Return to Sender

Bad-Luck Farm. It’s Tyler Paquette’s first morning back home after a month-long visit with relatives, and as he wakes up on this summer day in 2005 and looks out of the window of his family’s Vermont farmhouse, he sees strangers coming out of the trailer where the dairy farm’s hired workers usually stay. They look like Indigenous people and Tyler assumes that they’re trespassers. He rushes downstairs to tell Mom (Mrs. Connie Paquette) and Dad (Mr. Abelard Paquette), who reply that a lot happened while Tyler was away.

Actually, a lot happened before Tyler left, too. Gramps died unexpectedly early in the summer. And then, Dad got pinned beneath a tractor in a horrifying accident. Tyler had been there when it happened and had heroically run home to call 911. His speed saved Dad’s life, but Dad’s injuries were severe, and he might end up permanently disabled. Not long after he came home from the hospital, he and Mom started talking about selling the farm. This made Tyler even more depressed. He tried convincing Mom to let him take a year off school to help out, but she just shipped him off to his Aunt Roxie and Uncle Tony in Boston.

Tyler remembers how jealous his 15-year-old sister, Sara, was that he got to spend a whole month with Aunt Roxie and Uncle Tony, a middle-aged couple who run a party-planning business and who spoil their niece and nephews (Sara, Tyler, and their 18-year-old brother, Ben) rotten because they have no kids of their own. The time away wasn’t bad, Tyler admits, even though he missed the farm terribly and was afraid that his parents would sell it while he was gone. It was a relief to go home at the end of the month and to learn that the family had found a way to keep the farm running after all.

Back in the family living room, Mom and Dad explain that the people Tyler saw aren’t trespassers. In fact, Mom says, they’re angels. More accurately, they’re hardworking men from Mexico whom the family has hired to help on the farm while Dad recovers. And, Mom says, they have three little girls with them, two of whom will be going to Tyler’s school in the fall. The only odd thing about the conversation is the end, when Mom warns Tyler not to talk to anyone outside of the family about the Mexican workers. Tyler is confused, but he surmises that the family wants to keep things quiet to protect Dad’s pride, so that no one knows how much help he needs. He decides that if anyone asks, he’ll tell them that they have a bunch of Martians working on the farm.

Queridísima Mamá. On August 15, 2005, Mari (María Delores Cruz) begins a letter to Mamá, who left the family’s home in North Carolina eight months prior to visit her dying mother in Mexico. In the intervening time, Mari explains, it got so hard for Papá to find work that he, Tío Armando, and Tío Felipe decided to move the family (Mari and her sisters Luby and Ofie) farther north, to Vermont, where there is farmwork available. Before closing the letter, Mari confesses her feelings of loneliness and isolation, especially because she is not an American citizen like her sisters are.

Queridísima Mamá. Four days later, on August 19, 2005, Mari writes another letter to let Mamá know that the Cruz family has arrived safely in Vermont. At first, they plan to travel by car, but none of the adults have a driver’s license. And Tío Felipe is afraid the authorities are looking for him after his last employer, a White woman, accused him of stealing and selling one of her dogs (Tío Felipe refuses Mari’s and Ofie’s offers to try to explain things in English to the woman). They traveled north by bus, which reminded Mari of her trip to America with Papá and Mamá back when she was four. 

When they left Las Margaritas, the small Chiapas town where Mari was born, Mamá was brokenhearted to leave her family. But the trip all the way through Mexico to the northern border soothed her a little with its beauty, Mari recalls. Mari remembers being confused when the “coyotes” who helped the family cross the border into the United States turned out to be mean-spirited men rather than animals. She was scared, thirsty, and exhausted during the crossing on foot. 

Mari knows that this is the same trip Mamá must be making to come back to her family in the United States. She remembers how sad she was after Mamá left and how excited everyone was when Mamá called to say she was on her way back north. But then, she never showed up. Papá tried to retrace Mamá’s steps, but he nevertheless failed to find her. Now, Mari feels that she’s the only family member still holding hope.

Mari describes the Cruz family’s arrival in rural Vermont and how kind Mrs. Paquette is when she picks them up. Mom even calls them “angels,” which is so different than the taunts of “illegal alien” Mari endured from her classmates back in North Carolina. Soon after they get to the farm, Sara brings Mari, Luby, and Ofie a box of her old clothes, toys, hair accessories, and makeup. It was overwhelmingly generous. She also offered to help Mari mail her letters to Mamá. But when Papá learns of her plan to mail the letters back to North Carolina, he makes her promise not to. It’s too dangerous, he says. It risks exposing them or their friends in the old apartment to the immigration authorities. Mari doesn’t understand and even thinks that Papá is overreacting, but she gives him her word.