The Distance Between Us

After a year in America, Reyna’s father tells her and her siblings that their mother, too, is in America and has been for months. Furthermore, she has left Betty behind in Mexico, has a three-month-old son, and is living with a boyfriend in Los Angeles. When Carlos asks permission to visit her, their father replies, “Your mother doesn’t care about you” (220). Reyna and her siblings, confused and scared, argue with him about whether they can, or even should, visit her. Reyna discovers that an aunt will soon be bringing Betty to America, abandoning her own daughter—Reyna’s cousin—in the process: “I hoped that one day the cycle of leaving children behind would end” (222).

Reyna and her siblings finally visit their mother and Betty, but Betty, age five, doesn’t remember them. Their mother lives in squalor, having only one private room. She has to share kitchen and bath facilities with other tenants and works in a garment factory. Mago asks why she didn’t inform them of her arrival in America. She answers that she wanted them to have time with their father, but Reyna is doubtful: “It was then that I finally understood the kind of person my mother had become.