Efrén Divided

Efrén’s mother is a “Soperwoman” by his estimation, a superhero who manages daily miracles in the tiny apartment that make Efrén feel blessed and content. She turns simple ingredients into excellent meals and makes sure Efrén and the twins have clean and pressed clothes each morning for school. Amá works outside the home, too: She “sometimes spent seventy-plus hours a week locked in a factory behind a steaming iron” (8). Amá is devoted to contributing to the family, and in fact, is on a job interview for a supervisor position when ICE initially discovers and deports her.

After this inciting incident, Amá’s actual presence in the novel occurs in brief phone calls and a short meeting with Efrén in Tijuana. On those occasions, she is emotional, desperately missing her children and husband, and eager to get home despite continued risks. She shows traits of care, concern, and worry for her children; appreciation for Efrén and Lalo for making possible a new plan to get home, and nostalgia in recounting her first trip to the US. She is also indirectly characterized as a loving, devoted, and disciplined mother and wife by Efrén, Apá, and even David, who tells Efrén late in the novel that Amá is more of a mother to him than his own. Officials arrest and detain Amá on her way home near the end the novel, and the story ends with her fate undetermined. Amá is a static Mentor to Efrén and his siblings.

Apá was a police lieutenant in Mexico before emigrating to the US. In Mexico, corrupt government officials and local drug cartels wanted him to break the law. Apá and Amá decided to flee Mexico and came to America without the documentation or permission to do so legally. In the US, Apá works construction jobs. His emergency appendectomy in the last year created debt for the family. He works two long jobs to try to raise the money for Amá’s attempt to come home after someone steals the money he initially borrows and sends. Apá sleeps little, must sell his tools, and injures his hand over the course of the rising action, but even with the struggle he feels in trying to get his wife home, and the enormous pain of losing her at the checkpoint, Apá remains strong, kind, diligent, and forward-moving for his children. He reassures Efrén that though they will have no immediate resources to make a new plan for Amá to come home, he promises Efrén, “I swear, I will not give up on your mother” (229-30).

Fellow seventh grader David is Efrén’s best friend since early elementary school. While his mother, an alcoholic, works to remain sober and get a degree, David lives with his grandmother. His father is not part of his life. He is the “only white kid living on this block” (14) in Efrén’s neighborhood, and his style makes him stand out: “bright colors and baggy, oversized clothes” (14) that result in his nickname: Periquito Blanco (white parakeet). David dyes his hair and shows off flashy fake earrings to Efrén on the morning the novel opens. He also has exuberant plans for being elected president in the upcoming school election. He is hurt when Efrén cannot hold in his feelings that the election is a chance to take on serious topics. David is angry and upset when Efrén decides to run for the same position, assuming at first that Efrén wants to take away David’s chance to prove himself to their peers. David relents from his anger when he discovers that Amá was deported, then arrested; he initiates the solution of running for vice president to Efrén’s office of president. Because his opinion of Efrén and his feelings about their friendship change over the novel, David is a dynamic character. He ends the novel as an even stronger Ally to Efrén than he was at the beginning.

Jennifer is known as a teacher’s pet and for making corrections to others’ mistakes, but Efrén discovers that she is also kind and personable. They talk easily together over good books and share secretly that they both have parents with unauthorized statuses. Jennifer encourages Efrén to read The House on Mango Street, her favorite book, which later helps to inspire him to stick with his candidacy for president. Jennifer’s mother is deported in the rising action; initially, Jennifer accompanies her mother, but Jennifer is able to return home as the foster child of a teacher, Ms. Salas, who will help her apply for a private boarding school through the Fair Tomorrow Program. Jennifer planned to run for president but encourages Efrén to do so when she no longer can.