Annunciation House Newsletter - Winter 2003

A Juarez Morning

By Jesse Turner

Maria de Jesus beats me to the sunrise and says good-morning from the patched and greying couch. I must set my alarm and sleep lightly if I am to wake up on time start the morning shift, pull on yesterday's clothes, shirt inside out to make use of both sides. Eyes burning I traverse stairs littered with upturned cockroaches of sizes almost unimaginable. Stray legos and matchbox cars. Orange peels. A dirty diaper. From the sala door I see her back and her short curly hair pulled back in two barrettes. She is softly listening to the radio news and ranchera greeting the quiet morning alone as her daily sacrament. She needs no alarm, never oversleeps. Her body knows her work schedule. I unlock the door and barred gate that lead to the still empty street, and the official day begins. Mari has been waiting for me so that she can start breakfast, so that she can eat a little and quickly say good-bye to her sleepy-eyed children and go to work

Mari used to take her children to work, used to take them with her to the Senora's house that she cleans somewhere downtown everyday. Mari used to take her children to work - because what are you supposed to do with your own little children when you clean somebody else's house and you don't even have your own and you can't find a live-in job because who would take a woman with three kids when she could hire a soltera instead? What are you supposed to do with your own little children when you are the hired help 300, 500 pesos average a week which means that you certainly can't afford to hire someone to help watch your kids? What are you supposed to do with your own little children when you are a single mother runaway-escaped across the entire country from your husband who broke your feet enough times that you cry just telling me the story, from your husband who thought if he broke your feet one more time you wouldn't be able to leave. Run away. Escaped. Which means that you have no family here and so no one to watch your own little children while you work cleaning una Senora's house when you don't even have your own.

Mari and her oldest daughter Ana are scrubbing someone else's house. Mother and oldest daughter. It's like teaching the next generation how to run the family business. What are you supposed to do with your own adolescent child when you can't afford to send her to school and she says that she doesn't want to go to school anymore anyway? What are you supposed to do with your own adolescent child when you refuse to let her ramble the streets with a boyfriend all day, knowing that she is your legacy and that your own child-self birthed its first reflection at the unready age of twelve?

As I pass through the patio-courtyard mid-morning sun bright or mid-afternoon sun even brighter, I side glance into the bathroom. Ana stands at one of the sinks, washing Yesi, who smiles chubby cheeks mouth open wide as she sees me see her. She is pleased with her naked-wet self for being the center of my attention, pleased as only a three-year-old, still innocent, can be. Ana stands at one of the sinks, forearms wet and soapy, fallen hair glued wet to her cheek. Ana stands washing Juanito, who screams frustrated at not wanting to be washed, at not wanting to be seen naked and wet by me, at being five and having no choice to not know all the realities that he already does. Ana stands at one of the sinks, side-glances into the patio. She smiles at me and I can't tell if she means it. I'd say that her eyes speak self-consciousness of me, of an outsider looking in from outside, observing her work and this daily family ritual. I'd say that they speak sadness at loving her sister and brother, at being fourteen, and at this unchosen responsibility which she cannot abandon

La Senora fired Mari so now she works for another and does not take her children to work. Ana stays in during the day, her role to watch her sister and brother. Childhood blurs into womanhood, the line between them blurs. They leave during the day only when Yesi is wrapped in white lace ruffles and yellow bows, wearing her pair of shiny little shoes, when Juanito has on a red polo shirt and clean khakis and the two women are dressed in dresses. When Mari tells me that La Senora wanted to see them today

Today's morning shift begins with a 5.30 wake-up. The stars light the black night. Stumbling down the unlit stairs, I am tired and I am thankful for the calm silent stillness that greets me with good-morning. I drink hot tea into my throat, into my stomach, into my calm, with Maria de Jesus on the bench next to mine. She asks me if I've heard, heard that her mother is sick and has asked each of her children to come back home and I think that Mari must trust me enough because her heart and her fear open her mouth, with dry tears flooding her tongue and her story and the life she fled hunting her distance. I listen silently as she tells me how it's a three-day bus ride to her mother's home, four and a half to her husband's. How he will find out that she is back and go get her and start beating her again. She motions to her sneakered feet hands sizing their swollen history and I can hear her reliving the beatings, the screaming, the pleadings, the children, the desperation, the hospitals, the cigarette burns. She tells how she fled with three of her children. From Delicias to Juarez. They've been gone for seven months and he never came this far to find her. But she knows her duty to her mother, knows that she must go back. She knows that he will find her when she does. With quiet certainty, defeated resignation and bravery, she knows. The telling of her story has changed the sky from night to bright dawn when the rest of the world awakens. I don't know what to say until three hours later I am sobbing, I am angry, I am desperate. I run out to the patio-courtyard to tell Mari that there must be another way, your mother must understand you can't go back you've been gone for so long he'll kill you. But she has left for the morning, taken Yesi and Juanito with her to go find money for a bus ticket. Ana steps out from the kitchen into the 9 a.m. sun and I tell her crying everything that she already knows.

In the middle of dead afternoon with the single women gone for the day, the mothers out with their children, the hot sun shades the patio-courtyard yellow. Quiet and alone on tarde shift, Juanito shuffles up to me, bouncy, and he asks me, "Juegas a casitas conmigooooo?" And so we build our little house out of all the couch cushions we can find, all mismatched ripped stained. Juanito builds our very own little house worn out foam pads are our walls hold up our roof. He builds nuestra casita the length of my laying down body. The shelter hasn't had large diapers for three weeks and Yesi plays on my stomach my legs my neck. Wet on my shorts my shirt I hold her to me, wishing that I could take her with me when I go or maybe just stay here forever with her. Juanito giggling so satisfied with his triumph slides through the window onto my head. It is two weeks before I leave and so I tell them each, Te quiero te quiero te voy a extranar.