Where I Belong

by Marcia Argueta Mickelson

  Mario leads Mami and Dr. Wheeler to the other end of the counter where the clothes are handed out. Meanwhile, two girls who seem to be in high school come up to Charlie and me. One with long black hair in a ponytail introduces herself as Sophia. The other one has short blond hair, and Sophia calls her Emily. They explain that most people will be coming in with dirty, wet, or tearing shoes. Those get replaced. Some of them will be in better condition, and all they will need are new shoelaces. Emily shows us a bin that holds new shoelaces.

  “So, where are you two from?” I ask the girls, expecting them to tell me they’re from one of the nearby towns—Donna, Edinburg, Harlingen.

  “New Jersey,” Emily says.

  “New Jersey? Both of you?”

  “Yes,” Sophia says. “We’re just here for the week.”

  “You’re here on vacation?” Charlie asks.

  Emily shakes her head. “No, we came to volunteer for the week.”

  “You came here for this?” I ask them, looking from Emily to Sophia.

  “Yeah,” Sophia says. “We came with a school group. Two of our teachers are here, and there are four other girls. They’re making lunch right now.”

  “Wow,” I say. I’ve been thinking all morning that we came from far away. These girls paid for airplane tickets to come almost two thousand miles to help families they’ve never met before.

  “The bus is here,” Emily says, peeking behind a curtain, covering a narrow window. “The staff will start processing people, and then they’ll head over here.”

  Within moments, people start to trickle in. Some head to the showers first, others go to the clothing, and soon a long line forms in front of us.

  “Que tamaño?” Emily asks a little girl whose eyes are turned downward. Her mother comes up behind the little girl and tells Emily, “Doce.” Emily walks over to the girls’ shelf to grab a pair of size twelve shoes.

  A man steps forward behind her, and I make eye contact. “Hola, señor,” I say.

  He gives me a weary smile. “Hola. Cuarenta y uno, por favor.”

  I look at Sophia because he just said forty-one. She comes over and explains that some people will ask for shoe sizes in European sizes. She shows me that on some of the shoes, there is an EU and a number that correlates to the shoe sizes we use in America. I quickly see that a forty-one men’s shoe size is an American size eight. I find him a pair of Nikes that I remember Susana cleaning two nights ago. He takes the shoes, and I sign a large manila envelope where I write the size of shoes he received.

  I look over at Charlie and see him speaking to a young mom holding a toddler. Charlie picks out a pair of small shoes and puts the child’s foot into it to see if it fits while mom still holds him.

  Another man approaches, and I notice that he’s wearing a very old pair of tennis shoes. The original laces have been taken out, and the shoes are laced with long strands of shiny material that look like aluminum blankets I’ve seen in images of the detention centers. He takes off his old pair of shoes and throws them away in a garbage can near the counter. He tells me his size, and I give him a pair of Adidas that also came from Susana’s stash. I think about all the good that Susana’s hard work is doing for these people, some of whom have been wearing the same pair of socks and shoes for weeks. I wish that she were here to see what a difference she’s making in people’s lives.

  Glancing beyond our line, I see equally long lines at the clothing counter and the showers. I notice a man near the end of the shoe line clutching his son’s arm. The boy looks to be about nine, and his dad does not let go of his arm. The boy looks around with lost eyes and stays very near to his father. I think about all of the families that have been separated, families like these, little kids with lost eyes being taken away from their parents in this strange place they don’t know at all.

  It takes more than an hour for families to cycle through all the lines. Afterward they gather in the large waiting room, sitting on chairs there or lying down on mats on the floor. Many of them get help with their transportation arrangements. I heard one woman say earlier that she needs to get to South Carolina. Someone is making flight arrangements for her, connecting her to the family members who are paying for it.

  Sister Magdalena comes to tell us it’s time to serve lunch. In the kitchen, we meet the other four girls from New Jersey and their two teachers who came with them. Sister Magdalena gives each of us plastic gloves and an assignment. When the families begin lining up at the counter for food, Charlie dishes out chicken and rice. I give each person two corn tortillas. Mami provides apple slices, and Dr. Wheeler adds a napkin and plastic fork at the end. Emily and Sophia are pouring drinks and taking juice boxes out of a cooler. The line is long, but we try to work quickly.

