Return to Sender (25 page)

We leave tomorrow for Boston! Mamá will be released into the custody of Tyler's aunt and uncle, who have agreed to let us stay with them until Papá's case can be heard. Hopefully, he'll get released real soon, too. It's kind of complicated, but Mr. Calhoun explained it to Señora Ramírez, who explained it to us as best she could.

Mamá agreed to testify against the
coyote
criminals so they can be convicted and not do what they did to her to anybody else. And because she's going to do that, she's getting a special letter in her file that's going to help her when she applies to get into this country legally. Meanwhile, Papá's mental condition at the time of his arrest will be taken into consideration. When it's over, we'll all fly back to Mexico together.

“But what if we don't want to go to Mexico?”
Ofie said, pouting. “What if we want to stay in our own country?”

Señora Ramírez suddenly looked real tired, like she had climbed a mountain, only to look up and find an even bigger mountain ahead. She had worked so hard to reunite us. But that wasn't enough, not for my sister Ofie, anyhow.

But it wouldn't do to scold Ofie. She would just get more stubborn. Besides, I could understand how she was feeling. So I pulled my two sisters aside for a family meeting.

“I want us to try really hard when Mamá and Papá get out. So many sad things have happened to them,” I explained. “And wherever we end up, the important thing is we'll all be together as a family. And remember, the two of you can always come back because you are American citizens. So this is just for now. Okay?” Luby nodded, but Ofie was putting that chin of hers up in the air. “And, Ofie, most of all I want us to be friends, okay? Please,
por favor?
Not to argue because we'll need each other more than ever.”

Ofie's chin came down. She looked ready to strike a deal. “You'll let me borrow your butterfly backpack?” I nodded. “And use your makeup?” My makeup? The pinkish lip gloss and a sparkly blush Sara had given me when we first got to Vermont. “Sure,” I told her.

“How about your diary? Can I read it?”
Well, Diary, I was about to say, No! But then I thought if I could leave this record behind for the whole world, surely I could let my own sister read it.

“Yes, I'll let you read my diary, okay?”

Ofie threw her arms around me and almost knocked me over. That made Luby want to do the same thing. Suddenly, I had two not-so-little sisters hanging on me.

“We're going to Mexico! We're going to Mexico!” Luby and Ofie chanted, jumping up and down.

I sighed with relief, until I looked across the room and saw the sadness on Tyler's face. I felt my heart folding up like a letter in a sealed envelope stamped
Return to Sender.
Tyler would never know how much I was going to miss him, no matter how much fun we ended up having in Mexico. I would never find such a special friend again, one who would even name a star after me!

Before he left today, he asked if there was any one thing I wanted to take with me. At first I said no, but after he was gone, I got to thinking. Yes, there is one thing.

I know Grandma and Mrs. Paquette are packing up as much of our stuff as we can carry in the car. They're also planning to come down one more time before we actually leave Boston to say goodbye. But before we leave Vermont on
Sunday, I want to go by the farm one last time. I want to see it in the early morning when the sun is coming up, how it sits so pretty in the gentle swell of the valley. The two farmhouses with the trailer between them and on the flat stretch behind the houses, the big red barn with the little cupolas that look like birdhouses. I want to watch the cows, black and white like scrambled puzzle pieces, coming in from the pasture to be milked, the swallows diving in and out of the open doors so fast that it's hard to follow their every move. And I want to see a boy coming out of the barn, hauling his new show calf that he is going to name Margarita after our hometown in Mexico. And then, I can leave, yes I can, because the place and the people I've grown to love will all be stored inside me and here on your pages, my dear Diary.

It's going to be so strange to see you in Boston. I know we've talked on the phone, but I don't know. It's just going to be strange, that's all. It'll be the real goodbye, I guess, for now. Then you'll be in Mexico and who knows where I'll be.

What I mean is things haven't been going well with the farm since your dad and uncles left. This summer has been so rainy, most of the seeds have just rotted in the ground. Dad's already calculating that he's going to have to buy a lot of grain he doesn't have the money to buy. Anyhow,
that scary word is going around the house again,
sell
the farm, get out from under before the bank comes and takes it away anyhow.

