Enrique's Journey Part 16

"I'm your daddy. Do you love your daddy?" Enrique asks.

"Yes, I love you."

She asks him to send things. "Papi, I want a pinata! One with candy inside!"

"I think she'll love me when she sees me," he tells himself.

He pictures how their lives together will be. Everyone in Lourdes's house eats dinner at different hours, whenever they get home from work. His family will eat dinner together.

HONDURAS.

As Jasmin turns three, she is inseparable from her mother. At night, they sleep in the same bed. In the morning, before she readies herself for work, Maria Isabel bathes her daughter with buckets of water and plaits her hair into two braids.

When Maria Isabel heads off to work, Jasmin is in tears. "Mami! Mami!" she cries.

Barefoot, she scrambles down the ravine after her mother. Her grandmother dashes after her and grabs her.

"Ya vuelvo. I'll be right back," Maria Isabel calls up the hill as she walks away.

At night, when Maria Isabel climbs back up the hill, Jasmin runs to her. She sits on her lap, her hands draped around her mother's neck. They rub noses. They play patty-cake. Maria Isabel asks Jasmin to count to ten. With each number, she hoists her girl up in the air, then down. "Oh, you're getting so heavy!" Jasmin grabs her mother's hair, her ears. She squeals with delight.

"What did you do today?" Maria Isabel asks. "Did you take a nap today?" In a sweet, squeaky voice, Jasmin answers each of her mother's questions.

On Maria Isabel's day off, Jasmin is always at her side. Maria Isabel takes her daughter by the hand. They go downtown or to visit Gloria. She walks her down the sidewalk by Pizza Hut, crowded with carts piled with potatoes, plantains, and avocados. It is where Lourdes once sold gum and candy from a little box with Enrique at her side.

She carries Jasmin in her arms to the city's central plaza, where children beg with outstretched arms. She takes her into the cathedral, up to the gilded altar. She prays. She asks that Jasmin not get sick, that Enrique stay away from drugs. Then she takes Jasmin for a scoop of ice cream.

Today, Sunday, she readies Jasmin for a friend's birthday party. She dresses her in a pink-and-white outfit and the gold hoop earrings, bracelet, and pendant of Jesus her father sent.

As they walk across the heart of Tegucigalpa, Jasmin is a chatterbox. At the party, at the corrugated tin shack of Maria Isabel's cousin, Jasmin eats chicken, tries to blow up a red balloon, and borrows a pink bike with training wheels. But after a short while, she climbs into her mother's lap. Maria Isabel bounces her on her knees. Jasmin strokes her mother's hair and whispers into her ear. Maria Isabel straightens Jasmin's braids. She rocks her in her arms. Jasmin kisses her mother lightly. Jasmin finds a bougainvillea branch blooming with red flowers and brings it to her mother.

When it is Jasmin's turn to swat at the pink, dog-shaped pinata with a wooden stick, Maria Isabel cheers her on: "Hit it hard, hard!"

She helps her get a piece of cake, then lines her up for her bag of party favors. She shows her how to blow a whistle, one of the gifts.

At dusk they take a bus home, Jasmin in Maria Isabel's arms. Lights twinkle on the hills of Tegucigalpa. Maria Isabel undresses Jasmin and slips on her white nightgown. Jasmin dumps her bag of party favors on the floor, eager to see what is inside. There are two b.u.t.terfly hairpins. Maria Isabel puts them in Jasmin's hair. Jasmin dances to the music from the family's small television, twizzling her hips, her hands in the air.

At 7:30 P.M., Maria Isabel climbs into bed with her daughter. Jasmin holds a bottle of milk with her left hand. With the right hand, she rubs her mother's belly. It is a ritual. She cannot fall asleep without stroking her mother's belly. Slowly, as she sucks on the milk, Jasmin loses her grip on the bottle. Her eyes flutter. Maria Isabel rolls her over and rubs Jasmin's back until the girl falls asleep.

