Torn Between Worlds: A Mexican Immigrant's Journey to FInd Herself

By Nancy Blodgett Klein

Isabel, a 12-year-old Mexican girl, struggles as she tries to settle into a new life in the United States. She misses her mother, left behind when she and her father came to find a better life. She doesn't feel welcome living with her uncle and his family and struggles with the English language. How will she cope in this strange new world?

 

Her kind sixth-grade teacher suggests Isabel keep a journal, where she can pour out the feelings she used to share with her mother. She encourages her to take home the newspaper to help improve her English and learn about world events. While Isabel starts to make friends, she is horrified by the events that take place on September 11, 2001 in the US, witnesses a deadly political demonstration in Oaxaca, Mexico, and is eventually forced to flee to Madrid, Spain.

 

Willl all this chaos prevent Isabel from finding a way to feel connected to the world around her? This coming-of-age story is written in journal format, spanning three years and three countries.

 

Follow Isabel as she grows into a young woman during turbulent times, trying to find a place to call home instead of feeling torn between worlds.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Blodgett Klein
• Release date: Feb 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224565627

Nancy Blodgett Klein

Nancy Blodgett Klein worked as a journalist as well as a magazine editor in the Chicagoland area for much of her career after receiving a master's degree in journalism from Boston University. Later on, she went back to college and earned as master's degree from Roosevelt University in Illinois. Then she worked as a bilingual teacher to mostly Mexican students. In 2016, she retired to Spain with her husband Rick Klein. They are the proud parents of two adult sons named Alex and Andy. While living in Spain, Nancy keeps busy with yoga, singing in a choir, participating in a writers group and two book groups. She also writes a blog on a variety of topics called spainwriter.home.blog. Nancy Blodgett Klein worked as a journalist as well as a magazine editor in the Chicagoland area for much of her career after receiving a master's degree in journalism from Boston University. Later on, she went back to college and earned as master's degree from Roosevelt University in Illinois. Then she worked as a bilingual teacher to mostly Mexican students. In 2016, she retired to Spain with her husband Rick Klein. They are the proud parents of two adult sons named Alex and Andy. While living in Spain, Nancy keeps busy with yoga, singing in a choir, participating in a writers group and two book groups. She also writes a blog on a variety of topics called spainwriter.home.blog.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This is the story of Isabel, a 12-year-old Mexican girl who comes to the United States without legal documents in search of a better life with her father. It is a story common to many Mexicans and Central American families. The children who come to the US with their parents without going through proper legal channels don’t decide to break the law. They just did what their parents asked them to do.

Because of her father’s decision, Isabel is forced to leave her mother behind and this separation makes her sad. Her sixth-grade teacher suggests Isabel keep a journal, where she can share feelings that she used to share with her mother. This book is written in journal format, spanning three years and three countries, as she grows from a curious young child into a worldly young woman. Once crossing the border to El Otro Lado from Mexico, Isabel and her father move to Elgin, Illinois, a suburb northwest of Chicago, where many Mexican people live.

PREFACE

When I was a bilingual teacher in the Elgin, Illinois School District, I encountered very few books written in English for my bilingual students, books that told their stories, rather than stories of mostly White, native-born Americans. The absence of stories reflecting the immigrant experience of my Hispanic students compelled me to write this book so that bilingual students could find a story that would finally reflect their experience and perhaps even get them more excited about reading in English.

The first part of the book is loosely inspired by the experience of one of my female students. As for the rest, I just let my imagination take off to provide what I hope is an interesting story for both young people and adults, be they immigrants or born to the country where they live.

It is now 2024, 23 years since the September 11, 2001, attacks took place. Much time has passed since the events of that catastrophic day. Countless young people are unaware of what happened when the United States was attacked by terrorists in New York City and Washington DC.

As told through Isabel’s journal entries, this novel includes details about what people actually experienced both on September 11, 2001, and in the aftermath of this terrible event. Perhaps through reading Isabel’s story, young readers, in particular, will be inspired to learn more about that fateful day in American history and better understand how this tragedy still impacts us today.

PART ONE

IN THE UNITED STATES

Vaya con Dios.

Wednesday, August 29 , 2001

Three years ago, when I was 9 years old, I, Isabel Martinez-Estrada, left Oaxaca, Mexico with my father. We crossed to El Otro Lado without papers. In Mexico, we call the United States, El Otro Lado. This means the other side.

