To Kill a Mockingbird

I sat in front of my computer, trying to finish my work.  I could hear Norteño music playing next door.   It was getting dark.  The brown men had been tearing down Boo Radley's shitbox house by hand.  For three days.  The scary house.  The one that rats ran out of as I run past on my way to school.  These men had been busy depriving Americans of a job they had been clamoring for.  Tearing down walls, beams, asbestos dust everywhere.  No machines.  Hands.  What a-holes.  So many Americans would have done that in a second!  In three times the time, for three times the money and half the house would still be standing.  I had a beer.  I considered going over there and offering them one.   Then I thought of walking up to a relative construction sight with beer in my hand and thought better of it.  I liked listening to the Norteño music, drifting in the warm winter dusk, accompanied by the sing song lilt of Mexico City Spanish. 

I had a party for my milestone, get a walker birthday.  It was fun.  Really fun.  So many people I loved crammed into one kitchen I could barely get around fast enough to speak to all of them.  Cristian's family came.  He tried to cross again.  And he got caught.  Six thousand dollars, down the drain.  They played catch and release on his dad, who returned to central Mexico.  They kept Cristian.  He is in a federal prison, for six to twelve months.  Even though he has never done anything.  All I can think of is when is he out, when he will try to cross again to see his family and his new child.

And open the Christmas presents that have been waiting for him since 2011. 

Malasuerte en Georgia

"¿Cómo estás?" I asked kinder Wendy.  "Bien, because I skipped bath last night".
"¿Cómo estás?" I asked kinder Kendrick.  "Mal, because my dad wouldn't let me wear my same pants again today".

"He plans to come back in two weeks" Cristian's family informed me.  We took them out to dinner, trying to regroup, console them, somehow let them know that we were in this with them, as much as we can be.   My brother in-law picked them up; their luck is so bad that we don't want to ask them to drive anywhere.  Only the women are left of this family, except for the youngest child, the U.S. citizen.  The men are in Mexico, one voluntarily, the other, not.  The women are paying and working.  His mother.   His sister in a wheel chair, the girlfriend, pregnant with his child.  The little sister.  Working to pay coyotes, polleros, whatever you want to call the pendejos who charge a fortune to run them across the Río Grande and put them in an eighteen wheeler to a large city in the southwest and drop them, left to their own devices in navigating the many checkpoints between there and home.  And home is here. 

It was early.  Really early for a Saturday.  I was sitting in a a super seventies style roller skating rink, watching my lovely niece suit up for her roller derby practice.  I made her tell me the directions from her phone, mainly because I rarely drive and because I have no earthly idea where the fuck Lilburn is in regard to the outer reaches of the suburbs outside of the city.   We made it.  There were some parents there.  Some like me, who parked it in an orange, Formica booth and pulled out a book and their phone and others, that socialized.  Near me, unfortunately. 

"She is falling even worse than last week. I tell you, I'm done.  All she does is complain".
"It takes her twenty minutes to suit up!  I tell her, 'you're pissing your practice time away' but she still takes forever".
A child came up.  "Go away," her dad told her, "I'm socializing with my friends. You socialize with yours".
"My elbow pads are too loose.  Will you help me?"
"There is a lady that will help you with that.  Her, over there. You're too skinny.  You need to put some meat on your bones".  The child rolled away.
"My shoes hurt.  My feet hurt.  They're not tough, all they do is whine!" another mom exclaimed.
 
They tried to talk to me a couple of times during the two and half hours that I was there.  They didn't get it that I wasn't insecure or worried about not knowing anyone there.  I didn't want to know anyone there. I watched Emma giggle and laugh with her friends.  And skate on one foot like a swan.  And then I stared at my phone.  Or my book. 

I laid in the claw foot tub in my new house, staring up at the American Horror Story-style ceiling lighting.  I can lay down all the way in that tub and the water rises up almost to my chin.  I pretend I am somewhere else, in some other time.  I do that in my princess house.  Our house.

