Wednesday, January 9, 2019 // The Statement
7B
I
grew up in the arid valley where
the moonlight was muffled by the
smoke of thousands of coal-burning
stoves. It was cold and scary at night and
the day came, only to reveal the night’s
crimes. Every morning, the newspaper
delivered headlines of the number of peo-
ple, my people, who didn’t make it through.
Dozens every month. Hundreds every year.
It was an eye for an eye among my people.
The vicious cycle of death and suffering
continued uninterrupted for years.
Nobody was spared — not the rich, not
the poor, not those who ran or those who
hid. Every single person was affected.
Family members started to go missing.
Some came back and some were never seen
again. Some were taken viciously and pur-
posely. Some were mere accidents of a rico-
chet bullet. Their deaths were quick and
painless.
Nobody knew how to stop the misery,
but everyone was learning every day how
to live in it. There were no rules. Love was
vanishing. We lived in a war zone, yet the
world was unaware of our suffering.
I sat somewhere on the top branches of a
tree looking out at Lake Michigan, unearth-
ing memories. It had been some time since
I had been to Juarez, Mexico, but I still
liked to open my chest of memories once
in a while. I was afraid of forgetting about
my people and their suffering, but was also
privileged enough to be able to see it from
the other side — o separate myself from it
instead of live through it. I felt guilty some-
times. All of the femicides, the organized
crime, the anarchy that ruled my city’s
streets. I was away. I wasn’t there to see it,
but all I could do was remember.
I
remembered a woman and a girl in
a car at dusk. They were driving on
an empty avenue, their conversation
dwindling because of a disagreement. A
typical mother daughter interaction. The
girl iced her mother out for picking her up
early from a friend’s house, even though
the mother had agreed to extend the cur-
few by a few hours.
Unbeknownst to the girl, who had just
started la escuela secundaria (middle
school), her mother was afraid. A crippling
anxiety crawled up her spine, and the hairs
in the back of her neck were permanently
spiked. She would not be at ease until they
crossed the 15-foot wall and electrified
fence that separated their neighborhood
from the city streets.
Safety is only a few minutes away, the
mother thought to herself while she looked
over to the passenger seat, where her
daughter sat with her arms crossed and
eyes fixed on the ground.
Her daughter’s face was no longer that
of a little girl. It had started to trans-
form, along with her body, to give way to
a woman. It was a dangerous time to be a
woman in this city. Women had been dis-
appearing and dying here for decades, and
there was nothing more dangerous than a
girl and a woman in a car by themselves.
Suddenly, a car pulled up next to them.
It was another woman. She was older, but
the years manifested in a lovely way. This
woman had the appearance of someone
who wasn’t afraid anymore. She had seen
too much. Lived too much. Suffered too
much. She was there as an act of freedom.
During these years, no women dared
going out of the house without their hus-
bands, especially not at night. Being by a
man’s side gave them an illusion of safety,
as if any man could have stopped what hap-
pened that night.
The light was still red when a small,
white, battered-up Toyota driving on the
cross street — the only other car within
sight — stopped in the middle of the inter-
section. Two armed men poured out of the
Toyota and headed straight for the older
women’s car.
In the sliver of a second before the men
came too close, the two women and the
girl looked at each other. Their mouths
watered and stomachs dropped at the sight
of danger.
“Don’t look at them,” the woman said to
her daughter.
The exact complexion of either of the
men would remain a mystery, as neither
of the women nor the girl could recollect it
after the incident. But their presence was
infinite. It was as if their bodies radiated a
kind of heat that could permeate the doors
of the car. Their presence seeped through
the atmosphere and filled the veins and
minds of the two women and the girl with
fear.
The light was still red when the men
went up to the driver’s side of the older
woman’s car and pulled their guns out,
pointing them at her head through the win-
dow, opened the door and yanked her by
the arm. Her gesture of freedom, the brav-
ery of being in the streets on her own, left
her kicked and bleeding on the ground. She
wore a handkerchief around her head that
was now covered in blood and dirt. One of
the men took her purse as well.
When she saw this, the mother did not
hesitate to accelerate through the red light.
The men got into the cars and shortly after,
the battered-up Toyota and the older lady’s
car appeared in her rearview mirror. The
old woman still laid frozen on the ground;
becoming smaller and smaller as the cars
drove away.
There might have been other red lights
that night, but the mother did not stop at
any of them.
She did not breathe until she had driven
her car past the 15-foot stone wall and elec-
trified fence that divided their neighbor-
hood from the city streets. Her shoulders
did not relax until she and her daughter
were safely in their home.
She locked all of the doors and drew
all the curtains. As if any physical barrier
was going to stop the men who robbed and
kicked a woman on the street from coming
after them.
T
hat mother and daughter were
me and my mother. When I think
of it now, I always remember
family, friends, sunny days and happiness,
but the more I sit on top of trees unearthing
memories, the more I realize how real and
possibly traumatic my experiences were.
My family has been living across the
border now for a few years. Here, where
all the lawns are perfectly manicured and
everyone wears braces, it is hard for people
to understand what happened. It’s hard for
anyone here to really know me when my
past is so foreign to them. I could attempt
to explain, but there’s no way to put these
feelings into words.
I know I’m not from Juarez anymore,
but it is important to never forget. To
keep reliving those moments, as if it could
change the fate of the city or my own. As if I
could forget about the privilege of being on
top of a tree looking out at Lake Michigan
without a trace of worry. As if I could go
back without being seen as a gringa.
I look back now, after spending most
of my teenage years in Michigan, and I
can pick out all of the ways in which I am
different than my friends who stayed in
Juarez. I think they can see it, too. When-
ever I am with them, I am the Michigander,
but whenever I am with my new friends, I
am the Mexican.
I sometimes feel like I don’t have a home,
but what I do know is that I grew up in
the arid valley where the moonlight was
muffled by the smoke of thousands of coal-
burning stoves. It was cold and scary at
night and the day came, only to reveal the
night’s crimes.
BY ANDREA PÉREZ BALDERRAMA,
MANAGING STATEMENT EDITOR
A mother’s instincts
on an empty avenue
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL