Esperanza is a short story that I wrote after finishing the first draft of Popcorn 4 Fiction as a way to further process childhood religious trauma. I haven’t done much in the way of trying to find a home for it as far as publication is concerned, so I thought this might be a good place to share it. As always, please pass this newsletter along to anyone who you think might benefit from reading my work.
October 1983, southern California
To hope is to wait and to wait is to hope—the two are intertwined, wrapped up together in life, in language, in todo el mundo. But these gringos can’t seem to understand that as they rush me, as they try to hurry this thing along. Maybe it’s because their lengua doesn’t make the connection, doesn’t recognize that tangled web weaved between the two. They have wait and they have hope. Separate. Different. Their bond broken. We have esperar and esperanza. Words that acknowledge each other’s importance. Words that blend and meld and share. If there is anything left to esperar for then there is esperanza left too, ¿no? I hold onto this thought, wrap my brazos—my arms—around it, bury my face deep in its breasts. It’s more than just words, of course. Every fiber of my being is hoping for a different outcome than the one they are waiting on, as if somehow time could reverse itself and none of this would ever happen.
These thoughts come to me between olas of pain, olas of progress pushing this thing along. When the olas wash over me, the thoughts stop and all I can concentrate on is the hardness of my belly, the fire between my legs, the fear of what’s coming on account of what’s already been. It’s after one of these olas peters out and drains away that I know her name.
ESPERANZA.
For her future, for what she will be without me. A better life, a chansa at something great—an education, a career, algo mas que just survival in the shadows of dirt. They’ve promised it all, everything I would never, not in a million years be able to give her: new clothes and toys; soft silky carpet to greet her toes cada mañana; her own bed in her own bedroom; indoor plumbing and running water; fresh foods that stay that way thanks to refrigeration, thanks to electricidad; safety, security, somewhere far, far away from him. A part of me wonders why they don’t want to save me too, why is it only the fruit of my womb that they are so preoccupado with? Isn’t there hope left for me? Don’t I matter too?
The ola hits, gripping my middle like it’s trying to squeeze my insides out, knocking the thoughts from my head. The woman who will be Esperanza’s mother wipes my forehead with a wet rag. She tells me it’s okay, tells me to be strong in words I don’t understand. The way her cold gray eyes look at me I can’t help but wonder if she sees me as anything more than a vessel, a means to an end. The ola squeezes harder and I grab her mano, do the same to it. She should feel something of this thing too shouldn’t she?
The ola passes and my breathing slows, everything comes back around to normal. The woman with gray eyes slips her hand from mine, disappears from my bedside to say something to a nurse in that lengua that I can’t understand, the only lengua Esperanza will probably ever know. A tear tickles the corner of my eye. My hija will be an English speaking American. She will be raised in the church, in a good Christian family. She will never know me. I’m told this is mejor for the both of us, but it feels a little more complicado than that. My breath hitches in my chest, the tear drips down my cheek. I tamp the whole complicated mess down, pretend it doesn’t exist as the next one hits.
My daughter’s mother doesn’t join me at my bedside this time, she doesn’t offer me her mano. She stays off to the side instead, trading chismes with the nurse. It isn’t so much their words but their tone, the sly way they look at me and smirk as the gossip tumbles from the sides of their mouths. I know what they mean even if I don’t know what they say, everyone’s been saying the same for months now. In English, in Spanish, out loud or muttered under their breath, it doesn’t matter, it’s all the same. This is my culpa. Jesus is punishing me. I deserve what’s happening to me—all of it.
The ola is almost over when the door opens and an angel walks through. Jessica. She’s the whole reason I’m here and not abandoned and alone in some hospital in Tijuana. Her face falls as she lays eyes on me. In her awkward, blocky Spanish, she groans, “O po-bray-sita,” and even though she doesn’t mean it that way, it reminds me of how disappointed she was when she saw me again for the first time since her mission trip the year before.