"We are saving his Christmas presents," his sister told me.  "we aren't having Christmas until he comes home".  The mood was actually jovial.  I was relieved.  I watched my brother in-law load four illegal immigrants and a little U.S. citizen into his car.  He was laughing and joking, somehow communicating though he doesn't speak a word of Spanish.  The illegal immigrant wagon pulled away with folks sitting on each others' laps. I had a renewed admiration and appreciation for the strangely nonplussed and helpful person that my brother in-law is.

The moon was hanging really low.  It was lit from below, a crescent, yet the top almost looked like an eclipse.  I hoped for them.  I hoped really hard. 

Which Day?

"Cristian is going to be deported on Thursday" the text message read.  I started emailing.  I had been reluctant to start petitions, feeling jaded by the whole activist array of weapons:  Marches.  Phone calls to politicians.  Online petitions.  The only thing that ever seemed to work was legal action and we had tried that.  I got the petition started and spoke to his family on the phone.  I found myself feeling excited.  Would it work?

I kept checking the online petition between every class.  In less that twenty-four hours, he had over two hundred signatures, many with comments.  "Unbelievably cruel" one read.  "We need more people like Cristian in the United States" another wrote.

As I finished helping get the kids out of the school, I saw a father waiting for me with a little boy that had gotten in trouble in my class the other day.  I like this kid.  He's new to our school.  He gets squirrely now and then and needs a little tune up from his parents, but I still like him.   I had sent a note home once before, but this was the first time I had met either of them in person.  His father listened carefully as I explained what happened and how I knew that Andy could do better.  I spoke directly to the child and told him I could help him do better, he just needed to let me know how.  Different seat?  Different table partners?  The father spoke very little, but had an stressed, almost hyper look in his eyes.  I could tell he was concerned.

"Who was Rosa Parks?" our guest speaker asked the kids.  She had been at the March on Washington and was somehow teaching a class of around four hundred kids and about one hundred adults without batting an eye.  Or having to tell them to be quiet.
"She stood up" the first kid answered.
"That's right.." she said.
'So that we could sit down'  I thought.
"I wouldn't want to be on that bus," a kindergartner added,  "I would want to be with Randy" he continued, referring to the only African-American student in his class. 

I returned to my classroom, anxious to check on Cristian's petition again.  As I walked down the hall, I saw the father I had just spoken to, inches from his son's face.  His voice was raised, you could hear it above the roar of kids leaving the school.  I saw his hand rising up to the side of Andy's head.  'NO MORE CALLS TO PARENTS' flashed through my mind, as I averted my eyes.

I walked home.  I heard the chime of a new text message and checked my phone.  "No need for a press conference," it read, "Cristian just called his mother from Mexico.  He was deported this afternoon"

"How did it go when you got home?" I asked Andy, "Your dad looked mad".
"Yeah, he pulled my hair all the way home.  That was the punishment".
"How long is the drive?"
"About twenty minutes.  I live at 8750 Concord Drive.  If you go to Google Earth, you can see a picture of our house.  My mom's blue car is outside".

"We shall over come....we shall over come, ONE day...." the kids sang in our morning meeting, lead by the fabulous Ms. Warner.  I was hung over and I bet it showed.  I could feel the lump in my throat rising the more the kids sang.  I pictured the little face of Cristian's sister, nearly pressed to the windshield, as they followed me in their beat up compact car to the lawyer a month ago.  Five hundred signatures, forty-eight hours later.  They didn't know what had happened, that it was over.  I thought of Andy's overly obedient behavior in class after his talking to by his father.  

"Deep in my heart,  I do believe......we shall overcome, one day".

Girls at Parties

I heard James Earl Jones, walking and talking in my house.  I was in bed on a Saturday morning, in a no work, too much beer slumber.  He was telling Alec how to make the phone work.  It turned out to be a guy from the phone company.   A really helpful guy, who was talking to Al like he was his son and determined to educate him on the ins and outs of landlines. 