She can no longer imagine leaving her daughter. She has to tell Enrique.

At most, she might leave Jasmin when she is old enough to understand what is happening. "She would have to be at least five years old for me to leave her. Then, at least, I could try to explain it to her," Maria Isabel tells her family. Not a day before, she says firmly. It is the same age Enrique was when his mother left.

Some of her friends tell her she would be a fool not to follow Enrique to the United States. She is young and can find work now, but women over the age of twenty-five or twenty-eight are no longer considered for many jobs in Honduras, something made clear in newspaper employment ads.

One factory, S. J. Mariol, hires only women ages eighteen to twenty-five, says Leydi Karina Lopez, head of human resources at the company. In the large brick building in Tegucigalpa, young women sit in rows behind sewing machines, furiously st.i.tching medical scrubs for export to the United States. One woman sews a triangle at the bottom of the neck. She does it 2,520 times a day, forty-four hours a week, for $110 a month.

"We look at the work, and it requires a lot of energy and dedication. At thirty, they might have back problems or eye problems or arthritis. We want to avoid that," Lopez says. Without high productivity, she says, the work will move to lower-wage countries such as China.

The children's store Maria Isabel works at won't hire women older than twenty-three. Middle-aged women have three options, says Argentina "Norma" Valeriano, Maria Isabel's neighbor: was.h.i.+ng and ironing clothes, cleaning houses, or making tortillas at home, jobs that pay $50 to $90 a month. A family needs $350 a month minimum, says a social worker, Francis Jeanett Gomez Irias, with the Inst.i.tuto Hondureno de la Ninez y la Familia.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch caused many Honduran businesses to go under. Unemployment and subemployment combined now affect 43 percent of Hondurans. Government jobs go to people in certain families or with good connections, says Norma. Most of Maria Isabel's neighbors, including twenty-five on her block, have no work, she adds. They survive only because someone in the family has gone north and sends back money. The children of single mothers suffer most, she says.

Maria Isabel wouldn't be the first in her family to go to the United States and leave children behind. Her aunt, Eva's sister Tina, left four children in Honduras to go to Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Maria Isabel's eldest sister, Olga, went to Houston in 1990. She left Jose, one and a half years old, and Dennis Alexander, three, with her mother, Eva. For eight years, Olga sent Eva $50 or $100 a month to help her raise the boys. In 1998, Eva's other sister, Laura, left two children behind.

Eventually, the three women were able to bring their children to the United States, some legally, others with smugglers.

When Maria Isabel sees couples walking down the street with their children, it saddens her. If she went to the United States, would it allow Jasmin to have both her parents at her side more quickly? Jasmin, she knows, needs her father.

Jasmin has taken to calling the only man in Eva's house, her twenty-seven-year-old uncle Miguel, papi. With Enrique, Jasmin has to be coached to talk. With Miguel, words of affection come naturally.

One evening, Jasmin returns from a friend's birthday party. She runs to Miguel with a bag full of candy, a party treat. "Papi!" Jasmin says, handing him pieces of the candy. "Papi, tenga. Here, Daddy." She doesn't normally share her candy; with Miguel, she is generous. She gives him a full report of the day: how she hit the pinata, ate rice and cake, drank soda, how people took pictures. Jasmin runs and flops on his bed. Miguel chases her, tickling her ribs.

Many afternoons, when Maria Isabel is away at work, Jasmin eludes her grandmother and wanders next door, where Miguel is constructing the family's new house. She climbs the ladder to the second floor. There, she serves as Miguel's little a.s.sistant. As he lays floor tiles, Miguel points to the sponge; Jasmin brings it. He points to a flat spatula. She brings that, too. "Pa.s.s me the hammer," he says in his gentle voice.

When Miguel heads down the hill at dusk to play soccer, he says, "Me voy, Jasmin. I'm off, Jasmin." She quickly answers, "Vamos, papi! Let's go, Daddy!"

