What Is
an excerpt

Mexico, 1975

Mom hugs me goodbye in the parking lot of our church, Christ the King Lutheran in Bloomington. "Be good." She says. "Have fun." Then she hugs my sister, Margie, and probably says the same thing, but I'm hugging my brother, David, and then my sister, Amy. Sarah, only six years old, suddenly seems to realize that Margie and I are really getting on that bus, and that we're leaving her like we’ve been talking about for the past week. She starts to cry, loudly and without shame. It occurs to me that neither of us has been apart from Sarah since she was born. For the past five years, our family has vacationed together at Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center in Washington State. Everyone else leaves for Holden tomorrow. Instead of going with them as usual, Margie and I are going on a trip called, "Mexico Youth Encounter." It’s been organized by a bunch of Minnesota churches, and has been billed as a way for teenagers to serve poor families, learn Spanish, and experience a foreign country within the safety of a Christian youth group supervised by a dozen adults.

I pick up the wailing Sarah, and hold her close to me, desperately trying to calm her as if she was my own child. I am ten years older than her, and it is agony to see her so unhappy.

"I'll be home soon," I coo in her ear. “We’ll be home before you know it!" But Sarah is inconsolable and clings to my neck. The last call for the bus is made, and Mom pries Sarah’s arms from me. Sarah sobs even louder. Her long brown hair clings to her small cherubic face, tears streaking her cheeks. I wipe a tear from my own face, then take her head in both my hands and kiss her one last time on the forehead. It takes every ounce of my courage to turn away from her and board the bus.

We start to pull away from the crowd in the parking lot. Margie and I hang out the windows, reaching and waving toward our family. Sarah continues to sob as Mom hold her, little arms stretched toward the bus as if she could will the big yellow bus to turn around. Disbelief that we are leaving her sweeps across her face. I feel like I have betrayed her somehow. I swallow hard, waving out the window until they are out of sight.

I write in my journal as the bus jolts along 35W south. We stopped last night in Albert Lea and picked up our last group of teenagers. All six of them come from Hispanic families who work in the Albert Lea meatpacking plant. Their dark hair and skin are a sharp contrast to the rest of us, the Lilly-white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed suburban group from the Twin Cities. I wonder how it must feel for them to join us, if it feels strange to them to be going to the country of their parents or grandparents. I don’t ask though. I am too self-conscious and embarrassed, worried I’ll offend.

I am one of the oldest kids on the trip. I probably should have gone last year, but I didn't know about it then. I want to learn Spanish, and I'm looking forward to the variety of places we’ll be going. We will be gone just about a month. One week in Mexico City seeing sights; one week at the Monestario Benedictino doing service work for local families. At the monastery, those of us who signed up will participate in a week of immersion Spanish language study. The last two weeks of the trip, we’ll break into small groups. Each group will determine where they will spend the last week and a half. Then we travel back to the border where we'll meet up again for the long bus ride home. It sounds exciting. I’ve never been out of the country. Well, not since I was very young. I vaguely remember going to Tijuana when my family lived in San Diego, but we moved to Bloomington when I was eight. Even though some Spanish was taught in my San Diego elementary school, I only remembered a few words, numbers, and phrases.

I bought a new blank journal a few days ago, the first fancy book I've used since I started keeping journals in fourth grade. It's a beautiful, hard cover blank book with gold edges on each page. The cover is dark blue with a light blue tree with flowers on the front cover. The inside cover is yellow, blue, red and teal all swirled together so that it looks elegant. I started writing in it last night about how excited I was to go on this trip and my worry that I will miss my family and friends, including Gary, who I think is my boyfriend now, although I'm not sure.

I write for a while in my journal, recording what's happening on the bus. Most of the group is singing folksongs in the back, but I feel like writing and being still. Sarah's crying has left me sober, realizing that I really am gone. After a while, I put my journal aside and get out my package of notepaper. I start a letter to my Mom. I tell her about the hard seats, noting that they are surprisingly comfortable considering there is no cushion. I wonder in the letter if they should have installed seat belts for us, and hope that we don't get sore butts during the three-day drive to the border in Texas. I tell her that I hope they had a safe journey to Holden, and that she should give everyone a kiss for me, especially Sarah. I address the envelope to my Mom at Holden Village, put a stamp on it, and then start another letter to Gary.

I tell him about the landscape, the cows and fields we are passing. I marvel at how something so flat could be so beautiful, and tell him I love looking at the wind rippling fields of wheat and corn. I tell him to write to me soon, that I miss him already, that I hope he is okay. I sign the letter carefully, "Love and kisses, Becky." I hope he gets the message.

I worry about Gary. His dad died when he was little, and his mom committed suicide when he was five. Ever since then, Gary has lived with his grandfather who I’ve heard is physically abusive. At sixteen, Gary is a tall, gangly guy with sandy blonde hair that’s always a mess. He has an odd-shaped face and a crooked smile, but he's smart, quick, and makes me laugh with his crazy sense of humor. My mother loves him, and has sort of adopted him as an unofficial part of our family. He even came with us to Holden last year, along with a couple of other friends. He’s awkward with me, but then he seems awkward with everyone. I didn’t know for sure that he “liked me” until Tuesday, the last time I would see him for over a month. I was driving him home and turned the corner onto his block. He suddenly started sputtering and cursing, then fell over next to me as if he was hiding.

