Luz Read online

  Luz

  Copyright © 2020, Debra Thomas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2020

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-870-5

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-871-2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019918531

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1569 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The role Dolores Huerta plays is entirely fictional, although it is consistent with her actions in real life.

  for Mom and Dad who always put us first

  I tell you this

  to break your heart,

  by which I mean only

  that it break open and never close again

  to the rest of the world.

  Mary Oliver

  Darkness cannot drive out darkness,

  only light can do that.

  Hate cannot drive out hate,

  only love can do that.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Foreword

  by Alma Luz Villanueva

  When I was first contacted by Debra Thomas to perhaps read through, with commentary, her novel Luz, having to do with the immigrant experience (Mexico, Central America), those crossing the border to the United States, risking their lives, many dying, that dangerous crossing—I was hesitant. Debra is not a Latina. And so, I replied that I needed to know more about the impetus to write a novel with these immigrant themes—her concerns, the whys of the desire to write this novel. Debra responded fully in a passionate email, which is now in an Author’s Note at the end of the novel. When I read that she’s worked with immigrant communities in Southern California for decades, is an immigrant rights activist, has toured with Amnesty International to the US/Mexico border (speaking to people both sides of the border, including Border Patrol agents), and left jugs of water—the Blue Flags Water Station Project in the Imperial Valley Desert—for immigrants who would otherwise die of thirst and heat, and thousands do, I agreed to read this novel. And I’m so glad I did. This novel and all of the characters continue to resonate within me.

  Of course, I was struck, first of all, that her main character is Alma; her daughter Luz. I laughed out loud, as I’m Alma Luz. Then the opening of the novel with Alma and Luz leads to Recuerdo . . . (“Memory”), and from then on, I was carried like a soft wind, then a strong wind, to a stronger wind, to a tornado wind. The final crossing into the States, a brutal attack (which I had to put down a few times in order to read it through)—millions of immigrants experience this brutality daily, globally. I told myself, keep reading. As it is with every scene, chapter, dialogue, each character—it was absolutely necessary.

  The love story of Alma and Manuel is a very tender central theme. Of course, the most driving central theme, what forces Alma and Rosa, her sister, to leave Oaxaca, Mexico, is their father’s disappearance in el norte. He always returned after working the farming seasons, but not this time. He told stories of the courageous farm worker leader Dolores Huerta to Alma, igniting her imagination. Part of Alma’s quest is to find Dolores Huerta once she’s in el norte. She does find Huerta at last, after a journey that would have killed most of us. With Dolores is news that leads back to that tenderness.

  This is a novel of great tenderness and great brutality. Debra is right inside of her characters’ minds, bodies, spirits, and souls, and she doesn’t spare the reader either tenderness or brutality. This is crucial for these characters/people/immigrants, for their stories, their lives, to be passed on in an authentic human voice. The voice/voices are nailed to the page, speaking, truly, for millions of the life/death immigrant experience worldwide—the Mexican, Central American, this Turtle Island continent, as well as all of the Turtle Island continents globally.

  Debra’s novel is focused on these so alive Mexican, Central American characters. You will be immediately drawn into their lives as I was. You will journey with them and laugh at the light moments, sigh with the tenderness, recoil with the brutality. You will witness, via this novel, Martin Luther King’s words (that Debra quotes in the opening): “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.” You will experience Dar a Luz . . . to give birth, to give to the light. Believe me.

  Alma Luz Villanueva

  San Miguel de Allende, México

  We are one humanity

  April 7, 2019

  Alma Luz Villanueva is the author of four novels, most recently Song of the Golden Scorpion. Her The Ultraviolet Sky received the American Book Award.

  Prologue:

  Los Angeles: 2015

  “You don’t know anything!” my daughter Luz shouts, stamping her foot in defiance. At fourteen, she thinks she knows everything. Yesterday it was about a boy who is old enough to drive a car—a car that she will never ride in unless he is willing to wait until she is eighteen. Today her anger is fueled by yesterday’s argument as she tells me that I know nothing about the Central American children who are fleeing poverty and crime and have been detained at the Texas border. If she only knew what I do know—but I can’t tell her. Not everything.

  We had been watching the news when the screen filled suddenly with young brown faces and a headline “The Kids Are Back,” referring to the previous year’s migrant children desperate to cross the border and those newly arrived. Despite the government’s attempts to handle the crisis, children were still coming. I wanted to take them all in my arms. Those with eyes full of fear and worry were clinging to each other, but there were others seated slightly apart, some with sagging shoulders and empty eyes, and one with arms crossed, chin lifted and a cold piercing gaze. I had seen these eyes before. All of them. I had whispered softly, mostly to myself, “God bless you, pobrecitos, perhaps you should have stayed home,” when my daughter jumped up from her chair and exploded with her “You don’t know anything!” remark, followed by, “Just because you crossed the border a long time ago, you think you know what’s happening today?”

