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Chapter 12
Mia’s letter
Life in America was so different to life in Mexico. My mother found work cleaning for fourteen hours a day while I was enrolled in school. I didn’t speak a word of English, but thankfully our neighbors at the motel we lived in quickly became friends. Mateo and Carmen helped me learn the language and navigate the education system. They are still my best friends to this day. Their mother would check on me from time to time. They didn’t have much either, but she always offered me food when I was in their room.
One day, I came home from school after a particularly bad day of being bullied for my accent. My mother was in between shifts at one of her many jobs that paid her well below minimum wage. She took one look at me and suggested we make her polvorones. We searched the almost bare cupboards for the ingredients and chatted in Spanish about good times in the past with my father—memories that brought laughter. She dropped a powdered cookie in my hand with her calloused fingers and said, “These are best when made with love and laughter. Don’t believe what anyone says that’s negative about your heritage, because you’re not anything less than beautiful.”
I remember the day we received the letter from the government denying us asylum. Because the cartel had demanded money from us that we couldn’t pay, the U.S. government considered our plight 50 percent economic hardship, which made us ineligible for asylum.
It was the first time my mother didn’t cry when bad news came. It was as if she had been through so much trauma that she’d run out of tears to grieve. I had wondered if there was a set amount of tears a person could cry in their lifetime. When would my mamá get a break, and be able to be free and happy again like we were with Papi on the ranch? I wished she would get that peace, prayed to all the saints who would listen, even mother Mary herself. If only I’d known that death would be the only form of peace for her—I’d take back all my prayers. I’d do so much differently.
Living as an undocumented person in the United States was difficult to say the least. My mother made yearly trips to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. To go back to Mexico was a death sentence. We’d received letters from the cartel. They knew where we lived and sent detailed threats on how they would end our lives. The U.S. government had copies and they still denied us refuge, even though we followed the legal route towards asylum.
I applied for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and because of that was granted a social security number so I could work and go to college, and get a license.
Everything was going okay. I was determined to get my degree and make a better life for my mother so she wouldn’t have to be in so much pain from working herself to death. But then the elections came, and the new president who’d promised to only deport criminals was tearing families apart. I lived in terror that when I came home from school, my mother would be taken from me without a word. That ICE officers would invade my classroom and take me out in handcuffs. Anxiety and nightmares made it hard to sleep and function as a freshman in college.
This is what my life as a Dreamer (an undocumented person permitted to live in the U.S. since they were brought in as a minor) was like. This is why I don’t share about myself, because I could be turned in at any moment and sent back to Mexico. This is life or death for me.
I tell you this not to make an excuse for my lack of openness, but to give you an explanation that this rift is me, not you. It is my fault, all of it. Both my parents’ deaths, and the way things ended between us.