“Quick!” He hissed up at me through clenched teeth. “Turn around! Turn around!” I must have looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, so he explained, “There’s my grandfather, in the front yard. If he seems me with a girl, he’ll kill me!”

I didn’t do a U-turn, figuring that we’d be spotted for sure. But with Gary safely hidden below the dash, I passed the house, too startled and scared to even look directly at the old man in the front yard. I turned the corner, drove one more block, then pulled over to the curb. Gary opened his door and kind of rolled out of the car onto his knees, fidgeting and muttering to himself, “I can’t try anything now, it’s just not my way. Besides… all the houses….” He kept fidgeting, looking down, but pulled his tall frame up until he was standing next to the car. He leaned down so he could look at me.

“What can I say,” he said. “I love ya, Okay?” He looked at me suddenly with his very clear, deep blue eyes, and I nodded like an idiot. He muttered a goodbye, then took off between the houses, framed by the window of my mother’s gold Chevy Impala station wagon.

Gary sees the world differently. I suspect it’s because he's seen so much pain. He's part Native American, and I find myself thinking that he’d probably be a respected Shaman if he had been born in a tribe a few hundred years ago. I’m suddenly glad we have a month apart.

We arrived at the border crossing in Laredo, Texas about an hour ago. I hoisted my backpack onto my back, slung my carry bag over one shoulder, and grabbed my guitar. We were told to walk over in groups of five. I joined up with a group of girls and John, one of the counselors, and together we walked the five blocks to the bridge that was the border. Before we crossed, we had to go through a turn-style with a five-cent toll. The others were ahead of me, so I dropped in my nickel and hurried through so we wouldn’t get separated. I was going so quickly that my guitar got stuck in the turn-style. I felt really stupid, and started to panic when I realized the others were too far ahead to ask for help. Luckily a very nice man going the other way saw me struggling and stopped to help me disentangle myself and get through.

He smiled and I said, "Thank you, sir."

"Don't mention it," he said, then kept on his way.

I caught up to the others and we crossed the bridge. It wasn’t long, but the sun was beating down and soon I felt sweat trickling down my sides. I followed the rest of our small group into the customs office, and was immediately overwhelmed with Mexico. The office was dirty. Loud music filled the air. After waiting ten minutes, we were directed to get a cab to the train station in Nuevo Laredo, and that we should go through customs there. I followed my crowd to the cabs where John found one, and we packed six people and our luggage inside. The driver told us it would cost three US dollars, and before John could talk him down, Julie paid him. We paid Julie, but John told us quietly that, in the future, we should haggle. Three dollars was way too much for this ride.

We got to the train station and breezed through customs – they didn’t even search our bags. And we didn’t have to show the birth certificate or visa I’d so carefully packed. I was kind of disappointed.

The train station was filthy. I didn’t want to sit down anywhere. A little kid ran from person to person in our group asking in a thick accent, and with a huge smile on his dirty face, "Quarters? Nickels? Quarters?" I don't have anything to give him and felt terrible. A few minutes later, three other little kids who looked like a brother and two sisters, none of them older than five, did the same thing. "Pennies?" they asked. "Pennies, nickels? Dimes?" Why would anyone want pennies, I wondered? I wished I had some to give them. All of my money as in traveler's checks.

We had three hours until the train left, so Bonnie and I went into a little restaurant in the station for some pop. It was really dingy, but we got two bottles of Pepsi out of a cooler and sat down at a table across from a bunch of girls from our group. A couple of guys at the counter tried to make us nervous by staring at us, but Bonnie didn’t see them. The girls at the other table bought one of the little begging boys a Pepsi (which cost three pesos – 24 cents). He started teasing his sister who didn’t get a pop. I was embarrassed by them, acting like American Tourists. They took pictures of both of the begging children. I wanted to go over and tell them to stop, that it was demeaning. But I know I have no authority, so I kept quiet.

We board the train at seven PM. It’s dirty, but the ride is smooth and right on time. We ride first class. Instead of being fancy, it is crammed with people. A mom with lots of kids sits across from us. Two of her kids are holding younger children in their laps. Behind them is another family. One of those kids holds a live chicken. I have lots of time to realize that it's not a pet, but probably a future dinner.

After we pull out of the station and leave the town, I stare out the window. Cardboard shacks stretch out as far as I can see on both sides of the train. Some of the shacks are made with corrugated metal, but mostly they seem to be made out of cardboard. I stare at them as if they were a puzzle. It takes several minutes for me to realize that these are homes.

The vast paper suburbia seems deserted except for the children running next to the train tracks. These are little kids, and I am terrified for them, running so close to the train, unsupervised. It slowly dawns on me that lack of supervision is probably the least of their problems. Now and then I see other people appear out of the cardboard village like dream. An elderly woman tending a fire in an oil drum. A young woman with three young children clinging to her. An old man hanging torn clothes on a short piece of cord. I am astonished. I try to imagine a life in a cardboard house with fire in a drum to cook over. My first question, “What do you do when it rains?” stops me cold. I realize I can’t imagine this. Even looking right at it, I can’t imagine it.