Javier Zamora - Solito: A Memoir

La Herradura, El Salvador

Ma rch 16, 19 99

T rip. My parents started using that word about a year agoone day, youll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure. Like the one Simba goes on before he comes home. Around that same time they sent me Aladdin, Jurassic Park, and The Lion King, alongside a Panasonic VHS player for my eighth birthday.

Trip, they say now as Im talking to them at The Bakers, where Abuelita Neli, Grandpa, and I go to call themwe dont have a phone at home, but we do have a color TV, a brand-new fridge, and a fish tank.

Javiercito! Abuelita Neli waves her hand at me. Shes always called me that. I think my nickname, Chepito, reminds her too much of what the town calls Grandpa: Don Chepe.

Your parents say youll soon be with them, Abuelita says, and smiles, showing off her two top middle teeth lined in gold. Her dimples dig deeper into her round face. Ta Mali, who also has a round face, isnt here, because shes working at the clinic. She and Abuelita have been using the word more and more. Trip this, trip that. Trip trip trip. I can feel the trip in the soles of my feet. I see it in my dreams.

In some dreams Im Superman, or Im Goku, flying over fields, rivers, over El Salvador, over all the countries, over the people, towns, all the way to California, to my parents. I ring their bell. They open their huge door, tall and wide, made from the brownest wood, and I run to them. They show me their living room. Their huge TV. Their backyard with a swimming pool, a lawn, fruit trees, a mini soccer field, a white fence. I climb their maran trees, eat their mangos, play in their garden

Every night, between praying and sleeping, I lie in bed and think about them. What type of bed do they sleep on? Is it big? Is it a waterbed like in the movies? Are the sheets soft? I imagine cuddling right in the middle. The comfiest white sheets. Mom to my left, Dad to my right, a mosquito net like a crown covering all of us.

Whenever a plate breaks, whenever I find an eyelash, whenever I see a shooting star, I wish to be in that bed with both of them in La USA, eating orange sherbet ice cream. I never tell anyoneif I tell anyone my wish it wont come true.

I have bad dreams tambin. Bad dreams of growing a beard with my parents still not here. Bad dreams where Im not up there with themand Im thirty years old! Bad dreams of being chased by pirates, or running down a hill during a mudslide.

The bad dreams, those you have to tell first thing in the morning so they dont stay in your mind. And never in the kitchen, or else they get in your stomach. Thats how you get indigestion, Mom told me, and I never forgot.

Trip. Ive started using the word at school. I began telling my closest friends: Fijte vos, one day Im taking a trip. Like a real-real game of hide-and-seek.

In first grade, I was the only one who didnt have both parents with me. Mali says they left because before I was born there was a war, and then there were no jobs. Now, most of my friends dont have their dad or mom here either. A few lucky friends have left to be with their parents in La USA. Most left inside giant planes.

At recess, my friends and I talk about eating our first pepperoni pizza like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, eating lasagna like Garfield, eating McDonalds, watching the new Star Wars inside a theater with air-conditioning, eating popcorn with butter. Ive never tried any of these things except for pizza from Pizza Hut, and that was last Christmas.

But will you miss me? Will you? my friends ask.

Pues, I say, but I dont really know.

I ask them if they will miss me. Absolutely, they say, because no one whos left to La USA has ever come back to visit. Sometimes their grandma or grandpa will walk by on the street and well ask them how So-and-So is, and they respond, So-and-So says hithats the closest they come to remembering us. Oh, gracias, doa, gracias, don. Tell them we say hi. But we never hear from them again.

The Baker is still here. His wife and all six of his kids tambin. They look happy. I want what The Bakers family has: everyone in the same room. All my friends and I want to be with our parents, where everything is new, fresh, where garbage is collected by trucks, where water comes out of silver faucets, where it snows the whitest snow, where people have snowball fights and cut real pine trees for Christmasnot spray-paint cotton branches in white like we do here.

Its because our parents are not here and were not there that Mays and Junes are sad. For most of us, our grandparents are the ones who show up for Mothers and Fathers Day assemblies. Its not that we dont love them. We do. I love Abuelita so much. I love her cooking. The way my face gets stuck in her curly, frizzy hair that she dyes black, her short hair that makes her look like a microphone, her hair that smells like pupusas when she hugs me. I love her two dimples when she smiles. Her wide and flat nose with its dark-brown mole in the middle that she has to check at the hospital every year to see it doesnt get too big. And I love her fake eyebrows she draws thin with a pencil first thing in the morning.

I love my mom, tambin. Ive never met my dador I have, but I dont remember him. I was about to turn two when he left. He sounds nice over the phone. His voice is deep and raspy, but its still soft, like a sharp stone skipping over water. I always talk to him second, after I talk to Mom. I remember everything about her. Her harsh voice like a wave crashing when she got mad at me. Her breath like freshly cut cucumbers.

Now I talk to her first, and then she hands the phone to Dad. Sometimes Im so shy with Dad, Mom has to be on the phone at the same time. Other times Ta Mali whispers things Ive done that week to tell him.

They send pictures every few months, and in the pictures Dad looks kind and strong. I like his thick mustache. His thick black hair. His big teeth. The gold chain he wears over his shirt, his muscles showing. Everyone in town tells me stories about him, but I havent really asked him anything because I get shy when I hear his voice.