It’s the fall of 1978, and Lilia Flores trembles as she walks home from her boyfriend’s car. She skipped school this afternoon—like she has been doing sporadically for the past two months—to overlook the city with him from the Hollywood sign.

Her boyfriend, Carlos Paz, drops her off just a few blocks away so that she can safely enter her house. She fears her family will know that she has done something that she isn’t supposed to. “You were not in school. I looked for you. Where were you?” yells her dad, Luis Flores. The day before, he received a phone call from her junior high saying that she had been absent for a week.

“I was in school,” she lies, frightened.

“No you weren’t, because I waited there. They called your name over the loudspeaker, but I didn’t see you,” he yells. He grabs her by the arm and drags her to their station wagon parked outside in the side alley. “I didn’t go to school,” she says as tears stain her cheeks. If only he could understand that she loathes school because she can’t read well and her older sister grows impatient whenever Lilia asks for help. By contrast, she doesn’t feel dumb around Carlos. She feels loved—safe.

“Por mentirosa (for lying),” he strikes her face, and blood drips out of her nose. Her father is angry and knows she skipped school to be with Carlos. Two weeks later she goes to clear her locker before being sent away to stay with an aunt in San Jose.

This is my mother’s story. When she was four-years-old, she and her five siblings moved from Guadalajara, Mexico, to Los Angeles. In our culture, Mexican families don’t traditionally discuss sex, because it is taboo. Rooted in this non-discussion is how the hybrid of Nahua and Spanish culture characterize Mexico.

***

Alberta Flores waits at the carousel at the San Jose airport to see Lilia; she is immaculately dressed in pink polyester slacks and a turtleneck with her gold-hued brown curls combed away from her face.

“Hi Mom,” Lilia says reaching out to hug her mother, but Alberta looks at her coldly and lights a cigarette.

“You’re not going home,” says Alberta.

“Why?” asks Lilia. She thought that was why her mother came to meet her.

“Because I know what you did—your aunt told me. I know that you’re not a virgin anymore.” She looks at her daughter like she’s insignificant. “What do you plan to do?”

“I’m thirteen, what do you want me to do? I don’t know what to do,” Lilia pleads.

“I want you to call [Carlos] so he can come for you, para que se casan (so you two can get married),” she instructs.

Alberta feels like a zombie, and the food at work doesn’t taste the same. Growing up on a hacienda in Zapotitan, she didn’t know how to talk to her daughter about sex, because she did not know about sex until her wedding night. Both she and her husband grew up in small pueblos in the state of Jalisco and never talked with their family. They assumed that Lilia and her siblings should know better since they were going to school, but Lilia was just as naïve as her parents were at her age. Alberta sends Lilia to San Jose to separate her from Carlos, but she is hurt and angry because Lilia is only a child—and she taught her respect.

Still in San Jose, Lilia calls Carlos. “My mom wants us to get married,” Lilia says, “Can you pick me up?”

“Yes, I’ll come for you,” he responds. For three months, Lilia prays to God at night on the living room sofa bed. She weeps because she is confused and has no one to confide in. On the fourth of July, Carlos asked her to be his girlfriend. Lilia reflects on their days together when they talked about their future: he wanted to be a doctor. Lilia isn’t sure what she wants to be—maybe a flight attendant from the British Airways commercials.

But their dream ends and all her fears return. Carlos never comes for her. He is sixteen and too young to have anything to offer her.

After three months in San Jose, Lilia returns to L.A. Inside a 7-Eleven, Lilia recognizes Carlos’ light brown hair. He tries to talk to her between the isles but she’s too nervous that her little brother will tell on her, so she doesn’t take the chance.

Two years pass, and Lilia is about to turn fifteen. She sits in the living room watching a telenovela with her mother and asks, “Mamá, am I going to have a quinceañera?” “You think you’re worth it? You think you deserve one?” taunts Alberta.

