"And that you need to always carry yourself that way."
"Uh-huh. Uh-huh."
Karen Flores is escorted to her 15th birthday party in El Salvador. Karen's mother, who lives in Virginia and could not attend, is among thousands of Latin American immigrants who send money back home to families.
(Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
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A Mother's Support
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Immigrants and Separation: Post staff writer Nurith Aizenman is discussing the separation of one El Salvadoran mother from her children in order to make more money in the U.S.
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About This Story
This article was based on interviews with and observations of Maday Flores in Northern Virginia and her children and mother in El Salvador, where staff writer Nurith C. Aizenman and staff photographer Sarah L. Voisin spent a week in July. Other than for accounts otherwise attributed, the reporter and photographer were present during key events described, including Karen Flores' birthday party and a shooting that occurred outside as the family gathered for evening prayers. All interviews were done in Spanish.
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Then Karen smiled brightly.
"So, Mami," she said. "I wore the watch and the ring you sent me. . . . And almost all my classmates came. . . . And you know what? I didn't cry!"
Karen almost never does. Not when her mother announced she would be moving thousands of miles north, not when her mother gave her a last, lingering embrace. And not four years later, when asked to reflect on her mother's decision. "She left so that she could give us a better life," Karen said simply. When her mother sounds lonely and tearful over the phone after a long day of work and English classes, Karen lets it pass without comment.
It is one of many ways Karen differs from Evelin. Introduce Karen to a stranger and she will pepper him with questions. Give her a homework assignment and she will do it -- not brilliantly, perhaps, but with enough care to get a solid grade.
She is strikingly beautiful, with high cheekbones and lustrous hair. But there is none of Evelin's sensual swivel to her walk. Karen lumbers like a boxer, her whole body leaning forward.
Her mind tilts forward as well. "A secretary," she answers crisply when asked what she wants to be when she grows up.
Of all the Flores children, a neighbor predicted, "Karen will be the one to get out of this place."
For now, she might have to get past her grandmother first.
Karen sat on a stool in the living area, her eyes bright as she described her plan to get a job at a bookstore next summer.
Her grandmother leaned back on the couch. "I don't know. It's a nice idea, but it's dangerous for a girl to ride the bus. . . . And besides, a child's mentality changes when she leaves home."
On the wall above her head were photographs not just of the children's mother, but of three uncles and aunts who also live in Northern Virginia.
Maday's children, at least, Carmen can still keep under close guard. As soon as they troop in from school, she locks the door behind them.
Karen rarely asks whether she can go outside to play. She knows the answer. Nor is she permitted to invite anyone over. The neighborhood children could be a bad influence, Carmen worries.
And so Karen rides out her adolescence in a 600-square-foot bunker strung with lines of dripping laundry.
Piles of furniture add to the cramped atmosphere. A dining table and couch are jammed up against a refrigerator in the living area. Bunk beds crowd the room where the grandmother and the children sleep two to a mattress. When it's stormy outside, the rain hammers on the thin, corrugated roof with a deafening clatter. When it's sunny, the air in the house gets so hot even the flies stop buzzing.
Yet all around her, Karen can see the improvements her mother's money has brought. Concrete walls that once were bare have been painted a cheerful aqua. The old concrete floor has been paved with pretty blue and white tiles. Karen paces across it in gauzy skirts and jewel-toned tops -- the latest styles from Northern Virginia's malls shipped directly to Apopa.
Her amusements are imported as well. If she's not popping CDs into the boombox sent by her mother, she's helping her sisters fill up an inflatable kiddie pool in the living area.
Such luxuries are beyond reach for many of her classmates, Karen knows. She is one of only two girls in her grade whose families could afford a sweet-15 birthday party. Her three closest friends couldn't even accept Karen's invitation to be maids of honor. "Too expensive," their parents said when informed of the cost of the blue dress their daughters would be required to buy.
Still, Karen says she would trade every one of her mother's gifts to have her home again. And there are times even Karen wonders how the years apart might change her mother. Like the day last year when a man dropped by with a package from Virginia. "Your mother is fine. I saw her just the other day with her boyfriend," Karen recalled the man saying as he lugged the box inside.
"What!" Karen pounced. "My mother has a boyfriend? What's he like? How did she meet him?"
"In the restaurant," the man managed to say before Karen's grandmother halted the conversation with a hiss.
"Stop asking silly questions. He's just kidding," the grandmother said.
