Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

I was thinking of the time just recently when, at 17, my first boyfriend and I drove down to Mexico. We camped outside in a little tent in a park by the ocean, eating fresh melon in the morning and wandering into town in the evening. He bought me a few Mexican dresses and I spoke Spanish, at least what I could muster, to vendors and shopkeepers.

After a week, it felt natural to wander into town, to feel sunned-up and carefree, to also feel at home in the homeland of my grandfather. I had never been anywhere where so many people looked like me. So many of the women were my height and so many of the men looked like my uncles. It felt like a homecoming of sorts.

Even the smells of the food, the fresh corn tortillas, the roasted chillies, all of it seemed familiar. We spent the days on the beach and I mostly tanned while my boyfriend mostly turned red. It was an adventure without too many pitfalls. My car actually made the trip, we rarely fought, we only got lost twice.

It wasn’t until we were going back into the United States that things started to feel squirrely. Even with my California driver’s license, I started to get nervous at the border. And so did my boyfriend. We got pulled over and asked what we declared. I made a point to speak loudly and clearly so they knew I was born and raised in California despite my skin color, my embroidered sundress, and my heritage. I remember my heart beating and both of us holding hands. They studied my license, they searched our trunk, but in the end, they waved us through. We were safe as houses, as they say.

But I couldn’t help but think of my grandfather crossing the border as a child illegally, of how he lived in a chicken coop, or how later he became an American citizen.

In today’s moving poem, we see as the speaker witnesses his mother being interrogated by border patrol. Here we see the fear, but also the innocence as everything is seen through the child’s perspective in the backseat.

Las Chácharas They Carried
by Antonio de Jesús López

“¿Señora, qué declara?”

1.         Discount shaving cream.

2.  	   Tortillas wrapped in black plastic bags.

3.	   The telephone number of USCIS.

4.	   Vaporub, which in Spanish
	   translates to “comprehensive
	   health care.”

5.         My child’s nosebleed.

“What’s the intention of your visit?”

6.	    My son who stirs awake,
	    as the Nyquil’s starting to wear off.

7.	    Father’s sombrero that I promised
	    to never take off the wall.

“If I search your vehicle, will I find anything?”

8.	     Soap camouflaged
	     as sea salt. 

9. 	     La madrugada
	     whose bordertown haze
	     stains Mother’s dress.

10.	     An analog TV set
	     to plop my chubby brown hijo
	     in front of Sesame Street…

“Ma’am, please step outside.”

"Las Chácharas They Carried" by Antonio de Jesús López, from GENTEFICATION by Antonio de Jesús López, copyright © 2021. Used by permission of Four Way Books.