  We dish up two plates for a woman carrying a baby and holding the hand of a toddler. She doesn’t have a free hand to take the food, so Mami quickly comes around the counter and carries the plates to a table. While Dr. Wheeler covers Mami’s apple-slice station, Mami removes her gloves and reaches out to take the baby.

  “Síentense,” Mami tells her. “Yo me quedo aqui con el bebe.”

  The woman looks at her for a long moment before she hands her the baby.

  Mami stands next to the table while the woman and toddler are eating. She holds the baby, bobbing him up and down as she talks to the woman. The little girl, sitting beside her mom, eats quickly without pausing.

  The rest of us continue handing out plates to the people coming through. They sit and eat while they wait to see when they can leave for the next stages of their journeys. Eventually an overhead speaker announces when vans are leaving to take people to the airport. The dining area thins out.

  Two of the volunteers take full garbage bags out to the dumpster in the back alley. Charlie gets a broom and starts sweeping the dining area, and I wipe the tables down as people leave. We take a quick break in the kitchen and fix plates for ourselves before the next bus from the detention center comes at three o’clock.

  We start all over with the next busload. Charlie and I pass out shoes with Emily and Sophia. Mami and Dr. Wheeler go back to the clothing line. We do the dinner line, and it’s nearing seven-thirty when we finish cleaning up the kitchen and dining area with the rest of the volunteers. Sister Magdalena comes over to us again to collect our volunteer badges and say goodbye.

  “Thank you so much for coming, Millie, Charlie, Belinda, Sandra.” She squeezes our hands as she says each name. “Your presence has been a blessing. We always need volunteers. This is every day here. Every day, we have at least two busloads of families coming through. We couldn’t do it without volunteers like you.”

  Dr. Wheeler gives her a hug. “I would definitely like to come again. I’m going to start collecting donations from my friends and neighbors.”

  “Me too,” Mami says. “I am going to talk to people at church.”

  Sister Magdalena gives them each a list of the specific items the resource center is collecting and sends us on our way.

  The image of the dad clutching his son’s arm is the most vivid memory I walk away with. I imagine the fear and anxiety the dad felt about coming here in the first place. He probably knew he wouldn’t be welcomed here, that his son could be taken from him, but he chose to come anyway. The conditions he left behind must be so much worse, so much more dangerous and miserable, that it was worth the risk. I can’t imagine what he left behind, but I am glad that they’re here, that they’re together.

  Once we get past the Border Patrol checkpoint, I lay my head on Charlie’s shoulder, and he leans his head against mine. We sit in silence. I imagine he’s doing what I’m doing, thinking over all the emotions that this day brought. There is sadness at the traumatic journey so many of the families have endured. Anger at the shameful policies that made their journey harder. Relief that these families are together now. Hope that they’re bound for better situations, among loved ones—and that others, even strangers like Emily and Sophia, will step up to support
them.

  And fear that this is only a temporary relief for so many of these people, because there’s still no guarantee that they’ll be allowed to stay here.

  ≈

  July 2018

  Charlie and I are walking next to each other down the sidewalk in my new neighborhood. We’re both wearing Wheeler for Senate T-shirts and holding clipboards. Anxiety is spreading throughout my body. This is something I never imagined myself doing—knocking on strangers’ doors, asking them to vote for a political candidate.

  Charlie takes my hand. “Thanks for coming with me. Are you feeling okay about it?”

  I smile and squeeze his hand, thinking about how difficult it was to make the decisions that have brought me to this point. Charlie has been canvassing door-to-door for a couple of weeks, but this is my first time. I never thought I would be knocking on doors for any political candidate, much less for Charles Wheeler. He isn’t a perfect candidate, of course. But I know he sees the humanity of people fleeing desperate situations. And that is not nothing. It’s the people in power who control so much of what happens to immigrants, and if I can do a little to help shift that power by knocking on doors—then I have to do it.

  I went through a training earlier today at Mr. Wheeler’s campaign headquarters. The volunteer coordinator said that people respond to personal stories, and each of us should feel free to share why we plan to vote for Charles Wheeler.

  I’m going to say that I will be casting my first vote in this election—an absentee ballot that I’ll be mailing from Stanford. I’m going to say that if my father were alive, he would be so proud of me. My father was a dreamer when he named me Milagros; his dream for his family was that we would be Americans. I don’t think there is anything more American than voting. And I’m going to vote for candidates who know that people like me, people like my father, deserve to be called Americans.

