I packed my bags. I didn’t know where I was going, but I wasn’t broke. I went to a hotel. I felt like crap. I thought I was getting sick, so the next day I made an appointment with my doctor. Then I discovered I was pregnant. You. You were living inside me. And I was so happy. I was so, so happy. It was like my life suddenly had meaning. My life had a purpose. There was a life growing inside me.
I don’t know why, but I decided to move to El Paso. But I did know why. It was a town Vicente always talked about. He’d get this look on his face, and he’d say, “I love that border town.” So I moved here. It was far from my family and far from the life I had lived. I was going to start over. I’d lost track of Vicente, but I had his mother’s phone number—?just in case I ever needed to reach him. That was the first time I spoke to the woman I would come to know as Mima. I told her I was a friend of Vicente’s and that I was trying to reach him. She was so kind when she spoke to me. She gave me his number.
I called Vicente and we reconnected. He laughed when I told him I’d moved to El Paso. He said he didn’t take me for that kind of girl. About five months into my pregnancy, there were complications, and I went to the hospital because I went into labor. You weren’t born then, but the doctor said he was afraid I was going to have to stay in bed for most of the time until you were born. I called Vicente. Mima came to take care of me until Vicente managed to get all his stuff together and move. I fell in love with Mima. She took good care of me. When Vicente arrived from Boston, I felt I could breathe again.
Vicente didn’t want me to name you Salvador. He said it was too big and too heavy a name for a little guy to carry. “And besides,” he said, “you’re not Mexican.” I laughed and told him not to be such a snob. But you were my salvation, Salvador. You were.
As I said, the last two years of my life have been so beautiful. And all because of you. I’m dying now. And I am so very sad. But I’m happy, too, because you’ll have Vicente as a father. I’m sure you love him. And I know he loves you. I don’t know how old you are as you read this letter, but I’m sure Vicente gave it to you at just the right time. He was born with beautiful instincts. I think he got those instincts from his mother.
I didn’t want you to grow up with my family. I didn’t want you to grow up with your father’s family either. I don’t believe they’re good people—?not really. They’re too in love with money—?and too in love with the things money can buy. I just didn’t want you to be raised the way I was raised. Your natural father always wanted a son. But in my opinion, he didn’t deserve you. Vicente and I are going to the courthouse tomorrow while I can still walk. We’re going to get married. And we’ve already drawn up the papers for him to adopt you. That was the only way I could be certain that Vicente would be allowed to raise you, to be your father. I’m sure you understand what I’m trying to say.
I had the power to decide who would raise you. (It’s strange to talk in the past tense, but by the time you read this, I will have been dead for some time.) But, Salvador, I don’t have the right to deprive you of the knowledge of who your natural father was. That is not mine to decide. Inside this envelope is another envelope. It has a name, your father’s name. It also has the names of his relatives. It’s up to you now to decide if you want to meet him.
I know as you read this that you have already turned into a very fine young man. How could you not be? Vicente Silva raised you.
I love you more than I can bear. You saved my life—?if only for a little while. Not everybody lives a long life. But not everybody gets to give life to a boy as beautiful as you.
All my love,
Mom
I remembered what Mima told me. “Your mother was a beautiful person.”
I hadn’t known so many things, and I’d been so afraid. Maybe I was afraid that she hadn’t loved me. Stupid. Here was this letter from a mother who loved me more than she’d loved anything else in the world and who died too soon. I understood what she’d done for me. I understood that she had fallen in love with Mima because she’d never known a Mima in the world she came from. I understood why she married my dad. To give me a family, a family that knew how to love.
I pictured my biological father slapping my mother to the ground. Maybe I had a little bit of him in me. A little bit. But not much. I didn’t have to be afraid of becoming like my father. I wasn’t that man. And never would be. I think my mom ran away from a selfish and violent man. She saved herself. And saved me, too. I knew myself enough now to know that I’d taken out my fists because of my sense of loyalty to the people I loved. Yeah, I’d struck out at Enrique and other boys, but Dad was right—?my anger had come from hurt. I wasn’t proud of any of those moments. Hurting other people because you’ve been hurt? No bueno.
Every time I’d pulled out my fists, I thought I now understood the reflex. Or at least I was beginning to understand. I couldn’t bear to see anyone hurting the people I loved. Because I loved them so much that it hurt me, too. And I couldn’t stand anyone calling me a white boy because I belonged to a family, and when people called me that, all I heard was that I did not belong to that family. And I did belong to them, and I wasn’t going to let anybody tell me otherwise. And one more thing: I didn’t want to admit that I had anger living somewhere inside me. But that anger didn’t make me a “bad boy.” All it did was make me human. There was nothing wrong with getting angry. It was what you did with that anger that mattered.
All this time I’d been so scared that I was going to turn out to be like a biological father I’d never met. I’d underestimated myself. In the end, wasn’t it up to me to choose? Didn’t we all grow up to be the kind of men we wanted to become?
I was trying to explain to myself why I was so happy. I hadn’t ever felt this happy. I finally understood something about life and its inexplicable logic. I’d wanted to be certain of everything, and life was never going to give me any certitude. I thought of Fito, who always lived in hope when life had offered him no hope. Certitude was a luxury he had never been able to afford. All he’d ever had was a heart incapable of despair.
I thought of Mima and Sam’s mom and Fito’s mom and my mom. They were dead. They were like the falling yellow leaves of Mima’s tree. Life had its seasons, and the season of letting go would always come, but there was something very beautiful in that, in the letting go. Leaves were always graceful as they floated away from the tree.
There would always be cancer, and people would always die under its awful and unforgivable weight. There would always be accidents because people were careless and weren’t paying attention when they should’ve been paying attention. There would always be people who suffered and died from addictions that were powerful and mysterious and uncontrollable.
People died every day.
And people lived their lives every day. There were always survivors in the aftermath of all that death.
I was one of those survivors.
And so was Sam.
And so was Fito.
And so was Dad.