Alberta doesn’t let Lilia forget what she did, because Lilia disgraced herself and her family; Lilia lost her innocence. Our culture’s sexual ideals revert back to two historical female figures: La Malinche and La Virgen de Guadalupe. The Virgen de Guadalupe, the virgin mother of Christ who exemplifies power and purity. Guadalupe first appeared to the Indian Juan Diego in 1531. The Catholic Church compared her to the Nahua goddess Tonatzin, in order to convert the indigenous Mexican people. Guadalupe is the graceful Latin-American symbol who unified the conquered Nahua and the Spanish. Malinche is the polar opposite of Guadalupe, seen as a traitor and a whore.

La Malinche is the Nahua princess who was sold into slavery and became Hernán Cortés’ translator, counselor and mistress. In 1519 she aided in furthering the Spanish conquest over the Aztecs, but she quelled unnecessary bloodshed. She also bore the first Mestizo (mixed) child.

***

The virgin and the whore, Guadalupe and Malinche, subconsciously represent the passive gender role imposed on women. This subconscious view thrives within families like the Flores’. Lilia is a traitor in Alberta’s eyes; she shamed herself and her family because she had sex.

Lilia can do nothing to redeem herself. She kneels at her bed frustrated and alone, her tears soaking into the lined paper of her homework.

Eventually, she finds solace in Oscar Gutierrez, the eldest son of her parents’ friends from Tamazula. Looking at his black hair and ojos de café, Lilia realizes she is drawn to him. She hadn’t noticed him before, because Oscar lives with her family and works with her father in a frozen pizza factory. Aware of his mutual feelings for Lilia, Oscar moves out of the Flores’ and in with his Tia (aunt) Maria. He then asks Luis for permission to date his daughter.

It’s nine o’clock p.m. in the summer of 1980, and Oscar picks Lilia up from her job at Vans tennis shoes. They sit in the front yard so Lilia’s parents can see that she is home, and they talk until ten that night. He is serious and not very affectionate, but he listens to her every word. Alberta hears them talking outside and locks the front door. Lilia enters from the side of the house and says, “I’m home, ya me meti,” as she kisses her mother.

“Ya te dieron bessos aya fuera. ¿Porque quieres un beso mio (You already got your kisses out there, why do you want one of my kisses)?” taunts Alberta. Saying nothing, Lilia goes to wash her face and overhears her dad come into the living room.

“Did Lilia come in?” asks Luis.

“I don’t know. She’s probably still out there. Maybe she wants to sleep out there,” retorts Alberta.

***

Oscar’s Tia Maria pours coke into a glass of rum, and the smell of carne asada wafts in the air. It’s early autumn and Lilia is a few weeks into her 9th grade year. The days are growing shorter, but there is still just enough warmth and light out that her summer spent with her boyfriend looks like it will linger. Lilia scheduled this Sunday off work to spend the day with Oscar even though her mother didn’t approve. She leaves the barbeque early and arrives home just after six p.m. “Where were you?” questions her dad. Lilia feels chills.

“At work,” she responds.

“Don’t lie to me. I know that you weren’t. Get in the house,” he demands. Her older brother Jorge had told their dad that she didn’t go to work that day. Lilia walks the opposite direction.

“No, you’re not going to hit me like the last time.” She’s afraid, but she’s tired of the anguish. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not a little girl anymore.

“Papá, dejeme ir (“Dad, just let me go),” she says.

Luis pauses, frozen by sadness, and Alberta walks into the garage and says, “It’s all your fault. I told you this would happen—he’s older and you let her date him.” Lilia runs away, not wanting to deal with her mother anymore because nothing at home will change. She walks to K-Mart where she calls Oscar on a payphone. Lilia didn’t want to leave her home, but she had had enough. Her parents didn’t offer her any alternative.

***

After that night, my mom moved in with Oscar, now my dad. My mom made money-cleaning offices and never returned to school. Three years after they wed, she had my brother, and when she was twenty-one, she had me. My mom raised us with the tenderness that her parents were unable to provide to her and her siblings. Although she wasn’t entirely open about discussing sex until we were older, she never judged us. My dad carried on the tradition of silence, but my mother didn’t impose that shame on us. It was a rough and new beginning after she and my dad separated when I was three. A couple of years later, she reconnected with Carlos, to whom she is married to today.