Reyna Grande - Two Border Crossings, 33 Years Apart

 

I was at the San Antonio airport on my way home to Sacramento. This was city number 23 of my latest book tour, and I was fed up with airports and hotels. I was tired and homesick, and I just wanted to be back with my children and my husband and celebrate Halloween with them before having to head out again. To be honest, I hated the thought of having to get back on another airplane. 

 

So, I'm making my way down the jetway and I notice this young Latino man. Unlike me, he doesn't seem frustrated by traveling, but rather scared and disoriented. I notice that he has no luggage with him, not even a backpack. He's wearing stained jeans and a white T-shirt, and he has no jacket. But in his hand, he's clutching a white envelope. And then, it hits me. I know exactly who this young man is. I say to him, "No tienes maleta?" He breaks into a smile, clearly relieved that I speak Spanish. He says, "No tengo nada," I have nothing. And then, without me asking, he confirms what I suspected. He tells me that he was released from an immigration detention center that morning. It was the envelope that alerted me to his situation. 

 

A few years ago, I took donations to a migrant shelter in Tijuana, and I learned that when released from detentions, migrants have nothing but the clothes on their backs and an envelope containing their paperwork. He says to me, "I've never been on an airplane before. How does this work? Where do I sit?" I tell him to follow me and I find us a seat together.

 

After I show him how to put on his seatbelt, I learn that his name is Hector, that he's from Guatemala, and that he's been at the airport for eight hours with nothing to eat and no money. He devours the snacks I offer him while we share our stories, which are mirror images of each other. He tells me about his wife and his one-year-old daughter. He had to leave them behind in Guatemala when headed north to try to find a way out of the poverty, the instability, and the corruption in his country. 

 

Luckily, he's found himself a lawyer who's helping him with his asylum case. And in the meantime, he's been allowed to go live with relatives in Sacramento while he waits for his court date. What he wants more than anything in the world, is to be allowed to stay and for his wife and his daughter to be able to join him here, so that they can start a new life together in this country. I recognize that desire. It's the same desire I once had for me, and my siblings and my parents to be reunited, for my family to be put back together and be whole again. 

 

Like Hector, my own father had to leave me behind when headed north to look for work in Los Angeles. There were no jobs in my hometown, Iguala, in the state of Guerrero, which is the second poorest state in Mexico, and at present, its most violent. I grew up looking at a black and white photograph of my father hanging on the wall, memorizing every detail of his face, wishing that his paper eyes could move and that he could see me, wishing that his paper mouth would open and that he would tell me he missed me as much as I missed him. 

 

I was nine years old the first time I met my father. I stood in my grandmother's living room, rooted to the floor in shock, staring at him. I'd almost given up hope that I would ever see him again. And now, here he was, in living color, standing before me. And his skin was a beautiful dark brown, not a dull gray like in his black and white photograph. My aunt said to me, "Go say hello to your father," pushing me toward him. But he was a complete stranger to me, and all I wanted to do was run away. Still, I forced myself to go to him and I hugged him. He hugged me back too, but briefly, and I realized that I was a stranger to him too. 

 

My brother, my sister, and I asked him, "So, are you finally back to stay with us?" We couldn't bear the thought of losing him again, but he said he couldn't stay. He said, “What kind of a life could he give his children, earning a measly $5 a day?” He said that someone like him, a maintenance worker with a third-grade education, was too poor and uneducated to qualify for a visa. Asylum was also out of our reach. Mexican nationals are rarely granted asylum. And poverty, no matter how extreme, is not an asylum category.

 

So, because he couldn't come back to live with us and we couldn't travel legally to go live with him, there was only one path for him to take. He decided to hire a smuggler and take my older brother and sister back with him to Los Angeles. They were 12 and 13, old enough to attempt the dangerous journey across the border. As for me, he said I was going to have to stay behind again until I got older. I begged my father not to leave me again. "Please take me with you," I pleaded. But he said, "You're too little, Chatta. I'll come back for you, I promise." I shook my head and said, "But the last time you left, you were gone for almost eight years. Please, Papi, don't leave me again." 

 

I don't know how, but I managed to convince him to bring me along. And so, I found myself at the US border, risking my life, all for a chance to finally have a father. The smuggler would shout orders for us, and we obeyed. Walk, run, crawl, hide. My body was burning from the heat of the unforgiving sun, and the white-hot fear inside me at the thought of being caught and sent back. My father was right. I was too little to make the crossing, and I put everyone at risk of being caught. I couldn't make my feet run fast enough, and so my father had to carry me on his back most of the way. And it was there, at the US border, where I got my first piggyback ride from my father.

 

I clung to him as we ran through the bushes, branches grasping at me as if trying to tear me away from him. When we found a dead migrant in the bushes, it seemed as if he were sleeping. But then, I realized that it was the kind of sleep you don't wake up from. And so, I clung to my father even more as we ran. Border Patrol caught us twice. Back then, families were not being separated at the border like they are now. So, after they took us in for interrogation, they put us all in a van and then drove us back to Tijuana. 

 

On our third attempt, my father decided to try at night, under the cover of darkness. The border that night was pitch black. We couldn't see where we were going, and so we had to hold hands, so that we wouldn't lose our way. A helicopter came by, and we ran into the bushes to hide from its searchlight. A beam of light fell on my shoes, and the coyote made me take off my white socks, so that they wouldn't give us away. After the helicopter left, I ran into the darkness. I ran and I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. And when the sun finally came up over Otay Mountain, we were looking at it from the other side of the border. We had made it into California. And later that day, we finally arrived at my father's home. 

 

After finishing my story, I tell Hector, “I have been in this country for 33 years now.” But what I don't tell him, is that I came when things were different. When our Republican president, Ronald Reagan, passed a law that forgave three million people, including both of my parents, for coming into the country illegally, and he allowed them to remain as legal permanent residents and build a life here. I don't tell Hector how free and limitless I felt when our green cards arrived in the mail when I was 15. I don't tell him how I took that green card and I ran with it to my American dream, all the way to being a college graduate, a bestselling author and a public speaker. 

 

I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I came at a time when forgiveness and a chance of legal status were still possible. I wish I could give him hope. I wish I could assure him that those times will come again. I wish with all my heart that Hector's daughter doesn't have to grow up looking at her father's photograph hanging on the wall. 

 

When we land, Hector gives me a hug goodbye and he whispers, "Gracias, por todo. Se lo agradezco." Thank you for everything. I'm very grateful. And I'm grateful too, because he has reminded me why I do what I do. He has reminded me why I have to push past my exhaustion and keep going. 

 

Two days later, when I'm back at the airport heading to city number 24, I think of Hector and his one-year-old daughter back in Guatemala. I get on that airplane determined to keep on writing and fighting for him, for her, for all those fatherless daughters and daughterless fathers separated by border walls, longing for the day when they will see each other again. Thank you.