Borders-Denice Frohman

 

It starts before she gets here

before the stairs tell her she’s alien to a country that knows her great-grandfather’s Mexican hands all too well

His fingerprints still echo underneath railroad tracks and cotton fields from Texas to California where bent knees and bent hands once picked, plucked, pushed, worked for more money than he was used to

But less than he deserved.

For Ana Maria, it begins before the border.

She walks with her two uncles in a desert for one week, with nothing more than a few gallons of water and a prayer tucked into their pockets hoping both will last them long enough

The Sun is an unforgiving god

But any god is worth having right now

The wind pushing at their backs, the grunt of gunshots from drug cartels

and the desperation of a job to employ their stomachs

Both have been uninvited guests at their doorstep

So they step, step

Ana Maria’s small hand clutches the bottom of her abuela’s dress

Her mother waits for her on the other side, hoping that her face still sings of home like it used to.

Another step, she is too young to know what border means

she thinks people are just family members who haven’t met yet

after her family arrives she will learn there are some borders you can’t cross by foot

Ana Maria is now ten years old, she’s learned enough English to translate for her parents but says that her thick accent is still a problem she tries to fix by leaving in her locker

when the teacher calls on her to read, she tries to speak “proper” like “proper” has a sound

she pushes her tongue down so she doesn’t roll her r’s but she trips on the flatness of the syllables that bounce with too much salsa

she tries to rattle out the kinks in her speech

but her tongue is a stubborn dancer

The two boys behind her don’t know how to do long division, but they know what a wetback is

And that Ana Maria has braids, and that Ana Maria’s hair is thicker than their sisters

And they don’t know how they know

But they know how to treat difference when they smell it, so they say things like, “YO! Go back to your country.”

As if their Irish ancestors never walked through Ellis Island

Ana Maria is now 16

Her father works 18-hour days as a dishwasher

Her mother cleans houses she’ll never get to live in so that Ana Maria can sit in a college classroom and say, “I am here.”

But her guidance counselor says she can’t get financial aid or the instate tuition rate because of her status

She says it like an apology

Ana wonders if her family ever crossed the border, or if they are just stuck inside another one, aggravating it like a soul.

Her guidance counselor stands in front of her, with a mouth full of fences.

There are some borders you can’t cross by foot, but borders I tell her, that can only be crossed by stubborn backbones.

So when they ask you for your papers, Ana, show them your skin,

wear your tongue like a cape,

throw up your fist like a secret you can’t keep any longer,

they can’t keep you any longer

Afraid, you can’t ever afford to drop a dream, so when they come for you, tell them, in the language that you know best

That you are not scared anymore