Representing What Can’t Be Seen By The Angle: A Close Reading

This weekend my mother, daughter, and I visited the jewelry store Alex and Ani. As one could imagine, there were many cases filled with an assortment of jewelry in which I had the pleasure of viewing from every angle. My four year old, however, wasn’t so happy observing the collection from a very limited angle. (Down low and through the glass. Lol!) She responded to this by stating rather loudly, “Mommy pick me up. I can’t see!” My point? Often times when a child is too small to see over a counter, one of two things happens: that child either gets a boost from someone, or something. As illustrated in The Glass Castle, a three-year-old Jeannette must improvise to get the water into the pot to boil the hot dogs. (She uses a chair.)

In The Distance Between Us, there’s no difference. Although many examples are more internal than external, or less physical, the children get the boost they need to see from a different angle from somewhere. A four year old Grande improvises when her view of things are just below the glassless window. Her seeing is represented through another sense. Let’s take a look! The narrator says, “…we could hear everything that went on from that alley… Mago and Carlos got up to look, and they giggled about what they saw, [but they never picked me up so that I could see for myself.]” Because she is too small to see for herself, the narrator has to rely on something else to see. Her hearing connects her to what’s going on outside those walls. Our picture of what’s happening is being illustrated solely by sound. “We heard the drunken men coming from the cantina down the road. They yelled obscenities… Sometimes we could hear them urinating on the rock fence that surrounded Abuela Evila’s property while singing borracho songs (15).” In this scene, her ears are her eyes. Readers can also see that her perception of things remain very low on the ladder as well. She says, “I hated that song those drunks liked to sing. Life isn’t worth anything?” She doesn’t understand the meaning.

Another representation of things unseen to the children manifest in the form of memory, or reflection. The narrator says “At first I hadn’t really known where to find Papi… Mago stopped outside of a house to listen to ‘Escuché las Golondrinas,’ which was playing on the radio… [and said] Papi loved that song.’ That is how I learned I could find him in the voice of Vincente Fernández (32).” Reyna has never met her father at this point of the story, but discovers a way to be near him though sound. Here, we get another boost that helps the siblings see, be near, feel the presences of, etc., their parents when they wouldn’t have otherwise. This happens again with sensory details when Mago says “That’s how Papi smelled…” and then we see Reyna coveting spicy smells like cinnamon and Old Spice. Here, her angle of perception is broadened a bit more too, because she can put a smell to a face. Also, Reyna can be near her mother through “the smell of the apple scented shampoo,” or Avon perfume when the calls are less frequent (33).

Since the children, and many of the adults for that matter, have never been to “the other side,” I realize angle is formed through the eyes of others too. Page 45. “He said he wanted to know more about the place where our parents lived,” the narrator says of her brother Carlos, and next thing we see is an entire illustration of El Otro Lado. It’s a beautiful place, paved with concrete, no dirt roads, no mosquitos sucking blood, no trash on the streets, and most of all green dollar bills for trees. As a result of this, the kids then fantasize. They create a world centered on the characteristics Tía María provides them. To reiterate, their angle is established through the eyes of someone else. They now have some sort of visual of where their parents are, and how they live, in comparison to Mexico. At this point, they build their views from there. Grande represents what can't be seen by the children, through sensory details, and the building of worlds through other character's eyes.