What's funny, well, not so funny, is that a year ago, I just wouldn't have accepted the idea of not living here. It kind of drove me crazy, if you want to know the truth. My parents had to ship me off to my aunt and uncle's just to get my mind off the worry.

But now, I don't know. I still think this has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth—like you yourself said. But somehow, though the idea of not farming still makes me real sad, I can accept it a lot better. Maybe losing Gramps helped me practice losing? Or just knowing what you and your family have gone through makes me feel like it could be a lot worse. Also, I guess I'm seeing other sides that might be fun, like having more time for things I love besides farming. Maybe I'll end up being an astronomer or a meteorologist or maybe I'll study Spanish and travel to Mexico and help out all the farmers there so they don't have to leave their land.

Anyhow, like Mom keeps telling me, life is about change, change, and more change. “When you're born as a child, you die as a baby. Just like when you're born as a teenager, you die as a child.” Hey, Mom, thanks a lot! Sounds like our whole lives will be full of funerals, doesn't it?

“But there are good sides even to bad or sad things happening,” my mom reminds me. Like this fall, it'll be kind of sad not going back to Bridgeport. But a good thing'll be that I won't have to take the bus, since I can catch a ride with Mom because the middle school is right next to the high school where she teaches math.

“You've got to develop the habit of thinking positive,” Mom's always telling Dad and me. That's why she started yoga and meditating, on account of the mind is a puppy we have to train. (I bet Luby will love hearing that!) I guess my mind's more like my dad's. But it's not like our minds aren't trained—they are! They just go after the sad stuff. Like those golden retriever police dogs we saw on TV, remember? They hunt down missing kids and even adults. Just give them a whiff of a T-shirt or a pair of pants, and they're off.

But I'm definitely going to try to be positive in this goodbye letter that I want to give you before you leave. One really positive thing is how good it feels to be talking to you again, even though it's on paper, which I know you like to do, but I'm not so good at it. Another good thing is what Mr. Calhoun told Mom. How the judge at your dad's deportation hearing said he was going to drop all charges and send everybody back to Mexico and if your record stays clean, then in ten more years, when Ofie turns eighteen, she can
come first as an American citizen and apply for her parents to get their papers!

Ten years! In ten years, I'll be twenty-two! Old enough to be done with college, if I go to college—which Mom says is not an option: not going, that is. “In today's world …” I know your parents are always telling you to study, study, study so you can end up with a better life than theirs.

That's kind of sad, I know. Like your parents will never get to live the life they want. At least, my mom really loves teaching, and even Dad was real happy farming, until he had his accident. But farming's no fun anymore, he says, the way he's having to do it now, scrambling the whole time. Mom tells him how he has many more incarnations to go. Nothing wacky like reincarnation, just how he can live many other lives in this life. Why, with his experience he could be a field agent and help other farmers. He could do any number of things. Dad kind of sighs like Mom is being what he calls New Agey, but I think it does help him to think that his life won't close down if he has to sell the farm.

Besides, what they are thinking of is not selling, but sort of leasing the whole farm to Uncle Larry. (He's like your uncle Felipe, except Uncle Larry isn't lucky and unlucky, just lucky. Like how not one of his six Mexicans was picked
up.) Of course, we know what Uncle Larry means to do: turn our farm into part of his whole MooPoo operation. It's pretty amazing that collecting cows’ poo can make a farmer rich but milking them won't! Well, Uncle Larry milks them, too. He's got all his bases covered. Nurseries and parks and fancy gardens buy up all his composted manure. Meanwhile, he sells the organic milk for top dollar.

The way it'll work is, if one of us kids wants to farm in the future (“Don't look at me!” Sara says right off), we will be able to get the farm back from Uncle Larry. We'll just have to figure out what we owe him for improving the place. (I can't see how making a “manure product,” what Uncle Larry calls it when he wants to sound fancy with people like Uncle Byron, is going to improve anything. But I guess Uncle Larry'll have to build a bunch of storage sheds and buy more equipment and stuff.) The best part about this plan is that we can stay living here. Plus, I'll get to keep Margarita! Maybe that's why it doesn't seem as awful as it once did, the idea of Dad quitting farming.

