Pedro Haro -  Hawaii or Bust

 

 

So, when I was eight, I used to be obsessed with being taken seriously. I used to force my friends to play Ghostbusters or Transformers, because those were my favorite cartoons. And I always had to be Egon or Optimus Prime. And if they question, why I had to be either of those two, or if they didn't take my instructions exactly like I told them, they couldn't play with us anymore. [audience laughter] I was a little like tyrant. I was so wound up. 

 

But my brother, Armando, who was 14 years older than me and with three siblings in between us, he never took anything seriously. He was always making fun of me or my sisters or himself. He used to make us listen to these cassette tapes that was him and his friends singing at the top of their lungs, these Mexican rancheras completely off pitch. And everybody who would listen would laugh and laugh and they would think, “Oh, he's so funny.” I was mortified. I used to think, why would he want anybody to listen to this? 

 

So, when my parents told us that they would be leaving Mexico to work in the United States and we would be saying back, and my brother Armando was going to be in charge, I got worried. [audience laughter] My dad had lost his job about a year earlier when the Pepsi bottling plant that he worked at had closed and everybody was fired. He had tried everything. As a last-ditch effort, him and my mom got visas to come and work in the United States, and they were going to work in Kaanapali. At the time, the brand-new hotel area, and they needed lots of workers. 

 

And to this day, I can't understand why the United States would give them visas, but not their children to make sure that they couldn't visit. But I had one stipulation. It was that they had to leave while I was sleeping in the middle of the night, because I didn't know if I could bear to see them leave. And then, two weeks later, that's exactly what they did. I woke up one day and they were gone. And I thought, crap, I was just being dramatic. [audience laughter] But I was a good kid. I didn't complain. I did my job. I thought, my parents are doing the best job that they can, so I have to just not cry. 

 

My brother, Armando, the best job that he could do was opening up his own automotive shop, which was just an abandoned house in a residential neighborhood with no floors or ceilings. It was just dirt with walls. They would sit outside waiting for customers, even though there was no sign. Him and his friends, they would just sit there. And then, by the end of the night, they'd be drinking rum and Cokes, waiting for customers to come. I know this, because I was inside the house. That's how he would babysit me. It's like, I would be inside playing with my G.I. Joe’s and they would be outside. 

 

But it passed the hours. It was days and weeks and months. That quietness turned to anxiety when my parents said that they had raised enough money to hire a coyote to smuggle us across the border through the mountains. But my brother, Armando, would be guiding us through Mexico to meet this coyote, and then get across the border, and then get us to LA and then on a plane to Hawaii. And I thought, how is he going to do this when he can barely take care of us at home? 

 

The anxiety got worse and worse when we were going through the trip. It was well proven. We were hungry. There were all these things that went wrong, and it felt like that anxiety started becoming like a rock that was pressing against my stomach and it would create this physical pain. It got just completely worse once we actually met the coyote and we had to cross. There was all these things that just happened. It was so dizzying. We had to cross this multilane highway. It was pitch dark, and it was raining, and there was all this mud, and there were helicopters above. Somebody robbed us and they put a gun to my brother's head. I almost drowned in this raging river. There was no time to breathe, no time to think about the physical pain or anxiety. 

 

Before I knew it, we were up against this wall, this tall wall, and we just had to climb it. As soon as we climbed it, there was this stillness, and it was the United States. There were these beautiful houses and cars and yards, and I thought, in that house, there's children that are my age that are sleeping next to their moms and their dads and their goofy brothers, just their goofy brother. They're not running away from immigration in the middle of the rain. And so, that was the first time that I had this clear vision of, that's what I can get. If I can just push away this stomach pain, and all this anxiety, and the mud, and the hunger and all of that stuff, I can get that. I'll have that with my mom and my dad and my brothers. So, I was laser focused. 

 

So focused that when we got to this warehouse where there were immigrants sleeping all over the ground, they were waiting for the next parts of their trip, I went to the bathroom, and when I stood up, I looked in the bowl and there was blood. Even at age nine, I knew that wasn't a good thing. I knew that was probably tied to that pain that I was feeling, that it wasn't just anxiety. I had to make a split decision, do I tell Armando? Do I tell my sisters that are coming with us? What can they do? We're in a warehouse hiding from immigration, from the police. How is this going to affect our trip. So, I just wash my hands and I go lay down next to my sister and I don't say anything. I don't say anything for the next few days as we make our way to LA. 