Elizabeth pulled the corner of her shirt off of her shoulder.  So did Erin.  "I'm a girl at a party" Elizabeth stated, while waiting in line for their teachers to pick them up from Spanish class.  "So am I" a little first grade boy added, pulling his shirt over to bare his shoulder.  A different effect, but apparently they were all fancy party people.

The lights were flashing in front of my eyes again.  I knew that soon I would not be able to see.  I closed the blinds in my classroom, turning away from the light.  I took an aspirin and sat down, trying to take deep breathes, make it not happen.  The blood drinking class came in.  The assholes.  In minutes, I couldn't see at all.  I taught anyway, with one eye open.  This had happened while we were together before.  Actually, it has been happening a lot lately.  I plead on their mercy a couple of times, asking if anyone knew what an optical migraine was.  Some knew.  But they have little mercy, this group. 

I passed one of their teachers in the hall.
"God, I was seeing stars this morning while I was teaching your kids" I told her, "I keep getting migraines when they come in".   

"I have a rash that starts on my neck and extends down my back" she responded.
"It goes away on the weekends and returns on Monday mornings.  Melissa has been losing hair." she continued, referring to her co-teacher.

We have a three day weekend.  All rashes, migraines and hair loss should be on hold.

Miles To Go

The boxes surrounded me.  We were leaving the long, skinny house.  It made me sad.  I have always moved a lot, but this was ridiculous.

They pulled up outside of my house.  I wanted to give them a ride, I was willing, because the minute they get pulled over they get deported.  A family friend brought them over.  One with papers.  I wanted to see the lawyer; he helped Alejandro get free.  I was determined that Cristian needed representation, that things needed to be explored.  I was thrilled when his mom and sister pulled up. I thought I might have to go alone.  I'm glad that they said fuck that, we want answers and were willing to sit down with this guy.

I was getting excited about the new house.  The papers were scanned.  Things were in boxes.  It was over, right?  Just let us go over there.

I watched them in my rear view mirror.  I could see his sister's face, small and short, in the passenger's seat, as if she was pressed up against the windshield.  She is in a wheel chair.  Spina bifida.  It's how she rides. 

"Hey, tell me if he has a deportation order in his file?" the lawyer asked the ICE agent.  He hung up the phone.

"Cristian accepted involuntary deportation the last time.  He will be transferred to downtown ICE tomorrow.  It's a holding tank, then he will be sent to Stewart.  There is zero percent chance he will get out of this".

"Exactly, how much chance?" José, the family friend, asked in accented English.

"Zero" the lawyer responded.  "I am going to beg for him tomorrow, tell them he has been in the United States since he was a little kid and does not know Mexico.  That he graduated from an American high school.  That he has never done anything wrong, that his record is clean.   I am going to plead for mercy, but ICE isn't known for mercy....".

Giselle looked at him from her wheelchair, face piercings and all.  "Tengo una pregunta..." she began.

"How can I get myself legal?"

"You don't have papers either?"  the lawyer asked.  She and her mother both shook their heads. 

"Someone would have to marry me, right?"  she asked.

"Yes" he responded, "it's complicated".

We walked out.  They were stone faced.  We pushed the button on the elevator.  And then they crumpled and cried. 

I drove home.  And Alec and I signed our lives away on the papers.  "Does it feel funny?" one of the realtors or lawyers asked us.  "No.  It just hasn't sunk in.  It's like another lease". 

My princess house.  It is like a little castle, so pretty, so perfect.  So removed from every sense of reality.

And Cristian, sitting in jail, waiting to get deported again.  "He shouldn't come back" the lawyer told us, "es grandote.  The could put him in the federal pen for five years if he gets caught again".  

I drove through town.  Outside of the pizza place, a white guy held a scary looking ladder.  A brown man stood on top, fixing some facet of the roof.

I went to work.  The holidays were over.  We had a workday and I was determined to get things done, all the things that had been neglected during the house-buy situation.  I heard some noises outside and finally opened the shades on my classroom windows.  A white man stood outside, wearing a helmet, a huge winter coat and work gloves.  It had gotten pretty chilly.  Actually, downright fucking freezing.  Two Mexican guys stood out there, wearing pull over sweatshirts, hoods up, and no gloves.  One had a chainsaw.  The other had a rope.  They hacked and pulled the base of the old oak tree down, while everyone in good gear stood with arms crossed, watching.  

