A turn in the path
(Page 4 of 4)
"I doubt it," she says of Mario's dreams of college. "Michelle has a scholarship. He won't have that." By the time Michelle finishes school, Mario will be too old to qualify for the kind of programs that assisted her.
Pregnancy may make all the difference, says Haggerty.
If Mario and Michelle can hold off on having children for several years, they may achieve at least a degree for her.
But once children come along, she says, a young family needs more income, and at that point there is generally a great temptation to quit school.
Mario, however, has the undiminished confidence of the young.
As wedding plans escalated there were many shopping trips from their dusty border town across the river to Mexico. Customs guards came to know the young couple and teased Mario, trying to convince him that marriage would mean the end of his carefree life.
"I never listen," he says, with a happy grin. "I just tell them, 'I know what I want. I've always known what I want.' "
Asked what they'll do if Michelle gets pregnant, the young couple both giggle. "I knew you'd ask about that," Mario says with an embarrassed yet pleased smile.
But neither has an answer.
And now all the talk is over, and the big day has finally arrived.
Michelle's college friends drive from school the night before and hang crepe-paper flowers to help transform a local livestock exhibit hall into a site for a wedding reception. On the wedding morning they are jammed into her parents' living room along with an assortment of Michelle's aunts and female cousins, and her two little sisters.
Cellphones squeal, the large-screen TV blares, and conversation slips rapidly back and forth between Spanish and English. Three hairdressers are hard at work teasing and curling dark tresses, while Chris sits in the middle of the room, her hair dripping with dye.
Finally Michelle emerges from her parents' bedroom. The girl whose natural simplicity stole Mario's heart is today a tower of teased hair, heavy makeup, and billowing white dress.
Almost more quickly than seems possible, she and her dad are coming down the aisle together (in silence - no one remembered to hire an organist). Mario - looking like a young Latino Nehru in his formal white jacket - nervously waits by the altar.
The priest delivers a sermon. The couple exchange vows in hesitant, barely audible tones. Communion is offered. Then suddenly it's done.
The guests - adorned in everything from cowboy boots and jeans to formal evening gowns - spill into the reception hall. Many of them helped fund the wedding with cash contributions, and they are ready to have fun.
The dancing begins, the beans and barbecued pork are served, little children run and shout and bob happily amid the dancing crowd.
The couple's destination for their wedding night is a secret known only to Mario.
But there will be no honeymoon. Sunday the newlyweds move into Michelle's parents' house. Monday Mario must be at his job, and Michelle must prepare for exams.
Quickly, their adult lives will settle down on them. And where those lives will lead them remains to be seen.
"Michelle has already had the drive, the gumption, to move beyond where her family has gone," says Haggerty. "You just have to hope that will continue."
