Cross Section 5.3.25

Lalala

Sitting in my living room cozy in a new blanket, a fuzzy cloud of polyester that leaves stubborn strands of white on all of my clothes, slowly piles lint in my locs. Coulou on my TV screen. He is in his bedroom, playing his instruments. I have become so used to his peaceful music making that the quiet of my apartment is disquieting without him. Happy Saturday.

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On the bus this Wednesday, it’s the skinny serious bus driver. I flash him a smile and a happy Friday he smiles back for the first time, seems genuinely happy to see me. I think: he would protect me if it came down to it. I am safe in this city.

I am on the 8:08 bus heading downtown so it’s the chatty black lady with the walker and cornrows who brings the energy once she shuffles on at 30^th and Broadway. Good morning bus driver, she says, sitting in the front. Man I remember when I used to drive. I miss driving but I don’t miss the people. Does Darnell still work there? Anyway, I made myself a big breakfast today. I’m feeling good like James Brown said. Lord when I get back home tonight I’m not comin out my house for nothing. Gonna make my coffee and green tea and stay inside all weekend mm mm.

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Moments later I sit in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, have three near identical conversations with three Mexican men, each of them found the day before about 3 miles west of the Otay Mesa Port of entry and two miles north of the international border, concealing themselves in the a shrub in the hills of Otay Mesa, discovered by an agent wearing full regalia, border patrol insignia visible.

My interpreter translates, matching my inflection precisely:

If I were queen of the world I begin, what you did wouldn’t be a crime. But I’m not queen of the world, so it is a crime. Why did you come here? To work? That’s what I thought, your family is lucky to have you, you came here alone? Where where you going to stay? Your brother is here in New York? Do you know his number? Is there anyone you want me to call? I’m sorry but unfortunately the judge won’t let you stay here. Yeah. Even just to work. Yes she knows you weren’t coming here to do a crime. You should be out within three weeks. But please don’t come back, not because I personally don’t want you to come back but because you’ll just spend more and more time in jail I had a client who was facing 210 months in jail because he kept coming back so much. Ok? So we can fight your case or you can plead to a misdemeanor. A misdemeanor is a less serious crime than the one you’re charged with right now. Which is a felony. For coming here without papers. Ok. I’ll bring the deal as soon as I have it.

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My aunty’s blood pressure is too low, my grandmother’s blood pressure is too high. Both are in the hospital in Kenya. Please pray, my mother texts. I pray for my mother first.

On the phone she says grandma’s surgery will cost 2.6 million shillings, which is about seventy thousand dollars. It’ll be cheaper in India, so maybe they’ll go there, but not sure the insurance will travel with her to India. It’s her aortic valve, calcified and thin, it’s an elective surgery, until it's done grandma will be fine on her medication regimen, but her house simply won’t do, and she can’t live alone anymore, they’ll have her stay with aunty until they clear out the mold, repaint the walls, the constant maintenance of living.

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Mr. [] is back, after just three weeks. In the visiting room I can tell right away he’s back in his skinhead jit, head smooth to reveal every inch of his skull covered in tattoos. He’s skinny again, been smoking a gram of meth everyday but not fentanyl, no ma’am I have not done any opiods just meth. He doesn’t want a program this time, doesn’t want to have to check in ever again he’s been checking in since he was thirteen. He giggles again when I say, Case aside, I don’t want you to die?

No fentanyl I promise, just get me twelve months, hell I’ll even do fourteen, just get me off paper.

///

On the official website of the United States Government, an article entitled “100 Days of Fighting Fake News.”

An excerpt from a subsection entitled Other Fake News Narratives Corrected addressing public concern about individuals deported without due process to Centro Del Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) in El Salvador:

Who is writing this? Who?

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On the radio, a girl from Boston, so sweet she seems to have been generated by AI, speaks about her dad, a man from Brazil who came to Boston in the nineties, started a construction company, and how she loved her dad. Followed him around as he built, and even in middle school she loved him, handing out business cards for his construction company to her teachers and classmates, saying My dad can fix your roof! And now on the radio, in her twenties, in college studying architecture and design so that she can work with her father as he builds houses. Need I say more? He is taken by ICE to a detention center in Louisiana. He is deported to Brazil.

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A client on the phone. He’s on home detention, has been reading a lot, mostly the manga his little sister left behind, she’s in Japan now. He likes “Hal’s Moving Castle.” I tried to watch that one but I fell asleep, couldn’t understand it at all, I say. He’s quiet. Judging me the way everyone who loves Miyazaki would judge me.

He’s an amateur sommelier, likes his job, has been in therapy for two years since his arrest, has decreased his drinking, doesn't mind if the judge adds a no drinking condition. Lives with his parents, is meticulous about checking in with his pretrial officer.

He has been accused of something. I will not say what. He is a green card holder. Unless a miracle happens or we win at trial, he will be deported to a country he has not lived in since he was six years old.

At the end of the call I ask him if he has any further questions before I go. A pause. Is there hope for me? He asks. And I wonder what he means, exactly.

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“Tell me a time when you were bad, Daddy.” Age increases experience even as it narrows one’s possible reactions to it. Iron tracks have been laid down and long traveled. To deviate would require a crash. My own childhood was full of sourceless rages, solitudes so abysmal they retain exact position and proportion in the mind, like the objects left by astronauts on the moon that, because there is no atmosphere, exist exactly as they were. Not one particle has been lost or changed. But rage, too, is a reflex, I want to say, like grief, like God. There are times in one’s life when form is a lapse of courage. —Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair

xoxo,

LKM