Dolores
BY C. ADÁN CABRERA
Only symmetry harbors loss,
only the fusion of difference
can be wrenched apart, divorced
or distanced from its source.
Lorna Dee Cervantes, “The Levee: Letter to No One”
You’ve heard the story before: that Junior is not your only sibling, that when Mami fled El Salvador she had also been forced to leave behind a baby girl named Dolores. You are so well-acquainted with this bit of your family’s history that by the time you actually meet your sister today—well, half-sister, though Mami always insists that there’s no such thing as part of a relative—you can recite the rosary of poverty and events that led to your mother’s exodus to the United States. Daily meals of mold-edged tortillas sprinkled with lemon and salt to mask the green taste of earth; the single lightbulb dangling from a naked cable, the only buoy against the darkness; broken broomsticks and soiled rags repurposed into makeshift dolls.
And then, Dolores came into the world. (Mami always underscores the fact that she was impregnated by her then-boyfriend the first time she was intimate, and makes it a point to look at you, though it will be years before you understand why.) Abuelo and Abuela weren’t happy that their teenage daughter made them unwitting grandparents, but soon their displeasure was overshadowed by the civil war that came bellowing over the verdant hills and mist-laced volcanoes. At first, the violence didn’t reach Mami’s neighborhood except in rumors: for a long time the conflict remained an aberration in the abstract. Until the morning that Abuelo found the neighbor’s daughter, the girl that used to walk to school with Mami, slumped over on the front stoop of her house, her hair brushing the dirt that was becoming muddied with her pooling blood. That was enough for Abuelo.
You leave a week from tomorrow, he said to Mami. But Dolores stays with us.
Mami was barely seventeen, but even then she possessed the fierce, animal-like protectiveness that has always been familiar and which you sometimes hated.
Not without my daughter, she growled. Even the filthiest sow doesn’t abandon her offspring.
The details of what happened next remain a mystery. All you know is that Abuela somehow convinced Mami to get on that bus, followed by a series of cars and vans that Abuelo had arranged, taking with her only a fistful of cash and the three faded dresses she owned. It took her weeks to travel across El Salvador and Guatemala and Mexico and you only know that she experienced things that she will never feel comfortable telling you about, only mention obliquely before staring off into the distance farther than you can ever hope to see. At the end of her journey, she was instructed to tuck herself neatly into a fetal position in the trunk of the car while they crossed the border into California.
The hardest part about that first month in Los Angeles wasn’t the language barrier or the low wages or the fact that the only job she could get was scrubbing floors and shit encrusted toilets at a garment factory downtown. No. The hardest part was how much she missed Dolores, who had just turned one. A year went by: she sent money and letters to your grandparents and sister (who had taken refuge in the countryside) on the first and fifteenth of every month, no matter if she sometimes went hungry herself, all the time resisting the urge to rush back to El Salvador even if it was engulfed in war.
And then she met your father, a fellow Salvadoran refugee with little charisma but who had a newly-minted green card. They fell in love, and a few months after you were conceived they decided to marry, but on one condition: that once her papers were in order, Mami would send for Dolores and arrange for your sister to come to the United States.
Behold the unfolding of events: The city hall wedding. Your birth, and then three years later, Junior. The civil war ends in El Salvador. Immigration papers are arranged; a date is fixed for Dolores’ arrival. Time passes at different, unequal speeds in California and El Salvador.
And now, you are eleven years old, waiting at LAX, about to meet your older sister for the very first time.
***
You recognize Dolores from one of the many photographs that your grandparents have sent over the years. She is at the airport security check along with the other unaccompanied minors, talking to a tall, lanky boy who looks to be around her age. She is sitting on a large green suitcase and is staring up at him, drumming her hands against the fabric. Mami calls out her name, and Dolores immediately stands and turns in your direction. When she smiles and then waves frantically, letting out a little squeal of delight, you have the fleeting vision of what Mami must have been like as a much younger woman.
