Immigrant courage
05/10/2010

When my friend Carmen walked in on her husband in bed with a 16-year-old neighbor, she did what many self-respecting women would do:  turned around, walked out, and kept on walking.  From Honduras to the United States, a distance of more than 2,000 miles. 

            “Vé te!” her father said, agreeing with her decision.  “Go!  There’s nothing for you here.  Nothing but more children that your husband won’t take care of anyway!” 

Still, her decision was not an easy one.  She left behind a baby three months old and still at breast; a son, three; and a daughter, five.  She left all of them, crying, with her mother, after her father paid $7,000 to a “coyote” who promised to deliver her to the United States. 

             The women and children said goodbye in the chilly pre-dawn, while it was still dark outside, standing together in the harsh glare of a bare bulb, not knowing when they would see each other again.  But despite her despair and heartbreak, there was a kernel of defiant anger inside that gave Carmen courage.  Nineteen years old, with three children, and already betrayed for a younger woman?  She could see what the future would hold.  She could kill her husband, or she could leave.     

            She was afraid to go alone with the strange "coyote," however, so she convinced a girlfriend to come along for moral support.  It was a good thing, because the coyote abandoned them after crossing the border into Guatemala.  They woke up alone the next morning on the side of the road where they had camped. The coyote was gone and with him all their money, leaving them with just the clothing on their backs and a small satchel that each of them carried.             

            They discussed returning home, but Carmen had already been shamed once and would not accept being shamed again—this time by her failure.  So they traveled on alone, hiking slowly up into the Guatemala highlands, where each step grew increasingly difficult.  The weight of the milk in her breasts, of the despair in her heart, of the crying babies at home made each step agony.  She cried every time her breasts engorged with milk and there was no suckling baby to relieve the pressure.  But the tears were a good thing because they enabled the milk to flow, spewing from her teats in an erratic circle, soiling her clothes and leaving her smelling as sour as she felt.

            They had no money, so they washed clothes or cleaned peasant houses for food.  One night they found an abandoned shack in which to sleep, and it was the following morning that Carmen decided she would not force herself to her feet, preferring to lay there and die of wretchedness.  Her friend went out in search of food—fallen mangoes and avocadoes, water from a stream—but Carmen would not eat. 

            After four days, a kindly neighbor woman forced her up and to the doctor, where she was diagnosed with profound anemia.  The doctor hold her to return home.  “There’s nothing for you in Guatemala,” he said. 

            “There’s nothing for me in Honduras, either,” Carmen anwered.

            She returned to the abandoned shack but began to eat a little each day from the home-cooked meals the Guatemalan woman brought her.  Eventually her strength returned, aided mostly by the physical resilience of youth, rather than the conscious decision of her mind and spirit.  A 19-year-old is biologically programmed to live, not die, so, as her iron count was restored, her emotional strength returned, at least in part.  In a week or two she was well enough to travel, and she and her friend pressed on into Mexico. 

            They traveled on country roads by day, and slept under trees and stars by night.  They tried to sleep in shifts, so that one of them could always keep watch.  But inevitably, the watchwoman would also fall asleep, unable to keep her eyes open after walking all day.  When that happened the two of them would awaken together in the morning, roused  by the morning heat, the voices of passing strangers, or the wet noses of curious dogs. 

            In Mexico they met a man who offered them a job in a hotel.  They were elated, thinking they would wash dishes, make beds, or clean bathrooms with enough regularity to save sufficient money to carry them the rest of the way to California—maybe even by bus.  Their hearts sank, however, when their instructions were to “go to the rooms and do whatever the guests wanted.”  Carmen and her friend looked at each other, watching the same stony defiance appear in each other’s eyes. 

            “We didn’t come all this way to be abused by strangers,” Carmen told her would-be employer.  “If I want to lower myself that far, I’ll do it in my own country.”  So instead of sleeping in a bed that night, clean and fed, they slept hungry on the ground again.  Disappointment made the ground harder, the mosquitoes more unbearable, the night air more oppressive.  But at least they were not slaves.

            After that incident, they kept to themselves even more than usual—not trusting themselves to talk much with strangers, avoiding well-traveled roads where immigration agents and police might bother them, traveling by day, sleeping on the ground at night, unable to bathe or change clothes or even eat with regularity. 