  She is standing above me, hands on her hips, leaning forward. Gone is the gentle face of my sister Rosa whom Luz resembles in her sleep. In its place are my stubborn squint and firm pressed lips. As always, I search for traces of Manuel, but right now I see mostly my younger, angry self, as Luz continues with her lecture on my ignorance. “Many of them are just little kids; you were older. They have no one to help them like you did. Some have no parents anywhere; you had a mamá back home. Some are trying to get to a parent who is working in the United States, not missing like your papá, but actually there. This is not like you at all. They can’t just ‘stay home.’” She flips back her long, thick hair and lets out an exasperated sigh. My Adelita warrior!

  A long time ago? Not so long, though to her it is a lifetime—I was just a couple of years older than Luz when I made my journey, and then she was born. Her unexpected anger has stopped the tears that welled up in my eyes at the sight of these children. I yank out
the yarn of my crocheting, for I have lost count.

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Luz. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have come. I just meant . . . well, I know the hardships they must have endured.”

  “Not worse than the hardships they are fleeing,” she says, her nostrils flaring like Manuel’s when he was angry.

  I suppress a slight smile at this familiar sight and sigh, “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s complicated.”

  I look up into her dark eyes. There is much I wish I could tell her, but she is so young. I have always thought that maybe one day, when she is older, I will tell her more. I want her to know me, who I was, who I really am. But now, as a flood of memories sends a chill that turns my hands ice cold, I tremble with the knowledge that she will never know my true story but will always live with the safer one that I have given her.

  Perhaps this is the way of mothers and daughters. What, after all, did I ever really know of my own mother?

  “Complicated?” Luz is saying, with a hint of sarcasm in her voice as she gathers up her schoolbooks and hugs them to her chest. “I’m going to my room. My math homework is ‘complicated,’ but I want to figure it out myself. I don’t need your help.”

  This last bit is said to spite me, but I let it go. This is not her usual behavior. This is really about yesterday . . . about a boy . . . and we have tossed enough angry words about this apartment for one night. No more.

  I pick up my yarn and begin to count again. Ten single crochets, skip a space, ten more. Should I have stayed in Mexico with Mamá? The thought alone makes my stomach turn. But if I had stayed, if I hadn’t searched for Papá . . . I think of Rosa, of Manuel, of the night of the blinding stars. Maybe Luz is right. Maybe I don’t know anything. But one thing is certain: Luz can never know the truth of my journey. My precious Luz de Rosalba can never know.

  Recuerdo . . .

  1

  Oaxaca Bound

  My father disappeared in 1997. My precious papá, who knew me better than anyone else, who saw not only who I was, but more importantly, who I could be. He was the one who praised my schoolwork, spoke with my teachers, and made me dream beyond our simple life in Oaxaca. Never my mother. Papá encouraged my fascination with numbers, and at a young age I learned exactly why he traveled so far, for so long, to support our family. I remember vividly the two of us hunched over a table by candlelight, my small fingers clutching a fat pencil, as we created three columns listing the cost of monthly expenses and comparing them to what he earned in el norte and what he would earn doing the same work in Mexico. I understood well enough to see the staggering reality. Numbers always tell the truth.

  I was thirteen when Papá left for el norte that year like he had countless times before. For over three decades, he had worked on farms throughout California, arriving at each at designated times. He would stay for a season, sometimes longer, then return home for a couple of months. But this time his departure was followed by a chilling silence. No boxes arrived with T-shirts, toys, stickers, and stars. No first Sunday evening of the month telephone calls at the Cortez house, for we didn’t have a phone. No word at all made its way back to us those first weeks, that became months—and then, as the season ended, no money, no Papá.

  Mamá must have been terrified.

  I think that now, but I didn’t then. I thought only of myself and Papá.

  Mamá let me stay in school that first year without Papá. Of course, I gave her no choice, throwing a fit until she said I could at least try to combine school and work. I was beginning the first of three years of secundaria, similar to junior high in the United States, but unlike my older sister, Rosa, who had decided not to finish her third year, and unlike most young girls we knew, who never went on to high school, I dreamed of going to preparatoria, and maybe even university one day to become a math teacher.

  Papá had always said that nothing is impossible. He had learned this as a teenager, when he first began working the fields in Central California and met the leaders of the farmworkers’ movement, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Oh, how he talked about Dolores! He had never seen a woman quite like her before—small, but mighty, and so determined. He would often tease, and instead of calling me Alma, he’d call me his pequeña Dolores . . . his little Dolores, which made me feel very proud. But because of what he saw over those years, the long struggle and ultimate success of the farmworkers, he had learned that with patience, hard work, and a deep belief, anything could be achieved. And so, he had encouraged me to pursue my dreams—of course, I could become a teacher one day.

