But since they say it is really dangerous, he couldn’t go.”
“Is that why you don’t go, because it is dangerous?”
“Yes, you see, when I came, it was with papers. I didn’t cross like the others. I went to Tijuana and they gave me some visitor’s papers to cross with. And you see, because of the cost and everything [of the crossing], I can’t go back.”
OF STAGNATION AND CHANGE
January 2006. The next time I went to Las Cruces, the standoff between Germán, Ofelia, and Ricardo persisted. Although I had spoken with Doña María a few times since the previous visit, I had not seen Ofelia or Ricardo again. I did, however, occasionally talk to Ofelia’s brother and learned that his family life had radically changed as his wife Chavela had returned to Las Cruces with their children to permanently resettle the family in Mexico. Ofelia’s brother planned to join Chavela and their children after he worked a few more years in New Jersey to help save money to finish and furnish their house and store in Las Cruces. So while Ricardo, Ofelia, and Germán’s relationships remained in a deadlock, other family members were making changes in their lives.
On the first evening of my visit, Doña María showed me to Germán’s room, which I would use temporarily. After admiring changes in the house since my last visit, including the new computer Ofelia and Ricardo had bought for Germán, I sat with Doña María out front in the humid evening. While Doña María sold tacos of carne asada [steak], I sharpened two boxes of three hundred colored pencils I was using for a project at the local schools. When my hands grew sore, I convinced Chavela’s son to help me. Germán joined us at the table to have a dinner of his grandmother’s tacos. He listened warily as his younger cousin told me in a mixture of Spanish and English that he missed almost everything about his life in New Jersey. Germán’s face showed that he disagreed with his cousin’s opinions about the virtues of life in the United States. After a customer moved on with his order of tacos, Doña María idly told me about her taco sales and how much she made during the last town dance in December. Germán finished his tacos, wiped his mouth, and declared, “That is just how I like it: a poor and humble house but with lots of money.” Doña María scoffed at his comment, aimed at his “Americanized” younger cousin. Germán laughed drily and left the table, making clear his resistance to the materialistic influences of the United States and his preference for the more modest way of life in Mexico.
The next afternoon, I spent time in Germán’s school asking students to draw pictures of their families and how they imagined the United States. Germán’s class was small, just twelve students on the day of my visit. Now eleven years old, he was in the fifth grade, and though I knew he had been held back a year, he was not markedly