Enrique senses that his daughter has begun to identify someone else as her father. Late in the year, as Christmas approaches, he promises her he'll come visit.

Maria Isabel sees even more reasons to stay in Honduras with her daughter. A yearlong government advertising campaign has highlighted the dangers of the journey. Newspapers carry a stream of accounts of people injured or killed during the trek north.

Maria Isabel's sister Irma tried to make it to the United States but ran out of money in Mexico and had to turn back. So did one of her brothers. Maria Isabel asks one of her sisters about her trip. She tells her she was often hungry. Maria Isabel asks if she was raped. The sister doesn't answer.

What if she doesn't make it? What would become of her daughter?

She'd have to live illegally in the United States, always fearful of being caught and deported. There is racism; she would be treated as inferior. Her mother emphasizes that the United States is a cold place, where neighbors barely know one another.

She doesn't want to miss all the important moments in Jasmin's life. She thinks about everything Enrique has already missed. Soon, Jasmin will attend her first day of kindergarten.

Maria Isabel has heard how mothers who leave lose the love of their children.

Rosa Amalia, who raised Enrique's sister Belky, has seen the effects of these separations. She advises Maria Isabel to wait until Jasmin is older, when Enrique might be able to bring them both together.

Maria Isabel devises a plan to stay. If she doesn't have any more children and she works hard, she can give her daughter a shot at a good education. "It's not impossible. With one child, I can give her what she wants," Maria Isabel says.

"I'm not leaving without Jasmin," she tells Gloria.

Belky has secretly been seeing a new boyfriend, Yovani. Eventually, Yovani goes to Rosa Amalia, who has raised Belky, to pedir la llegada-ask for permission to date. Rosa Amalia agrees after Yovani vows chast.i.ty. Rosa Amalia wants Belky to stop living in limbo, always fixating on reunifying with her mother. She hopes she will finish her studies in business administration and eventually form her own family in Honduras.

Belky begins to think that if she doesn't see her mother soon, she will never see her. "I just want to give her a hug. A bunch of hugs. I just want to be by her side-even if it's for a short while," she says.

One night Yovani proposes as they sit outside her cinder-block hut. Yovani is not handsome. He lives with his mother, a tamale maker, in a tiny wooden shack. But he is kind, drinks rarely, and buys her little presents. He treats her like a queen. She loves him. Belky asks Lourdes to provide a few thousand dollars to build a tiny house on land beside her grandmother's home-land reserved for the house Lourdes was to build upon her return. When she marries, her mother won't be there. Her aunt and uncle will walk her down the aisle.

UNITED STATES.

Lourdes works on a cleaning crew, then on a factory a.s.sembly line. It is hard living with so many people jammed into her apartment, especially because the men don't help. When she arrives home, the kitchen trash is full, the floors are dirty, and she must cook and clean for everyone.

Although the men come home at different hours, Lourdes waits up to serve each of them dinner. On her day off, she takes the men's laundry-six baskets-to the Laundromat. On Sunday, she buys $300 in groceries, enough to last the clan a week. Having seven people split the cost of the three-bedroom apartment, which costs $800 a month, allows Lourdes to send money back to her daughter and mother in Honduras. To Lourdes, it seems as though every relative in Honduras who has money troubles thinks they can ask her for help.

One night, Enrique and a friend start talking about gangs in Honduras. Lourdes says that Honduras is a horrible, lawless place. Enrique chafes at such talk, especially from Lourdes. It is your country, he says. "Mom, I don't know why you hate your country so much."

"I'll never go back," she says.

The discussion devolves into another big fight. For the third time since he arrived, Enrique accuses Lourdes of abandoning him in Honduras. He tells her his true mother is his grandmother Maria. Enrique has hung a picture of the Last Supper above the headboard of his bed. It reminds him of her. His grandmother had several pictures of the Last Supper hanging in her hut. He misses the beans and spaghetti she made for him. He misses going to church with her as a child.

