“We aren’t having this argument again.” He sounds stern now. Papa is exhausted—he’s not as young as he used to be and the trip across the border steals something from him like crossing that invisible line from our country into this one draws away his energy and strength. He’s better in Mexico where he can speak his native language and move through his native culture like a seal cutting through water, but here he’s awkward and uncertain, in a language he never mastered and with people he doesn’t entirely understand. And yet he needs them as much as they need him.
“Convenient for you, but not so much for me. Have you thought about going home to your big house and how quiet it will be without me? Have you thought about me marrying this American man and having his children and becoming a stranger to you? My babies will be American, Papa. I’ll raise them on English and I won’t teach them a word of Spanish. I hope they’re as white as the snow.”
“Olivia,” he snaps, and that’s the Papa I know: his voice like a coal shoved down his throat. He wants to breathe flames on me. “I will not explain myself to you again. You know how our family works and what’s expected of you. With Manuel gone, you’re all I have right now to try to make alliances with the people that can ensure our family continues and thrives. You know I would not ask this of you if it weren’t important.”
I finally look at him. Papa, big papa, with his bushy black beard and dark eyes, so different and strong with his thick neck and shoulders. He glares at me and I smile in return.
“I know, Papa, and that’s why I haven’t hung myself yet.”
His anger dissipates somewhat as he shakes his head and mutters prayers to Virgin Mary begging her to keep watch over me. He touches his fingers to the cross at his chest beneath his shirt, the cross that’s always to close to his heart like nothing else in the world ever could be. Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if Mama never died or if Manuel were still with me or if that war hadn’t ruined everything we had and more.
“We’re nearly there,” Papa says softly and his anger is gone. We’re in the middle of nothing: low-lying buildings, a strip mall, dozens and dozens of cars. I missed America so much for so long, the television shows, the food, the sounds, the sprawl of the city, and now it feels like an entirely different world than the one I left ten years before, much too big, much too empty, lifeless and sun-stained and riddled with palm trees.
We move away from the main city and out deeper into the desert. This is Apache and Yavapai and Maricopa territory. Rocky, bush-studded, green and brown striated by red. This is the land of my dreams and my nightmares. The land where I was last happy, and the land where I was most hurt. I hate being back and wanted to return so badly it was like an itch at the base of my spine that I could never, ever scratch, no matter how comfortable my life in Mexico was in Papa’s gated house with his guards and his swimming pool and his professional chefs and housekeepers and gold-glittering framed oil paintings and his machine guns. It’s fitting that I’m going to die here, of all places.
“Before you see him, I need you to know something.” Papa sounds almost frightened, and that sends a jolt into my spine. Papa is never frightened. “This was not my first choice, Olivia, but you’re twenty-five years old. It’s long past time for you to marry, and when I heard he was searching for a wife and a good match for his family, I knew this was our opportunity to regain what we’ve lost. I need you to understand how hard this was for me.”
“You marry him then. Whoever he is.” But a creeping uncertainty is lodged in my guts. An image from before: a smirking asshole with dark hair and dark eyes and rage etched in every fiber of his muscular body.
Papa stiffens. “Don’t be that way. I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“I don’t feel bad for you,” I say, which is partially true.
Papa grunts angrily. “You will, once you understand. Or perhaps you will be too blinded by your own self-pity to think about what it took to negotiate this marriage and make it all happen, but that’s you, isn’t it, Olivia? Spoiled little brat. Given everything in the world.”
I grimace and look at my hands, at my manicured nails painted black: a little rebellion. Black for my funeral. “I don’t feel spoiled.”
“And yet you are. You’ve lived in my house since we left this place ten years ago, and you’ve done what? Swim and read and take lessons from tutors and do nothing. You’ve had it easy, Olivia, don’t try to tell me different. Most girls your age are married with three or four children already where we come from. I love you, daughter, but it’s time for you to do something hard instead.”