Where We Come From

Set in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, the novel follows three intertwined lives over a single summer: Nina, a retired schoolteacher in her late sixties who cares for her elderly mother; Orlando, known as Orly, her twelve-year-old godson from Houston, grieving the sudden death of his mother; and Daniel, a thirteen-year-old boy from Mexico hiding in a small house behind Nina's property.

Nina, whose real name is Hortencia but who adopted the nickname her godson coined as a toddler when he could not pronounce madrina (godmother), lives in a baby blue house with her ninety-four-year-old mother, Mamá Meche. She retired early from decades of teaching to become her mother's full-time caregiver after Mamá Meche fell in the kitchen. Her only regular contact is Rumalda, a housekeeper who crosses the bridge from Matamoros, Mexico, every Friday.

Two months before Orly arrives, Rumalda asks Nina if her daughter and granddaughter can stay temporarily in the empty pink house behind Nina's property before being driven north. Nina reluctantly agrees. After the two are picked up, the driver presses a fifty-dollar bill into Nina's palm, saying there will be more people who need favors. When Nina tries to refuse further involvement, she is threatened: The smugglers now know where she and her mother live. The driver is arrested, and two men take over: El Kobe, an enforcer who carries an aluminum bat, and his volatile partner, Rigo. They deliver groups of undocumented immigrants to the pink house, paying Nina fifty dollars per person and expecting her to prepare meals and leave them outside the padlocked door.

When Nina's nephew Eduardo calls asking if his son Orly can spend three weeks with her, she eagerly agrees but cannot extricate herself. El Kobe refuses to leave, warning that his bosses will not tolerate a change of plans. The loads grow to over twenty people. Nina witnesses crossers sitting half-dressed against the walls, their clothing confiscated, while a boy in a blue cap sits alone near the air conditioner.

Nina's brother Beto discovers the operation when he watches from his car one night as people are loaded into vehicles in the driveway. He confronts Nina, but that same evening she sees El Kobe and Rigo's mug shots on the news: They have been arrested at a motel. Two nights later, the boy in the blue cap appears at Nina's back door. Without a word, she feeds him and takes him to the pink house. His name is Daniel.

The narrative shifts to Orly. His mother died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on the day she was supposed to move out for the separation she had initiated. His father sends him to Brownsville while traveling with his girlfriend, Kayla, a former intern at his ad agency. On the drive south, the novel briefly follows Odilia Hernández, a Guatemalan grandmother who dies of dehydration after her coyote, a paid smuggling guide, abandons her in the ranchland near the highway.

Orly arrives to find Nina's world of strict rules and quiet days. One evening, Nina shows him the family photo album, narrating generations of border history. At night he runs his fingers over the paneled wall, missing his mother. Then one night he finds a boy at the kitchen sink washing dishes. Nina rushes in and steers Orly away, later explaining the boy is Daniel, from Veracruz, staying in the pink house until he can rejoin his father. She asks Orly to keep it a secret.

Orly grows resentful of the restrictions and lies. One day while Nina is out, he boards buses to downtown Brownsville and walks across the international bridge into Matamoros, where he encounters trucks of heavily armed federal police and flees back to the bridge. U.S. Customs detains him for lacking proof of citizenship. After Nina retrieves him, Orly tells her he is tired of everybody lying to him. Nina confesses that violent men brought Daniel and others to the pink house, that Daniel fled the motel raid and returned to her door, and that she has been unable to reach his father.

The novel flashes back to Nina's youth and her hidden relationship with Jorge, a boyfriend whose family lived in Matamoros. Her controlling older brothers policed them constantly. After Jorge joined the navy, Nina crossed the bridge to his uncle's house during his visits and became pregnant. Terrified, she miscarried in a seamstress's shop in Matamoros, sitting alone in the bathroom. She and Jorge drifted apart, and she poured her grief into caring for her infant nephew Eduardo.

Back in the present, Mamá Meche falls and breaks her hip. Nina leaves for the hospital, trusting Orly to stay home. Beto arrives and subtly asks Orly if he has seen any "illegal ones" around the neighborhood, then wanders the backyard inspecting the pink house windows. After Beto leaves, Daniel crawls out through a trapdoor in the pink house closet, a hole cut by El Kobe and Rigo as an escape route, and knocks on the back door. Orly speaks to him through the latched screen door.

Over the following days, Orly and Daniel bond over Minecraft and Google searches for Daniel's hometown of Coatzacoalcos, in the state of Veracruz. Daniel's backstory emerges: His father left for Chicago when Daniel was seven, promising to send for him, but his parents fought, and his mother refused to let Daniel go. At Christmas one year, his father secretly gave him a prepaid phone, calling him by the family nickname Chivito (little goat). When violence in Veracruz worsened, his father arranged for Daniel to travel north. After crossing the border, Daniel was held at a motel where smugglers demanded more money. When a police raid erupted, he fled into the night and walked two nights back to Nina's house.

Nina allows Daniel to eat with them and works through his notebook of phone numbers each evening, searching for his father. One afternoon, the boys sneak out for raspas, flavored shaved ice, by following the canal. Later, Beto breaks the padlock on the pink house and finds children's clothing and small worn shoes but no child; Daniel has escaped through the trapdoor. Beto holds one of the shoes against his work boot and imagines his own twin boys wearing them, but his anger returns. He gives Nina an ultimatum: Whatever she has going on must be gone before their mother comes home.

Nina then confesses her deepest secret to Orly. She wanted Daniel to stay permanently, imagining him enrolled in school, becoming her family. To keep him, she sabotaged the phone calls to his father, deliberately not dialing all the digits. She finds Daniel by the back gate, preparing to leave for good, and kneels before him with a tenderness she had not allowed herself.

That night, Nina sits with Daniel's notebook, Orly verifying each digit, and dials until a man answers. She holds the phone to her chest, weeping, and extends it to Daniel. The man on the line is his father, Daniel Mendoza Gutiérrez, now in Chicago. Daniel hears his father's voice: "¿Chivito, eres tú?" His father arranges transport. Nina buys Daniel a prepaid phone and emergency supplies with El Kobe's money. Orly gives Daniel his backpack. When the driver arrives, Daniel hugs Orly with a full embrace. Nina makes the sign of the cross as the car pulls away.

Nina takes Orly to visit Mamá Meche at the rehab center. When his great-grandmother dozes off, Orly traces the veins on her hand, reflecting that all of his family came from these hands, but where they came from is only where his story begins. That night, Nina hears a thump at the back door. It is a stray cat. She sets out milk, then opens the family photo album to a blank page and seals inside the phone number a driver gave her. She still has plenty of pages to fill.