Lourdes believes that Enrique's comments reveal a fear: If he goes back to Central America, his mother will not follow him. They will once again live apart.

Lourdes's boyfriend tries to find a way to alleviate the sadness he sees in Lourdes.

"Mira, honey," he says, "tome la distancia. Look, honey, put some distance between you." It's no use arguing and fighting with Enrique, he tells her. It's a fight you will not win. You're both equally stubborn. Neither of you likes to be contradicted or told he is wrong. You have to control your anger when Enrique baits you.

If Enrique does something she doesn't like, Lourdes ignores it. She still cooks his dinner but no longer serves him his plate of food. She stops doing his laundry. They no longer routinely go out to dinner on Sat.u.r.day night or grocery shopping on Sunday.

With the new year, Lourdes, her boyfriend, and their relatives decide to leave North Carolina. The paint firm where most of the men work is in financial trouble and has cut back on everyone's hours. Jobs are scarce.

They move to Florida, where a cousin of Lourdes's boyfriend gets everyone painting jobs. Lourdes and her sister Mirian start as hotel maids for $6.50 an hour. Each cleans sixteen to eighteen rooms per s.h.i.+ft. Eight people cram into a small two-bedroom apartment. Enrique sleeps on the living room sofa. He hates it. He misses his friends in North Carolina. He has to get up before dawn to be painting by 6:30 A.M.

Lourdes's sister Mirian toys with the idea of bringing her children to the United States but quickly dismisses it as too dangerous. She switches to a job was.h.i.+ng dishes for $9 an hour. She focuses on saving enough to return to her children in what she hopes will be another two years. She needs to save $10,000 to $15,000 to add a beauty salon to her mother's house and send her three children to school. So far, she has banked $1,200.

Enrique constantly nags Mirian to go back. "Why are you going to abandon your kids?" he asks her. After fights with his mother, Enrique always has a warning for his aunt Mirian. "This will happen to you, because you left your children when they were young. You think that filling our bellies is the same thing as love."

As Enrique mulls over returning to North Carolina, he becomes more loving with his mother. He hugs and kisses her often. Finally, he decides to go.

Lourdes begs him to stay. She tells him she will not follow him back to North Carolina. She has a life now in Florida with her de facto husband, daughter, and sister. "You've never acknowledged me as a real mother. I have to work at my life with my husband now," she tells Enrique.

Enrique quietly packs and leaves.

Lourdes wants to enjoy her life more and worry about Enrique less. She and her boyfriend go out Sat.u.r.day nights to a buffet dinner. Lourdes relishes moments with her daughter Diana. She teases Diana when she flubs a phrase in Spanish. Diana helps teach her mother English in a southern drawl.

Lourdes and her boyfriend can finally afford their own apartment. She'd like to open a paint store with him someday, maybe buy a double-wide trailer. Mostly, she prays for an amnesty for immigrants so she can become legal and bring her daughter Belky to the United States.

"G.o.d, give me my papers. I want to be with my daughter," she says. "I ask G.o.d to give me this before I die." She begins to sob. "Is that so much to ask of G.o.d? I don't ask G.o.d for riches. Or other things."

In North Carolina, Enrique focuses on working, on saving money, on cutting down even more on drinking and drugs. He'll need $5,000 for a smuggler to bring his girlfriend north.

Enrique gently tries to convince Maria Isabel to commit to the move. "Maria Isabel, you know I am very good to you. I give you everything," he tells her on the telephone. He loves her. He misses her serene, calm nature, how much she would cry and giggle, how simple she is. He misses walking her home from school holding her hand.

If they live apart too long, Enrique fears, Maria Isabel will find someone else. "If you find someone who loves you as much as I do, go with him," Enrique says. "I left you. I understand."

In truth, he desperately wants to hear her protest such talk, to know if she is interested in anyone else. She tells him she loves him for life. Why doesn't she tell him she wants to come be with him? He is reaching his breaking point. He resolves to call her and ask point-blank: Are you coming or not?

