Return to Sender Read Free Page A

and soon you will be receiving this letter, that worry has been put to rest.
    Even so, it is difficult for Luby and Ofie toleave the one place they have known as their home. The place they were born. As for me, Mamá, it is the place where I have been waiting. Waiting for you to return. Waiting for the laws to change so I can visit my birthplace in México and be able to come back into the United States again.
    But Papá explained to us how our lives would be better in Vermont. We would all be together, living on the farm where he and our uncles worked.
    Ever since you left, Mamá, he doesn't want to let my sisters and me out of his sight. And now, there are so many of us in Carolina del Norte that he could not always find work, and when he did, he had to go where the
patrón
sent him. The jobs were only for two, three weeks, and then back to a street corner with a crowd of other Mexicans, hoping he would be picked. And always fearing that
la migra
would pick him up first and deport him back home, where he'd have to find the money to pay for the dangerous crossing once again. Papá worries most about what would happen to my sisters and me if he was taken away, especially with you not around to at least be one parent in the family.
    “Do not worry,” Tío Armando reminds Papá. “I would take care of them like my own children.” Our uncle has not seen his wife and kids since hewent for a visit three years ago. His littlest daughter he hasn't even met. Papafón, she calls him, because she only knows him from hearing his voice on the telephone.
    “And what if they take you, too?” Papá always replies. “What then?”
    Our uncle Felipe strums his guitar to remind Papá that he can take care of us, too. Wilmita, he calls her. “I will treat them like
princesitas,
“ he sings as he picks a tune. “I will dress them in diamonds and pearls and take them to Disney World.”
    “How about we dress them in sweaters and boots and take them to a farm in Vermont,” Papá says, smiling. Tío Felipe sure knows how to make us all laugh. Without him, we'd be a family of the well half dry, that is for certain.
    Another thing that is for certain: Papá will be so much happier working on a farm! He often speaks of being a boy, helping our grandfather, Abuelote, farm in Las Margaritas. But that was before the family had to give up farming because there was no money in it. In Carolina del Norte, all he did was construction, and often the jobs were far away, and Papá could not come home for weeks at a time, and then just for a short weekend.
    Don't worry, Mamá, I have taken good care of my little sisters when he is gone. You will notbelieve how tall Luby has gotten! She is up to my chest, and Ofie is almost as tall as me! A lot of people guess they are older than five and seven, which Ofie especially loves to brag about. Often those same people can't believe I'm really eleven going on twelve. “Good things come in small packages,” they say to console me.
    I understand why I am not very tall, because I resemble you and Papá. But where did my sisters get their height? In school, we learned about genes, how we become what our parents put in us.
    “Genes?” Tío Felipe makes a joke when I explain it to him. “Jeans are to wear!” He says it is food, lots of it. When I was in your belly in Las Margaritas you were not eating as well as when Ofie and then Luby came along in this country. When he sees the sad look on my face, Tío Felipe tries to make another joke. “All those McDonald's and Coca- Colas!” He smiles his wonderful smile that is so hard to resist. Papá says that when Tío Felipe returns with his pockets full of money and his good looks, all the girls in Las Margaritas are going to throw themselves at him like girls do here at the movie stars. That makes Tío Felipe smile wider.
    It is difficult to be the one different from my sisters. Some boys at my old school made fun of me, calling me an “illegal alien.” What is