Story Description:
Washington Square
Press|March 12, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-1-4516-6178-1
Reyna Grande
vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling…unvarnished,
resonant” (Book Page) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and
two countries. As her parents make the
dangerous trek across the Mexican border to “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) in
pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the
already overburdened household of their stern grandmother. When their mother at last returns, Reyna prepares
for her own journey to "El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted
her imagination for years, her long-absent father.
Funny,
heartbreaking, and lyrical. The Distance Between Us poignantly
captures the confusion and contradictions of childhood, reminding us that the
joys and sorrows we experience are imprinted on the heart forever, calling out
to us of those places we first called home.
My Review:
This story
captured my heart from the beginning to the end. It was so eloquently written with such a
descriptive narrative that I could literally feel and smell and see the sights
around me. From the dust on the ground
to the feel of the dirt and mud clinging to my feet to the taste of the
medicine Abuela Evila used to rid the children of worms.
When Reyna was
four-years-old she didn’t know yet where the United States was or why everyone
in her hometown of Iguala, Guerrero referred to it as El Otro Lado, the Other
Side. All she knew back then was that El
Otro Lado had already taken her father away.
What she did know was that prayers didn’t work because if they did, then
El Otro Lado wouldn’t be taking her mother away too.
Both Reyna’s
mother, Juana, and her father, Natalio had gone to the United States leaving
Reyna and her siblings: sister Mago, eight-and-a-half-years-old; and her
brother, Carlos 7-years-old behind with their miserable grandmother, Abuela
Evila. By June of 1980 the children had
been with her for six months. During
that time they were never taken anywhere.
The three children all had head lice and instead of cleaning their hair
properly to rid them of the lice, Abuela Evila dosued their hair in kerosene,
wrapped their heads in towels and plastic bags and forced them to sleep that
way. Halfway through the night, the
children couldn’t stand the burning of their scalps and would remove the towels
and bags so in the morning, their grandmother shaved all their heads bald as
punishment. The little girls were
horrified.
One night the
children received a phone call from their mother and father in America. They called to tell them they were going to
have a baby. The three children felt as
if they were being replaced. They’d now
been at their grandmother’s house for eight long months.
The children’s
parents sent money regularly from the States to buy clothing and shoes but
Abuela always spent it on something else forcing the children to walk around in
old, torn, and tattered clothes looking like orphans. Abuela wasn’t a very nice woman at all.
The children
received word that their mother had just given birth to a baby girl whom she
named Elisabeth (Betty). The kids were
so upset it sent them to their rooms crying for the night. It had now been a whole year since they’d
seen their mother and with this new baby they were afraid she would forget
about them altogether.
Their cousin,
Elida turned fifteen so a big quinceanera party was planned to celebrate. The kids other cousins came and gramma Abuela
Evila spent all day making new dresses for the girls on her sewing machine. Elida’s dress was made in the United States
because her mother, Tia Maria Felix said she had to have the best for HER
daughter. By the end of the week
everyone “except” for Mago and Reyna had a new dress. The day before the party, Abuela Evila bought
a few yards of silver material, shiny like a brand new peso and began making
dresses for Mago and Reyna. She made a
mistake on Reyna’s dress and sewed the dress inside out and made the child wear
it like that. And poor Carlos didn’t get
any new clothes at all. Reyna was so
upset at being forced to wear the inside-out dress at the party that she sat,
hidden underneath the table and cried about the dress, and the fact that her
parents had replaced her with Betty.
Reyna was now no longer the youngest child.
The children were
missing their parents something terrible and they asked their grandmother if
she thought they’d ever return and she said “no.” When Reyna gets bitten twice by a
scorpion, is burning up with fever and on
her way to the hospital in a taxi with her aunt, she asks her if she believes
her grandmother is telling the truth. Aunt
Tia Emperatriz said she didn’t know, but Reyna felt that although where they
lived was pretty, it was just a place of “broken beauty” without her Mom and
Dad. It had now been two years since her
Mom and Dad had been gone.
Eventurally, their
mother comes back with little Betty in tow but soon leaves again. This pattern continues over and over again
until one day their father returns after many years. He decides to hire a mule to smuggle himself
and the three children back across the border to live with his new wife who has
three children of her own. After three
attempts they finally make it but the children’s dream of living in American
isn’t the dream they had in mind.
Natalio wasn’t the kind father they had remembered from their younger
years. He was distant and extremely
abusive and after years of having neither a mother nor a father the children
didn’t deserve this type of treatment.
The experiences
these children have during their childhood, and I’ve only just barely touched
on what they went through, remained with them their entire lives. This memoir is one I won’t soon forget and is
now part of my permanent collection. I
loved ‘The Glass Castle’ by Jeannette Walls but The Distance Between Us has that beat by a long shot. If you want an unbelievable read, don’t miss
this one, it definitely gets a thumbs up from me.
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