How I found hope in my mother’s collection of gentle giants
Sept. 28, 2021 | By Edysmar Diaz-Cruz | Illustration by Apoorva Thapa
For as long as I can remember, I have watched Mamá polish a smokey gray elephant figurine and tighten a crumpled dollar around its tail. She has found a space for it in every home we lived in. She warned me not to remove the dollar, hoping we’d never need it.
It is among several elephant figurines. Over the years, her collection grew even as our belongings dwindled. When it was time to pack and move from one house to another, my sister and I helped Mamá wrap newspapers around each of her elephants. The dollars wrapped around their tails were soft and fragile, torn from years of casting a cloak of protection over us. They felt sacred.
At first, I believed in the power of the pachyderm wholeheartedly, even as we moved in with family friends after Mamá’s second divorce. Amid a housing crisis in South Florida, we became one of many families to rely on welfare. Mamá struggled to make ends meet. She worked strenuous jobs: harvesting plants under a hot sun in Homestead and scrubbing the marble floors of beach-front condos in Sunny Isles. Her income was a sum of child support, food stamps and meager under-the-table paychecks.
As a little girl, I’d trace the hand-carved wrinkles on the dusty figurines and wondered what kind of magic they held. I felt as though we were in possession of ancient artifacts, anointed by something divine. I imagined that someday the elephants would suddenly exhale life and march together throughout the house, a mini fleet guiding us to wealth.
At 11, I became Mamá’s second-in-command. At the time, she could only afford studio efficiencies. But even the smallest apartments required a hefty move-in deposit, first month’s rent and good credit. Mamá had none of these things. Instead, I helped her sift through cork bulletin boards at the Sedano’s Supermarket on 67th Avenue and translated handwritten ads with phone number cut-outs on the bottom:
One room. Kitchen included. Single woman. No kids. $750 per month.
I’d read them to her, and she told me which number slips to tear off. That was my favorite part; collecting small, rectangular sheets of paper in the palms of my hands. They reminded me of omens tucked inside fortune cookies. In the evenings, I watched Mamá negotiate over the phone, convincing our next potential landlord to allow a single mother and her two daughters to live in a spare room, a repurposed storage shed or a small studio efficiency.
“We have nowhere else to go,” she said in Spanish. “We’d like to move in as soon as possible.”
Within days, we would tour our new living space, though there was not much to see. Most smelled dusty and had cracks in the tiles. Patches of paint curled up on the walls in South Florida’s humidity. But we weren’t picky. As long as our beds fit, we were willing to call it home.
I looked to the elephants for guidance. But they stared ahead lifelessly as they always had.
In middle school, my friends invited me to homes, grand houses with lush, spacious backyards. They showed me their rooms, filled with years of possessions: stuffed animals and toys, an overflowing closet and a writing desk. I began to long for my own things. I decided that if I studied hard enough and earned a college degree, I would be able to buy such luxuries, too.
I tore through my books with a renewed passion. Perhaps in college I’d have a dorm room to call my own, join a sorority and write for the student newspaper. Maybe I could graduate and become the career woman my Mamá always dreamed of. I could bring stability to our family.
In the meantime, I got off the school bus and entered a house that didn’t feel like home. We lived with an old woman who dictated what times my mother was allowed to cook and how much space in the refrigerator we could use. When I tried hanging posters in our room, she’d peek inside and demand I take them down. She kept a watchful eye on my every move, waiting for the opportunity to blame me when things went missing. Most days, I stayed behind closed doors.
With each day, I doubted more whether we’d ever find a place to call home. I grew weary of depending on the compassion of friends and family. My Mamá’s beloved elephants remained in their boxes. They collected dust as my optimism dwindled.
The tension in the house came to a head when I asked our next-door neighbor if he needed help painting his fence. Summer was at its peak; I could see sweat trickle down his bald head and soak his white shirt. I wanted something to do, so I asked to paint the side that faced the old woman’s property. After a mere two brush strokes, our landlady barged outside and shouted in my face. Painting was not allowed either. She urged me to go back inside the house, leaving our neighbor dumbfounded.
Inside, she confronted Mamá while I stood in silence.
“I’d rather live under a bridge than have some puta vieja disrespect my child,” Mamá yelled.
She angrily packed her things and ordered my sister and me to do the same. The next day, we were back where we began, standing in front of bulletin boards, collecting numbers. Our clothes and kitchen appliances along with the box of elephants were stacked in our Mazda minivan.
I wondered when the cycle of moving would ever end. When would we find a home?
I worked hard throughout high school, buoyed by the optimism the figurines instilled in me as a little girl. I slept on floors, air mattresses and even a closet through my college application process, but I had hope. At least, I thought, we had not yet needed the elephant’s dollar.
As I began to receive college acceptances and scholarship offers, Mamá secured her first apartment lease in a long time with the help of a friend who was willing to co-sign.
By the end of my senior year, I committed to the University of Florida and prepared to move to Gainesville. It was something I had thought about for a long time. I helped Mamá pick a new shelf to place her trusted fleet of figurines, and she chose a painting to hang above the desk in my first dorm: a large and triumphant watercolor of an elephant.