by Erin Jamieson
We pretend not to notice.
That’s the way we’ve learned to survive. We accept the splintering wood, the peeling
paint, the broken dishwasher and weeknight dinners of canned tuna and microwave peas.
If it’s a good week, we eat baked chicken and maybe even a little steak. Though more
often than not, Diego takes most of my share too. I used to complain, but whenever I did,
Abuela would suggest we could both live off of stale bread if we couldn’t learn to share.
I don’t think Diego would understand the word sharing if someone shoved it in his face.
To be fair, he wasn’t always this way. He became angry and territorial the day Papá was deported. I grew silent.
By the grace of God, Abuela would say, the rest of us are still here in Arizona.
I never saw it that way. The way I’ve always seen it, if God was really giving us grace, he would have either sent us all back together of Papá would have listened to our mother and never gone with us in the first place.
But today is unbearably hot, even for Arizona. It’s the kind of heat where you feel like
your skin is melting off of you. My one friend (my brother, naturally, has many) even has a pool in his backyard, but Abuela says if I go over there too often then I’m taking advantage.
And if there is one thing Abuela doesn’t tolerate, it’s free loaders. At the ripe age of
seventy two, Abuela works full time at a diner two blocks away. Sometimes she comes come with headaches from the lighting and blisters from being on her feet all day. She often smells like burgers and pizza.
Diego has asked time and time again why she can’t bring home leftover food, like other employees do and she says she still didn’t pay for it.
I go outside and just start walking. I walk until I go past the diner, past the CVS and
Safeway. There’s a group of women huddled together. I hear the words: invasion, immigrants in the same breath.
Abuela would say the Bible teaches us to turn the other cheek.
But as much as I admire Abuela, what she doesn’t understand is how cruel people are. I walk past the woman and feel my ears burning. I am sure they mentioned ‘welfare’ in the same breath, too.
Diego would be more direct. Instead, I head into Safeway and buy a blank card. It has
an American flag on it, just in time for the Fourth of July.
It doesn’t take me long to figure out what to write. I leave it on one of the cafe tables
outside the grocery store and even though the women are gone they or others like them will be back.
Nosotros también somos estadounidenses.
We are Americans too.
On my way back home I spot purple wild flowers that are growing between sidewalk cracks. I nearly pluck them, to give to Abuela, but rethink.
Beauty in the most unlikely places.
I smile and somehow, I no longer mind the heat.
About the Author
Erin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio. Her writing is forthcoming in After the Pause, Into the Void, Flash Frontier, and Foliate Oak Literary, among others, and her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She currently teach English Composition at the University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash College and also works as a freelance writer.
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