The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child

In these final stories, devastating personal material losses for Francisco emphasize both the family’s perseverance and The Value of Family. The family’s successful effort to break away from the circuit seems to promise stability, future financial security, and opportunity for Francisco to pursue his formal education. While injustices, power imbalances, and the threat—and eventual reality—of deportation continually remind Francisco and the family of their inequality.

In “To Have and to Hold,” Francisco loses two physical possessions that he values deeply: his penny collection and his librito. Each represents memories and ideas. Francisco’s 1910 penny connects him to his family and heritage; Papá’s birthdate and the Mexican Revolution—an event that Papá interprets as a victory against inequality and oppression. The 1865 Indian Head penny represents Francisco’s true friendship with Carl, another friend Francisco loses to the circuit. Despite their socioeconomic differences, Carl treats Francisco as a friend and equal, allowing him to choose any penny from his collection. Francisco chooses the oldest penny, appreciating its difference and its history. Due to these connections, the two pennies are worth much more to Francisco than merely their monetary value: They are also some of the few possessions he can call his own, and he is proud and protective of his personal treasure. When little Rorra, who sees the coins only as currency, takes the pennies, Francisco is devastated: He has lost the physical objects to which he attached meaning. While Francisco no longer has them to “hold,” ultimately he still retains their messages.

Similarly, Francisco’s librito holds Francisco’s hard-won knowledge. Francisco continues writing definitions in his notepad after he leaves sixth grade, for himself, rather than for specific assignments, showing his personal perseverance and his thirst for knowledge. He includes “other things [he] needed to learn for school and things [he] wanted to know by heart” (103). Francisco believes that his book learning, everything he knows and needs to know—to an extent, his future—is contained in the notepad, so much so that he is willing to risk his life in the fire to retrieve it.

Mamá helps Francisco see that in both instances—Rorra taking the pennies, and the fire destroying their home—though he has lost the physical objects, he keeps their significance in his heart and memory. Even more importantly, Mamá helps Francisco understand that despite both tragedies, the family is safe and together, and that The Value of Family transcends the importance of physical objects. Following the fire, she tells Francisco, “We’re safe and we have each other, gracias a Dios” (111). The story’s title is derived from traditional wedding vows, and Mamá shows that the love they have for each other embodies those vows: It lasts throughout life, and through ease and hardship.

The circuit and The Challenges of the Immigrant Experience continue to take a toll on the family in “Moving Still.” The severity of Papá’s back pain keeps him from picking cotton, making him feel emasculated. He cannot fulfill what he sees as his role as head of family: He cannot work, cannot provide for his family, or protect them from la migra. Roberto admits he is tired of field work, and both he and Francisco are tired of moving. Papá’s bad back signals what will happen to each of the boys if they continue that work: Francisco suffers back pain after thinning lettuce rows.

In his search for a year-round job, Roberto endures the humiliation of racial discrimination when the shoe store owner sees him only as an outdoor worker: someone to mow his lawn, rather than clerk in his store. Roberto’s job as a janitor thrills the whole family because it will provide both steady income and stability— freedom from the literally back-breaking circuit. Papá credits Roberto’s education for earning him the job of janitor: Without The Importance of Education and the connection to Mr. Sims, neither Mamá nor Papá could aspire to that position.

The immigration sweeps threaten the family’s precarious stability and engender constant fear, spotlighting The Challenges of the Immigrant Experience at their most extreme. Only Papá has a “green card,” which allows him to live and work in the US (See: Index of Terms). Mamá, Roberto, and Francisco are undocumented, and therefore in danger of being deported if caught. La migra’s sweeps of the migrant camps and fields end up deporting hard workers like the Jimenez family who are eager to earn an honest living. The fact that Francisco is taken into custody by Border Patrol just before reciting his memorized excerpt of the Declaration of Independence is bitterly ironic: His arrest belies the concepts that “all men are created equal” and that all have absolute rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (129). Francisco and his family are not seen by Americans as equal to American citizens. They are not accorded the same rights, although they share common humanity.

Francisco leaves readers with this tense cliffhanger but resolves it in Breaking Through (2001), his second volume of autobiographical stories which picks up where The Circuit ends (See: Background).