  While I still don’t think that I am miraculous in any way, I’m ready to add my small voice, to say that we do belong here.

  Author’s Note

  Guatemala is known as “País de la Eterna Primavera,” or “Land of the Eternal Spring.” One of its most important exports is bananas. United Fruit Company, an American company, had a monopoly on the banana trade in Guatemala for much of the twentieth century. UFC was known as el pulpo, the octopus, because it had its tentacles everywhere, including in building railroads and communication infrastructure to dominate the area. Guatemalan authorities gave UFC numerous privileges, allowed UFC to avoid paying taxes, and repressed labor unrest. This changed when Jacobo Arbenz was democratically elected as Guatemala’s president in 1951. Arbenz advocated for fairer wages and agrarian land reform. He also wanted UFC to pay adequate taxes.

  UFC lobbied the U.S. government to intervene to protect its financial interests. The company had many allies in the U.S. government. John Foster Dulles, who had previously represented UFC as a lawyer, was the secretary of state. His brother Allen Dulles, who did legal work for UFC and was on its board of directors, was the head of the CIA. John Moors Cabot, a major shareholder in the company and the brother of a former UFC director, was the assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs. Ed Whitman, a UFC lobbyist, was married to Ann C. Whitman, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s personal secretary.

  In 1954, U.S.-backed forces armed, trained, and organized by the CIA invaded Guatemala to overthrow Arbenz. This coup was commissioned by the Eisenhower administration, and a military dictatorship was established under Carlos Castillo Armas. Armas was the first of several U.S.-backed leaders to govern a deeply destabilized Guatemala.

  In 1960, a rebellion against Armas sparked a civil war. Over the next thirty-six years, more than 200,000 people—many of them civilians—were killed by the Guatemalan government. The U.S. continued to support the Guatemalan government despite its human rights violations. In 1999, after the conflict finally ended, the U.S. apologized for propping up dictators and for overlooking numerous atrocities, including acts of genocide, throughout the Guatemalan Civil War.

  The war’s legacy lingers in ongoing government corruption and violence, as well as in economic hardships for many Guatemalans.

  It is in this context that so many people have left and continue to leave Guatemala. The circumstances they encounter upon their arrival have varied over time, but the struggles that drive them from their home country remain largely consistent, rooted in decades of U.S. involvement in Guatemala.

  Acknowledgments

  Getting this book published has been a long journey, and it would not have been possible without the help of so many people. First, I would like to thank my husband, Nolan Mickelson. We are nearing three decades of knowing and loving each other. Your love and support have made everything I do possible. Thank you to my three boys—Omar, Diego, and Ruben—for being what matters most in my life. Being your mom will always be my favorite thing.

  To my sister and childhood best friend, Claudia: I could not have picked a better friend to go through the journey of childhood and adolescence with. Throughout all of it, our weird imaginations were so in sync with each other. Feeding off each other’s imaginings turned us into writers. I am so happy that we have each other to trade stories with.

  Thank you to my friend Elodia Strain. I have been your fan since our old Ink Ladies blog days. You were one of the first people to read this manuscript. Your email’s subject line—“At last . . . your beautiful book”—gave me hope and compelled me to keep working on it. Amanda Gignac, I am so glad we met so many years ago. Your friendship and your honest and amazing editing over the years have meant so much.

  Thank you to Kay Pluta, Nicole Martin, Emilia Smith, Mikayla Oelschlegel, and Rebecca Latimer Jamison for reading this manuscript in its infancy and for all your essential feedback.

  Thank you to my agent, Kathy Green, for your support. Our initial phone call gave me so much hope that I would be able to tell Millie’s story. Thank you so much for believing in me and in her. Thank you to Amy Fitzgerald and everyone at Lerner Publishing for all the work that was done on this book. It has been an amazing experience.

  Thank you to all my Blanche Moore friends. My years with you have been some of my favorites. Your love and laughs have meant the world.

  Mami, gracias por todo tu amor, sacrificio, y apoyo. Gracias, Papi por traernos a este país donde pudimos realizar nuestros sueños.

  About the Author

  Marcia Argueta Mickelson was born in Guatemala and immigrated to the United States as an infant. She is the author of several novels for adults and the young adult novel The Huaca. She lives in Texas with her husband and three sons.