As I hung over the trashcan in my classroom vomiting, I heard the door swing open. "Hi Maestra!" a chipper parent called out "We bought you this book!""Today is day deux" one of my bosses announced to the kids. "Dos!" some of the kids howled back. "No, I took French" she retorted "I don't speak a word of Spanish. Well, except taco".
"My parents walked through the desert to get here!" I heard Ignacio state defiantly to another student. "¿Es verdad, Ignacio?", "Sí" he responded, "No sabía, Ignacio, no sabía yo. ¿Cómo llegaste tú, en carro?" "No," he responded "en avión. Nací en México".
I thought it was hard to have undocumented high school students in my classes. To watch them try to get through school, knowing it really wasn't worth anything. They could stack up as much education as they wanted, but not having at least a green card would always lead to working a variety of undesirable jobs reserved for illegal immigrants, in the country where they had spent the majority of their lives. I found it even more difficult to look into the hopeful eyes of the smiling, moon faced eight year old.
I put on my jogging clothes and waved at the old man the kids throw rocks at for being poor and black and headed to the park.
"DON'T SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME!" Fleetwood Mac howled in my ears as I ran. My mind's eye pictured the beige hills and scrubby vegetation of Arivaca that I saw while I drove the last section of paved road last summer, the part before everything turns to gravel and dirt. I pictured little moon faced boys. My stomach felt angry. I remembered Carla crying in my Spanish III class. "I remember those flat trees" she told me "the way that place looks. My back has scars from the barbed wire..."
"The kids have been a little, um, crazy" I told one of the lead teachers as she came to pick up her class. "Oh God, I know, I know. It's a full moon..."
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