He knows Maria Isabel has been stalling, that she is anxious about leaving Jasmin. He's been stalling, too: he wants to learn English and get his vices totally under control before bringing her to the United States. Yet the sooner Maria Isabel comes, the easier it will be for both of them to save money and return to Honduras. The sooner he will see his daughter. He is resolved to be with her by the time she is five, six at the latest.

If not, Jasmin won't embrace him as her father. "She'll see me as a stranger," he says. He'll go back to Honduras when she is six, even if it is for a brief visit and he has to make his way back through Mexico illegally again.

"I need to see her. To be with her."

As time pa.s.ses, Enrique sees other things with equal clarity. He knows now that his mother will never offer an apology for leaving him. He tries to put the love he has always felt for Lourdes above the resentment he has harbored all these years. He gives his mother his first gift: $100 for her birthday. She uses it to buy a dress and a bottle of lotion.

Enrique and Lourdes start to call each other two or three times a week to talk. Enrique has long called his mother senora. Now, he says, "Ma." With each call, he is more loving.

"Tan bonita mi mami, la quiero mucho. My beautiful mother, I love you so much," he says.

Lourdes teases, "Mentiroso viejo! You old liar!"

He even begins to make plans to move from North Carolina to Florida. He does not want to live apart from his mother anymore.

Lourdes is sure that G.o.d is answering one of her prayers: that Enrique straighten up, stop drinking, and no longer feel so bitter toward her. "It's like a miracle," she says. It is as if all the hurt he felt inside had to come out and now he is ready to move on. She feels the same warmth and love from Enrique as when he first arrived on her doorstep in North Carolina.

"He always wanted to be with me," she says.

Maria Isabel and Jasmin in Tegucigalpa, 2003 THE GIRL LEFT BEHIND.

It is spring 2004. Enrique has been gone for four years. Enrique and Maria Isabel have not spoken for more than four months, since last Christmas. Enrique calls his sister Belky. Go find Maria Isabel, he tells her. Tell her she must call me.

Maria Isabel dials from the Internet store.

"Why don't you call me?" he asks. She answers curtly that she doesn't have anything to talk about.

"Are you ready to come?" he asks.

Maria Isabel tells herself he is joking. When he was sniffing glue in Honduras, he often said things he didn't really mean. Even if he's serious, she can't leave until Jasmin is at least five years old. She promised.

You must make a decision, Enrique says. Now. If not, he vows, he will remake his life, find someone else.

"I don't want to leave," she tells him.

Enrique cajoles. I've changed, he tells her. I drink, but just a little now. I don't use glue. "I'm not the same person."

She doesn't budge.

If you come, he tells her, it will be the best thing for Jasmin. Together, we'll provide her a better life. We'll both be able to return to her sooner.

Now she is listening. "I'll think about it," she says.

Her answer fills Enrique with hope. He starts calling Maria Isabel constantly. I need you, he says. You're the mother of my child. You're the only one I want to marry.

Day and night, Maria Isabel turns it over in her mind. If she stays and marries, her husband would never treat Jasmin as if she were his own.

Maria Isabel decides: In the long run, leaving will help Jasmin. Eventually, she will be with her real mother and father, everyone together. She strikes a deal with Enrique: Jasmin will live with Belky but spend weekends with her mother. "I will do it for my daughter," she says.

A few days later, word reaches Maria Isabel from a smuggler. He will call next week, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday. She must be ready.

Maria Isabel hauls all of Jasmin's clothing and dolls over to the cinder-block hut where Belky lives behind her grandmother's home. She waits next door at Gloria's for the smuggler to call Rosa Amalia, who has just gotten hooked up to phone service. She hugs her daughter over and over. She cries and cries.

Jasmin asks, "Why are you crying so much, Mommy?"

Maria Isabel tells Jasmin her arm hurts. She tells her a cavity in her mouth aches.