Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant

2: Of Things Lost

Of Things Lost My father lived a very short life. He died at the height of his youth, at twenty-two, just days after I was born. He was an artisan. Had I been more sensitive during my youth, I would have done everything to preserve the sun-shaped mirror he had crafted with his own hands. The mirror that hung, for an unexplainable reason, on a wall of my grandmother’s patio. After my father’s death, my mother and I went to live there. Until I was about fourteen, I saw the mirror hanging on the blue wall every time I went out onto the sunny patio. It was around that time that I started noticing that its colors were beginning to fade. After years of exposure to the generous sunlight of Guadalajara, the cheerful rainbow of flames shooting out of the rounded mirror was now beginning to lose its charm—the multicolor flames were now giving way to a taciturn autumn scene. Years of neglect had taken their toll on this intricate , colorful mirror that had probably been a gift to my mother. The mirror she had surely used when putting makeup on looking forward to seeing my father was now meeting its demise. Fourteen or fifteen years later, time had slowly nibbled away at it—two or tWO N----_Illegal_Txt.indd 27 11/18/13 8:07 AM 28 c h a p t e r t WO three strings of rusty water rolled down the mirror, and dry leaves that once were blue, yellow, and green flames were now beginning to chip away. This mirror was the only material possession I could have called an inheritance. But time, which takes away everything we are and do (Leopardi), and my own neglect robbed me of it. The memories—or rather thoughts—I have of my father are few and widely scattered. My first memory of him is, obviously, his absence . One of my earliest recollections is that of running in front of the windows of a storefront that was a pharmacy and a clothing, shoe, and fabric store all at once. I remember running in front of the windows and seeing a little neighbor of mine walking hand in hand with his father. Back then, like now, I was very curious. Also back then, like now, I knew I should remain quiet. I saw little Manuel holding the hand of his father and felt like asking my mother, who was sitting on the step of the pharmacy, her chin resting on both her palms, her sad gaze fixed on the bell tower of our church, where my father was. But I didn’t. A few years later, during my paternal grandmother’s funeral when I was about six or seven, I remember standing right next to my mother as the grave diggers prepared my grandmother’s final resting place. I remember, too, how their heads kept going lower and lower each time they produced a new shovel of dirt. And I, embracing my mother’s legs, remember pile after pile of dirt coming out of the hole, out of the family burial site. Amid those piles, I saw a piece of mustardcolor fabric and something that looked like a small elephant tusk—it was my father, tossed around indistinctly in a random shovel of dirt from below. That was the first time I experienced the terror of life, as my mother let out the saddest cry I’ve ever heard. My mother cried and screamed aloud, but she kept enough strength to turn my gaze—like an American poet says—away from history and toward the place where all human aches begin. She didn’t tell me what the reason for her sudden distress was. But back at my uncle’s, I heard him N----_Illegal_Txt.indd 28 11/18/13 8:07 AM 29 O f T h i n g s L o s t say that he remembered that my father had been buried wearing a shirt that color. Those remains—the yellow shirtsleeve, the lonely rib—were the closest I ever came to my father. And now, as I type these words, I wonder whether the grave diggers, with the hurried, relentless pace of their shovel blades, broke through my father’s coffin. Did you even have a coffin, Papá? Back then, like now, I lacked the courage to ask...