Borders

by Michelle Schenckenberg (Ireland)

Making a local connection USA

When I asked you to come with me, you said “I can’t. I was smuggled here, from Mexico, when I was ten.” Then I am paralysed by the story of a small scared boy, running blindly in the dark, surrounded by strangers. They are no less small. No less scared. The boy is running with a desperate hope to see his mother again. Running into the mouth of an impossibly large predator. “If I try to leave now,” You said, so calmly, “I go to jail.” That was the first time I truly became aware of your captivity. Of the captivity hidden among your people. I had come into your life from across the ocean, mere months before, with freedom singing in my veins. A shiny new trophy in your small-town stagnance. “What could we be?” I asked you one day, in a room full of strangers who all knew our names. I was desperate for any motivation to stay. “Happy.” This you said with a smile. It didn’t reach your eyes. I learned then, to find that look in the eyes of those I’ve never met. I learned to recognise sadness. Our lives, in those short months, became a tangled knot of elation and depression. I struggled to understand the pain that had been stamped onto your genetics. Each time you wanted to tell me, you fed us lies about our future instead. “Think about our children.” You’d say when I grew despondent. “A simple life, here, with each other.” But what about the rest? 'Here' was a word I came to loathe. It represented everything I wanted to leave behind and all you had to give me. The rest of the world was closed off to you, as the predator held you firm in its jaws. The decision I had made to leave was an easy one. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it was still easy, even when I knew you wouldn’t be coming with me. I left behind the long Californian evenings, standing on the mountain tops, overlooking our small town. Bishop had a population of just eight thousand. An absurdly low number for a girl who grew up in an indifferent city. Yet I never felt alone up there, with you, amongst the dusty rocks and dying plants. High enough that even the air felt magical, as snowflakes fell during the heat of summer in a soft steady stream, only to disappear as they hit the surface. I still feel the snow falling onto my skin, so foreign to me, so unexpected and lovely. I also traded away the time we would spend swimming in hot springs with our friends. Stealing wood for bonfires from the behind the building of the only supermarket we had. Then taking in the magnificence of frost-covered lakes, on long walks in the afternoons. I traded all of it, even you, for a life that could be lived. I left with the world in my eyes and you in my heart. I left, running at full speed, into the light, away from the country that has caged you. Over the borders that hold you captive. I’m sorry that it was so easy.