Before you left for the airport, you’d stuffed a few tissues into your pockets, expecting the high drama of a tearful family reunion. You had visions of Mami rushing up to her child after all these years apart and of Dolores crying inconsolably, practically collapsing under the gravitas of the moment. Instead, at the terminal it is Mami who first hugs Dolores. You detect a note of stiffness in the way Dolores’ arms drop awkwardly by her side after a few moments, and though she looks happy, in her eyes you see a flash of something for which you do not yet have a name. Mami dabs away a tear when she pulls away from your sister. There is a shyness about her—her incision-sized smile, the exaggerated cheerfulness, akin to the way she acts whenever the doctor or your teacher or a policeman speaks English much too quickly and she pretends to have understood whatever’s been said to her. You hate how uncomfortable she makes you sometimes. Do not let this consume you now, though.
Mami wraps an arm around Dolores and they make their way to where you and Junior are standing. As they approach, try not to look surprised at how formal Dolores is dressed: her white shirt and navy-blue skirt are starched and still perfectly ironed despite the five-hour flight. Later, you will learn that she is wearing her school uniform, which is the best outfit she owns. You admire how the stiff collar presses into her delicate neck, how the thin silver pendants she is wearing catch the light. She walks with a confidence of someone far older than fifteen and she seems, instead, to be what for you still feels remote: a young woman.
“This is your brother, Emerson,” Mami says in Spanish, using his full name that you know he hates. Dolores squats down and gives him a tight hug, stopping momentarily to ruffle his hair. Her skin, you notice, is a few shades lighter than yours.
“You’re so cute,” she says. She straightens up and beams down at him. “My brother. I can’t believe I finally get to meet you. Emersoncito.” The singsong way she speaks Spanish makes you smile: it reminds you of the rural Salvadoran accent that your parents sometimes imitate to make each other laugh.
Dolores and Mami turn to you. “And this is your sister, Ángela.”
She hugs you immediately. You blow away a strand of her long, curly hair that tickles your nose. Her strength is surprising, as is the soft flesh of her breasts pressing against your still-flat chest. You remember what Mami says—that every girl develops at her own rate and that puberty is not a competition—and do your best to beat back your insecurity. Dolores smells of soap and coconut lotion and perfume so strong it makes your eyes sting.
“I can’t believe it,” she says, pulling away to look at you. She looks at Mami, then embraces you again. “I have a sister. A little sister.”
You steal a glance at Mami as you pull away, who is dabbing at her eyes again. You hand her one of the tissues you’d stuffed into your pocket. Mami tells Junior to grab Dolores’ suitcase and you all begin to make your way to the exit, the wheels on your sister’s suitcase scraping against the airport’s linoleum floor. She links arms with you as you walk: despite her age, Dolores is not much taller than you. This makes you feel better. Step out into the fierce evening breath of summer and make your way to the parking garage. Mami explains to Dolores that Papi (who she refers to as “my husband”) is keeping an eye on the car, though you know the truth: strong displays of emotion make him uncomfortable and that he preferred to wait in the lot instead.
After Mami introduces Dolores to Papi (a stiff handshake, the echo of a curtsy) you get into the car. Now that there are three of you, the once-roomy backseat feels tighter, especially because now you’re in the middle. Reach over to fasten your seatbelt and when you ask Dolores to lift herself up so you can buckle yourself in, you blush slightly at the heat of her backside on the seat.
Papi starts the engine and before he pulls the car out, he slips in a CD. The first few notes of Fleetwood Mac begin to flood the vehicle. At first, everyone is quiet. Papi drums his fingers to the beat as he drives; Mami is rummaging through her purse. Junior, meanwhile, is leaning against the passenger seat, his eyes closed. It is early evening on a Wednesday: there is rush hour traffic on the way back from LAX, and the sea of red lights foretells a long drive back home to the Valley. When you merge onto the freeway, Dolores asks you questions that, because of her funny accent and because she speaks at rapid-fire speed, you sometimes ask her to repeat herself.
Respond in single words:
“What grade are you in?” (Sixth.)
“Do you have a boyfriend?” (Gross.)
“Have you been to El Salvador?” (Never.)
“Would you ever go?” (Sure.)
“Who’s your favorite singer in Timbiriche?” (Who?)
“When’s your birthday?” (June.)
“Do you eat pupusas with your hands or with a fork?” (Fork. Duh.)
At this last question, she laughs—a high, tinny guffaw that feels almost fake. You don’t understand what’s so funny. Laugh with her anyway: you are now part of an older, more grown-up sense of humor.
