She hated her mother's voice, her strong accent thick like champurrado. Her defiance, her identity.
She didn't fit in, and her mother's voice was a reminder why.
A constant reminder. She hated the moment she crossed that border, maybe “I would have been the popular girl at school with a mother in the United States”. But here she was just an illegal.
So many postcards, pretty pictures of tall buildings: “Las Vegas, city of lights”. She dreamed of one day being a tourist, like them gueras on TV, with their flashy credit cards, ordering coca light and rare steak. But here, she was just an illegal.
Her resentment grew like a cactus: green, slimy, tall and filled with thorns. Each microagression a thorn, each mispronounced word a bullet.
She remembers that one day when her English teacher made her read. She caught her as she was about to leave the classroom, “Miss Cuellar, it's your turn!” “Dang this pinche vieja is slick!” she thought... For cacti can't speak, much less read. But they remember. They remember each day they went without water, so their roots grew deep and profound in hostile ground, and they kept themselves strong, they hid themselves, they stood tall and vulnerable in the middle of nowhere.
“I am a cactus” she wrote as the first sentence of her English paper about identity, she then deleted those words, what the **** was her teacher going to think? Now this crazy *** illegal thinks she's a plant so she wrote her name instead. But deep inside she knew she was a cactus in the middle of hostile lands, far away from that precious lake of healing waters where the wind sings and hills are green; far away from that country of dreams, colors and stories. Stories where her existence made sense, stories where she belonged. But here, she was just an illegal.
So many things would trigger her, the sunset, the heat, people starting conversations, “don't talk to me, cacti don't talk” they grow thorns, they grow green, they like to be left alone. But she knew that that was not her natural state, she wanted to be free. Her spirit wanted to run out of that cactus. Why couldn't she be a bird? Un tzentzontle or a humming bird, even if they didn't live as long, they at least get to fly.
But instead there she remained, rooted, guarded and defenseless, no matter how profound her roots were, she was still an illegal: wrong countried, wrong bodied, multispirited. One day her skin began to cry, a deep beautiful wound from which a flower sprouted. She had found poetry and realized that while cacti didn't speak they still flourished.
To be continued..