Abandonment In The Distance Between Us By Reyna Grande

Would you still have love for your own parents who left you only at four years old? The memoir, The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande is a story of the notable main character, Reyna, who starts out being the youngest of three children, and eventually becomes a middle child when her parents have a baby born in the United States. At the age of four, Reyna and her two siblings were left to live with their Abuelita as their parents left to work in America and planned to return later. Over the many years of absence by their parents, Reyna and her siblings were left with many traumatic incidents and feelings. In The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, the author uses experiences growing up to express how one's life is affected by family relations

The absence of certain people in one’s life from a young age causes one to mature more quickly and show more compassion for others. “But this time, when my mother said she wouldn’t be gone long, I knew it would be different. Yet I never imagined that “not too long” would turn out to be never, because, if truth be told, I never really got my mother back.” (Grande 13) This is important to note because, after the absence of their mother, she did not return later to be the same person as she left. The relationship between them changed. This might impact the reader of my essay by connecting to Reyna Grande and the experience of their relationship. “I wanted to reach out and hold Mami. I wanted to tell her that I’d rather eat beans for the rest of my life as long as she was with me. But the look she gave me scared me. It was almost as if she hated me.” (Grande 92) This is important because the return of their mother was for a reason nobody would have expected, Mami was full of angry emotions and vaguely showed it when treating the children she abandoned. The reader of my essay might relate to seeing the change in someone after being absent for so long. Though a mother chose to be absent through her children’s adolescence, they still chose to hold so much love for her when she returned though she came back full of anger and

However, the children always forgave because all they wanted was their family united. Mami initially returned back to Iguala because Papi had cheated on her. Reyna could not imagine Papi loving another woman. “And then came his ultimate betrayal. At the end of the week he tossed her out of the apartment, but did not allow her to take Betty. My mother’s first thought had been to go to the police, but she was afraid of being deported, and if that were to happen, then surely she would never see her daughter again. She wanted to go back to Mexico, back to the place she knew, back to her mother, back to us —her children—away from my father, but she couldn’t leave like this, with no money and no daughter. Everyone would scorn her for coming back worse off than when she left”(Grande 87). Papi was aggressive and strict when kicking Mami out. She came to El Otro Lado to help and support him, but he betrayed her and his children by loving another woman. That woman is known as Mila, Reyna looked at her as a mother figure as her own was absent in her life, once again. “That’s what you get for being a traitor,” Mago said when I told her what I’d done. “She’s right. She’s not our mom. Why are you always trying to find mothers everywhere you go”(Grande 178) Mila had taken Reyna to the dentist for her toothache. She asked her if she had felt any pain and Reyna responded saying she was not in pain but called