Lawson-Zepeda vs. Homeland Security

Los Politicos

By Jennifer Lawson Zepeda
Monday, May 11, 2009
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?AuthorID=17657

An essay about Homeland Security written in 2004, and published in SoMA Literary Review in 2005.

Five years here now. Still living in this hellhole, Tijuana. All because we can't cross the border and come home. Watching miniature dirt-devils whisk a candy wrapper along raised and broken concrete. It tumbles like our lives, end over end along the dirt, beside a discarded styrofoam cup. We're discarded too.

Miguel told me why he can't return. "I was busted for having pot on me and I didn't have papers. The judge said next time would be five years."

"But, what if we get married? They have to give you papers if you're my husband, right?"

"It doesn't matter. Give up! It's never gonna happen."

"You've got proof you've been working here now and you've changed your life. I don't see why they wouldn't approve your application after all these years."

"Give up. They don't care."

"What if we had kids?"

"It doesn't matter. Look at Ray. He's got kids and his wife is American. Do you see them giving him papers?"

"But it's not right."

"That's your President, mami."

Images of Golden Gate flood me. A grassy knoll where I sat and wrote near Stowe Lake as the sun peeked through the fog. Sometimes even renting row boats to cruise those murky green waters on the lake, paddling around the trees on Strawberry Hill with Mero, laughing at a mosquito he waves away.

God how I miss the Bay Area! The pungent aromas of garlic, fresh baked sourdough bread, onion focaccia and espresso wafting through the streets of North Beach. Upper Grant Avenue and the earthy blend of gut wrenching blues with some black guy screaming "Caledonia," in a beefy voice. I feel his emotion and smile. Carnival and Capoeira in "la Mision," in February. Latinos everywhere. Others too. Naked ladies in jewel toned feathers and pasties, as Bobby plays on stage in a black T-shirt, with a Puerto Rican flag showing his Latin pride. His compadre trailing me like a bodyguard, until we leave to grab a steak and a beer. A steakhouse in the Mission, next to winos, liquor stores, and signs in Spanish, where the waiters "hablamos Espanol" and "bistec, picante y deliciosa."

"I don't wan' no other guys pickin' you up while I'm performing," he explains and I'm humored and so alive, so damned alive with his salsa. "We're playing next week at Sol y Luna on pier 23. You have to come and see me there." I laugh, knowing his compadre will pick me up and sit two tables away...that eye always watching for other men approaching my table, with Bobby sending endless drinks to my table.

Ahh la barrio, la Mision! Hearing Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalapeño Band. Dr. Loco's gray pointed goatee, hanging down his throat, his infamous sunglasses hiding his eyes, and that hat too, while he screams out, "Puro party, San Francisco!" and Bobby laughs. Telling me "he's one crazy righteous dude, for a professor, ain't he?" Then I think about Dr. Loco's class I took, under his real name, Professor Jose B. Cuellar, teaching Raza Studies. Yeah, he's one righteous dude, alright, and a pretty damned sexy anthropologist too.

I recall hot salsa nights. Dancing at the Caribbean Gardens in Burlingame, a palapa style decor, weaing satin dresses, rhinestone earrings and jeweled strappy shoes. Reeking of Coco by Channel and hearing Banda, Salsa, Merengue with my friends, exchanging commentaries. "He's fine! Look at those two. I got first dibs on him." Faces everywhere wiping beads of perspiration, drinking, fanning themselves. Dancing as the DJ pumps the beats.

Then I think of my father driving the MUNI while we lived in Millbrae and now the F-line runs along the Embarcadero. God how I miss that too. Fisherman's Wharf and clam chowder or shrimp cocktail. Alliotos. Alcatraz...all of it. But we are part of the forgotten, the deported, the banished.

There are a few of us here in TJ, still wearing our 49ers jerseys, smiling when we think about the homies in Hunters Point, or the Tenderloin, Fulton street or Van Ness. Recalling a flat I once lived in, two blocks off of North Beach. A fifties decor for a couple of grand a month and no parking.

"Clean the stairwell, will ya?" Gertrude Slovneck used to say, holding her broom out for emphasis. Sometimes she'd bring fresh cut greenbeans from the Italian grocer down the way. "Here. Smell these. Don't they smell fresh? This is the way vegetables are supposed to smell." And I'd inhale the scent of those green beans and accept her gift. "The tomatoes are grown without pesticides. That's the best way." And they smell good too, like I remember tomatoes used to smell, when I was a kid.

But here we are, part of the Homeland Security plan, keeping American citizens protected from the likes of me - another American citizen. Living with my Salvadoran husband in a foreign country because he's deported. Waiting for political asylum so we can return some day. It's not safe for him to return to El Salvador, even though he's changed his life, years ago. The Sombra Negra is still practicing "social cleansing" there, and his tattoos make him a prime victim. A blindfold, two shots to the head. No more problems.

Sitting here now, staring blankly at the uneven asphalt, lifted in some places a few inches, crevices filled with dirt. The blue, cloudless skies of Tijuana. Recalling the lush grasses from the Bay Area. Grass so plush I could run my toes through and tickle my feet. Even feel the soothing, moist blades comfort the pads of my feet. And the scent of fresh cut lawn, that bitter sweet smell of earth mixed with grass.

