It's always hot and windy. It's always 4:00 a.m. She knocks
softly, but consistently. I incorporate the knocking into my dreams until I
feel my husband sit up abruptly in bed and say "Someone's at the door-- probably
Marta!" I hear her panicked voice. He talks with her for a moment, then
calls to me knowing this is my territory—getting her through the anxiety
attack—trying to intervene in the latest crisis. You might ask why we put up with
these intrusions into our relatively “normal” lives. At first we didn't really have a choice. She would come knocking at the door in such a panic, kids
in tow, it would have been inhumane and irresponsible to shut the door. Also
that is who I am. I get pulled in and wrapped up in vulnerable people’s lives.
Not that I don’t complain about it later, but I am a huge sucker for
vulnerability. I don’t deny or regret it. And I've lost nothing from it (except
a few hours of sleep) and gained so much understanding about how some people’s
lives are just so unfairly hard. I've gained gratitude and admiration.
I left off the last post with young Marta
(and baby) working for a despotic old woman who verbally abuses and shames her.
Her pregnancy, remember, followed her father sending her away from her
rural home in Mexico by selling her into
domestic servitude in Texas at the age of 13 where she had endured sexual
abuse by her employer. At 15 she was
seduced by an older, unbeknownst to Marta, married man who promised her papers
and education but who subsequently dumped her when she was pregnant. When the
baby was due and she was no longer able to work she traveled back across the
river to Matamoros, Mexico where she gave birth to her baby and lived briefly
with her sister in a shack in a shantytown. She then made her way with baby in
tow, back across the Rio Bravo and landed a “job” cleaning and cooking for a bitter
old woman.
What decisions would I have made in her place, I ask myself? If I were
15, illiterate, alone, undocumented and unloved, I don’t imagine I would have
done anything better, and I may have done a lot worse to survive and care for
myself and my baby.
Fast forward ten years. Marta is married to a U.S.
citizen, an alcoholic Vietnam Vet. There is no hope of him helping her get the
legal status she has a right to because he derives a sense of power by keeping
her vulnerable and “illegal”. They have a son together, born in the U.S., as
well as her daughter. Her husband has periods of rage that disrupt their lives
followed by long absences when he goes off and lives with another woman in San
Antonio. “When he is gone we have peace in our family,” says Marta. “The worst
is when he comes home in the middle of the night drunk, shouting at us all to
get out of bed and make him something to eat or worse , demands sex.”
His financial “support” is sporadic and inadequate. He
rarely gives her any cash for food, but one time brought home a big screen TV. “I
needed money for medicine more than a TV. But my son was thrilled.” He uses
Marta and her daughter’s undocumented status against them, especially when he
is drunk, which is most of the time. He often threatens to call the Migra and get them deported, saying he’ll
keep their U.S. citizen son and Marta will never see him again. The terror of
being separated from her child creates
constant fear in Marta. She ekes out a living cleaning houses and ironing. She
lives day to day in the squalor of the tiny rented room her daughter likens to
a chicken coop. She also suffers from clinical depression and anxiety, an illness
common to many people I know—my co-worker, several friends, a family member.
But they all have access to medication and counseling and still struggle to
manage it. Marta’s illness has gone untreated for years and rears its ugliness
in the wee hours of the morning when she comes to my door in a panic, fearing
she is dying, can’t breathe, having not slept for days at a time. These are
rational fears considering her situation. But she acts irrationally and needs
medication. Months of being on a waiting list at a local indigent health clinic,
and hours of sitting in the waiting room finally yields a month’s supply of medication.
The medication helps a lot, but of course she doesn't qualify for any
government assistance (she's "illegal"), has to pay out of
pocket for the meds, often can’t so her condition is uncontrolled. Coming to
our door is actually an act of reason and sanity because she knows her children
will have some peace, and cool air-conditioning, if even for a couple of hours.
One early morning visit to our door wasn't the usual
escaping her husband’s rage, nor was it a panic attack. She came with concern
over her 8 year old son, who had literally lost 10 pounds in a matter of days. His
clothes hung loosely, suddenly sizes too big, his shorts held up with a rope.
“He is peeing and drinking water all of the time—all night long. Something is
wrong with him, she cried!” I drove them to the emergency room where he was
subsequently admitted to the hospital and deemed dangerously close to a diabetic
coma. Of all the injustices, why would this poor woman have to deal with her
child having Type 1 diabetes?
After a week in the hospital, he was released. She came to
our door that evening with a bag full of medicine samples and syringes. Her son
looked better, she looked worse. There
were pamphlets and instruction sheets and forms. She dumped them all on our
dining room table and said “No entendi nada de lo que me dijo la enfermera!” (I didn't understand anything the nurse told me!). My husband and I with our multiple
graduate degrees couldn't figure it out either. There were so many details
about keeping air bubbles out of the syringe, how to measure the insulin, the
timing of when he eats, what to do when his blood sugar drops too low, how to
use the glucometer, the strips, etc. It
was so overwhelming to think she would have to manage this along with figuring
out how to feed her children and dodge her husband’s abuse.
Subsequent battles with the school nurse and the teachers
followed. None of them really wanted this child back in school— just another
poor, below average student with an illiterate mom who now has to be closely
monitored because he is diabetic. Marta has fought battles to get supplies and
medicine and to travel to the only pediatric endocrinologist within a 300 mile
radius-- a two hour bus ride on a bus that could be boarded at any time by Border
Patrol agents asking for documents from a mom who has none. So much drama--none of which could have really
been avoided by Marta. I sincerely believe she handles it with more cool than I
ever would.
Marta’s story is just one. Sadly there are many
similar stories with common themes here in this “poorest metropolitan area in
the nation”—an area often neglected by the powerful in a state more concerned
with providing benefits to oil companies and corrupt politicians than caring
for children or investing in the future.
“But this is a region wealthy in so many other ways”, a
friend recently commented when I posted something about our status as the
poorest community in the U.S. She is right. The semi-arid/semi-tropical climate
create natural beauty and the geographic location on the border allows for a unique blend of cultures. Wild parrots flock and palm
trees are silhouetted against brilliant sunsets; sunny, 80 degree skies abound in winter months. The easy blue waters of the
Gulf await beach goers and dolphins. Cheap labor and land allow middle class families to live
like colonial aristocracy. Despite the structural injustice and arguable racism
that has prevented State Legislators
from approving basic funding for a public hospital or medical school in a
region with over a million very unhealthy people; despite our disregard for
vulnerable children and young adults trafficked into our community to work as
maids and baby-sitters in our homes; despite
the fact that thousands of our neighbors are dehumanized and deemed “illegal” due
to their economic inability to cross a river with documents, among them some of
our highest achieving high school students raised here yet denied the ability
to go to college and work; despite many families living in squalor housing
conditions, lacking basic services. I imagine it could be one of the best places to live, if I didn't know so many real people like Marta who suffer and struggle daily “beneath the
palms”.
This is a true story.
Names have been changed.