And I screamed and raged and swore out the window and nothing changed at all.

Nothing.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

"I......want Charles in charge of me.  Ieeeeeeeeeee, want Charles in charge of me....." the young, Kroger employee sang over and over while I checked myself out.  I laughed.  Was that the song from that awful, Scott Baio TV show, post Happy Days?  Way post Happy Days, when Chachi had to acknowledge that it was the '80s?  I thought it was some weird joke at first, until I could still hear him singing it as I walked out of the front door.

"Ieeeeeeeeeeeeeee, want Charles in charge of me............".

I was driving south, way south, toward the Stewart Detention Center.  The dead grass looked kind of golden.  I woke up.  I knew why I was dreaming about this for the second night in a row.  Alejandro has been free almost ten months, but Cristian is not.  And he's headed to Stewart on Monday.  Sundays at Stewart.  Again.  Do the people still cry when the let the guys come out and sit on the other side of the glass and pick up the phone?  Cry like I did, to see an innocent person locked in jail for not being able to produce a driver's license?  Do the kids still smear the glass with their hands when they see their fathers?  Do people still sit out in the car for hours, afraid to come inside, unable to come inside because they don't have the documents to visit, but still willing to make the drive, still willing to at least be as close as they can, even if that means sitting in the parking lot, without laying an eye on the person they came to see?

I remembered the Christmas that Walter Garcia and I spent, driving my shitbox of a car around, holiday songs on the radio, with a dead dog in the back, looking for the Humane Society.  The Cremation Society.  Our roommate was going to kill us.  But it wasn't our fault.

"Do you know we haven't gotten paid yet?" Miranda asked, as she dropped her class off for Spanish on the last day before the break.  Huh?   Our checks always go through, at like five in the morning.  It was afternoon.  Hijole, what the fuck?

"I don't care when the money clears my account.  Can you just give me the pay stub, even though I haven't gotten the money?" I asked the accountant impatiently.  We are supposed to close on our, well, HOUSE in a little more than a week.  The lender wanted that check stub to finalize our loan.  Our mortgage.  On our first house.  Why was my job fucking this up?

I remember the hissing of cats in our kitchen, followed by the distinct sounds of cats fighting.  Alec and I sprang out of bed.  It was Christmas, ten years ago.  We didn't own cats, but were pretty partial to the Orange Cat, a big stray that roamed the apartment building we lived in.  He would jog with me like a dog and run to me when I called him from all the way across the parking lot.  The one that we didn't use, but had cars in it that Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer would drive.  We had a cat door that we kept open for him.  He would come and go as he pleased, eat, get in bed with us, relax a bit. He was our perfect pet.  No commitment.  Independent.  And now he was knee deep in a snarling fight with a big, mysterious black asshole cat in our kitchen.  It had followed him in.  Alec has never been a cat owner and is not versed in how to respond to their fights.  He grabbed the Orange Cat, afraid that he would get hurt in the fight.  Orange transformed himself into a viper and sunk his teeth directly into Alec's forearm, and then ran out the cat door.  He returned a few minutes later, as if nothing had happened and laid down on our bed.  A few days later, Alec was on an IV in the emergency room.  We didn't know cat bites were so nasty. 

"Why were you in Mexico?" the lender's email asked for the millionth time.  I don't know, running from the law.  Selling drugs.  All kinds of shit.  "I was on a Fulbright grant" I explained, again.  "My employment was not interrupted.  Nothing scandalous.  Congressionaly funded, educational exchange". 

No one was helping me with the check stub.  The tension was mounting in my head.  And, the second graders were making Puerto Rican musical instruments in class.  A recipe for disaster.  Me, ready to explode, them, with homemade maracas. I didn't want to be a dickhead.  I planned the lesson, because I knew that they would love it.  I finally got the class lined up to "assault", or surprise carol, the secretary at our school.  I heard a loud bang as something hit the wall of the classroom.  Norman started yelling furiously at no one in particular and running around like a nut.  He had beamed his "guiro" across the room, trying to hit another student.   Everyone stopped, stunned.  "What the HELL was that?"  I asked loudly, in front of twenty-two second graders.  "She said 'hell'" someone whispered.