Mi primo, Juan, son of Papi’s brother, also named Juan, drove us out to the middle of the desert then let us out and said, "Vaya con Dios." And that was it. Mexicans say Vaya con Dios a lot. It means, Go with God.

That’s all I remember that he said. Where he let us out, there was another man waiting. Papi said he was a coyote, someone who helps people get across the border. This grey-haired man was really old and very thin, with a hump on his back. I didn’t see how he could help us get across given his age and condition.

I was so scared to be out in the middle of nowhere, with the sun going down. We walked for a long time in the hot desert, with the coyote leading the way. My feet hurt. Plus, the rubber on the soles of my favorite pink Converse shoes was starting to crack from all the walking in the heat. We saw a dead person too—a woman, I think. At first I didn’t even think I was seeing a person. Her body was the wrong color and parts were missing. It smelled really bad, too. Papi told me not to look. It was too late. I shuddered and felt like throwing up. Even though I turned away, I couldn’t get the sight out of my mind for a long time.

It was scary at night. We heard wild coyotes howling and we didn’t have a tent or anything. We just slept out under the bright stars wrapped in thin blankets my abuela, that’s my grandma in English, had made. Luckily, we had enough food. Papi brought a big backpack full of cans of beans, tortillas, cheese and chiles. He had a pocketknife and can opener too. He wrapped the blankets up in a tight roll and attached them to the backpack with a rope. I carried the water bottles in a smaller backpack, but it was really too hot to drink and it tasted bad. The coyote drank a lot of water but seemed to eat nothing but sunflower seeds, which he would spit out of his mouth along the way.

I almost stepped on a scorpion while we were in the desert and there were snakes too. It was all very scary and it made me miss Mami even more.

Mami didn’t come, you see. She is a public school teacher in Oaxaca (pronounced Wha-ha-ca) and didn’t want to leave her job teaching third grade. But Papi could not find work in Mexico and wanted to come to Chicago. His older brother, Juan, mi tio, my uncle, works there cutting grass and working in peoples’ gardens. My Papi would often say, He makes more in a day than I can make in a week. So, we came to the United States and left Mami behind. Mami, mi abuelo and mi abuela. Plus, my friends too. Papi wanted me to come because he thought I could get a better education in the US. Mami agreed with him but she wasn’t happy about us leaving. She said it was muy peligroso to cross the border illegally. Peligroso means dangerous in English. But Papi said the US was the only place he could make enough money to have a better life for the three of us.

So we walked for several days and got really dirty and smelly too. Plus, I was sunburned all over and my lips got really blistered. Finally, with the coyote’s help, we found tio Juan’s friend Paco. He met us by a garbage dump at the edge of the desert in his old beat-up car. The back bumper was falling off and part of it was almost on the ground when he pulled up. I later found out from Papi that he had  tied it back up with a rope to avoid attracting attention. I think we were in Heroica Nogales, Mexico, near the border with the US. But I am not sure. I was so hot and tired I wasn’t paying much attention. When we got in his car, I remember him telling me to lay down on the floor. I did that and then fell asleep for a long time. When I woke up, the first thing I saw were the Golden Arches. We had stopped at McDonalds to eat. Papi said we were in Arizona, in the United States! I don’t know how Paco got across the border without being stopped by la migra.

I have been in the United States for more than three years now and am slowly, oh so slowly, learning how to speak, read and write in English. I am in a bilingual class here. That’s what they call it anyway. For my first two years in bilingual, my teachers kept yelling at me to Speak English.  All the time in English. "Dios mio!" Sometimes, I didn’t know the word to say something in English and it’s hard. So, I didn’t talk much those first two years, not in English or Spanish!

But this year, my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Martin, lets me and my best friend Manuela talk in Spanish when we are having free time and she will speak to me in Spanish if she sees I don’t understand something, like fractions or division. She caught me crying in the bathroom today. I was embarrassed to have her see my tears. But she’s pretty nice. So, I told her my story. She said that writing about my problems might help me and she gave me a spiral notebook to write in. She said I could take it home and keep it. She said to put the date that things happen in it so I can look back at it later and know what took place when. She said when I get older, like she is, I will start to forget when things happened and putting dates in prevents that problem. So, this is my first entry.