 

My brother's trying to joke with me and saying things, and they're not landing, because I'm so concentrated on the pain that is getting worse and worse and worse. He starts asking me and my sister starts asking me like, “What's wrong?” And I say, “Oh, my stomach hurts.” I just keep saying that. When we finally get to LA, I've gotten so weak that I asked one of my siblings to take me to the bathroom. When I locked the door behind me, the bathroom toilet seems so far away that I crumble to the ground, and I rest there. The coolness of the floor against my cheek feels comfortable. 

 

I don't know how long I was there, because the next thing I know, Armando's knocking on the door, saying, “Mijo cómo estás?“ I think I answer, but I don't think there's any words that actually come out of my mouth. And so, I crawl up to the door and I unlock it, but he doesn't know that it's unlocked, so he just keeps knocking and knocking. He's pounding on the door, like saying, “Open the door right now or I'm going to knock it down.” He realizes that it's open, so he opens it. He doesn't miss a beat. He just scoops me from the floor into his arms, and he starts running into the streets to try to ask strangers for help. I realize how sick I am for the first time, because I've never seen my brother panic like this. 

 

Somebody drives us to the hospital. It's like an episode of ER, like 20cc's and 10, or whatever doctors say when they're doing stuff. I don't know. I didn't speak English. [audience laughter] But my brother's next to me holding my hand, and caressing my hair and saying like, “Everything's going to be okay.” He leaves for a few minutes, and he comes back and he's like, “The doctor said, you're going to be just fine.” He does this a few times. He comes in one last time and says, “You're going to get this operation, and then you're going to be just fine.” This is when I find out that my appendix has burst. And apparently it has been burst for three days, and that I'm very, very sick. 

 

So, they wheel me into the operating room, and the next thing that I know is I wake up with tubes coming out of my mouth, and my nose and my stomach. There is this bright light coming out of the door that I'm staring at. And through the door walks in my mom with my sisters on either of their side. I know there was a lot of pain and recovery and all of that, but I don't remember any of that, because to this day, those are the happiest memories of my life. My mom has told this story so many times, hundreds of times, and she's usually crying and how the hospital wouldn't operate, because they couldn't get my parental signature on the disability. Not disability, liability forms. 

 

But this doctor, this hero doctor comes in and signs the liability forms. He's not even my doctor. He's not my surgeon or anything. He just signs the forms for liability, and that's how they can operate. When I tell the story, I usually concentrate about finding this doctor and how I want to tell him that he's my hero and I want to thank him for what he did for us. When my brother tells the story, it's usually about how so and so fell on this branch as we were running away from immigration, or [chuckles] how the stupid Bermuda shorts that I was wearing were like 10 sizes too big, because we had stolen all of our clothes, and that's what I had to wear. 

 

I realized all of these years later that all of those versions of the story erase what my brother actually did. Because you see, what the hospital had actually told them was that there was nothing else that they could do for me, that it was too late, that the best they could do was to keep me comfortable until I passed. He pled with them to please, please do something for his little brother. And then, he would go into the room and tell me, “The doctor said everything's going to be fine.” He would tell the same thing to my siblings outside, and he would tell the same things to my parents on the phone and then he would go back into the hallway and plead with them. 

 

I don't know what he did, if he told them jokes or if he cried or what he did, but it was because whatever he did, that that doctor signed those liability forms. My brother kept me long, kept me alive long enough to make me realize this goofy, unserious version of myself that finds infinite joy, and embarrassing my nieces and nephews and my husband and my dog. I have found a way to embarrass my dog. [audience laughter] I'll tell you about it. 

 

My brother, on the other hand, has transitioned into being this loving, wonderful father and grandfather who still [chuckles] trolls all of us with TikTok videos, and on Facebook and all these things. He's gone high tech now. I realized, not only did my brother saved my life in the hospital but he gave me this model of how to be able to not take yourself so seriously, not to be so wound up that if you're going to live with the trauma, you might as well laugh at the funny parts. I like to think that now if we were to play Transformers together, I might just let you be Optimus Prime. [audience laughter] Thank you.