The mother of María Isabel Flores
García was both fiercely protective of, and deeply ashamed of, her daughter, in
only the way a mother can be.
Doña
Marta García gave birth to María Isabel the 15th of April, 2008, at
a hospital in the fertile San Fernando Valley, where she was a migrant worker
married to María Isabel´s father, Don Isaac Flores. “Don” may not be the right word to describe Isaac,
inasmuch as the “don” implies some sort of honor or maturity. Isaac did work very hard, and doted on his
newborn daughter, but he was deeply machista and emotionally, mentally and
physically abused Doña Marta. Although
they both worked all day long in underneath the broiling California sun or its
bone chilling winter winds, Isaac believed, as his father and his father before
him had believed, that all the work around the house was to be done by his
wife, whom he had won over with his skills dancing norteña in a Fresno dance
club. Isaac was also very possessive; he
frowned upon her socializing with men who were not family, even his own friends,
with the kind of insecurity hard-boiled into young men (or old boys) of a
certain stage.
Doña
Marta had barely learned she was pregnant, eight weeks after the nuptials, when
she first became aware of Isaac´s possessive nature. Isaac had passed out at the bar and Doña
Marta, abstaining from alcohol because of the new life within her, accepted a
dance from Isaac´s friend Daniel. It was
a very friendly dance, but when she mentioned it the next day to Isaac, he
began screaming at her, calling her a puta and a ramera, and threw an empty bottle
of Budweiser into the wall, and forbid her to ever dance with another man
again. He didn´t talk to her for three
days. Doña Marta, more stunned than
afraid, accepted his conditions so as not to upset him further.
Thus
life proceeded. One afternoon, when she
was six months pregnant, after a day of picking what was left of the grape
harvest, they stopped at a gas station to pick up a case of beer for Isaac and
his cousins. Since Isaac was driving,
Doña Marta went in to make the purchase.
As she stood in line, a young gringo man asked how far along she was,
and told her a story about his own pregnant wife, and Doña Marta laughed. When she returned to the car with the beer,
Isaac was silent. When they got home, he
grabbed her by the arm and pinned her shoulders against the living room wall.
“Only
because you are pregnant,” he railed, “do I not knock you into tomorrow! What did that fucking gringo say to you? Why
did you smile at him? Do you want to be La Malinche and fuck that gringo? I´ll
kill you before that happens!”
Doña
Marta, for the first time in her life, felt fear, real fear, that fear that
settles in the pit of your stomach and eats into your tripas. She withdrew, she smiled at no one, she only
worked, ate and slept. The only thing
that brought her joy for many years was the criatura in her womb that would
become María Isabel. At night, after Isaac
fell asleep, she would talk to her panza, telling her baby that she couldn´t
wait to meet her and that she would be the world´s greatest mother and that the
baby would never want for anything, because her Mami and Papi loved her.
To
Isaac´s credit, he was a much better father than husband. After the birth, he didn´t work for a week,
relying on the small sum they had saved for the occasion. He was sweeter with Doña Marta than he had
been at any point since their courtship and cried every time he held little
María Isabel, either forgetting about or unable to summon his sacred machismo. Isaac´s
female cousins swarmed around Doña Marta, making sure she made a full recovery,
and raving over the beauty of the young criaturita. Doña Marta depended on them, since her entire
family was in México; she had come north with a brother who had been deported
several years earlier after a field had been raided by ICE agents. She called
them every day for a month after the birth, and one of Isaac´s cousins sent
them pictures over the computer. Every
night and every morning she prayed to La Virgen and thanked Her for her
wonderful new life.
The mother of Erick Arturo Wagner
Montalvan was both outwardly critical of, yet absolutely worshipful of, her son
in a way that only mothers can be.
Erick
was born on March 25, 2009, at the local hospital in the small northwest Iowa
town of Storm Lake. The town was big
enough to have a hospital and a small liberal arts college, and not one bit
bigger. In the 1960´s and 1970´s its
townpeople considered it to be a hidden jewel; there was the lake, and the meat
packing plant in town was a union shop.
