But as Karen lay in bed that night, she wasn't so sure. What if her mother was in love? What if she decided to leave them forever for a new life with this man?
"Pssst, Evelin," Karen remembers whispering to the dozing form on the bunk above. "Do you think it's true?"
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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A Son's Farewell
"Where are you going? Take me with you, Mami," René Antonio urged the morning his mother left.
"No, I'm just going to work, my love. You know I can't bring you there," she remembers answering. "So be a good boy and I'll see you tonight, okay?"
Yet even a 4-year-old could tell something was amiss. Why had his mother wiped her eyes before turning to speak to him? Why had she hugged each of his sisters so tightly?
And so he sat and watched by the front door as afternoon gave way to evening and the sky grew dark.
At last, a hand pulled him inside. "She won't be home until very late," his grandmother recalls saying gently. "Come to sleep now."
The next morning, René Antonio sprang awake.
"Where's my Mami?"
"Oh, you just missed her," Carmen said. "She had to leave really early."
It went on this way for nearly two weeks, his grandmother recalled, until finally she told him the news that his mother had worried he would be too young to bear.
A few days later, the phone rang. René Antonio watched as his sisters took their turns -- crying, and thanking God that their mother had made it safely across the border.
Then they handed the receiver to René Antonio.
"Mami!" the boy shouted. "You are a liar!"
These days, René Antonio pops up when the phone rings, grabbing the second handset to find out who is on the line. If it's his mother, he smiles and whispers hello. If it's someone else, he hangs up without comment and sinks back into the striped armchair in front of the television in the bedroom.
He spends hours cradled in that chair, his almond-shaped eyes growing glassy as a succession of cartoon characters prattles on the screen.
"A man of few words," joked one of his cousins.
Although René Antonio teases and giggles with his sisters, in the household conversations his voice is always a grace note rather than the dominant chord. In the outside world, it is rarely heard at all.
His sisters often call Carmen "Mama" -- "she's our second mother," Karen explained. René Antonio always refers to her as "Mi Abuela." My grandmother. Yet of all the children, he is the most attached to her. At night, he curls up next to her in bed, as he used to do with his mother. When they leave home, he is careful to keep Carmen in view. "Where's my grandmother? Where's my grandmother?" he asks in alarm if she strays from his sight.
And as his bedtime draws near, the child who shrinks from nearly everyone's touch crawls into his grandmother's lap and rests his head against her chest. "My poor little orphan boy," she'll say, rocking him softly. "No mother. No father. Who will protect you?"
There is much to protect him from. If his sisters and the other girls in the neighborhood risk the trap of early motherhood, the boys are stalked by a darker cloud -- las maras, the gangs. The grown-ups around René Antonio always say those words in an undertone.
"Mara Salvatrucha" and "Mara 18." At 8, René Antonio knows their names and their hand signals.
Reminders of their battle for control of his neighborhood come every few weeks: the next-door neighbor who was sliced with shrapnel from a bomb thrown near a crowded tortilla stand on René Antonio's street, the middle-aged man on his way home from work who was shot to death for no discernible reason in front of René Antonio's school.
Nearly every night, Carmen leads her grandchildren in a prayer for safety.