It was August. It was always August when they came. My belly was already full and round when their big yellow camion teeming with American teens climbed the cerros, followed the dirt roads, and pulled into the colonia. We heard them before we saw them—we always did. Worship songs belted a cappella from open windows beckoned us from every corner of the settlement. From all over we raced to the bus parked in front of the church too fancy for the ramshackle huts around it; raced to declare our love for Jesus and win a prize. Any other year I would have been one of the first to reach the camion and pick from the box of donated toys they hauled across the border. This year was different. This year vergüenza sent me into hiding instead. I was at the communal pila when the first notes of their song clambered over the horizon like a warning. Heart racing, I dunked the last bucket in and pulled it back up full of agua. Then, fast as I could without spilling the precious water, I raced back the opposite way, doubling down two dirt roads over to avoid the church, the camion, the judging smiles of missionaries who would be so happy to see me until they did.
Home’s nothing more than a dark shack made of spare plywood, chicken wire, and cardboard. I set the buckets of water down on the floor made of bottlecaps hammered into the earth and slammed the makeshift door shut behind me. Amá hollered from her kitchen in the corner—just a card table with a camp stove, a kerosene lamp, and a plastic tub big enough for washing trastes. Asked me what sort of trouble I’ve gotten myself into now. She was cleaning membranes off cheap cuts of meat with a dull knife, browning onions and tomatoes and jalapeños and ajo on the single burner, soaking laundry in a bucket to wash later. “Ven,” she said. “Tráeme la agua.”
I picked the buckets back up and dragged them over to her. They were heavier now that the adrenaline was leaving my sangre. When I bent over to set them down again my tetas ached with fullness, my back throbbed with the new weight of a body growing inside of my body. Her dark cold eyes watched me the whole while, no offer of sympathy. Before I could walk away, before I could find temporary refuge in the corner that makes up my bedroom shared with three sisters, her tongue sharp as cut glass took its turn. She asked, “¿Estás lista para decirme la verdad?”
Except she never wanted the truth. She only ever wanted me to tell her what she wanted to hear. That it wasn’t Felipe. That I’m a dirty slut and I slept around. That I don’t know who the father is. That if it is Felipe’s baby then it was all my fault. That he’s inocente. That I seduced him. That’s what she was willing to accept. Nothing more. Nothing less. So I bit my tongue, shook my head, banished myself to the dark corner of my cama where I pulled the ratty blanket over my head and tried not to listen to the squeals of delight, the joyful music, or any of the other sounds of celebration trickling over from the mission trip’s opening fiesta.
It’s hard to say what hurt the most at that point.
Hiding from Sister Jessica and Brother John. OR missing out on the prizes and games that only came around once a year.
Knowing my own hermanos and hermanas would return with faces painted and stuffed animals under their arms. OR being chided by Felipe when he came home stinking from whatever he does all day to put such meager comida on the table and keep the propane from running out—"Si estás tan cerca de Jesús, ¿por qué tus amigos misioneros aún no nos han construido una casa?”
Having been violated by my stepfather. OR Amá choosing her marido over me.
It took a couple of days but eventually, Jessica tracked me down, came knocking on our flimsy plywood door, tripped all over her words to ask, “Esta is don-day Gimenia lives? Gimenia is home, si?”
If we had a back door, if we had any kind of window, I would have been through it right then, belly and all. But I was trapped, trapped with nowhere to go, no way to hide my shame. I tried shaking my head no, tried pleading with Amá to send her away. Lips curled up on one side, Amá threw the door wide open instead, invited the missionary in. “Ven,” she said to me, chastising me with her eyes for hiding in the shadows. Feigning excitement, she said, “Hay alguien aquí para verte.”
In the dim light from our single kerosene lamp, Jessica didn’t see the reason I was hiding straight away. Rather, she felt it. Felt my belly like a balloon pressed into hers as she pulled me in for one of her signature bear hugs—and pulled away just as fast. “Wha . . . wha . . . Gime . . . Gime . . .” she stuttered. “Gimenia kay paus-oh?” The color drained from her face, leaving pale piel in place of her usual beat by the desert red. Her eyes went wide and filled to the brim with shock and sadness. “Oh Gimenia, pour kay, pour kay you fall into temptation? So ho-ven,” she lamented as tears streamed down her face. “So HO-VEN!”[37] Then she stuttered, “Sorry, sorry,” and rushed back out the door—gone as quick as she came.
She returned the next day. Said she could help me make it right. Said we could turn this curse into a blessing.
