Carlyn Montes De Oca

Excerpt from

Junkyard Girl:
A Memoir of Ancestry,Family Secrets,
and Second Chances

Chapter 10: A Doll’s Story

ON WEEKDAYS, Mami dropped me off before kindergarten at Abuelita’s bungalow near the train tracks on the other side of Carpinteria, before heading for work.

Abuelita’s house was a feast for the senses. The vibrant hues of purple-blue hydrangeas, a burst of fresh sea air wafting in from the beach, and the occasional train whistle greeted me as Mami and I walked toward the front porch where my poker-faced grandmother waited.

Mami and Abuelita, evenly matched in size and temperament, exchanged few words. I glanced up at their faces and wondered why neither smiled. Weren’t they glad to see each other? When Mami came home from work, I often jumped off the couch, flew into her arms, and, in record time, blathered all that had happened in my day. Feeling her arms wrapping around me, hearing her chuckle when I said something I didn’t realize was funny, and inhaling the sweet garden bouquet on her skin—these moments filled my heart. Wasn’t that true for Mami and Abuelita?

Once Mami left, Abuelita and I watched cartoons on her television; a single box with rabbit ears, not quite as extravagant as our double-decker set. My mother taught us never to ask for anything from anybody but Abuelita was a mind reader; she always knew my deepest desires. At 10:00 a.m. every day, she got up from her recliner and shuffled across the tile in her navy-blue slippers toward the kitchen. When she returned, a snack-size bag of Fritos was in her outstretched hand.

Next to Orange licking my face and sinking baskets through my hoop, the taste of salty corn chips was the best thing in the universe. My mother insisted on good manners and had ingrained the words thank you into my vocabulary. I took the offering, thanked Abuelita, and showed my gratitude with a huge hug, which gave me the chance to stroke her Adam’s apple, the lump in her throat that bobbed while she swallowed. I found this part of her anatomy endlessly fascinating.

Mami always picked me up after work, but one day my father pulled up in his pickup truck instead. I waved from the window and waited for him to come inside to get me, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat in the idling Chevy, facing forward like a cabbie awaiting his fare. Abuelita watched from behind the lace curtains—a panther spying on a rabbit.

“Go to your father.”

Abuelita spoke in even shorter sentences than Mami did, but unlike Mami’s voice, hers didn’t make me wonder what I’d done wrong. I adored Abuelita and was grateful for her unlimited supply of Fritos.

I hugged my grandmother goodbye, lightly tapped her Adam’s apple with the tip of my finger, then bounded down the walkway and jumped into Dad’s truck. I kissed him on the cheek, his five o’clock shadow sandpaper to my lips, then settled into my seat. As we left the curb, I waved goodbye to the figure behind the curtains.

“How come you didn’t come inside, Daddy?” I asked.

“Una gallina nunca se junta con un coyote,” he answered as though he were a priest lecturing his flock.

My father often spoke in dichos—short Spanish sayings with deeper meanings than the actual words themselves. I found this way of communicating perplexing. I was a kid who loved jokes but hated riddles. Why did I have to figure out what he was talking about? Why couldn’t he just talk like normal people? A chicken never befriends a coyote, Dad said. What did this have to do with going inside Abuelita’s house? My grandmother didn’t own chickens, and I had never seen a coyote except Wile E. Coyote on TV. Abuelita didn’t even have a dog.

I didn’t know it then, but Abuelita and my father’s relationship was as cozy as a glacial wind in winter. After my grandmother’s kidnapping caper tanked, a truce had ensued. On the rare occasions that Abuelita came to our house, Dad disappeared out the back door and into the yard. He, meanwhile, never visited Abuelita’s house except to pick me up or to fix her plumbing when Mami insisted. At gatherings, while our family laughed and music played, Dad and Abuelita sat apart, never saying more than a few words to each other. They kept to their respective corners, and maintained the peace.

I didn’t question the behavior of the adults in my life; I accepted it. When Mami and Dad spoke in hushed tones, then noticed me in the room and suddenly stopped talking, I understood there were secrets that only grown-ups were privy to. When they wanted to share their stories, however, I was all ears. Especially when the subject was their love story, which I begged Daddy to tell over and over again, as if it were the first time I had heard it.

One day I pleaded for this story until my father acquiesced and heaved me onto his lap.

“Years ago, when I was young and living in Mascota, I was working on a scaffold with a construction crew. I was painting the side of a building, when I saw a beautiful girl in a sundress and high heels walking towards us.”

This is how his story began. He told me the young woman carried an umbrella for two purposes: to shield her from the rain and to protect her face from the fierce summer sun.

“Who’s that?” Dad asked his friend who was working on the platform beside him.

“A girl from America,” the friend answered. “They call her La Morena.”

Dad winked at his buddy, then grabbed his jacket and sped down the ladder. Once his feet touched solid ground, he ran across the cobblestone street that had been soaked by an earlier thunderstorm. With a dramatic sweep of his arms, he lay his threadbare jacket over the muddy sidewalk just as Mom’s pretty shoes reached it.

“Pase la reina!” he proclaimed with a chivalrous tone and a hint of sarcasm.

Some women might smile and say thank you to a dashing young man who offers his only jacket to prevent her new shoes from ruin. Other women might find it flattering when a good-looking guy singles them out and says, Pass, my queen. Some might even blush when they realize the galant young man with the mischievous green eyes and unforgettable dimples is a dead ringer for the 1950s heartthrob, Richard Egan—but not my mother.