When, later, she closes her eyes during a lull of silence, admire how the light lattices her closed eyelids which, up close, you see are powdered with blue makeup. Consider how odd it is to have someone in your life now besides Junior, who gets on your nerves more often than not. Excitement begins to bubble up inside you. Let it. As if she senses you looking at her, Dolores opens her eyes. She blows you a kiss before pressing her face against the window, her breath fogging the glass as she stares at the downtown skyscrapers in the distance, her gaze searching the lights with something that looks very much like awe.
***
When you get home, Papi says he’s taking Junior out for a bite to eat and that they will be back in a couple of hours. Once they’re gone, Mami announces that you and Dolores are to share a room. She will get your bigger, softer bed and you will (temporarily, Mami assures you) inherit Junior’s racecar box spring, which is so small your feet slightly poke out over the edges. It doesn’t seem fair that your brother, who is three years younger, should get his own room just because he’s the only boy. Hiss this at Mami while Dolores drags her suitcase to the room.
“You know, Angie, I wish I could have shared a room with my sister,” Mami says, and even before she’s done speaking, you already know what’s coming. Tía Veronica, who is fifteen years older than your mother, crossed the border when Mami was still a girl. She, however, staked her own fortunes in San Francisco instead of Los Angeles. Mami always said how she was robbed of having a sibling while she was growing up. “You kids will never get just how good you have it here.” She shushes you away and orders you to help Dolores unpack. Resist the urge to complain again.
Dolores has opened her suitcase onto what was once your bed and is making neat piles of packages on the mattress. She grins at you when you walk in. She motions for you to sit on the floor with her to show you the gifts she’s brought. For Papi, a handmade wallet made of thick, tanned leather and a small vial of cologne; for Junior, a toy with string wound tightly around it which Dolores calls trompo, but which to you looks more like the dreidel your classmate Hannah brought to school last December for show-and-tell. Mami gets a bundle of letters from relatives with small, delicate handwriting (which you’re sure will make her cry, like they always do) and a host of food: bricks of smelly, nose-pinching cheese; that pineapple sweetbread you like; and tiny, grape-shaped fruit candies whose name you cannot pronounce.
When it comes to your gift, she takes out a small box with special flourish. It is painted an almost fluorescent blue and your name is written on it in long, curly letters across the front in thick marker. Lift off the lid: there are several items neatly positioned next to each other. A comb with your name painted on it by hand; seven butterfly hair clips, each of which is a different color of the rainbow; and a small makeup kit. Do not admit that you don’t yet know how to apply it. There’s also a smaller cardboard box. Inside are two tear-shaped earrings. Hold them up to the light and admire their translucent green magnificence.
“Jade,” Dolores says, and though she pronounces it in Spanish, with two syllables, you know what she means. “From my grandfather’s shop. Sorry: our grandfather.”
Your sister helps you remove the cheap titanium hoops that Mami gave you a few years ago and slips in the new earrings. Dolores smiles when she sees that you like them; you shake your head slightly to feel their weight. Imagine wearing them to the celebratory dance when you graduate from elementary school next June; picture them swaying with your every movement, every twirl.
Mami has been watching the two of you from the hallway this entire time. You blush and reach up to take the earrings off but Dolores stops you midway.
“Don’t you love Ángela’s beautiful jade earrings?” she asks Mami.
Mami laughs softly and puts a hand on her hip. “Stop messing with the girl, Dolores,” she says. “There’s no way your grandfather would sell that at his store. He’d get robbed within an hour.” And when you tuck them quickly back into the box, she adds: “They still look nice on you though, mi amor.”
Dolores hugs you, kisses your cheek. “I was just teasing,” she says. “Green glass looks like jade. Girls don’t have to buy expensive things to look fancy.” Smile to hide your embarrassment.
Later, when it’s time for bed, you change into your pajamas: a faded Mighty Ducks T shirt and an old pair of gym shorts. Too conscious of your own still-girlish flesh to change in front of your older sister, change in the bathroom instead. When you’re ready for bed, knock on the bedroom door.
When you walk in, your sister is pulling her nightgown down over her body. You catch a glimpse of her bare breasts tipped with dark brown nipples, breasts which are smaller than they seemed to you at the airport a few hours earlier. She does not seem embarrassed by this presumably inadvertent moment of nudity. Your cheeks, however, begin to burn. She smiles and after stretching herself out onto your bed—well, now it’s her bed—she yawns loudly. Climb onto your mattress and bid each other good night.
