I stopped eating momentarily and glanced around to see dozens of faces staring back at me —many were laughing. Shame washed over me. Shame that I was looked down upon, even among the poorest citizens of a third-world country. Shame that my desperate hunger drove me to attack food like a wild animal. I wanted to dive under my seat and never come out again. But I couldn’t move. And there was no place to hide anyway. So I sat there, flooded with embarrassment, the splotchy redness and heat from my humiliation rising from my chest up my neck and cheeks.
Still, I continued to eat the apple. I felt compelled to finish it because I didn’t know when I’d get another chance to eat, or if I’d ever see another apple again. But every bite I swallowed had to work its way around the lump in my throat.
GAMALIEL AND I FINALLY ARRIVED in Mérida, Yucatán. When I found out that the “other relative” I was going to live with was my oldest half-sister, Ramona, I was thrilled. I got more and more excited as we walked from the bus station to her house.
Just the thought of living with Ramona was like a soothing balm to my raw, vulnerable heart, since I had such a strong, maternal attachment to her from all the time she had spent caring for me from the time I was born. In our large families, the oldest girls often were secondary mother figures to their younger siblings. Ramona had taught me my favorite card games and played endless rounds with me. If she ever grew tired of playing the same games with me over and over, I never knew it, and she probably let me win too many times. I remember the day we were going to Olan Mills for a rare family photo session. Ramona entertained me for hours after my mom bathed me, fixed my hair in loose curls, and dressed me up.
I was glad Ramona wasn’t in Catemaco when her husband, Dan, got arrested —a primary reason husbands and wives in our family rarely lived together or stayed in the same place for very long. I didn’t know it at the time, but many adult family members, including Ramona, were hiding out in Mexico because they had carried out the orders of my father or were involved in other ways. Some were even awaiting prosecution for murder. But that wasn’t the Ramona I knew and loved.
Ramona lived in a small efficiency apartment with her three daughters and cooked on a small propane-powered camping stove. She had no pan to “refry” the beans, so she pureed them in a blender. The final texture was smooth, not like the mashed beans that I was used to eating in Catemaco and Calería. She had to add enough liquid from the boiled beans to allow the blender to work, so they came out runnier than what I was used to. I definitely preferred beans that were refried the traditional way, but I didn’t voice any complaints. Living with Ramona was nourishment enough to my heart, so the food I ate didn’t matter so much.
On my second day in Mérida, Ramona sent me to the nearby mercado to buy more corn tortillas and beans.
“Anna, I’ve wrapped these pesos in a handkerchief. Don’t take out the money until you need to pay. I don’t want you to lose it.”
I nodded. I felt confident, having gone to the store dozens of times in Catemaco and Calería.
“Go down the main street until you see the panadería (bakery) with a large, pink door. Turn left, and the mercado will be one block down on the right.”
I set out for the store feeling lighthearted and enjoying the abundant sunshine. I walked and walked and walked, but I never saw the pink door Ramona had described. After walking what felt like several miles, I came upon a giant grocery store like the ones I remembered seeing in the United States on the rare occasions when we would go inside to shop —much larger, cleaner, better-lit, and more well-stocked than a neighborhood mercado. I knew it wasn’t the local, open-air mercado Ramona had described, but I knew I could find the items I needed there. I searched aisle after aisle and eventually found tortillas and beans.
On the long walk back home, the big bag of dry beans and tortillas, secured within the cloth sack Ramona had given me, banged repeatedly against my leg as I walked. I had to shift the heavy bag from my right hand to my left and back again. By the time I arrived at the apartment, my legs were aching, and my arms felt shaky from the weight of the groceries. She had been worried about me taking so long, but I thought nothing of it.
A couple of days later, Ramona sent me to the store again. This time I noticed a closed door painted bright pink, clearly visible to me for the first time. I turned left and spied the mercado that Ramona had described to me initially —mere blocks from our apartment.
We didn’t stay in that apartment long. After dinner one night, my half-sister Lillian and her husband, Mark, came to Ramona’s apartment with Celia and Hyrum, who were living with them. They picked us all up and took us to a beach house they had rented for Ramona in Progreso, a port city also in Yucatán. Lillian and Ramona were much older than I was and were close in age to each other. They were friends, having spent time together growing up as step-sisters.
“What’s the house like? When will we get there?” Celia and I chattered with excitement. We kids loved being with each other.
Lillian turned around in her seat and flashed a smile at the rest of us jammed into the backseat of the station wagon. “We have a big surprise for Anna too.”
I stared at her in stunned silence. I couldn’t remember anyone ever giving me a surprise before. “What is it?”
“You get a bedroom all to yourself.”
I stared in utter disbelief, unable to speak, as I tried to imagine having a room all to myself. “Really? I can’t —I mean, thank you.” Celia looked at me, eyes bright with excitement.
Mark pulled into the driveway and parked the station wagon on a large circle made of gravel. He had barely stopped the car before we kids began opening doors and climbing out. I ran past the younger ones into the house and selected the tiny bedroom on the right as my own. I didn’t care if I lived in a closet or under the stairs. Here, I was even farther away from Antonia’s critical reprimands, the real benefit. A room to myself was icing on the cake.
After I claimed my new room, I ran out onto the back porch. In the moonlight, I could see grassy shrubs, then flat, white beaches beyond. The sound of waves crashing on the shore mesmerized me. I decided to sleep with my window open so I could hear those waves each night as I drifted off. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something wiggling across the wooden planks. A tarantula! Even though it was huge, I wasn’t frightened because we used to hold them when we lived in California, during my toddler and kindergarten years. “Everybody! Come out here and see the tarantula I found,” I shouted.
Mark arrived first, peered down, and smashed the creature under his cowboy boots, then kicked it off the edge of the porch just as the others joined us. He leaned over, placed his hands on both knees, and looked each of us kids in the eyes. “That was a scorpion, Anna. They are poisonous, and their sting makes your skin feel like it’s on fire. Stay away from them, and never play with them or pick one up.”