I'll be seeing you tomorrow when we come down to say goodbye. Mom is driving because Dad can't spare the time off. I feel kind of bad, taking the weekend off, but Dad says, “Son, you've earned it.” If I've earned it, so has he, but
at least two people have to stay to do the milking, and Dad really only counts for a half with his bad hand. Ben offered to stay, and Corey's now working part- time when he can be spared from his other farm job. Dad's also had to hire two local guys “to almost make up for one Mexican,” as he says, complimenting your uncles and dad.

Anyhow, as I'll put on the envelope, I don't want you to read this until you've opened the box I'm bringing as my goodbye gift. By now you'll know what's in it! Yes, really and truly, I want you to keep it. For one thing, I'm asking Uncle Tony and Aunt Roxie for a stronger one for Christmas. They usually give me a big fancy gift then. And yes, I already asked Grandma, since it was a gift from Gramps, and she gave me her blessing, as she calls it. This way, Mari, when you look at the stars in Mexico, you can think of me looking up at some of the very same stars in Vermont. Only they'll be in different parts of the sky, but still.

Grandma also says if the ICE agents won't let you take more luggage, she can bring stuff when she comes down next month with her church youth group. They've raised enough money and they're confirmed to go. Grandma invited me to come, but Mom told me privately that it was a stretch for Grandma to buy another ticket.

Besides, Dad still really needs my help with the farm this summer. But by next summer if Uncle Larry's taken over, I won't have any chores! Another positive thing for my golden retriever mind to concentrate on. And by then, I'll be rich again from working for Mr. Rossetti for a whole year.

That's all for now, Mari. Tomorrow I'll be seeing you at Aunt Roxie and Uncle Tony's. Maybe we can go to the planetarium at the science museum and look at your star through their real powerful telescope. It'll be awesome, a lot bigger than just a pinprick of light.

And, Mari, well, you know how you felt bad that I spent a whole lot of money buying that star? I didn't exactly buy it, because you can't really buy a star, you can only name it. And it doesn't cost anything unless you send away for a fancy certificate or pick a star visible without a telescope, which I'm willing to do for your next birthday. But what will we name it? Maybe instead of Mari Cruz, we'll use your whole name, María Dolores Cruz Santos, to go along with it being a bigger star?

That reminds me. One last thing I want to do before we lease the farm to Uncle Larry: give it a name. Mom thinks it's a great idea. That way when we draw up the legal documents with
Uncle Larry, we can write down an actual name. “It'd be so sad to just call it one-hundred-and-ten-acres-with-frontage-on-Town-Line-Road,” Mom says, and suddenly, there are tears brimming in her eyes. I guess there's some in mine, too. But naming it, I don't know, it'll be more ours somehow.

Since you're so good with words, Mari, maybe you can help me with some ideas? Especially because I think a name in Spanish would be really cool. The same name in English wouldn't sound as special. The best I've come up with is
Amigos
Farm, but Sara says it's too blah—this from the one family member who can't wait to get off the farm. I think
amigo
is not her favorite word right now, as Mateo just left for Spain after his year in the States. And this time, instead of my sister dumping him, he told her that now that they were going to be an ocean apart, he just wanted to be
amigos,
friends. So, anyhow,
Amigos
Farm is on hold for now—until my sister finds a new boyfriend.

But whether or not it's named
Amigos,
as long as my family is on this land, it will be a place where you and your family will find friends. One thing I did learn from Mr. Bicknell this past year is that the only way we're going to save this planet is if we remember that we are all connected. Like the swallows. How when they
leave here in a month they'll be on their way to where you are.

If it can work for barn swallows, it should work for us. Like we learned from Ms. Swenson, our teacher the year before you came. Something the Hopi elders told their tribe during really hard times: how certain things needed to get done if they were going to survive. How they couldn't put it off. How there was no one else but them to do it. “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” that's what the elders told the Hopi people.

You and me, Mari, it's up to us. We are the ones who are going to save this planet. So we've got to stay connected—through the stars above and swallows and letters back and forth. And someday, you will return, Mari. Like Mr. O'Goody said, he's putting a special letter in your parents’ file. Meanwhile, I'll be coming to visit you in Las Margaritas. For one thing, I've got to see the town I've named my show calf after.

Adios, amiga,
and I guess I don't have to tell you to write back.

Your friend forever,

Tyler