You are amazed at how quickly she falls asleep, while you, meanwhile, have trouble relaxing. Her even breaths soon give way to strange, nearly guttural snores. Over the coming days you will learn that she has sleep apnea but that first night, when she takes deep gulps of air and then suddenly stops breathing, you are afraid. You find yourself missing Junior’s nighttime murmuring, the way he reaches for your hand in the darkness after he’s had a nightmare. When you finally do fall asleep, you have uneasy, restless dreams and more than once you wake to see the moon streaming in through the slits of the miniblinds, illuminating her strange form.
***
Because it is July when Dolores arrives, and because by now you are used to spending the long, hot days home alone with Junior while Mami and Papi are at work—fighting over the remote control, arguing endlessly over what videogame to play or which radio station to listen to—when you wake the next morning and see your sister’s empty bed, you realize suddenly that there will now be three of you to spend the summer break together. Bleary eyed, make your way to the kitchen, where you hear your sister laughing.
Mami and Dolores are sitting at the kitchen table, sharing a small stack of pancakes. You watch for a moment as they pass the plate back and forth to each other. Mami never has time to have breakfast with you because she’s always running off to one of her jobs. She is wearing her green housekeeping uniform, so you know that she has a double shift today: first, at the Holiday Inn by the freeway, and then she’ll change into her other uniform, clip on her nametag, and race off to the gas station to work until midnight. Papi, meanwhile, leaves for the bus yard before dawn and usually comes home after sunset.
Mami doesn’t seem to be in much of a rush this morning. Instead, she insists that Dolores finish the pancakes because they are fluffier than the ones in El Salvador. Your sister eats them with great, exaggerated gestures. Mami holds her coffee mug with two hands, leaving the marks of her lipstick on the perfect porcelain edge. When Dolores says something funny—you don’t quite catch it, because they’re speaking Spanish so quickly—Mami laughs in a way that you hadn’t ever heard before. Cough. She turns to face you, covering her mouth as she laughs. Dolores turns as well, her mouth full.
“Good morning, mi amor,” Mami says, catching her breath. “I’m just about to leave.” She picks up the empty plate and sets it in the sink.
Mami stands and explains to Dolores that while she normally leaves food ready for you to warm up for you and Junior, she instead expects your sister to whip something up. She points out the cans of refried beans, opens the fridge and points out the eggs, slices of ham, the tortillas and bag of uncooked rice.
Mami grabs her car keys. Dolores yawns and puts an arm around you. It is still early in the morning, and yet she smells of coconut lotion. A piece of lint dangles from her hair and close-up, you see that the pink nightgown she’s brought with her is quite threadbare.
“Now that there are two of you here, I expect you to help me clean the house,” Mami says. “Ángela knows where I keep the mop and broom.” She glances at her watch and then kisses you both softly on the forehead, lingering a bit longer on your sister’s hairline. Mami bends to hug her, and then, embraces you too.
“Remember the rules,” Mami tells you, like she does every morning before she leaves. She makes the sign of the cross and walks out into the warm morning air, closing the door behind her.
“What rules?” Dolores asks. Recite them aloud as if they were a set of divine commandments:
- You must not answer the phone, under any circumstances.
- You must not open the door to anyone, under any circumstances.
- You must never leave the house, under any circumstances.
Your sister nods thoughtfully after each one.
***
For the first couple of weeks, Dolores obeys Mami’s orders strictly, and things go smoothly. She cleans the house, standing on her tiptoes to clear out the spiderwebs or crawling on all fours to scrub away the last bit of dust she found next to the toilet. Your sister divines lunches so good that even Papi, after he tries some leftovers one day, says she could teach Mami a thing or two about how to make arroz con pollo.
