Borders are born, people are made!

I was in a trance eating melon, the kind you don't share, the spiritual sort. My comadre Sofía arrived then with her son Danielito, my godson to relief herself from some words.

--Comadre, my daughter Tonatzin left the house!

--I'm not surprised.

--"Why do you say that, do you know something?," said my comadre startled about the knowledge of melons, that were already cravings.

--Would you like some melon comadre?

--"Just a bit for Danielito" she said putting a large piece into her mouth.

--I say that because you haven't gotten along in a long time. I wanted to keep Tonatzin for you, you know that.

--Sí comadre, we have never gotten along. I'm sorry that she's only thirteen. What will she do alone in this world.

--She left alone?

--I think so, although a woman can never be alone, even as a child, she is always in her own company.

--You don't know if she left with someone else?

--She has no boyfriend. She left as I left at her age. I left because I was afraid of my father and of my mother's death. Then motherhood followed me until it caught me. At the Tijuana border I was impregnated.

--You have never loved her comadre. You have never shown her affection. Now that you offer love like a lover to your son Danielito, this is especially obvious. She has wanted to purr under your arms for thirteen years and hasn't yet merited one caress from you.

--Things can't change. It's the odor comadre.

--What odor? What mother dislikes her childrens' smells. My husband smelled like sulphur, coming from work in the orchards all day. As soon as he bathed I could separate the two odors and treat him better and he wasn't my son. Your daughter can't smell worse than sulphur.

--Smells betray comadre.

--Where do you think she left to?

--I am not sure, if I were to guess I would say she's at her friends' house, the black and vietnamese kids.

--Why do you think that?

--They are the only ones that treat her well. Nobody likes her since she got the tatoo of a pregnant woman on her hand.

--Are you choosing not to love her comadre. She's your daughter as are the other two.

--That is not chosen, it's given. Her father gave me that odor which makes my stomach turn. I wash her clothes three times and put them in the dryer with expensive softener, the kind that smells up a storm so her smell will be camouflaged. I only let her sit on one side of the couch so she won't stink up the other side. I can't drink anything in a glass she has used. That's why I buy old dishes at the flea market every weekend. Her eyes stink badly comadre!

--Why can you be a mother to the others?

--The odor, comadre. The others don't have the odor of the border. They were born here or there, but not in the wide middle, like her. I can't stand the middle of the road.

--You went through that road without telling her. It's not a road, it's a position.

--If her smell didn't depress me so much I could be affectionate with her.

--Find her and lose your smell.

--Sí comadre, borders are born, people are made.