Great. 

I remember when Cristian was deported the first time.  It was over the holidays.  It went on for months, his parents paying bond after bond only to see him transferred to another jail in another state.  They were distraught.  Holly and I started volunteering in the desert that summer, after he'd been sent "home", to the country he didn't even remember, alone.  He was trying to get back and we knew it.  Every young man we met made us think of him.  Especially the sick one and his friend.  The sick one that flew up into the sky while his friend was shackled and frisked and fire lined the mountains and smoke filled the air.

And it's happening again.

A Holly Jolly

The exacto knife dove into my finger.  Instinctively I grabbed it and squeezed.  The kids gasped, still holding their hand made, sandwich bag piñatas. The knife was supposed to be punching holes in the  piñatas, not shoved into my finger.

"Does it hurt?!" someone asked.
"No, no, I'm just afraid to look."

I let go of my finger.  Blood smeared my hands.  They all gasped again.  The kids in that class can be real assholes.   I'm surprised they don't drink blood.  One grabbed the first aid kit and put a band aid on my finger.  Another kid, an especially violent one, bolted out of the classroom.  I had no idea why.  Looking for a pitchfork to finish the job?  He ran back in, holding a small, wet paper towel to clean the blood off of my hand.  I was surprised.  It was actually one of the nicest moments I've had with that group in a year and a half of teaching them.  I always knew that they needed to see blood. 

Dau looked beautiful.  And excited.  More than excited, as if she couldn't stop smiling, her perfect white teeth shining against her dark skin.  I have always loved her.  She was in my class during my second semester of teaching.  I taught her again the following year.  She insisted on having my cell phone number on the last day of class.  I was reluctant, but gave it to her, though she was a student.  I was so glad I did.   I followed her through graduation and the frightening period when I lost her.  I always remember standing in the nearest "town" in the Arizona desert that had a cell phone signal and calling my old principal, the one I hated, to tell her that Dau was in trouble, she needed help, her financial aid for college had fallen through and she didn't know what to do.  The principal that claimed to mentor her because it would look good to have a Sudanese mentee.  I couldn't do anything and my principal didn't do anything and I couldn't find Dau when I came back to Atlanta.

I clicked play on the parranda You Tube video for the kids learning about Puerto Rican Christmas.  "Will METH make you do this?" it asked, showing a guy with no shirt on sitting on a cruddy bed.  "How much will I get for this?" he asked the man unzipping his pants.  Oh shit.  I put my hand over the light shining from the projector and tried to get the volume down.  "There's a guy with no shirt on in the video!" some kid exclaimed.  Great.  

"It looks like the seller is going to accept your offer, he just has to return it in writing!" our realtor announced.  I went out to my car.  It made a horrible noise and became difficult to steer.  I pushed on to the beer store, because I am dedicated like that.  "I've heard that new power steering is really expensive" my sister stated, plunking down on my decrepit porch furniture and opening a beer.  Great.  The idea of having to buy a car terrifies me.  I have never even had a car payment.  What the fuck was I doing buying a house?

I looked at Dau as she rode in the backseat of my sister's car as we drove her to the airport to catch a flight to Australia.  She hadn't seen her sister since they left Sudan and got scattered across the world.   She hadn't been abroad in more than a decade, when she took a boat up the Red Sea from Sudan to Egypt, got trapped there in September 11th, Arabic as a primary language limbo and finally arrived in the U.S. via Germany where she was placed in the public school system without knowing a word of English or even the Roman alphabet.  As she walked through the airport, her white teeth shining and her dark skin accented by the red leather jacket she wore, the names of her nieces and nephews that she would soon meet air brushed on her long nails, total strangers were smiling at her.

They couldn't avoid the light.