Storm Lake had a thriving middle class and attracted visitors from a
wide circumference who wanted to lake but didn´t want to spend the money
required at Okoboji or the Minnesota lakes.
In the 1980´s the union was broken and the plant temporarily closed
down; the town received a large influx of Hispanics and Vietnamese immigrants
when it reopened paying half the wage it did before. The natives who could relocate, for the most
part, did; those who couldn´t took job alongside the immigrants and begrudged
them, begrudged the greedy, union-busting owners, begrudged their friends who
had left, begrudged the small, educated “elite” who staffed the college and the
schools and the city. Meth and booze
took hold.
Kevin
Wagner was largely ignorant of these changes.
He left Storm Lake when he graduated from high school in 1982, enlisted
in the Army and did very well, became a non-commissioned officer and a
lifer. Kevin loved the Army, its clear
chain of command, its emphasis on teamwork, its structure and its grand tradition. He served in the Persian Gulf and completed
his twenty years in 2002 in the run up to the Iraq invasion. He offered to stay on and help out in
whatever way was needed. His commanders accepted his offer but to his surprise,
he was sent with a superior to Colombia, where the U.S. was providing military
and financial aid to the Colombian government in their half century battle with
the leftist guerrilla group, the FARC.
While the world watched Iraq, Kevin was installed in a makeshift base in
the Colombian Andes, overseeing one unit of many that was being built up to
fight the rebels. Kevin didn´t follow the politics, he just did his job like a
good Army man. One week, on leave, he
went to the capital, Bogotá, and toured a museum. He liked the tour guide so much that, in a
move completely out of character for him, retook the tour the next day and
summoned up the courage to ask the tour guide to have a cup of coffee with him
and tell him more.
The
tour guide´s name was Ana Lucía Montalvan Castillo. She had grown up in a small town called San
Pablo, about an hour from Bogotá, and hailed from a middle class household, and
studied language in college. Her English
was quite good, although her accent tended a bit British, and she thought the
fortyish American guy was quite adorable.
Kevin´s visits to Bogotá became more and more frequent. When Kevin´s tour finished up in 2006, he
asked her to marry him, and she accepted, in an English that was quite a bit
more American than it had been in 2003.
She didn´t want to be an Army wife, though, didn´t want to move every
two years, was tired of being in a long distance relationship, and insisted on
living together, in one place.
The
only place Kevin knew that weren´t army bases was Storm Lake, Iowa. At first Ana hated it; Storm Lake was about
1,000 times smaller than Bogotá. But as
the first year went by and she started working in the local school system, she
came to appreciate the small town, the tight connections, the Fourth of July
celebrations, the lack of traffic and the Iowa Nice. They didn’t worry about money; Kevin had his
pension for the Army and they had moved into his parents´ old house after they purchased
a condo right on the lake. Her biggest
pet peeve, really, was when the white Storm Lake people assumed she was
Mexican. She had never been to Mexico
and before arriving in Storm Lake had never ate a “taco” or celebrated el Cinco
de Mayo. She was lighter skinned than
most of the so-called white natives, for the love of God! But that was small. Kevin opened up a small motor shop; they
lived life slow and steady, and life was good.
Just
one thing was missing, and he came along in March 2009. They called him Erick so his name would be
roughly the same in English and Spanish, and both parents were proud as
peacocks. Kevin had an enormous family
spread out over northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota, and little Erick wanted
for nothing. Ana´s sister Cecilia came
up (she was the only one who could get a visa) and stayed for two months. Kevin´s dad, smitten by the little guy,
brought him over to the condo every day and sat out on the dock with him,
telling him his glory stories playing football and baseball for the Storm Lake
Tornadoes. They had a huge celebration
on the lake for little Erick´s one month birthday, with a keg of beer, an
enormous sheet cake, and a whole roasted hog.
Cecilia live streamed the party home to their parents in San Pablo, and the
girls´ parents cried with joy at their first grandchild.