There's nothing soft or moist here. Everything is asphalt, cement or cinderblock. Walled in, gated, and enclosed with bars. I feel I'm in prison, doing his time. But this is my home now. I have to keep reminding myself of that. This is my home.

A lime green potato chip wrapper drifts by, remnants from the customers of the liquor store next door. They purchase cerveza by the case, chips, cigarettes, and sometimes a bottle of Dom Pedro. Broken Dom Pedro bottles scattered between the rocks of my driveway, shattered like our spirits. Everything here is breakable. Trash. People's lives. Everything. Cigarette butts, wrappers, this all becomes my view. But Miguel can't get papers, so we're here.

Yesterday, I sat on my neighbor's stoop and drank Pacifico. We laughed about our childhood school rooms in the states. Recalled teachers we thought were unfair. "She used to rap me on the fingers with a ruler." I laugh and share mine, "Mrs. Eggbert once gave me an "A" for a paper and got pissed off and crossed it out, replacing it with a huge "F."

My neighbor's waiting to see if immigration will approve her papers. Her mother is a U.S. citizen, but mom never applied for the documents. Diana grew up until the age of fourteen in Chicago. Then she was deported. She hardly knew Mexico and she wants to go "home" too.

Miguel yells out the window, "Lisa! You gonna fix dinner or something, eh?"

I look at Diana and the expression on her face tells me she understands. I gather the books in English she's given me to read. Mitch Albom. Dagoberto Gilb. They are treasures here, because books in Mexico are expensive and the libraries require near evidence of home ownership to grant a library card. We trade books all the time. So I hug Diana and kiss her cheek, tip my beer and guzzle it and leave the stoop. She walks up concrete stairs, locks the iron gate at the entry to her apartment and calls it a night. Too many men here think single women drinking on a stoop are whores.

The nights are a medley of music everybody else wants me to hear. They pump the music from open windows of cars, rev motors at stop lights and scream at chicas crossing the street. An endless barrage of noise. Exhaust systems of jalopies altered to sound more powerful. Power everywhere. Reflected in the machismo of the engines, men, attitudes. Everything here powerful, bold, in-your-face.

My dog's flopped out on the couch, laying on his back like Snoopy. Dreaming - his tongue working against his teeth, legs quaking, and a moan that sounds almost like a whine. Is he wishing he were somewhere else too? The sofa reeks of his paws tracking in urine from the cement courtyard in back. It's imprinted on the fabric, but I don't care anymore. I've already washed those cushions a thousand times and it's too much work to light the stove each time I cook, or pump the water from large ten gallon plastic containers. Everything is so much work here.

The other day I lit the gas oven, but I left the gas running a little too long. It sent an explosion of blue flames into my face before I shut it off. I smelled burnt hair, touched my face and the dust of hair particles was on my cheeks. Now my hairline feels like burnt polyester and I trimmed my bangs trying to fix some of the damage. My right wrist is burnt and peeling too.

There is one outlet per room for electricity. We move the tv between rooms, plugging it into extension cords, because the landlord won't fix the ones no longer working. I cry because I'm so tired.

"Go home. No sense in you living like this too," Miguel tells me. But we both know I won't leave him here. He's always been there for me, so how can I abandon him? He tells me this even when I break down crying, sucking breaths between tears, wanting to scream because it's so unfair.

"I just want my old life back," I tell him. His face reflects his sadness. He wants a normal life too. That's why he came to the States to begin with. A steady job. A clean apartment. Honest landlords. And maybe even people who throw trash in containers. These are our dreams.

I watch the styrofoam plate hurl along the pavement, dancing with the other trash, playing hide and seek with the wind. And I wonder how everything becomes trash. Then I think about Bush asking for the Latino vote. Are we trash too? To be discarded and sent to another country when the Department of Homeland Security decides we aren't worthy?

The other day my car ran out of gas at the border. A dark man pushed it through. I wasn't sure if his complexion was oily or it was perspiration or a combination of both. I was reminded of Gringos calling us "greasy." My own grandfather once called me an "oil speck." Or was it "oil Spic," I'm not sure now. I was so young and didn't know those words then. I was still confused by the combination of English and Spanish in our house. So many sounds. "Ayy," or "Eh?" Then English, "Oh" or "huh?" All of it so different and I'm reminded of my fear when my history teacher taught me "Catherine was burned as a steak." Learning later from mama, "no m'ija, she was burned at the stake." But it still made no sense to me.

But la migra doesn't care about all of this because my car is parked incorrectly. They stand in a group, grown men laughing at a woman's misery as we push the car. Laughing like hyenas as I cry in anger, my cheeks flushed and my heart seering with hate.

"Can I use your phone to call a tow truck?"

"We don't have a phone."

"Please don't tow the car. I'm walking to the gas station to get gas and I'll be right back."

They ignore me, as if I haven't said a word to them. I want to spit on them. How are they protecting me? They laugh as I walk off, knowing the closest gas station is over a mile away. Chickenshit bastards! I wonder if their wives respect them, because I certainly don't. Apparently chivalry wasn't a big concept in their upbringing. I wonder why we hire such marginal idiots as representatives of our country at the first Port of Entry to our people?

Now, I envision Bush tossing a paper cup in a container. I wonder if he thinks to himself, "one more piece of trash gone." Then I recall his plea for me to vote for him.