Delia's Heart

Prologue (Page 3)

Will they Finally see me for myself and not just "another one of them"? What must I give up to win their full acceptance? Can't I hold on to what I loved and still love about my people, my homeland, my food, my music, and my heritage and yet still be part of this wonderful place? Except for the Native Americans, wasn't that what everyone else who came here had and kept? Italians, Germans, French, and others hold on to their sayings, their foods, and their ancestral memories. Why isn't it the same for us?
Nearly a year and half ago, I stood by the door of the bus in Mexico City and said good-bye to Ignacio Davila, the young man I loved and thought I had lost forever to the desert when he and I fled back to Mexico. He was fleeing because he and his friends had taken revenge on my cousin Sophia's boyfriend, Bradley Whitfield, who had forced himself on me. During the violent conforntation, Bradley was thrown through a window, and the broken glass cut an artery. He was with another girl he was seducing, Jana Lawler, but she did not call for medical help quickly enough, so he died. Ignacio's friends were found, quickly sentenced in a plea agreement, and sent to prison, but through a friend, Ignacio's father hired a coyote to lead us through the desert back to the safety of Mexico.
A little more than halfway across, bandits attacked us when we stopped to sleep in a cave. Ignacio fought them so I could escape. I thought he had been killed but later discovered he had faked his own death in the desert. Only I, his family, and a fee of their very close friends knew he was alive and well, working out a new identity for himself. That day we parted in Mexico City, we pledge to each other that we could wait for each other, no matter how long it took for him to return.

(Continued soon)