I know my mother-in-law doesn’t necessarily talk to me about the family issues, but I really don’t like being taken by surprise by problems. My husband asked me if I knew why Dacia left her boyfriend and said that he was told there had been abuse within the relationship. Now I know Dacia’s father Ignacio has been abusive to my sister-in-law and Dacia has pleaded with her mother to leave him before, so I was surprised to hear this. I promised I would find out what I could and tell him what I’d learned at our next visit. I talked to my mother-in-law and she told me that Roberto had hit Dacia several times and even cut her once with a razor when they had been fighting. I was shocked, but the only other thing Gisela could tell me is that Dacia’s father told her to come to Mexico with Junior.
As luck would have it, Dacia decided to visit her uncle today so I had the opportunity to speak with her alone. I didn’t ask her about the situation on our way to the jail, but instead used what she said to Alberto during the visit as the foundation for my own questions. She asked me about traveling to Mexico and what Junior would need to fly, or to cross the border in a car. She wouldn’t be able to fly to Mexico with Junior if he didn’t have a passport, but they could cross the border in a vehicle as long as she had a certified copy of his birth certificate. I told her it was in her best interest to apply for Junior’s passport and postpone traveling until she had it, but that apparently is not an option. It’s something she needs to take care of as soon as possible or Junior will have trouble getting one in the future if the USCIS decides to claim he stole someone else’s identity. I asked her why she was leaving all of a sudden and she told me she did something stupid; she went out with another guy. I asked if the relationship could be fixed or was Roberto abusive. She told me Roberto wants her to come back to him, but she doesn’t want to be with him anymore because he’s too jealous. She stated that he wasn’t abusive to her or their son; she just didn’t want to deal with his jealousies anymore. She sheepishly told me that she wove a story for her Abuelita about abuse because she was afraid that Gisela wouldn’t let her come home if she knew the truth. I said something about the fact that Roberto is a Mexican/Chicano male, implying that she should’ve known he would be somewhat jealous. Alberto was the same way when he was Roberto’s age, that’s why I quit working at McDonalds – we were fighting all the time over stupid things.
Dacia is leaving for Mexico in a week. Gisela told me that Roberto already has his plane ticket ready to follow them down. He wants to see where his son will be living and where Dacia came from. Alberto and I are of the opinion that Mexico will probably be good for Dacia. She’s an average teenager, but she needs a wakeup call. I mean she was only 14 when she got pregnant, and I haven’t seen any change in the amount of responsibility she takes for her actions. She reminds me of Alberto’s youngest sister, Aide.
Aide has four children Anita, Marcos, Jimena, and Magdalena. She has an abusive ex-husband who I still have a serious issue with, and only three of the children are his. She went to Mexico when Jimena was 3 years old to escape Marcos and he would still call her regularly with threats until Gisela stopped allowing him to talk to her daughter. The next time I saw Aide was when she came back to Minnesota a year later. She was 4 months pregnant with Magdalena, and for the longest time she wouldn’t tell anyone who the father was. His name is not on the birth certificate. He lives in their pueblito in Mexico, and is apparently a married man. Aide has a history of making bad decisions just like the majority of her family. She had many boyfriends shortly after Magdalena was born until she settled with Ramiro. Magdalena calls Ramiro father. The other children seem to genuinely like Ramiro and he’s had a stabilizing influence on Aide.
Alberto is more level-headed than his siblings, but even he makes bad decisions. I mean look where we are right now. Another example was when he was pulled over in my car, which was then impounded, and arrested back in 2003; I was stranded at work at 3 o’clock in the morning when He finally answered his cellphone. I could hear the police officer yelling at him for answering his cellphone, and Alberto finally convinced the officer to talk to me. I told the officer my name and that I owned the vehicle. The officer told me he was going to take ‘these boys’ to jail and my car had been impounded, so tough luck. I managed to get someone to give me a ride home, and after 5 minutes the officer called my back and asked me where he should drop ‘these boys’ off as he’d decided to release them to a responsible adult. We met up at the gas station closest to my house and they walked back to the house with me. I wasn’t about to ask borrow one of my parent’s cars to give them a ride home, so they walked 15 miles home. The next day I had to have my dad bring me to the impound lot to help me get my car back. I learned just last year that the officer called my dad since his name was also on the title (my parents cosigned my car loan), and tried to get him to say the car was stolen. My brother John convinced him not to do that, and told him to let me get myself out of this mess without telling me about that phone call.
I wonder if it’s something in the blood. How do I make such Ashley doesn’t suffer from the same appalling lack of common sense?
“Common Sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ciao
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