“Hey, listen,” he began. “You know I came across the border illegally too, a long time ago.” He gestured to Maria, and she passed him the plate of tortillas. “So I can understand better than anybody why they come here.”
“You always talk about how much you miss Mexico, Dad,” Carlos finished his plate, and Maria went to get him more eggs and beans. “Why did you come?”
Juan laughed, “For the money!”
“I get it,” Carlos said with a grin. Then he grew more serious, “No, I actually don’t get it. How bad was it?”
“Well,” Juan tilted his head back and forth several times, remembering his youth and trying to figure out how to explain it, "It wasn't so bad.”
Maria gave him a sharp look.
Juan continued, “I was seventeen years old, and I had just met your mother. There was plenty of work, but it didn’t pay nothing. I’d stack bricks all day long for maybe, twenty pesos a day…”
Maria cut him off, “Then he would spend it all on beer the same night.”
Juan grinned at the truth of it.
Maria scowled.
"So, my uncle says to me, 'Juan, if you're gonna go to America, you better do it now.' So, I went."
Sofia took her father’s hand in hers, “How did you do it?”
"Well," Juan scratched his chin, "At first, I rode on top of the train at night. I remember it was so cold." He brought his hands together and hugged himself, shivering at the memory. "To get across the border, I had to give the coyote all my money, two hundred dollars."
“How did you get across?” Carlos leaned forward.
“I hid in the trunk of his car,” Juan handed his plate to Maria as she began cleaning up. “They dropped me off in Tucson. Then I walked to Phoenix because we have relatives here.”
“Ay, Papí,” Sofia exclaimed, “That’s over a hundred miles!”
“It wasn’t too bad,” Juan pursed his lips and shook his head, "I was younger then and used to walking all the time. Plus, I hitchhiked a little bit. But not too many people wanted to pick up a skinny Mexican.”
Sofia just stared back at him with a shocked expression on her face.
“I would never want any of our family in Mexico to try to get here like that now,” Juan said.
“Why not?” Carlos asked.
“Even though I think everybody deserves the same chance I got, things are a lot different now.”
“For one thing, you have to pay the coyotes a lot more than two hundred dollars!” Juan tried to make it into a joke, but then he grew serious. “Those guys steal everything. They’ll leave you locked in a truck to die, too.”
“Why do you think we’ve been working so hard to get your uncle’s wife into America legally?” Maria asked softly, cleaning up the last of the dishes.
"Three years we've been trying to do it the right way," Juan grumbled bitterly. "But I would never let any of our family come across the other way. The system is broken."