"The Cariboo Café" by Helena Viramontes

"Because we are going home. My son and I."

Out of all the stories I've read, this one is written in possibly the most unique perspective. It shifts between three first-person characters -- Sonya, the owner of the café, and the mother -- and a third-person narrator. Each character tells a part of the story, never chronologically overlapping. What makes this shifting of perspectives interesting, though, is the information that Viramontes leaves out in each perspective. We start with Sonya, and are told about her and her brother walking around the city and ending up in the café. Then, we are told from the perspective of the café owner about a little girl and boy with a woman, whom he presumes to be their mother. There are hints that the kids are Sonya and Macky, such as their age and her protectiveness, but we have no idea who the woman is -- she seems to have appeared from nowhere. This makes it all the more interesting when the café owner finds out that the kids have been reported missing. 

With gaps of information like that one, the story is told without directly being told. We are told about two kids lost in the city, about a café owner's moral dilemma, and about a mother's longing for her son, and we must connect the dots to figure out what is actually happening.

The detail I find most interesting is the mother's conviction that Macky is her son, Geraldo. We know that she is desperate to get her son back, but the question the story doesn't answer is whether or not she is aware that Macky is not her son. My interpretation is that she is aware, but is very delusional in her misery and chooses to ignore that fact. She has a gap in her life that can only be filled by her son, and conveniently, these two children, one of them a boy her son's age, happen to be wandering nearby. The mother is a very interesting character in this way; she is so deeply devoted to her delusions that she fights with the police over a little boy she doesn't actually know. It makes an interesting statement about the lengths to which people will go to heal heartbreak -- pretty damn far. The quote above is one that really hit me, and defines the mother's character well. All she wants is for her and her son to go home. The minor detail that Macky is not her son is irrelevant, because she is so desperate. It's sad and a bit crazy at the same time. 

True to its indirect style, the story leaves the ending open. You get the feeling that the mother has lost, but what will she do next? Will she simply continue looking for a replacement Geraldo? Will she herself get taken away by the police? And what about Sonya and Macky? My question from the start was why they were wandering in the first place -- did their parents forget them? Clearly there was somebody waiting for them, since the news that they were missing went out so quickly, but why were they alone in the first place?