ABSTRACT
I'm forty-six years old. I came because we were very poor, and there were no opportunities at home. My mama and I arrived here with empty hands. My papa had died much earlier. My mother is very strong and independent; I get my energy from her. I started working very young, en la casa pues hada mandados, doing chores at home. Then I started going with my mama to the other side to work as domestics in the homes of the gente rica, the rich people in Brownsville. We earned eight dollars a week, which was a good salary; the dollar was at 12.5 pesos them. We lived hidden in the houses where we were working. It was fine except that my mother was working in a different house, and I missed her. I was very young and I had no experience with children, but they asked me to care for six children, and the mas chiquito, the youngest one, was only a month old. I became very attached to those children during the three years that I was there, and I was sad to leave them. Then I changed to another house, and then another, until finally I came back to this side looking for work in Matamoros.
