I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

After Olga’s funeral, Amá doesn’t leave her bed for nearly two weeks. She only gets up to go to the bathroom and eat stale pastries from the funeral. Her behavior begins to worry Julia—Amá is usually clean and put-together, no matter the circumstances. Apá, meanwhile, continues working all day every day, and comes home to sit silently on the sofa with a beer. He never communicates his feelings to Julia, and has barely even spoken to her since the funeral.

The Reyes’s roach-infested apartment on the south side of Chicago has fallen into particularly bad shape over the last couple of weeks, and there is hardly any food in the house. Julia tries to cook for herself, but can’t even make beans right—she’s never learned how to cook, out of fear of becoming “a submissive Mexican wife” who does nothing but clean and prepare meals.

One afternoon, Julia peeks into her mother’s room and asks if she’s planning on eating or taking a shower. Amá yells at Julia for being “suddenly concerned with cleanliness,” remarking that Olga was always “the clean one.” Julia flatly states that Olga is gone before taking five dollars from her mother’s wallet and leaving the apartment. In addition to a ghost sister, she thinks, she has a ghost father and a ghost mother. At a nearby taco shop, Julia orders some food and eats ravenously, wolfing down three tacos and a large horchata in minutes.

When Julia arrives home, her mother is sitting in the kitchen sipping some tea, freshly showered. Julia is shocked when Amá—who always demands to know her whereabouts—doesn’t ask Julia where she’s been. Julia is even more shocked when her mother announces that Julia is going to have a quinceañera—a traditional party which marks the entry of fifteen-year-old Latina girls into womanhood. Julia is confused—she’s already nearly sixteen. When she brings this up as a way of protesting against the party, Amá replies that she is full of regret that she never got to give Olga a quincé—and isn’t going to make the same mistake twice. Julia insists she doesn’t want the party or any of the frivolous celebrations that come with it, but Amá’s will is solid—she tells Julia not to say a bad word against the idea, threatening to “break [her] teeth.”

Whenever Julia can’t sleep lately, she gets out of her own bed and goes to crawl into Olga’s, even though Amá has forbidden her from entering her sister’s room. Julia is comforted by Olga’s familiar scent, which lingers in the bedclothes. As she lies there, her thoughts swirl around in her head: she is afraid of not getting into college and being stuck in her working-class neighborhood forever. Julia tries to distract herself with a book, but even reading—her favorite activity—doesn’t work. Julia spies a picture of her and Olga on vacation in Mexico at their grandmother Mamá Jacinta’s house—they used to go together every summer. Julia studies the picture, wondering who her sister really was, and realizing that maybe she didn’t know her at all.

Olga has always been the favorite, taking their mother’s side in arguments—of which there have always been many, because of Julia’s contrarian views and feisty personality. Stuck in a thought spiral about all the ways in which she’s failed to measure up to Olga, Julia turns over and tries to sleep—but as she lays her head on the pillow, she feels something poking her. She reaches into the pillow case and pulls out a note scrawled on a sticky note bearing the name of a prescription: the note says “I love you.” Julia’s mind begins racing. She knows that Olga hasn’t had a boyfriend since she dated a skinny, wimpy guy back in high school.

Julia gets out of bed and begins going through Olga’s closet. She finds old pictures and clothes stuffed in boxes—but in one box, finds a cache of sexy underwear. Julia is scandalized, and knows that if their mother ever found these things, she would “flip the hell out.” Julia begins searching for Olga’s laptop, and eventually finds it under the mattress. She becomes frustrated when she can’t guess Olga’s password, and goes back to looking through Olga’s things. In her sister’s dresser she finds a hotel key card from a hotel called The Continental. Angie, Julia knows, works at a hotel—but not The Continental. As she hears sounds of someone waking up, Julia flicks off the light, stashes the laptop, and gets into bed. 

In the morning, Julia wakes up in Olga’s bed. She panics, knowing that if she gets caught in the room she’ll be in trouble. She hurriedly makes the bed and tiptoes back to her own room—but as she twists the knob, she hears her mother come up behind her. Full of dread, Julia turns to face Amá, who has her hands on her hips and looks deeply angry.