            Their scariest incident came as they waded across a river in Mexico.  Glancing behind, they saw a group of men start into the river after them, wielding machetes, which they held above their heads, out of the water.  Carmen and her friend struggled against the current so frantically that they lost their shoes, but didn’t dare stop to retrieve them.  Hauling themselves from the sucking grasp of the river, with their clothes stuck tight to their skin and night falling, they scrambled up the river bank and hid in some treetops, barely breathing as the men passed by below.  They spent the whole night in the tree, afraid the men would come back.  Carmen says now she thinks maybe God sent the men purposely to scare her.  Her terror made her realize how much she did want to live.

            Working and walking their way across Mexico took several months.  Sometimes passing travelers gave them a lift, but they could not risk buses or trains for fear of immigration officials.  Finally they made it to Tijuana, where crossing the border into the United States proved difficult.  They were caught and hauled back twice, but the third time was the proverbial charm. 

            Once inside the promised land, they pushed onward to Los Angeles, where Carmen believed a cousin was living.  The cousin, it turned out, was in San Diego—five days back down the road from whence they had come.  But the cousin had a car and used it to come fetch them.  Carmen’s walking days were over.

            It’s now been six years since Carmen made it to the United States.  The three-month-old baby she left in Honduras is now in school; her oldest is nearly 12.  Carmen has not seen any of them, but they write, exchange photos, and talk by phone.  Her ex writes to her, too, begging her to come back, threatening to take the kids away from her parents.  Four years ago, she sent money to pay a lawyer to have his name removed from theirs.  She hates him now, not because she lost him, but because she lost her children because of him.  They will grow up without knowing her.  She will grow old without knowing them.

            Two years ago, she remarried...a Mexican man, three years her junior.  He is here illegally, too, but he works all the time, and brings her his money.  He buys food and clothes for their new baby and, for the first time in her life, someone buys presents for her, as well.  They both send money to their families back home.

            Three months ago, they came to New Orleans to start over, yet again.  New Orleans has fewer Hispanic immigrants than California, and it has less anti-immigrant sentiment, as well.

            Although she hasn’t resumed menstruation yet after the birth of her American son, Carmen asks me to take her to a clinic for birth control—a luxury of freedom and self-determination she has only experienced since living in the U.S.  She says respectable women in her country cannot buy birth control.  Even her father, who encouraged her to escape a life of obligatory child-bearing, “would hit me—or disown me—if he found even a condom in my purse.   Because in my country, if a woman buys birth control, she’s a prostitute.  But here,” Carmen says with a smile, “if a woman buys birth control, she’s intelligent.”

            Carmen cleans houses, and sings while she works.  She has no driver’s license, no car, no Social Security number, no bank account.  She cannot get a credit card, but she gets frequent flyer miles (courtesy of all the long-distance calls she makes).  She cannot leave the country, however, unless she wants to take the same risks as before to get back in.  She owns three pairs of pants, a pair of sandals, and five T-shirts.  She and her husband have one pair of tennis shoes (Nikes) between them, which they take turns wearing.  She lives outside the law and has no way of becoming legal, short of an act of Congress.  Neither she nor her husband can go back from where they came; they can only go forward.

            I cannot say that their presence has no negative impact on the United States.  Her husband works at Avondale, employed by a contractor who hires entire crews of illegal immigrants.  Their presence helps keeps wages low for other Avondale workers.  On the other hand, were wages not low, American shipbuilding might simply move offshore, as so many other industries have done. 

            Sometimes my friends make disparaging remarks about immigrants—particularly illegal ones—who take from this country without giving back.  I don’t try to argue with them...I just think of Carmen, humming while she cleans my tub, or her husband, bringing his sweaty wages home to her, or their son, brightening my kitchen with his happy gurgles, and think of all they’ve given me.  I think of the domestic troubles my friends and I complain about and seriously doubt we would have the strength of character to walk a couple thousand miles to rectify them.  I also think of the countless other women like Carmen, raising children alone in a culture whose men measure their manhood by how many women they have screwed and children they have sired, rather than how deeply they have loved or how well they have fathered.