Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail

Story Twenty-six

Story Twenty-six M iracle Baby, that’s Veronica. It was early summer, and I had just spent the afternoon holding that little creature, born on the desert floor of southern Arizona, among saguaro, cholla, prickly pear cacti, and creosote bushes. She was not yet three weeks old and already had an aura of strength and independence. Plump little cheeks, eyes closed, and body bouncing rhythmically with rapid breathing . Her head, chockfull of jet-black hair, glossy and beautiful. I reached down to touch her fingers, and she stirred with a whimper, then began to fidget and yawn. She stretched and drifted back into the land of angels and fairies. That is when I learned firsthand about the baby born in the desert , with survivor engraved on her soul. Veronica’s mother, twenty-fiveyear -old Ana, was from Guatemala but had been living and working in Chiapas when she decided she had to leave and come north. Chiapas is Mexico’s southernmost state and shares a border with Guatemala. Ana thought she was only seven months pregnant. Her group had been crossing the desert several days, had slept on the ground three nights. Ana went into the bushes to go to the bathroom. Others in her group called out for her to be careful, to be on the lookout for snakes and bandits. There were no snakes or bandits, but she felt a pain in the front of her abdomen, down low, and squatted to defecate. During labor of her two previous pregnancies she had had pain in her lower back, but never in the front part of her abdomen. This pain was different . Then, two more pains in the lower, anterior abdomen, and she felt the baby coming. Immediately her baby cried out. On hearing that high-pitched wail, two other women in the group ran to her, took the baby, cleaned it, and wrapped it in a soft T-shirt. They cut the umbilical cord with fingernail clippers. 142 stories from the migrant trail The rest of the group left the three women and moved on northward. The two impromptu midwives then took a shawl and bound the infant to the mid-body of the mother and the four of them began a trek toward the highway, three miles away. A Border Patrol helicopter spotted the small group—three “undocumented” crossers and one U.S.–born baby. A call to the ground alerted Border Patrol agents. They arrived on the scene, efficiently evacuated the mother by helicopter, and transported the infant by ambulance to the hospital. The two comadres were immediately arrested and returned to Mexico by the Border Patrol. We asked Ana about all the attention she had received. We had heard that she had refused press interviews and photos. We thought her very wise to avoid all of the media exposure. “What did the reporters say?” we asked her. “I wouldn’t talk with them because my eyes and face were puffy and I hadn’t washed my hair yet,” she told us shyly in Spanish. All three Samaritans were grandmothers, and each of us wanted to hold this special baby. Are these creatures, who are brought into this life in environments less favorable to survival, stronger in order to endure? This tiny survivor slept soundly. She only stirred and woke to nurse or have a diaper change, and then went back to dreamland: no colic, no crying to be held, no fretting at 3:00 a.m. However, the beautiful newborn had a problem. She did not possess a birth certificate. The two women who cleaned the infant and helped Ana and Veronica to the road were gone, so they could not verify the time and location of the birth. So began the cycle of bureaucratic red tape. Ana had left her backpack in the care of the comadres who assisted the delivery. They were immediately deported, and phone calls to Nogales said the women had moved on and were no longer at the shelter in that border town. All of Ana’s belongings, including identification papers and phone numbers, had been in her mochila. Back in Guatemala, Ana’s mother did not know that she was a new abuela and had a brand-new nieta. She did not even know whether Ana was dead or alive. Ana, knowing neither how to read nor write, had never used a phone card. But that would not have helped anyway, since there was no telephone in the...