Borders
I used to
cross the bridge from Reynosa to McAllen every day. It was only 12 miles on the map but the
divide was wider than the River. Colors
changed. Rhythms shifted. Walks, tones, and languages transformed. Like entering another dimension, I would pass
through this curtain into a new world where the depth of a glance contracted
and deepened depending on which side of la
frontera I was on. McAllen with its
clean, wide streets and new cars. Modern
highways sliced through cookie cutter chain restaurants (Applebees) so orderly
and meticulously planned. And Reynosa
with her “Limpia y Hermosa” signs
juxtaposed the floating trash and acidic smells of the canal. There was the inch of dust that greeted me
each morning on my windshield and the amputees rolling on their little pushcarts
as I waited in la cola to cross the
border.
My doctors
chided me for living en el otro lado. Too much pollution, too few regulations and
dangerous levels of dust for my sensitive lungs. And the stress of a two hours commute each
day was no way to recuperate from my recent miscarriage and battle with double
pneumonia and a collapsed lung. And as I
was also getting an emergency certification to teach in an underprivileged
school while simultaneously managing to survive my first year teaching 125
lively 6th grade students.
I woke up
each day at 4am and kissed my husband goodbye with the tenderness that the
uncertainty of seeing each other again brings.
I rolled out of the warm covers of our air mattress to the shock of cold
tile floors and poured myself out into the chilly dark outside. I drove the long, lonely dirt road through
the blackness of night to the international bridge. Suddenly feeling blessed as I passed so many
on foot headed to their jobs at the soulless maquiladoras for mere cents a day.
Being 2002
with the 9/11 threat still pulsatingly real, one time my clutch gave out due to
the two hour pumping it endured as I crossed a high alert line trailing
endlessly as far as you could see. By
the time I reached the border patrol station, I was popping it to get my big
green Chevy truck to hop its way back to the States and straight to a Pep
Boys.
The
scariest moment was the night I woke up in the middle of the night with an
asthma attack and my husband had to drive me to the border. Not yet having his papers, he had to get out
of the car with tears welling helplessly in his eyes as I took the wheel and
drove myself gasping over the border straight to the emergency room in McAllen.
That’s when
the doctors refused to release from the hospital unless I could verify that I
was not headed back over the border.
Open lung biopsy and a trip to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, they would
not sign my release forms unless I had a residence in the USA. “Suicidal” they said. So I moved temporarily into a long term
Marriott near the hospital until I was strong enough to find my own apartment
on this side of the border. Back to work
to support two apartments now, I doubled my efforts to get my husband over the
border to be with me: humanitarian visa, a trip to DC, lawyers, and letters to
US Senators & Representatives. But
rejection after rejection, the awful truth began to sink into my bones. I was going to have to chose between risking
my health in Mexico or giving up on my
husband and any hope of having children.
Diego was
born 9 months later. He met his dad for
the first time when he was 3 weeks old at a bus station in Reynosa to the flash
of a reporter’s camera. The moment was forever
engraved in black and white on the front page of the The San Antonio
Express. When Diego was three months
old, I quit my job and packed up my US apartment with him tucked snuggly in his
Bjorn. I tossed the Chihuahua in my
overstuffed Mazda and headed to Monterrey, México. I found a job, a doctor and a trustworthy
childcare with Diego in tow my first week in Monterrey and set about creating a
new home and community for my newly united family.
A year
later we were suddenly called to Ciudad Juarez.
My husband and I were finally able to laugh at the absurdity that our
life had become and the tiny sliver of a chance that this would be any
different from any of the other rejections.
However, that morning after a late night of reviewing our notes and
checking our papers a 1000 times, my husband was suiting up in his three piece
of humiliation. Diego had pulled off all
the sheets and pillows from the hotel beds when he suddenly rose up on two feet
and walked to Polo for the first time.
It was Polo’s birthday, September 7th.
By Diego’s
birthday October 4th, we were celebrating in South Padre with my
parents! Still giddy and shaking, sure
at any moment we’d wake up from this dream, we made our way back to
Austin. Sitting in my glider in our new
home I would sing “Amazing Grace” to Diego every night before bed as tears slid
silently down my cheeks:
...Through many dangers, toils and
snares
We have already come
T’was Grace that brought us safe
thus far
And Grace will lead us home…
***
This
morning, so many trials later, I was fixing breakfast, now a single mom in a
new home. I hear my now 12 year old
Diego humming this tune as he worked on his homework at the kitchen table. It all washed back over me like a wave
splashing out of a distant past, slicing our arbitrary border of time. Just like that, tears were slipping freshly
down my cheeks as I realized I’m still being held safely in the arms of a truly
Amazing Grace.
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