I hear it, a dialogue inserted between the stacks of books,
hidden among shelves, secret whispers shared in nooks.
“They are almost always criminals, the Mexicans, the illegals
are bad people, murderers and rapists,
that is why we need to build the wall,
to keep them all out.”
Out of the mouth of innocents comes driveling pomposity,
of abhorrence and horror.
I have heard it coming like a tide,
creeping closer along the shadows,
as a whisper over my shoulder in a restaurant,
in the lines of some distant relatives status update,
but somehow it doesn’t become real until I hear it fall,
tumble with fluidity from the mouth of a child, practiced.
It is then that I recognize how real it is –
frozen against the stacks of books,
caught between tears and rage,
my heart cracking, fracturing.
A terracotta pot left in the sun,
my pieces begin to shatter and fall.
She is speaking about me, about my people,
about my familia and so many of the families I know
from LA, the Central Valley, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada
this place.
She doesn’t even know it is me
she calls dangerous,
a rapist, a criminal a good for nothing law evader.
My mind is astounded
that I would have to have this conversation
with one of My students,
one of my sparkling diamonds in the rough,
one who stares back with awe and wonder when I read aloud,
but, they don’t see me, not the real me,
not the girl born in the East LA Barrio,
who bounced on the knees of Cholas and OG’s at three,
the me who was loved by those with permanent tear drops chiseled into cheeks,
as well as cops, nurses, and bank executives,
not the girl who lived in trailers on the hillsides of farm communities
a moonlight runner through orange groves
looking to pluck free fruit from the branch,
the girl whose first swimming pool was a milk crate
and a garbage bag atop a garage,
Santana blasting alongside Led Zeppelin
in the smog filled sunshine.
I am the girl who grew out of a lisp
caused by a tongue wedged
between two worlds that never quite fit.
The one whose brown skin grows thin.
I wipe away a tear before turning the corner to ask about this fear.
She only sees what I have created,
the educated educator, the thought maker,
the literate clear speaker of fine words and stories –
I could never be one of “those” people,
the ones she was trained to fear, to hate,
to believe they are a mistake to keep out at all costs.
But if she believes those words, one day she will look up,
no longer will she see me, or her brown-skinned classmates,
we will have become like those phantom faces
creeping across borders in the night,
to wreak havoc in her fair land,
we will be things to eradicate, like weeds,
the cause of ills she has no name for,
a face erased and nothing more.
We will become “them”, a new target
lined upon some new and unknowing face
until the wall of hate becomes so dense
all that will be left is enemies.
