When they get there, though, they find their father-gone for nearly four years-sitting on the sofa with his new girlfriend, Mila. One day, Reyna and her siblings excitedly head over to Abuela Evila’s house to take what they think is a phone call from Papi. When she returns, Mami is manic and reckless and eventually announces that she is moving to the other side of town to live with her sister, Tia Güera. One day, a neighbor arrives with news that Mami has called: after a horrible car accident that killed her boyfriend, Mami is coming home at last. Reyna’s cousin Catalina is drowned in a horrible flood, and Betty is burned terribly when Abuelita Chinta spills boiling water on her face. In Mami’s absence, several tragedies befall their family. Mami soon takes up with a new boyfriend, and announces that she is moving away again, this time to Acapulco. Mami reveals that Papi left her for another woman, and her bitterness seeps into her relationship with her children.

As the days and weeks go by, however, they realize that the woman who has returned is not the same as the woman who left. She takes Reyna and her siblings to live with her at her own mother Abuelita Chinta’s house, and all of the children are delighted to have their mother back. Nearly two years after leaving, Mami returns to Iguala-with her new daughter Betty in tow. Reyna and her siblings endure lice and roundworm infestations, scorpion bites, as well as taunts from Élida and all the neighborhood kids about being “orphans.” When news arrives that Mami is going to have another baby, Reyna and her siblings grow even more despondent, convinced that their parents have forgotten all about them. They sleep squished together on a straw mattress, are forced to eat table scraps, and are neglected by their grandmother even as she dotes on her other grandchild, Élida, whose own mother María Félix left years ago for the US. Reyna, Mago, and Carlos suffer difficult and even abusive treatment at their Abuela Evila’s house. Abuela Evila is not happy about looking after the children, and reminds Mami to send money every week. Mami drops the children off at the home of Abuela Evila-their father’s mother. Reyna and her older siblings Mago and Carlos beg Mami not to leave, but she insists she must leave to join their father, who has already been working in the US for years in order to make money for their family. In 1980, four-year-old Reyna Grande’s mother is preparing to leave Mexico for the United States-“El Otro Lado,” or “The Other Side,” as it is known in their impoverished city of Iguala.

The distance between us reyna