Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir

The family goes to Kmart, and Apá (Pedro Sr.) tells the children they can only shop for essentials. He will whistle for them when it is time to go. The children fan out to look at toys, books, records, and other non-essentials that they plan to buy with the money they have earned picking strawberries. Pedro chooses a Green Arrow action figure and worries that Abuelito will think he is strange. He wonders if Mexican boys his age also collect action figures or if they only play with lassos and knives. He suggests to his father that they should get something to make Abuelito feel more at home. He suggests a knife or a lasso, but his father explains that Abuelito was not a fighter in the revolution—he ran a mule train to keep people on both sides fed. Sometimes he gave the federales food—like prunes—that would make it harder for them to fight. Pedro wants to hear more, but it’s time to go. His mother shows him a Spiderman shirt she thinks he will like. Pedro appreciates how hard she tries to understand him, even though she does not get things like this quite right—he has no interest in Spiderman. León buys a tape recorder so that he can record American radio music and listen to it on the trip, as he doesn’t like Mexican music. Pedro decides to record American television shows to keep himself entertained on the drive.

The family plans to take both a motorhome and a truck on the 2,000 mile drive to Jalisco. Sal, the oldest son, will drive the older children in the truck. Pedro will be with the younger children in the motorhome. The older children are comfortable driving on their own because they were born in Mexico and speak fluent Spanish. Hugo, Pedro, Alex, and Adam are American-born and tease their older siblings about having allegedly been born in an adobe barn. They call the older siblings “Barn Babies,” and in return the older children call their younger siblings “Hospital Babies” (36-37). Pedro’s parents work all night to pack and get the vehicles ready. In the morning, they have to redo some of their work because the children have been messing around in the motorhome before the trip, but eventually they get underway. As they depart, Pedro compares the motorhome to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.

The motorhome and truck stay in communication using CB radios that Apá has installed. Pedro watches out the back window of the motorhome, running to tell his father whenever he loses sight of the truck. León rents his tape player to the younger children for $3 a day, and they pass the time listening to tapes of television shows. They fight when one sibling rewinds to listen to the song “Shipoopi” over and over.

Pedro jokes about how difficult it is to navigate through a moving motorhome without getting hurt, comparing their Winnebago to a pinball machine in which the siblings are the pinballs. The boys must cooperate to accomplish tricky tasks like getting something to drink while the motorhome is moving. Pedro is impressed by his mother’s ability to manage tasks like this unaided, saying that years of traveling with the family has made her expert at pouring liquids and providing snacks while they are driving down the road. She has bananas stashed everywhere for snacks, but the boys do not especially want them. When the siblings get bored and start running around, Apá yells at them to stop unbalancing the motorhome while he is trying to drive it. Pedro watches out the window, pretending that it is a television and the billboards are commercials. He wishes he could stop to see the advertised attractions—like a giant artichoke—but Apá refuses to waste the money. Pedro is especially disappointed by Apá and Amá’s reaction to the Casa de Fruta Cup Flipper. The signs for this attraction—which is a man who flips cups of coffee while serving them—are fascinating to Pedro, and he badly wants to see the attraction. But Amá and Apá are disgusted by the whole idea of someone being so careless with breakable cups and refuse to support “this screwball” (57).

Whenever the family is driving to Mexico, they stop in Los Angeles to stay with one or another of the parents’ friends, usually one of the close friends that serve as godparents (padrinos) to one of the children. Pedro hopes they will stay with his own padrinos, because they will likely give him a gift of money. Apá is excited to show off his motorhome, and Pedro realizes that his parents are people just like him and that they, too, “want to look cool in front of their buddies” (59). When they arrive, Pedro is disappointed to find that they are staying with one of his siblings’ godparents. The adults listen to Mexican music and drink while the children get reacquainted. When the younger Martín children learn that their hosts’ children have also been instructed to pack up their old toys to donate in Mexico, they have fun going through the toys and playing with them. The two families’ children play a game of “Kmart.” Pedro puts handwritten price tags on everything and runs a “store” to swap some of their old toys and clothes with one another. When they get bored waiting for the adults to come to bed, Pedro and his brothers bundle up all the donations and their own new belongings and fall asleep.

In the morning, the women make chilaquiles for breakfast using the leftovers from the night before. Disconcerted to see how much has been added to the pile of charity donations, Apá decides that some will have to be tied to the Winnebago’s roof. Apá grows more tense as they get closer to the border. Pedro imagines that the many signs making announcements about the border are warning him that there will be no English and no American television when they cross into Mexico. He goes to the back of the motorhome to watch for the truck his older siblings are in. He worries about the family being separated at the border.