It's been almost two weeks now since mom crossed the border with the coyote. We were supposed to hear from mom days ago.
Since we have been here longer than we thought, we had to move to a cheaper motel. There's a small TV on the corner where my sister plays a CD with music videos of some of her favorite songs. We spend most of the days watching that CD over and over. There's bed bugs everywhere. If you look under the bed, there's so many dead bed bugs that the floor is barely visible. The whole floor shares a bathroom that's all the way at the end of the we hall.
Crossing over takes 3 to 4 days, it shouldn't have taken this long. All of us are scared that the worse happened. What if mom she was shot on sight? What if they ran out of food or water? Dad has been trying to find out what happened so he hasn't been spending much time with my siblings and I.
All we can do is keep waiting.
It wasn't until the end of the second week in which dad received a phone call from mom. Turns out she was caught by border patrol on the third day of her journey and she had been in a small jail all this time. At least we know now that mom is alive.
When I saw mom again, my heart broke. She was covered in bruises, her bones ache and her feet were swollen. She was in pain. We were all in pain at the sight of our mother like that. It hurt to see her like that. But I felt happy.
"Now we can go home" I said to myself.
We'll all get inside dad's car and drive back. We will unpack, mom will re-open her restaurant and in the morning I'll walk to school like I always did. I'll see my friends again and I'll tell them that I was just sick. Dad will drive my brother and sister to their middle school that's all the way into the city. It was a good attempt but now we can go home, right?
I was wrong. Mom was gone again the next morning. My sister said she went with another coyote to try again. This time, mom was successful in making it to the other side. Dad had received the phone call about five days after mom left which meant it was our turn to go.
Our uncle came to the hotel to pick us up the day after the phone call. Now it was time to say goodbye to Dad. He kept on smiling and telling us that he'd be seeing us soon. He's not a very good liar. We could tell that he was sad that his whole family was leaving him until the money allowed.
Little did we know that the money would not allow for a reunion for a long time.
We hugged and kissed dad goodbye and we were headed towards the boarder. A security guard stopped the car and asked my uncle where we were headed. My uncle told him we were headed to Albuquerque, which is where my siblings and I came to visit three years ago.
The security guard looks at me and says something. I don't know how to speak English yet so I say nothing. He chuckles and lets us go on our way.
Eight hours later we get to Albuquerque. We stopped at a gas station at the edge of the city, I give my sister what I want so that she can buy it and I won't have to speak to the person at the service desk.
My sister knows a lot more English than my brother and I. When I was four, we lived in Denver where I went to pre-school. My brother who was five at the time went to kindergarten and my sister who was nine was in fourth grade. Since my sister was older than my brother and I when we lived on this side of the border, she was able to retain a lot of her English. My brother and I did not. Still, my brother got to go through a month or two of English classes since he got to start middle school back home so he knew more than I did.
When we got to our uncle's house, I immediately ran out the car and was welcomed by mom's embrace. I felt as though I hadn't seen her in months. We had been reunited with our mother. She has more bruises in her body but she tells us it's all ok. She tells us that it is all worth it because we are together in a place in which we can now begin a new life. It doesn't feel real. We have our mom but now we are missing our father. I start to question whether or not we can begin now without him.
