The Distance Between Us

Living now with only her father and Mila, Reyna locks herself in her room. She urinates in a bucket rather than risk seeing her father and goes without food until she is certain he is asleep, then sneaks into the kitchen to find something to eat. She watches TV with the volume down. When her father and Mila are out, she invites Steve over and agrees to have sex with him to spite her father.

Weeks later, she applies for a job as an actress. Wearing a new dress her mother bought for her, she heads to a talent agency, but she doesn’t have the required portfolio nor the money to pay for one. As she exits the building, two men pretending to be agents convince her that she should be a model. Reluctantly, she gets in the car with them and submits when they take her to a studio and ask her to expose her breasts. She hears a voice in her head telling her to escape but doesn’t recognize it immediately: “It was the other me—the other Reyna, the one who still believed in that bright future my father had once said I could have” (297).

She runs off and goes home, breaks up with her boyfriend, and confronts her father, telling him that she is going to enroll in Pasadena City College: “I wanted him to say no. I was ready for a fight. But my father looked at me, and whatever he saw in my eyes made him keep quiet” (298). He relents and tells her a story from his childhood, hoping it will explain his harshness; as a child, his job was to hit oxen with a stick if they failed to walk in a straight line.

In college, Reyna meets her English professor, Diana Savas. Over the course of the semester, Reyna visits her office frequently, and the two share a bond over literature. Her home life, however, is getting worse. Her father and Mila argue, and finally Reyna has to intervene as he beats Mila so terribly that she needs to be hospitalized. Later that evening, the police come and arrest Reyna’s father. A female officer asks Reyna to explain what happened: “How could I tell her about all the abuse? How could I tell her that I was ashamed of what he had done, as if I were just as guilty because of the fact that I was his daughter?” (303).

Reyna leaves her father’s house and moves in with her mother, but the conditions are terrible. She has to sleep on the floor and commute after dark in a dangerous neighborhood. She works up the courage to talk to Diana about her family history; Diana invites Reyna to stay with her. At this point Reyna discovers Chicano/Latino literature and finds Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street to be a revelation: “There were people out there who understood, who experienced the things I was going through” (306). Diana encourages Reyna to transfer to a better school and become a writer. Years later, Grande notes, she would sit in Cisneros’s dining room sharing a meal—one of many of her idols she later had a chance to meet.

Reyna is surprised to learn that Mila has finally left her father. While she respects Mila’s decision, matters worsen as Mila has taken most of their shared savings and put a restraining order on him. Feeling obligated to take care of her father, Reyna spends her summer vacation with him in his new house. Her siblings visit, with their allegiances torn again—while they appreciate what Mila has done for them, she is now becoming vindictive and cruel. Furthermore, Reyna and her siblings are happy that they have their father all to themselves: “Finally, we had access to our father in a way we had never had. Finally, the wall had come down” (312).

With divorce proceedings underway, Reyna becomes closer to her father. She tells him about all of her successes as a writer, and for once he listens and even sounds impressed. They share meals and jog together; at one point, her father expresses his sadness that Reyna is transferring to school in Santa Cruz, a six-hour drive away. Reyna is conflicted and asks herself: “How could I leave now when things were starting to turn around at home, when finally my father was beginning to change?” (314). One evening, however, he tells Reyna that he and Mila are going to work things out and call off the divorce, with one condition: Mila doesn’t want to see Reyna, Mago, or Carlos. She asks if he has agreed. He says nothing, unable to even meet her gaze. Reyna quickly packs her bags and spends the remainder of her summer vacation at Diana’s house.

Reyna’s boyfriend, Edwin, drives her to Santa Cruz and drops her off near her student apartment, promising to visit every weekend. Reyna sees all the families sending their kids off to school and wishes that her family was there to join her on this important day: “But we were three hundred miles apart, and this time, it was I who had left” (317). She walks around the facility and finds herself staring at the ocean. Thinking about her first sighting of the ocean, years ago with her father, she remembers that she held tightly onto his hand, afraid that he would let go. She now closes her eyes, imagining herself “at the water’s edge, holding tightly to my father’s calloused hand. And I let it go” (318).

In 1999 Reyna becomes the first in her family to graduate from college. All of her family—including both parents—attend the graduation ceremony. She later becomes an ESL teacher and notes that many of her students, both children and adult parents, have spent time away from their families as part of immigration.

In 2002 she becomes an American citizen, but she considers herself Mexican American because she is “from both places. Both countries are within me” (320). She soon publishes a novel, then another, and earns a master’s degree. Her family members are doing well; her relationship with Mila has also improved. Reyna is still distant from her mother, but she and her siblings have forgiven her and accepted her the way she is.

As her father nears death, Reyna is determined to cure him. She researches treatment options and explores alternative medicine, but his condition worsens, and all she can offer is her forgiveness. As she witnesses his death, she asks herself whether she would have come to America if she’d known what her life would be like and decides that the answer is yes.