Thursday, August 30, 2001

I was crying today because I miss Mami so much. When I told Mrs. Martin why I was crying she told me she missed her mother too. She said her mom died because her lungs didn’t work too well and that she had CPD or something like that. I forget what that stands for. Anyway, Mrs. Martin said maybe I should go visit my mom at Christmas. But I said I couldn’t visit and be able to come back. She understood then that I am here without papers. She said there are others in our class like that. But I bet I am the only one with one parent in Mexico and one in the US. It’s so hard. I feel lonely sometimes and don’t really feel like I fit in here. Plus, I am an only child so that makes everything harder.

My friend Manuela says I am better off without my mom because her mom is always telling her what to do and her dad is no help because he is never around. Her parents are separated. Her mom may be mean sometimes, like when she tells Manuela she is too young to wear makeup, but at least she can talk to her face to face.

Tuesday, September 4, 2001

Something funny happened at school today. We were learning about idioms. Mrs. Martin said that those are sayings. There is one about ‘raining cats and dogs.’ It made me laugh to think of cats and dogs falling from the sky. We don’t have an expression like that in Spanish. But Mrs. Martin, who used to live in France when she was in college, told us that it’s important to know the common expressions of the language you are trying to learn. She told us how when she was full after a great dinner with her French family, she said, Je suis pleine. The French family told her that this doesn’t mean, I am full in English. Instead, it translates more like, I am a pregnant cow!   Was she ever embarrassed.

We have some expressions in Spanish that Americans could learn too. Like, A quien madruga, Dios le ayuda. Mrs. Martin said that’s kind of like the expression, ‘The early bird catches the worm.’  Here’s another one mi abuela or abuelita, as I like to call her, used to say to mi abuelo, ‘Las moscas no entran en una boca cerrada.’ In English, I think this would be, ‘Flies don’t go into a closed mouth.’ Mi abuelita, or little grandmother, doesn’t like it when mi abuelo, my grandfather, talks too much. I don’t like it either!

Wednesday, September 5, 2001 

There is a boy in my class, Alex, who keeps teasing me. Manuela says that’s because he likes me. But I don’t like him. He always tries to get behind me when we line up for gym, music, or art and then he will step on the back of my gym shoes to make them come off. Mrs. Martin asked him if he did that on purpose, but he said, No. I know he’s lying. He gets his name on the board a lot. Mrs. Martin puts student names on the board as a warning. If they keep being bad, then they will have a note sent home to get signed by the parent. It sure seems like the boys are the main ones with their names on the board! That was the same way the last two years. They seem to act up a lot, especially at the start of school. I want the teacher to like me. That’s why I stay quiet.

I am looking forward to the weekend so that I can talk to Mami on the phone. We talk every Sunday and at least I get to hear her voice. She has a good sense of humor and tries to make me laugh. My dad is quiet. When he gets home from work, he usually sits in front of the TV drinking Dos Equis beer and watching soccer. He doesn’t talk to me much. Plus, the family we are living with isn’t very nice to me. We are staying with my dad’s brother, tio Juan, the one who works as a gardener. There isn’t a lot of room for us here. He has a wife and two teenage girls from her previous marriage here already. His wife’s first husband was killed by a drunk driver. Juan was a friend of his. I don’t think his wife, Mariposa, wants us here. Mariposa means butterfly in English. But I think she is more like a witch, or something that rhymes with witch, than a butterfly.

Friday, September 7, 2001

The family that lives next door to us is from Pakistan. That’s on the other side of the world from Elgin, Illinois, where we live. Elgin is west of Chicago and most people know where the ‘windy city’ is. I am starting to learn where places are in the world because in Mrs. Martin’s class, we play this game where two students get called up and have to find a place on the world map. The first person to find the place is the winner. Then another student’s name is called and he or she has to beat the winner in finding the place on the map or go sit down. She asked me where Saudi Arabia was, and I had no idea. But since then I have been studying the globe we have in class during free time so that next time, I won’t lose when we play the map game.

Our neighbors, the Noorani’s, are Muslims. I don’t know much about that religion but I do know they don’t eat pork. We Mexicans eat a lot of pork—in tacos, enchiladas, burritos and other foods. My family is Catholic but we don’t