Thread: DENVER POST - LIVING JUST LIKE IN MEXICO

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/n ... /article/0,
Tina Griego
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May 18, 2006
The evicted sofa of evicted tenants is still sitting in an apartment driveway on Border Street. No one is certain how long it's been now. Four weeks? Five? Long enough to speak to an undercurrent of resignation, to something broken down among neighbors.
In a front yard at the other end of the street, a woman washes her family's clothes in a bucket filled with soapy water. The washer broke down last week. She squats, pulls jeans from the bucket, slaps them against stone pavers and scrubs them against the stone, arms pumping hard.

"Just like we do in Mexico," says a cheerful young woman watching from the front porch.

The woman, 20, is one of the Marias on the street. There are at least three. "You know we love the name Maria," Maria says, beaming. Hail Mary, full of grace.

She is pregnant. Due any day now. So is her sister, Maria the younger, who also lives on Border Street and has been walking back and forth between their houses trying to speed her labor. The baby has dropped and her gait is awkward, lumbering, as she brushes past the garbage cans her neighbors have stationed in the gutters so that no one takes their parking places. Maria the younger was one of the last to leave her grandmother's house in Mexico two years ago to follow her mother, sisters and brothers across the border. Fifteen hundred dollars into another coyote's pocket.

Her cheeks are flushed as she approaches the house she now lives in with her boyfriend. He has just arrived home, a cabinet-maker as lithely built as a jockey, now standing next to his truck with a fragrant basket of laundry in his arms. He has, much to Maria the elder's amusement, not only gone to the Laundromat, but also packed a diaper bag for the soon-to-arrive baby. One blanket. One T-shirt. One yellow sweater, impossibly small. One pacifier. A headrest for the car seat.

The house is his older brother's. His brother is a legal resident, the family a legal hodgepodge, citizen, legal, illegal. The boyfriend and Maria moved in about four months ago, taking one of the three bedrooms. His brother and his wife have a room. An uncle shares the last bedroom with four nephews. They share a single bathroom. It works out fine, the boyfriend says. We have our schedules.

Maria follows him inside and sits at the kitchen table. He sweeps the kitchen while she times her contractions by the Sacred Heart of Jesus clock on the kitchen wall. She is 15 and he is 26. They know this is not acceptable in this country. They do not know that it is, in fact, statutory rape. They are not married and he is at least 10 years older than she. Should questions arise, she says, she will explain that he did not force her to have sex with him and they are a couple. She will explain, she says, that such relationships are more common in Mexico. It does not seem to occur to her that the answer to this will be, "This is not Mexico."

Her sister-in-law calls and her voice comes loudly through the receiver. Why haven't you called the doctor? How far apart are the contractions? Has your water broken?

No water, just a little bit of blood. Maria tucks her hair behind her ears, serene.

Across the street, the American spouse of an illegal immigrant says goodbye to her brother. Her grandma is driving him back to a halfway house. Grandma is still mad that anyone would think she'd support the roundup and railroad-car shipment back home of illegal immigrants when her own granddaughter is married to one.

I never said no such thing, she says. Illegals just need to come the right way, get in line, learn the American way because there is, she thunders, an American way, a flag that means something. Her eyes water. I'm just very patriotic, she says.

They drive away and the American spouse's brother sticks his head out the window and turns back to his sister with a grin. "See you later, chedder lover."

"Shut up," she yells after him, laughing. Chedder, she says, comes from ranchero.

Not much later, one of her Hispanic neighbors turns the corner and hits the roof when she sees the sofa in the drive at one end of the street and the washed jeans and shirts flapping from a rope at the other end.

I'm sick of it, she says. We don't live on a farm. We are not in Mexico. We live in a city where we should care what the neighbors think. Nearby, Maria the younger is ready. Her boyfriend gets the bag. She calls Maria the elder. It's time, she says. She is calm. They will give him a biblical name. He will be an American citizen.



Border Street is a portrait of a Denver street changed by immigration, legal and illegal. griegot@RockyMountainNews.com

Her cheeks are flushed as she approaches the house she now lives in with her boyfriend.

GOOD Catholics, eh?

I'm sick of it, she says. We don't live on a farm. We are not in Mexico. We live in a city where we should care what the neighbors think. Nearby, Maria the younger is ready. Her boyfriend gets the bag. She calls Maria the elder. It's time, she says. She is calm. They will give him a biblical name. He will be an American citizen.

Another "ANCHOR BABY". I suppose his "blibical" name will be Hey-huse? I refuse to recognize anyone's baby named after the baby Christ. I just cant accept it.