Most days you wash the dishes together while she blasts cumbia and punta and merengue. The house echoes with the sound of drums, trumpets, saxophones. Be amazed at how smoothly she dances, how her hips ride the beat in perfect time like the women in the music videos your parents watch. You don’t really understand the lyrics but do your best to sing along with your sister. Imitate how she moves while Junior is shut up in his room, playing videogames. On the weekends, or on days when Mami doesn’t have a double shift, Papi drives you all to the beach, or Griffith Park, or the movies, and one time the zoo. You begin to forget what it was like when it was just you and Junior and you get used to squeezing in the backseat between your siblings. Dolores starts to feel like your sister, so much so that when you get scared after you see her used pads in the bathroom trash can, she sits with you and patiently explains the ins and outs of menstruation. A year later, when you get your period, you will remember how she comforted you. For the first time in your life, you realize how wonderful it is that Dolores is here, with you.
One day, during the hottest part of the afternoon, the doorbell rings. Its sound is alien: usually it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the occasional neighborhood kid asking for school donations or selling something for their softball team. You are supposed to ignore any visitors, but your curiosity gets the better of you. Through the peephole, you see that it is Alex, who lives in the house across the street. He is the teenage son of Olga, a neighbor who has become a family friend over the years.
Dolores, who is at the kitchen sink finishing the dishes, asks who it is. And before you can stop her, she’s drying her hands on her pants and presses her eye against the peephole to see for herself.
“Mami says we’re not supposed to look,” you scold her.
Dolores rolls her eyes. “Well, she’s not here now, is she?”
To your horror, she unlocks the door. Alex, who was about to leave, turns around surprised.
“Angie, is that you?” he calls out in English. He shields his eyes against the sun. He is wearing a tank top, and you see the black hair of his armpit.
“No, Ángela not here,” Dolores responds. She steps out onto the porch, barefoot. She continues in Spanish. “I’m her older sister.”
By the way Dolores stands—one hand on her hip, the other fumbling with her back pocket; leaning slightly forward, a lazy smile on her face—you sense that there is something almost adult about how she is acting. They speak in Spanish for a few minutes, and when you ask her to come back inside, she ignores you. You’ve disobeyed Mami before, of course: lies about who broke the cereal bowl or that one time you blamed Junior for losing the remote. But this time, there is nothing you can do except think about how you’re going to tell Mami.
When you do, Mami reprimands Dolores, but not as harshly as you would have expected. She reminds your sister that things are different than in El Salvador. The neighbors here are nice, sure, but they’re nosy. If the authorities were to learn that you were left unsupervised for nearly the entire day, the adults would get in deep trouble.
“It’s a strict country,” Mami says, as a final warning. Then, after a moment she adds: “That boy is seventeen and should know better than to lead on a girl who hasn’t even started high school.” She is red in the face and you can tell that she’s trying her best to control her ire. She’s not the only one who’s angry. Had you done what Dolores did, Mami would have smacked you worse than when you picked up the phone and the bill collectors found out that Mami had not one job, but two.
Dolores promises to never to break that rule again, but the moment Mami turns around, she sticks her tongue out. She then cuts her eyes at you in a way that wounds you deeply. Do not, however, admit this.
***
After you squeal on your sister, she is angry with you, barely marking your existence. It is mid-August and there are two weeks left until the school year starts. The days normally feel much shorter as they race toward the return to school, but this time, with your sister’s silent treatment, time feels even more bogged down by the heat. Gone are the dishwashing and dancing; gone are the question-and-answer sessions about the human body.
A week later, your sister comes into the room while you are playing Mortal Kombat with Junior. At first, she stands silently, arms crossed, watching you play. She’s done this before over the last few days, hovering around you until you speak to her before walking away, pretending she hadn’t heard you. It makes you feel stupid, so you’re not going to fall for it this time. After a moment, though, she is the one who addresses you.
“Will you help me improve my English?” she says.
Her request feels so out of the blue that you pause the game—annoying Junior, who throws down his remote in protest—and turn to face her.
“I’m starting school in the fall,” Dolores continues, “and I should probably start brushing up on my English.” She explains that she studied in El Salvador and that though she understands more than she’s able to speak, practicing with you would help her gain more fluency. She’s nervous about having to start school with so many Americans and barely being able to understand them. You are delighted to be back in her good graces. Agree to practice conversation with her.
Spend the next couple of days helping her hone her English skills. Correct her misplaced verb tenses, read aloud the issues of The National Enquirer that your mother spirits away from the hotel. Teach her how to differentiate the sounds of beach and bitch (she will laugh hysterically and never quite get it) and cut and cat. Be amazed at how quickly she learns and though she has a strong accent, you reassure her that with practice, she’ll assimilate in no time.
