The Distance Between Us

Along with the other female students in her class, Reyna watches an instructional video about menstruation. Following the assembly, she receives an instructional pamphlet and a sanitary napkin. She is excited to become a señorita and wishes for her period to begin although she is only 10 years old. Every day after school, she admires the wrapping on the napkin and enjoys reading the pamphlet—especially the phrase rite of passage.

One day, Reyna comes home to discover that her napkin is missing. She confronts Mago, who has used it; her period started that morning. To make matters worse, Mago has missed school. Their father comes home and gives Mago “the biggest lashing any of us had gotten thus far” (200).

Mago, embarrassed, does not tell him the reason for her absence. Reyna intervenes—pushing her father—and explains that Mago has started menstruating.

When Mila arrives home, the children tell her what has happened. She tries to explain their father’s behavior and leaves to buy a package of sanitary napkins. Mago gives one to Reyna to replace the one she used. Reyna places it on her drawer and hopes that her “rite of passage wouldn’t be as painful as my sister’s” (201).

Reyna is devastated to learn that she has head lice again; she wants to tell the school nurse that since arriving in America she showers regularly, wears shoes, and launders her clothes in a washing machine: “I had never been so clean in my life, and yet here she was telling me I had lice” (203). Fearing her father’s reaction, she walks home with the nurse’s note, prepared for a beating. She apologizes to him; to her surprise, he tells her it’s not her fault. In fact, he spends the afternoon gently removing the nits from her scalp and shares a memory with her. When Reyna was little, he tells her, she always insisted that he be the one to bathe her. Reyna doesn’t recall the events but cherishes the new memory.

No longer suffering from head lice, Reyna returns to school in time for Valentine’s Day. Mago, now in adolescence, insists that she is too old for childish activities. When Reyna asks to play dolls together, Mago removes Ken and Barbie’s clothes and simulates sex. Reyna doesn’t quite understand. She then reports that Mago has been writing letters to their mother and sending pictures of the family looking happy: “[W]e wanted Mami to see we were doing great and that she shouldn’t worry. We would never tell her about the dark side of Papi” (207). Their mother never writes back.

Mago, approaching 15, confesses to Reyna that she has a crush on a boy at school named Pepe. She can’t communicate with him, however, as he doesn’t speak Spanish and Mago doesn’t speak English. Her idea is to attend mass and pray for help in getting close to him. Their father, claiming that Budweiser is his God, refuses to take them, so they have to walk. Upon entering the church, Reyna is overcome by sensory memory: “I became intoxicated with the smells of incense, melted wax, and flowers. All of a sudden, I was back in Iguala” (209-10).  

The following day, Pepe asks Mago her name. She replies that her name is Maggie, which is the name she goes by at school: “she was known as Maggie everywhere but at home […] It was the beginning of her assimilation” (210). Once Pepe learns that she doesn’t speak English, he ignores her. Days later he and his friends throw rocks at her and Carlos, calling them wetbacks.

Carlos, too, has a crush on a girl at school named María. Noticing his attention on the bus, María asks him why he’s staring at her. Mago intervenes, telling her she’s lucky that someone as ugly as her could attract Carlos. María shows up later at the house to fight Mago. Now it is up to Carlos to intervene—he knows that Mago is heartbroken and wants to protect María from her rage. Mago pummels María and drags her into a puddle of motor oil, cursing at her in Spanish. Terrified, Reyna stands in the parking lot and wonders what her first love might be like: “Would I have the same rotten luck as my brother and sister?” (214).

Reyna looks forward to entering a writing contest at school and learns that she can enter in Spanish. Finally given the opportunity to make her father proud, she sets out to write her book. First, she attempts to rewrite a fable she remembers from childhood, but she doesn’t want to copy. Instead, she writes the story of her birth: “I wrote how even though I was now living far away from Mami and my country, I hadn’t forgotten where I came from” (216). She is additionally excited to illustrate and bind the book.

During class, the teacher reads the students’ books as they watch E.T. Reyna feels sorry for E.T., an alien who wants to go home, and she is jealous of him for learning English much faster than she is. She can’t pay close attention to the movie; she’s waiting to see how her teacher reacts when she gets to her book. However, the teacher simply flips through the pages and sets the book on the reject pile. Reyna, dejected, knows that the teacher can’t possibly have read her book carefully, especially since the teacher doesn’t know much Spanish. She wants to protest the injustice: “But I didn’t have the English words to say what I thought, and so I said nothing at all” (217). At this point she longs, much like E.T., to go home. Her book is set out for display with the other rejected books. She promises herself that one day she will succeed as a writer and make her father proud.