It's not that we fled Mexico
It's that something was chasing us
Last week, I confessed it’s not that I’m sober curious, it’s that my father had a disease. This week you’ll get to know my mother, and how fear is something that infects.
It's not that we fled Mexico
by Maria Giesbrecht
I can’t say for sure my family fled Mexico because that would imply we were being chased, and I don’t know if sins have legs.
I don’t know if they have hearts that pump blood into their muscles and help them chase their shaking victims.
I suspect they might, but I was only five years old, so how would I know?
There is so much of my family’s immigration to Canada that I can’t remember. I was covered in Chickenpox on the three-day Greyhound bus trip up north. The pieces come and go for me like flecks of light on a cloudy day. Like itchy patches of flaked skin.
Before we left, I remember my mother sobbing into my aunt’s arms while my father glared into the blinding Mexico sun with one arm around the steering wheel. Ready to spin the wheels, to let the dust fly. To get the hell out of there.
I wonder if my mother held on a second longer and smelled her sisters’ hair like people falling out of love do, not sure if she would ever see them again.
I didn’t understand who was going to care for our three dogs, Vochter, Koalie, and Fix, Who would ride Koalie across the farm, whooping and hollering, if we didn’t?
I remember the cold midnight air passing through my headscarf as we crossed the American border on foot. We were herded through security like cattle, my father gripping the suitcases with his thin, bony fingers, and my mother trying not to lose all four of us in the crowd.
The bus driver watched us in amusement, chuckling. He smoked a cigarette the size of a candle. It lit our path like a North Star.
A burning start.
To run away implies there is a safe destination somewhere, waiting. A haven.
Most of my memories start in the first house we lived in. Our little two-bedroom rental sat in the middle of a busy peach orchard. All my siblings shared the one upstairs bedroom and my parents had the downstairs one.
A red, ugly couch from the thrift store sat in the living room like a rotten cherry. It was the heartbeat of that house. A stinking pulse.
Unlike our farmhouse in Mexico, this house didn’t have holes in the walls, no tarantulas skittered in at night, and the front door had two hinges.
This was also the house where I saw my mother’s fear manifest like a monster.
It was the first time in her life she was home alone all day, her husband gone framing houses for minimum wage. In Mexico, my father worked at home on the farm and could pop into the house at any minute.
One late August evening, I saw her running back towards the house from the orchard with eyes as wide as mason jars. Her mouth gaped open, but she couldn’t speak.
My mother had been picking up peaches that had fallen onto the ground in hopes of salvaging a few for canning. One of the farm workers approached her quietly and tried to show her how to pick the fresh peaches off the tree instead of the ground. He tried to share the good harvest with her.
My mother couldn’t understand a word he said, and assumed she was in deep trouble for peach theft and bolted for the front door—her dress waving in the wind like a white flag.
My mother never went to school past the equivalent of a grade four education. I have a university degree.
There have been many times my previous bosses have called me into the office, and my heart begins to flutter like a hummingbird; my eyes open wide, yet I cannot say a word.
The very same look in my eyes as my mother’s.
Perhaps what I’m trying to do by telling these stories is to do what I could never do without words: connect us.Â
To say that, Mom, you and I are not so different after all.
There are gorgeous sentences, similes, and even metaphors from our childhoods. I’m going to find them and string them together until I can hear you from one end, and you can hear me from the other.
I’m going to write words so strong they build a bridge we can walk across slowly—not flee. I’m going to build us a haven.
I never found out what exactly was chasing us. I can’t give it a name, or a color, or even a feeling. But I do know it eventually reached us in Canada.
It found its way into my body like a bad cold. Took hold of my hands in the dark, like a puppet.
Some things, like fear, or faith, you can’t escape. They must be tamed. More on this next week.
If you liked this essay, catch up on the previous ones in this series:
It’s not that I’m sober curious
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Checked out and liked a couple of your poems on Instagram. Maria, the multi-talented! Wow.
Love all the metaphors throughout. It made all the places come alive.