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whereabouts.
    “Yeee-haa!” Carlos said. As he drove, I looked at the Mountain That Has a Headache and was sure El Otro Lado was over there. Mago said El Otro Lado was really far away, and back then nothing seemed farther away than an unknown town on the other side of the mountain.
    “Head that way,” I told him. “That’s where Mami and Papi are.”
    Carlos at four
    Carlos started the noises again. The engine revved and soon we were off. “Yeee-haa!”

    Because I’d decided that my parents must be on the other side of the Mountain That Has a Headache, I got in the habit of looking at it each night and wishing my parents a buenas noches. In the morning, I wished them a buenos días. Carlos and Mago would do it as well, even though Élida would laugh and tell us we were a bunch of pendejos to believe our parents were that close.
    “We aren’t idiots,” I would say to Élida. “My mami and papi are as close as I want them to be.”
    At first, I hadn’t really known where to find Papi. All I had was his photo and the rich brown color of Mago’s skin, which was the color of rain-soaked earth, like his. But one day, as we were walking to the store, Mago stopped outside a house to listen to “Escuché las Golondrinas,” which was playing on the radio, and said, “Papi loved that song.” That is how I learned I could find him in the voice of Vicente Fernández. Another time, as we were walking to the tortilla mill, a man passed by us on his bicycle and we caught a whiff of something spicy, like cinnamon, and Mago said, “That’s how Papi smelled!” SoI would find him in the empty bottle of Old Spice we were lucky enough to discover in a trash heap.
    It was easier to find Mami. She was in the smell of the apple-scented shampoo we asked Tía Emperatriz to buy for us. I found her in the scent of her favorite Avon perfumes I smelled on her old clients when Mago and I stood in line with them at the tortilla mill. I found the color of her lips in the flowers of the bougainvillea climbing up Abuela Evila’s house. I heard her in the lyrics of her favorite songs from Los Dandys: “Eres la gema que Dios convirtiera en mujer para bien de mi vida …” And when Abuelita Chinta came to visit us every other week, I saw Mami in her eyes.
    Whenever I would go into the little shack where I was born, I’d trace a circle around the spot where my umbilical cord was buried and think about the special cord that connected me to Mami.
    Every two weeks, when they called, I would find my parents in my grandmother’s phone. But always, those precious two minutes Abuela Evila allowed us on the phone went by too quickly. Two minutes to tell them everything we felt. So many things to say to them, but one night in August we said nothing at all. It was Mami who talked, who gave Mago the worst news of all.
    She was going to have a baby.
    “They’re replacing us,” Mago said after handing the phone back to Abuela Evila. Élida smirked at hearing the news. We went to our room, and since only a thin curtain separated the room from the rest of the house, I could hear my grandmother telling my parents how tough things were and could they please send more money. “Your children need shoes and clothes …” Abuelita Evila said.
    “They’ll leave us here and forget all about us,” Mago said as she lay on the bed. We had been at my grandmother’s for eight long months. What had sustained us through that time was the belief that our mother would be back within the year. Now, with this new baby on the way, Mami’s plans had changed. Why would she come back to Mexico to have her baby, when she could stay on that side of the border and give birth to an American citizen?
    “She promised,” Mago said. Carlos and I tried to make her feel better, yet no matter what we said, Mago was inconsolable. Almost every night, I heard her crying, and all I could do was wrap my arms aroundmy sister and cry with her. I felt so angry at my parents. I