Spare Parts
This an excerpt of my creative nonfiction instances, "Spare Parts". The full piece will be published in the upcoming Spring Issue of Allium, a Journal of Poetry & Prose.
My goal as a writer is to talk about topics that go under the radar. My border town has always been used as a political battleground--migrant crises, cartel wars, anti-Mex sentiment--but to me it was just home.
I witnessed heartbreak in Laredo, Texas.
It belonged to someone else, to entire generations of those with houses packed in tight suitcases and distant dreams. To those trailing after shooting stars much too quick and impatient to wait for them as they chased its light.
In a border town, there was no shame in being undocumented—at least, not amongst those of us who cared enough about our roots but understood the incessant need to stay within the confines of the United States through any means necessary. Still, there was that fear that lingered. Sometimes it would simply be a bitter aftertaste, and other times it would be a bullet wound that ripped through the heart.
I met Kathia during one of those rare poetry slam events my high school held for the “less academically inclined” students as an encouragement to get them to read and write. I was helping run the event, an ugly part of me believing I was doing charity work.
My teacher had invited Kathia as a special guest, stating that her slam poetry had a bite to it like no other, but I also believe it was because, like the rest of us within the library, sitting on hard chairs, she was poor too. Poor people just have that instant connection.
She wore a sheer black shirt with sleeves that went all the way down to the knuckles and had the brightest pink hair I had ever seen. Even with the lights dimmed, her hair was still a beacon.
“I’m from Martin High School,” she exclaimed proudly to the crowd of bored onlookers. “As many of you know, Martin high school is the poorest high school in all of Laredo.” She took a steadying breath, tightly gripping the phone she was reading from. “It is also the high school that was most affected by the policies implemented by the Obama administration.”
Martin, in the veiled years of Obama’s reign, had lost over one hundred students. All because of deportation. Either the students themselves had been vetted and caught by the border patrol or the students made the difficult decision of dropping out of high school to support the family that had been left behind. Children became parents in an instant.
“In the morning, the phone calls came,” Kathia says, palm rising above her head before dropping with the next words that raged against her. “In the afternoon, the classrooms were empty.”
Martin High School, a school built of ruddy brick and aching wooden floors and endless history suddenly had children pressed against its walls, had children holding onto the chain-link fence that encircled the property as they waited impatiently for someone at home to pick up the phone.
But no call came. And like everything within this city, this had all become a distant memory.