One day, she says that she needs to practice her English with someone besides her sister. “You’re a great teacher,” she insists when you make a face. “I just need a variety of accents for when I start school.”
Your sister announces that she will go see Alex a few mornings to continue her English lessons. Dolores does not seem to be asking permission, insisting that she’ll only be gone for a short while, thirty minutes, an hour at most. She hopes that you can keep a secret, because what’s a sister for if not to cover for one another?
“I’m counting on you,” she says, inspecting herself in the mirror. “It’s for my own education.”
She sees Alex a couple of times that week. One day she stays out nearly all afternoon, coming home just minutes before Papi pulls into the driveway. Each time, you wait for her anxiously, worried that Mami will come home unexpectedly, catching her in the act and forcing out your secret.
In the end, though, it is Olga herself who calls Mami and tells her about your sister’s daytime escapades. Your mother demands proof of Dolores’ unsolicited visits, and when Olga comes over and delicately places one of your butterfly hairclips in Mami’s hands, something shatters inside of you that it will never be put back together.
***
Things happen so fast that you barely have time to process them. Dolores has morning sickness, which your mother quickly notices; Mami screams at Olga, accusing Alex of raping her daughter; Dolores blames Mami for being too controlling, for not letting her assimilate to the new life, and says that she wants to return to El Salvador and have her baby there. In a fit of anger, she throws a cup at Mami. It shatters against the wall and as the pieces fall, a shard lodges itself in Junior’s cheek, leaving him a scar below his right eye. After a fierce argument, Papi says he’s had enough and he orders Mami to control her daughter. After he says this, Mami sits alone at the kitchen table long after night falls. When you walk up to her, unable to sleep because of the guilt you feel, and ask if you can sit next to her, she buries her face in her hands. “Why, why?” she says over and over, and even then, you know that it is not you she is asking.
A few days later, Tia Veronica drives down from San Francisco to take Dolores back with her to the Bay. Help your sister pack her few belongings back into the suitcase she brought with her. She insists how happy she is to be leaving and to be able to have her baby and eventually go to college. She wants to give the child a bright future, she says, even if Alex’s family wants nothing to do with her. When you are done packing and Tia Veronica is waiting in the car, it is time for you to say goodbye. No dramatic gestures, no long speeches. Dolores ignores Mami, who is sobbing openly this time as she watches your sister roll her suitcase outside. Your sister gives you a hug and as she pulls away, she makes you promise to keep in touch.
You don’t, though. You don’t really know why: the years it took Mami to forgive you for keeping the visits a secret, perhaps, or the fact that once Dolores was gone, her memory started fading almost immediately, as if the couple of months she spent with you were a fever dream. Mami seldom mentions her after she is gone, too. A few months down the line, you hear that your sister miscarried. She never comes back to Los Angeles, though, despite the fact that Tia Veronica says losing the baby made her mature more quickly. Mami is silent when she receives the news over the phone, but when she asks to speak to your sister, Dolores is uninterested in talking to her. This, you know, hurts her deeper than anything.
Either way, fifteen years go by before you see Dolores again, and even then it is on accident. You are nearly thirty. The firm you’re interning for sends you to San Francisco to help with a deposition on a rainy Tuesday and as you walk to the check-in counter to catch your flight back to Southern California, Dolores is two spots ahead of you in line.
You embrace each other and for a few minutes, catch each other up on your lives. You tell her about your study abroad year in Milan and about law school and describe the house you’re planning on buying with the girlfriend you met in college; she tells you that she’s a medical assistant and about her husband and three girls. As you advance in the line, she flips through the pictures of her kids. In one, Dolores poses with your oldest niece—who is about to turn twelve, you learn—in front of the castle at Disneyland. She does not tell you the names of her children, and you do not ask. Neither of you mention Mami.
When your turn is up at the counter, you fish your driver’s license out of your purse. Glance outside at the storm lashing rain against the window. In the distance, there is a flash. A bolt of lightning divides the sky into two dark, unequal halves. You are glad to be heading home, away from the inclement weather.
You ask Dolores where she is flying to as you gather your things to head to the counter.
“Miami,” she answers. “To visit my family.”