Amá tried to warn me against trusting the missionaries but she never liked gringos anyways, always had something bad to say about them. “No sabes nada sobre sus intenciones,” she warned, told me they were just using me. Promised I’d get tossed right back across the border as soon as the baby was born. But honestly, what else was I supposed to do? Stay there and raise her marido’s spawn? Abandon the baby at the hospital like she was probably planning to do with me? At least the missionaries presented an opportunity. Maybe not for me, but for this thing creciendo inside of me. It never asked to be made. Not any more than I asked to make it.
It would be a big fat mentira to claim I wasn’t relieved at the chance to be rid of it—that that wasn’t the sole reason I climbed the corrugated metal steps of the yellow school bus, everything I owned in a single mochila. And it would be an even bigger lie not to acknowledge the guerra being waged inside of me—or how quick my relief is surrounded, overwhelmed, defeated by guilt.
Jessica wipes my brow, caresses my arm. She is gentle and understanding and I wish it was her who is going to be Eperanza’s mother, not the woman with cold eyes the color of steel. Jessica’s eyes are soft blue, tender in their stare. She looks at me like Amá used to—before my breasts budded and Felipe caught the scent of my sangre. She looks at me like she cares. But then her face falls and disappointment clouds those blue eyes as she reaches for the neck of my hospital gown and pulls it down, just a centimeter or two, just enough to expose the bite marks raw and red across the front of my shoulder, the places where I’ve tried to chew myself away.
A tear trickles down her cheek but she doesn’t say anything, just lifts my gown back over my wounds. Covers me up like the baseball cap that hid my face long enough to get across the border.
It was hot that day—hotter than usual. But I couldn’t risk being noticed in a sea full of white faces, so we covered my arms with long sleeves and my neck with the buttons done up all the way to the collar; stuffed my thick black pelo under a baseball cap and pulled the bill low over my face. Stuffed me towards the back of the camion, between two blondies.
The wait at the border took hours, but I would esperar days if that’s what it took. By the time the guard waved us forward nervous sweat had formed pools in my armpits, under my breasts, between my thighs, and my cheap cotton dress soaked through across every inch of my swollen belly. Beads of it rested on my brow, across my upper lip, as though I just came in from the rain. The muchachas on either side of me tried to inch away from my spreading perspiration. One of them handed me a cloth, motioned for me to wipe my face. The other handed me an American magazine as if she seemed to think it would be better to hide my face altogether.
My heart hammered in my chest as I peered over the magazine, watched as man in a blue uniform, not unlike the policía’s came on board the bus. From the driver’s seat, Brother John smiled and yammered away as he handed over a stack of passports. I took a deep breath and held it—sure that this was it for me. I don’t have papeles and there was nothing in that stack granting me permission to cross the border.
The guard flipped through the passport books as though he were counting them then looked out at the rows of teenage missionaries and their chaperones, surveying the sea of pale faces. I ducked lower behind the magazine and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for him to storm down the aisle and yank me from my seat. Instead, there was more banter, a few chuckles, and the sound of his boots on the steps as he left. Still, I was sure that he was coming back with more guards to arrest me, to drag me back to the colonia, to Amá and Felipe, so I could hardly comprehend what was happening when the engine rumbled to life and the missionaries around me cheered, clapped their hands, praised Jesus.
Jessica beamed at me from the front of the bus with her bright red face, the whites of her eyes showing excitement as she gave me a double thumbs up. My confusion must have been real obvio on my face because she got up and shuffled down the aisle to explain to me in her broken blocky Spanish that it pays to know people. That they’d brought busloads across so many times that most of the guards never bothered to check more than a few passports anyway. They had earned trust and, of course, they were led by the mano of God who protected and watched over their every move. Besides, the guard was late for lunch.
We traveled north for a few hours, through cities with names that seemed to belong on the other side of the border. When darkness fell and the muchachas on either side of me drifted off to sleep, I undid the buttons on my blouse and craned my neck to reach the skin near my armpit. No sooner did my teeth pierce the piel that something let go, disappeared. For the moment that I control this pain the other, the one inflicted on me, the one where I am at the mercy of others, fades away. Felipe cannot violate me. His child within me cannot break my heart. What’s coming cannot destroy me. Not while I control the pain.
But the pain of this thing hatching is different. It is uncontrollable. I beg for medicine but the nurse tells Jessica my body is not ready. I beg them to cut me open, just get it out, but the nurse smirks and shakes her head no. Whenever they leave me alone in the room I bite down, seek relief in that other kind of pain, but it is never enough.