Mami took one look at the sweaty laborer dressed in splattered overalls and said, “Humph!” Head held high, she stepped off the brick sidewalk, bypassing Dad’s garment, and trampled through the muddy street. Mom’s rejection of my father’s overture sent the construction crew howling.

“Pase la reina,” they joked among themselves as one of them pretended they were Dad and another the girl marching through mud. Deaf to their heckles, Daddy watched Mom disappear down the street. Who can hear anything when they’re smitten?

A few weeks later, a good friend invited my father to Sunday lunch. There she introduced him to her cousin, an olive-skinned beauty who was originally from Mascota but was now visiting from America. The young woman was my mother. Mami and Dad laughed, realizing they had already met in the muddy streets a week before, and soon romance blossomed between them. My father fed their courtship by serenading Mami outside her window with his twelve-string guitar and stirring voice.

I like to think of my parents in those early days—a time when their love was fresh, unstoppable, and defied all obstacles. As they grew to know each other, they found common ground in their dreams—not of money or success but of family.

Years later, after they realized those dreams, Mami would rule with an iron hand. Her love for her children, fierce and uncompromising, was clear. But her brand of justice was not one I easily understood.

* * *

Melanie appeared on my father’s bed, laying over a stack of thrift store garments. The blond curls and her sapphire eyes, the color of an African lake I had seen on the cover of a magazine, mesmerized me. Despite the D battery–size hole in her upper back showing she’d once had the power of speech, Melanie was the most perfect doll I’d ever envisioned.

I wasn’t partial to dolls. I preferred the stuffed animals I curled up in bed with every night. My sister had Barbie knock-offs living in her gypsy caravan, but I didn’t care about them. Those figures with their hourglass bodies and strange orange skin were only useful for tea parties. They did not touch my heart as Melanie, with her dimpled smile and rose-colored cheeks, did.

For months I played with this doll at every opportunity, whispering my secrets into her ear and promising her that she would always be mine. Perhaps my mother had mentioned that the doll wasn’t meant for me and that she planned to give her away. If she had, I’d dismissed it. Love had made me deaf to anything else.

* * *

July arrived, signaling our annual trip to Mexico. Every summer we climbed into The International, my dad’s behemoth truck. Like my father, this rig was rock-solid, resilient, and built with one purpose in mind: to see us through any calamity on our journey through the Sonora desert.

Mami loaded the camper with secondhand goods she had collected the previous year. Boxes of used kitchenware, electronics, hardware, and clothing quickly filled the compartment—castoffs that would find new homes with people south of the border who had less than we did. When I climbed inside, I found Melanie lying across the plastic-covered seat waiting for me.

Our three-day trip through the hottest, most arid landscape in Mexico was taxing. Temperatures were in the low one-hundreds. In the back cabin, I sweated and slept, but holding Melanie on my lap made the journey more bearable. Through the jalousie windows’ vents we watched the endless armies of Saguaro cacti sweep past our speeding truck.

On these long drives, my father was in his element. His tanned, muscular arms gripped The International’s steering wheel, forcing its vibrations into submission, as he drove long hours across vast stretches of desert. When we got a flat tire, he fixed it. When the engine overheated, he had it up and running again in no time. My mother rode shotgun, keeping watch over Dad in case he nodded off from lack of sleep, the scorching sun, or mere boredom.

One night, after a grueling twelve-hour drive en route to Mazatlán, The International groaned to a stop. I sat up in the rear cabin and looked through the glass panes at my father sliding a nozzle into the truck’s gas tank. The smell of fuel mixed with fried street food reached me as Mami opened the back door.

Her arm stretched toward me. I was about to reach back when I realized it wasn’t me she wanted; it was Melanie.

“Dámela,” she said.

I gripped Melanie tighter.

Mami repeated the word slower, as if I hadn’t heard her the first time. “Dá-me-la.”

Asking why, saying no, or refusing my parents was never an option.

I did what I was told: I handed her Melanie.

As my mother closed the cabin door behind her, the cool feel of Melanie’s chubby plastic legs lingered on my fingertips.

I scrambled to the window and watched as Mami approached a dark-skinned woman standing barefoot on the side of the road. Her parched face looked weary, as if attempting to smile would leave her exhausted. A little girl about my age, a smaller version of her mother, stood in front of her, her smile gappy and bright.

I couldn’t hear what Mami said to them. But in the end, it wasn’t necessary. When she handed Melanie to the girl, I knew my mother was giving her my child.

The gas cap clunked into place, alerting us it was time to get going. Mazatlán, with its crystal waters and poolside cabana, awaited. Lilly sat in the front cab mouthing the words to a song on her transistor radio as Ray and Art tried to beat each other into the truck. My father jumped inside as if the full tank of fuel had rejuvenated him as well as his vehicle. The International rumbled to life with a twist of the key. Mami climbed in beside Dad, her face devoid of emotion.

I peered through the window panels at the little stranger cradling my doll as if she were hers. She is hers now, I realized. Melanie looked at her new mom with the same frozen smile and blue gaze that had won my heart. I wondered if there were tears in Melanie’s eyes as there were in mine.

Even at my age, I knew that this girl was poor and that my life in America was better than hers. I could have been happy for her, or admired my mother for her benevolence. But I didn’t.

Instead, as I watched Melanie’s new mommy disappear past the steam emanating from the food vendors’ carts, I questioned my mother’s love. Like a vase knocked from a mantel, a crack formed in the foundation that had once bound us together. Mami and I were not yet broken; the true rupture would come later. But today, something unfamiliar found its way under my skin into the place where love had once lived: seedlings of resentment took root in my heart, and there they gestated, eventually growing into shoots of hate waiting for the next time my vulnerability called on them to emerge.

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