Sunday, a True Story

I walk into church at 9:30 in the morning with my smile on. Whether they love me or hate me they give me a warm welcome. Then I hear the news of the day: a rancher in his fifties was found dead on his land. Some say it was a heart attack.
I start making the rounds, shaking hands. A Border Patrol agent says to another church member, "apparently there were U.D.A.'s in the vicinity."
"What are U.D.A.'s?" I ask.
The agent gets defensive. "What do you call them?" I try to make words but not fast enough.
"Un Documented Alien," he says, and proceeds into his diatribe. Now he explains the word alien by translating into Spanish, like I don't have my Masters and I don't translate almost every day.
"Extranjero. Forastero. Stranger. Foreigner. Not like alien from another planet."
I ask, "Have I done something to make you mad?"
The agent explodes into some uber-border-patrolly man-rage. His words flow down from his mouth like a pyroclastic flow, laying to waste some poor Pacific volcano town, "I had a long day yesterday and you don't know what a fuckin' U.D.A. is?"
My mouth said: "If you're gonna get mad, get mad at some one else."
My brain said: "fuck off asshole."

Then I put on my fake smile and go to teach two middle school girls about Holy Week. My fake smile turns into a real one and forty five minutes later I walk into the sanctuary. You can't bullshit kids.

"Hey Carol, where in the bulletin is my speaking part?"
"Ha," she responds. "You know whats funny? When people's brains don't work."
Hilarious.
She continues: "O its not your fault, its just your culture."
Real smile, defeated. All I hear now is the auditory equivalent of raw sewage seeping from the hole in this woman's face.
You know whats funny? Somewhere in a parallel universe (where we're going we don't need roads) my doppelganger is beating the mess out of an old and ornery church crone. In front of the pastor. In front of the congregation. Yes, I know this is offensive.
But in this universe, I take it like a kick to the balls. From a third grader. Or maybe from a crusty old geriatric.

Church starts. In the pew behind me Gean's dead and strangely endearing voice croaks out hymns that sound more like a duck call than human singing. She's been singing now for ninety six years. I ask God for strength and patience to deal with people who are mean and wounded and unaware of others. But somewhere not so deep down I want to fight back. I want to physically fight. Instead of turning the other cheek after being slapped I want to come back with all my guts and glory and rip these bastards to shreds. I would feel better. Maybe for a little while. But we all know where that kind of mentality get us: sons and grandsons fighting their fathers' and grandfathers' fights, and they don't remember why.
So instead, I lick my wounds, put my fake smile back on, and pretend like I'm the strongest dude on the planet. Inside I want to fight like a wounded street dog. Barking at ghosts.

Hours later I'm in the Migrant Resource Center. It goes from boring to busy in exactly one second. Seventeen men and two women, the majority of which I already know, enter in from the night. Suddenly the center is filled with "hey amigo!" and "buenas noches!" and other pleasantries. Hands are shaken. Faces have smiles. Hopes and dreams are dashed and delayed. I scan the crowd of folks (some people call them U.D.A.'s). Two lines form. One for coffee. One for burritos. My eyes meet with several others, and we start laughing. We laugh. Inexplicable laughter. Several other pair of eyes shift and faces communicate a certain wonder of why this crazy guero is laughing.
"Mejor reir que llorar," I say.
Its better to laugh than to cry.
The not so alien, newly documented crowd laughs corporately. Not because its very funny, but because they understand.

We may not seem like we have much in common. I was born on one side of a line drawn by soldiers and government men. And they were born on the other side of that line.
We look differently.
We speak differently.
I have a life of privilege.
Many of them die for privilege.
But we all laughed.

These people. These humans. These brothers and sisters. Fathers and Mothers. Undocumented Aliens. These people were just denied by my country and the policies that I am responsible for. They see me and the laugh with me. We laugh because we are tired of the bullshit and we want to go home. And thank God we can laugh. Because if we start crying we might not be able to stop.