  Because of this, staying in school was a must for me. But that year, unlike previous years, I had to hurry home to help Mamá and Rosa prepare tortillas. Mamá had found work with a taco vendor named Mundo, who was also an old friend of Papá’s. The more tortillas we made, the more money he paid. So, we worked late into the night, mixing the masa, rolling a ball, and then flattening it between hands with a pat, clap, slap. Mine came out perfect each time because I measured the ball’s diameter using my finger as a ruler. Then, after clapping each back and forth exactly ten times, I would finish with three slap, slap, slaps and onto the fire. Once done and stacked, they were wrapped and packed to go.

  I could not get to my schoolwork until late in the evening, but I didn’t mind. I came to like this nightly routine of Mamá, Rosa, and me, sitting by the fire in the center of our one-room, dirt-floor shed behind Mundo’s house. My little brothers, Ricardo and José, then seven and five, would play on a blanket beside us until they fell asleep, while the three of us worked quietly by the fire. Clap, clap, clap, slap, slap, slap.

  I felt in my bones that it was temporary and that Papá would return. There had to be a good reason why he did not come back for a visit that summer as he promised. Perhaps he had sent us a message that we didn’t get, and he didn’t know that we didn’t get it. All I knew was that when he did come home, he would explain, and we would all understand, and then this nightmare would be over. How proud he would be of my schoolwork, especially my math exams. How proud he would be to see how I was helping Mamá. So, as we sat there, clapping our tortillas, I felt certain that everything would be okay.

  The months passed. December, January, and then February came and went with no sign of Papá. These were the months that he always spent with us, finding odd jobs in Oaxaca before the spring took him back to the farms in el norte. It wasn’t until the following summer that I began to worry when I heard Mundo speak of the increasing dangers of crossing the border. What he said made no sense, for he spoke of the gringos’ anger that men like my father were crossing to work in the fields. Yet he had worked for the same farmers all his life, worked hard and made money to clothe and feed us. Now, Mundo said, they were putting up fences that pushed border crossers east to the desert where many died, or, if they made it, many were arrested and held in a prison called a detention center before they were finally sent back. Was Papá in such a prison, or worse?

  While my own spirits began to deflate, Mamá’s beautiful black hair began to show threads of gray, and her soft, round face became thin, as deep lines appeared around her eyes. She began to have headaches that, some days, kept her curled on the blanket with a pillow over her head to block out the light. So, when she told me I could not continue with school, even I did not have the heart to fight her. At least not that second year. Rosa and I took to the streets of Oaxaca by day, selling the tacos and even tamales that we made by night. Seven days a week, we all worked; even my little brothers helped the best they could, day and night, until, one by one, each of us would fall asleep beside the fire.

  It was during the summer that marked two years without Papá that Mamá’s distant cousin Tito, who smelled like sour beer, came up from Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico. The two of them, Mamá and Tito, would take long walks in the evenings, leaving Rosa and me to tend to the boys and the tortillas. They sometimes spoke in the Tzotzil language of her family, a language I did not understand, so their murmurings in this f
oreign tongue added a secret intimacy that infuriated me. Mamá rarely used her native tongue, for she left Chiapas at a young age after her mother died. Papá spoke only Spanish and some English. Only Rosalba, who was her firstborn, and whom I called simply Rosa, was taught a few words of Tzotzil, even a little poem or song, I believe, but when I was born two years later, Mamá never used Tzotzil. In fact, she rarely talked about her life in Chiapas, only that she came to Oaxaca to take care of an old aunt, who died shortly before she met my papá. This last fact was always part of her answer whenever I asked how she and Papá met; the old woman died, and she met my father at a wedding shortly after. It had always struck me as odd to link the two so purposefully, but as I watched events unfold, it began to make sense.

  Over the next weeks, Mamá’s headaches slowly disappeared. Two months later, she told us we were moving with Tito to Chiapas.

  I hated Tito. I hated Mamá, and I hated the thought of Chiapas. As long as we stayed in Oaxaca, I felt there was hope—hope that Papá would return from el norte, and we would live once again in a cinder block house with a cement floor. Mamá would smile and decorate the walls with colorful fabrics—and I would go back to school.

  “Go!” I shouted at my mother the morning she began to gather our few belongings. “I am staying right here. And when Papá returns, I will tell him where you are and what you have done!”

  Mamá turned slowly, her shoulders hunched forward. “Papá is gone, mi hija. He is not coming back. Either he is dead or dead to us.” She could not look me in the eye, but kept her head down.

  “What does that mean . . . dead to us? Papá loved us. He worked hard for us. Everything he did was for us!”

  “Not just for us,” she said, finally lifting her eyes to mine.

  She was referring to Diego, his son by a first marriage. Diego lived in Los Angeles with an aunt who had raised him after her sister, Papá’s first wife, died in childbirth. I remember hearing Mamá and Papá arguing once about money, and Mamá saying that if Diego had a better life in el norte, then why did Papá have to give him any of our money. Papá’s voice had cut sharp in response. “Because he is my son!”