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The Visit
It was hot those summers, hotter than it has ever been. Everything smelled sweet with despair. An oily film coated everything, leaving you with the constant sensation of being dirty. We stood in the sun. Single file line into the waiting room, withstand the guards who treat you like cattle, and make your way to your seat. I wondered if he would look different this time, but he never did. Sometimes my mom and I would laugh or tell stories, sometimes we would just sit quietly, too often consumed by the ugliness around us to muster a word. I was only eight and I had lost a father for the second time. The man, who had promised to never leave me and my mom, had been torn away.
We filed out to the bus. There were bars on the windows and obscenities carved into the thick white paint that covered everything. Light flickered sporadically and I held my breath, fighting waves of nausea. I was a little girl but even then I could comprehend the magnitude of the moment, the cruelty, anger, and grief in the big white bus. We stumbled out of the dark, stuffy bus and into the blinding Arizona sunshine. I was surrounded in eerie silence. Around me, in a clump, stood so many women and children, anxious to be reunited with their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Besides the guards, my mother and I were the only ones with pale skin and blue eyes.
We waited in the dust and heat for first of many gates to open and then we were shoved in. We were treated as if loving someone who had done wrong, made us tainted and unworthy of our own dignity and respect. Everywhere I looked there was concrete and barbed wire, dry waste land and the body of a fallen bird. I held tightly to my mother’s hand, praying I would not faint in the heat. We walked a long stretch before being packed into that small visiting center. The clips on my overalls made the metal detector go off. Finally, we turned down that long corridor. Phone after phone, and from behind each Plexiglas window a man would peer out, hoping to see his loved ones had come. I felt a rush of nerves, bumble bees tumbled and buzzed in my stomach.
Then I saw him. He looked so puny behind that window, so weak and powerless. I watched my mom talk to him, push her hand up against the scratched plastic, and I never felt so low. I looked around, and on the face of each woman’s face was that same look. I wanted to tell them to run, to never come back to this toxic place, to teach their children what it was really like to be loved. I never came back again. I realized I had nothing left to say to the man behind the fences, and the windows. I knew then that I could no longer rely on a man to make miracles happen. I have to make them for myself..
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Thảo luận, ý kiến hay thắc mắc
Cập nhập lần cuối cùng lúc 8:30h ngày 14 tháng 1 2013
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