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 older than the others. Later, during recess, Germán’s teacher described him as being extremely popular with the girls, quite a flirt, and also a bit uncontrollable in the classroom. During the drawing exercise, Germán sat sectioned off with three other boys; they appeared to be the unruly students of the classroom. But Germán was respectful during the exercise, and the others followed suit. While students drew their families, I went one by one to their desks, asking whom they lived with and who in their family lived in the United States. The other three boys in Germán’s group of friends all had parents in the United States. When I came to Germán, I noticed he had drawn two figures: one he labeled “papa” and the other he labeled with the name of his young sister (whom he had never met). I was struck that he had not drawn his mother. Later when he turned in his pictures, I saw that Germán had scratched out the name of his sister and replaced it with the label “mama.”
That evening, Doña María sold tacos once again. We sat and chatted as on the previous evening. This time, when Germán came out and declared he was hungry and wanted a cheese sandwich for dinner, Doña María snapped at him: “You are way too young to be demanding things like that.” Germán retreated inside to prepare his own sandwich.
Although at Germán’s urging we had originally planned another beach trip that Saturday, at lunch on Friday, Doña María told me that she had not been able to change the catechism class for Germán’s Communion the next morning, so we would not be able to go to the beach. “Since his mother is not here,” she explained, “I am the one who has to be there for him.” When I told Germán that we would not be able to go to the beach after all, he looked disappointed. I left the next morning. As Doña María accompanied me to the bus stop, Don Fernando and Germán were busy washing the truck. Don Fernando mockingly faked wailing at my departure: “When are we going to see her again,” he cried, and we laughed. I called out a good-bye to Germán, but he concentrated on cleaning the tires in the back of the truck, completely ignoring me. Doña María shook her head as we walked away. “You should have called out to him, ‘See you in New Jersey’,” she said. “Then he would have responded.”
THE LONG ROAD TO REUNIFICATION
April 2006. As had been the case since I first met with Ofelia in the fall of 2003, talk of Germán’s reunification with his parents continued. Once, when I called Doña María a few months after returning from my visit, Germán answered and chatted away about the party his family threw for his First Communion. “It was a big party. There was a D.J.,” he reported eagerly. “My dad said that he would either put [money up] for a D.J. or a cow [to provide the meat for the party], but then my dad put [money] for the D.J. and my grandfather put the cow so I had both.” After a bit, Germán asked, “So when are you going to come again so we can go to the beach?”
“I don’t know,” I explained. “Probably not for a little bit. When are you coming here? I bet you’ll come here before I go there.”
I was surprised when Germán answered decisively, “April 30th.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah,