Jessica caught me with my skin between my teeth while I was staying with her, waiting on this thing to reach the end, that’s how come she knows about the marks on my skin and how come she doesn’t leave me alone much even here. How it happened was that even at her house, even in America, they didn’t have a room just for me so I made my bed in the living room. It was late one night, just a couple of days after we arrived, when she shuffled in to turn off the television and caught me chewing a fresh spot raw. Shame washed over the both of us as she realized what she was witnessing. It might have been late but that didn’t stop her rushing over to me, laying her hands on me, praying over me with words foreign to the both of us. It didn’t stop her picking up the telephone and calling in an emergency prayer circle. But what stopped her mentioning it a week later to the doctor who made weird sounds come out of a machine with a probe on my belly and stuck his fingers in the same places Felipe had been?
She watched me closer after that, doubled down on the time we spent at church, in Bible studies, in prayer. Everywhere I went gringos laid their hands on me and prayed for my sins to be absolved, for my soul to find solace in Jesus. Jessica said I would start to grasp their lengua over time and she was right. But I didn’t like most of what I understood. That was when they prayed in English anyways. What they said when they launched into tongues was a mystery to all but God. The woman with gray eyes cold as steel prayed the longest and hardest but always in tongues and always with a frown on her face. Each time she laid her hands on my middle, her hand cupping my belly, never asking permission. As if what’s inside was already hers.
Each week living with Jessica and John left me more uneasy. Not because they weren’t warm and loving, they were, but because as much as they paraded me around their church, as much as they touted how they had intervened to turn a terrible situation into a blessing, they never said a word about what would happen to me after all of this. Would I stay on sleeping in their living room? Would they help me get papeles and an education and a job? Would they dump me back across the border like Amá predicted? Desperate for the comfort of broken skin I looked for places to hide, lingered in the shower, spent too long changing my clothes behind locked doors. The closer my due date came, the more inventive I got, the more control I sought through little morsels of pain. Then I lost it all in a gush of water that left Jessica stuttering and John running around grabbing bags and keys, shouting directions.
No one ever asked who I wanted in the room with me with my privates hanging out. Not that they were ever private or ever my own. So when the time comes, when the doctor sticks her hand down there to touch what was never under my control and proclaims that this thing is ready to move along, the woman who will be Esperanza’s mother only leaves long enough to retrieve the man who will be Esperanza’s father. Jessica squeezes my hand and tells me she’ll be right outside. Panic grabs hold of me as I realize what she means. I squeeze her hand back and refuse to let go. Shaking my head, I beg her not to leave me, beg her to stay with me through this thing. I try to tell her that the other woman doesn’t care about me, that I’ll die if she leaves me alone with her. Jessica uses her free hand to stroke my brow and tells me everything will be okay. The nurse hollers something about only two in the room and Jessica takes that as her final cue. I cry as she leaves, big heaving sobs that shake my pecho[46], giant tears that stream down my face. Another ola hits.
There is no comfort from the woman or man, only commands to push. They hold my legs as the doctor commands and wipe my brow when the sweat stings my eyes, but there is no sympathy, no compassion, no sign that they care about anything except what they’ll walk away with when this is all over. I bite my cheeks and set my jaw. At least when it’s done it will be them and not me.
Ola after ola struggles to push Esperanza out of me as each one brings me closer and closer to the end of my esperanza. Esperanza to undo what’s been done. Esperanza that this never was. Esperanza that something good might manifest in my interest. It has for everyone else. These two get the child their loins could never produce. Jessica gets the glory of saving a heathen slut. The church gets to tout making a milagro out of a curse. As for me, my body violated and stretched, strained beyond my fourteen years, abused and never given a choice, it’s starting to feel like all there is for me is another cross to bear on top of this one.
They say your entire vida flashes in front of your eyes before you die but they never say anything about the flashes going backwards. Mine start with Amá—with her rage, her disappointment, how much she needs Felipe for her own survival, how much she doesn’t need me. What Felipe did to me comes next. His hot and sour breath. His hands taking what they want. The sword he wears in his pants. The flashes are less terrible after that. Our plywood shack. The piso made of bottlecaps. The dust that used to hang in the air before it was finished. My sisters and brothers. The beds we shared four across. Menudo on Sundays. Vacation Bible School. Missionaries. The last argument I had with Amá before every argument became about how what her marido did to me never happened and if it did it was my fault—when she forbade me to be baptized by the gringos. The kittens and pups born in spring, dead in ditches by disease or careless drivers by the end of summer. The paletero that never came down our dirt road because it had too many ruts for his cart. The empty lot next door with its collection of broken bottles and tumbleweeds. The school we could never afford libros for. The church that turned sanctuary literal when my body began to change and Felipe’s eyes wandered away from Amá. The good times when Apá was still alive.
