Write Me A Happy Ending

Grease sizzles at the bottom of the large pan and makes a hot bed for the plantain slices. They pop and dance with energy until they sweat and tan. Mercy uses a spatula to flip them and then place them on a plate to rest. Her nine year old son Fernando places a couple skinny tree limbs into the side of the homemade mud oven, turning up the lively rhythm of the fire. Miguel, her other seven year old son comes out of the adobe house with another tray of freshly cut plantains and adds them to the heated floor of the pan. Maria Jose, her five year old daughter, sees me approaching and runs into me, greeting me with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. Her little fingers form around mine. My footsteps shorten to meet with her tip tap tip tap pace. We hop across the massive mud puddle. I tug on her arm, lengthen her leap and then hear the sizzling oil, and feel the breath of the flaming fogón. The littlest of the children, one year old Elsa peeks her head out of the scarred, scratched door: barefoot, her mouth hangs in a cute baby face expression. The dust has collected in her dimples and crusts the ends of her feather brown hair.
“Buenas Tardes, Mercy!” I greet her warmly, “Como esta?”
“Bien,” she states, “y Usted?”
“Bien, gracias.”
Her “bien” response is flat, automatic.
I enjoy the kids surrounding me and crunch on the fried platano chips that she gives me topped with cabbage, onion, and a bit of hot sauce too. I enjoy the scene more than the overly oiled spiced banana chips; the green mountain in the back drop, the long dirt road climbing past the small pueblo life to meet it and in the foreground the single mother and her four children all working together selling food on a wood burning stove in front of the house where their grandfather lives too. It seems romantic, authentic, warming to me. I like the small town life. It contrasts the busy monster cities, mall, and materialistic life I came from in the United States. It is simple, like the red wheel barrel poem we read in high school English class. I take my last bit of fried platano and Mercy kneels beside me at first taking the empty plate into her own hands and then meeting my eyes with her wide brown eyes. “Fíjense que yo me voy mojada a los estados…”
My romantic image is shattered. The foreground is ugly and cannot be balanced by the beauty of the mountains and nature in the background.
“what?! QUE?! What about your four children? What about the old frail grandfather? What about crossing Guatemala, Mexico, and finally into the United States illegally without papers. Something could happen Mercy. Are you sure?”
“Es necessario, Teresa. No hay otra manera. No hay otros negocios ni dinero aquí.”
“What about the kids? Who will care for them and love them like you do? Four children with three different fathers, (can we say machismo?!).”
“I am doing it for them. I will send back money.”
“You can’t open up a comedor here in town? You can’t borrow money to make a negocio of your own?”
“No, Teresa. Me voy en ocho días. No hay otra manera. Mi hermana y mis vecinos ya fueron. Mandan cheques.”
“Gracias por los platanos.”

I want to keep her life the way I admire it, tranquilo and rich in cultura, honduran cooking over a fogón. Maybe she doesn’t understand what the United States is really like. Or maybe I cannot understand what it is like to be a desperate single Honduran woman with four children desperately needing shoes. “Mommy, I need a cuaderno for school. Mommy, I need a new shirt,” and not being able to give. Selling fried plantains just isn’t enough.
But send money from the United States to buy shoes notebooks, and new shirts isn’t enough either. Abandoned by father and then by mother. My story is a sad one. I am going to break every grammar writer’s rule and leave it unfinished. I hope it will have its own happy ending someday.