Voices cut through the flashes. English voices. Panicked voices. All of a sudden I am moving—rolling through a hallway, pushed by a nurse and a doctor at my head telling me everything will be fine; pulled by a nurse whose face tells a very different story; surrounded on one side by the woman with the gray eyes cold as steel, her husband on the other. The bright white hallway is getting dark and it might be my last chance. I turn to the woman, look deep in her cold eyes, and, in the only English that has ever passed my lips, say, “Her name es Esperanza.”
Esperanza’s mother looks away, towards her husband, and bites her lower lip. “¿Por favor?” I beg. “For me?”
She looks back at me and nods, stutters, “O . . . o . . .okay . . . um yeah, sure . . . Es . . .Espur . . . Espurunza?” She looks back at her husband and one of her eyes twitches. The corner of her mouth tugs away like she’s trying to say something without saying it.
“Esperanza,” I correct her. “Es . . .pe . . . ranza.”
Everything goes black.
Not for good. Not for forever. I don’t die. I wake up with a bag of blood draining into one arm, something clear going into the other. This new room is foggy, blurry, there is a blue sheet stretched in front of my face. There is a searing pain in my belly and everything starts going dark again. I can’t see the doctors or the nurses or Esperanza’s new parents, but I can hear them. It’s almost black when the curdle of a newborn’s cry pierces the air. I struggle to open my eyes and hear a nurse curse. She pulls something plastic over my mouth and nose, something that feels like being wrapped in soft, billowy clouds flows into me.
Just before the pitch-black takes over fully I hear the woman with the gray eyes cold as steel give the baby a name, but that name isn’t Esperanza.
Her husband says something that sounds like prometido but she balks. Insists—“Her name is Ruth.” I hear it clear as a campana. Not Esperanza. Ruth.
Ruth is nothing like Esperanza. Ruth has nada to do with hope or waiting. Ruth has nada to do with me. And that’s exactly how they want it. How they want me and what happened to me—gone, forgotten, without a trace. Not even a blip in Ruth’s story. Not even the esperanza that this could ever not be.
When I wake up Ruth is gone along with her new parents. Jessica sits in a chair beside me, my hand clasped between hers. She smiles and tells me to rest some more, says I’ll be here for three more days. Says, “Then llevo you to your casa.”
A smile spreads across my lips. Between her broken Spanish and what little English has taken up residence in my mind, it sounds like she plans to take me home with her, to give me a chance, a better life of my own. Imagine my surprise when, three days later, the drive home takes much longer than expected. When we start to pass signs for Los Angeles my stomach burns with worry. Hoping for a different answer from the one that is becoming all too obvious, I ask Jessica where we’re going. She smiles and scrunches up her face like she’s confused. “I’m taking you home. To your casa.”
My eyes go wide. My body feels like it’s sinking and imploding all at the same time. “¿A mi casa?”
Jessica nods, “Yes, yes, donde else?”
Brow wrinkled, tears on the verge of release, I say, “Your house?” Wasn’t it obvio? Wasn’t it plain as day?
“Oh no, Gimenia, I can’t,” she shakes her head. Looking sad, she says, “No room. No hay room.” But her living room is as big as my family’s entire home so I don’t understand what she means. Of course, I should have known this would happen. Amá tried to warn me.
“I have to take you home. To your familia.”
I look away—out the window, at the irrigated desert and sprawling cities about to give way to the border, to the wall, to the life I thought I escaped—then down at the brand new Bible in my lap, leatherbound in all white and engraved with my name. A promise that didn’t mean at all what I hoped it meant.
“Understand?”
The wait is over, my hope is gone. There was never anything to esperar for, there was never any kind of esperanza. I nod and turn my head away from Jessica, let my teeth find a fresh piece of skin near my wrist, gnaw the pain away.