Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Over the next few weeks, I started hanging out at the Mission a lot. The fact that all I was doing was working my internship and exploring Chicago meant that I was uncharacteristically free. I could be flexible and wait around while someone completed their work. I could get to be friends with the kids. Each conversation ended up supplying me with practical knowledge about the people there or the neighborhood. I was relishing the art of hanging out with people and watching things happen. And moreover, people learned to like and trust me because I was always there.
On that first day of hanging out, the Padre returned to the Mission to make a phone call. When we walked in, he greeted a mother and daughter talking to friends at the front.
These are the Blancos, he said. You should talk to them. Marilu is helping them to get loan modifications.
And so, Dulcidia Blanco, her fourteen-year-old daughter Joceline and I sat on the wooden pews.
Dulcidia spoke ok English, but soon we moved into a rhythm where she spoke to Joceline in Spanish and Joceline translated. Sometimes, I asked interview questions, sometimes we chatted. It was in that way, in this relaxed, conversational style that I got their story.
Dulcidia and Luis had crossed into Mexico from Guatemala twenty-five years ago. They later crossed the rio to get into the united states. In the 1990ss, they received amnesty through a lottery. Dulcidia feels safer now, more free, less afraid.
They bought their house in the nineties and Joceline and her three brothers were raised there.
They told me about joining the church: “It helps out a lot of people, we like that a lot.” Luis drove supplies down on a mission trip to Tabasco. They never expected to be the recipients of aid.
They told me about last September, when Luis started getting less and less work as a trucker. Soon, he was only working 2 or 3 days a week at most.
Dulcidia had to go onto food stamps, something she has never done before.
She spoke of how they could no longer pay the mortgage. “The bank keeps pressuring me,” she said. “The first time they called was Christmas. They said we had lost the house. They keep calling and saying we have already lost the house when we haven’t. They once called my husband when he was driving and said the same thing. He almost crashed, so now I take all of the calls.”
“If they take the house away, what are we going to do?” she asked. “It’d be easy to rent another place but it’s been fifteen years there, I don’t want to leave.”
Joceline turned to me. “Mom gets really depressed. She cries a lot. Sometimes, I come into the room and she is just staring at the wall.”
Dulcidia adds: “Sometimes I want to just leave it all behind.”
The most precious part of the whole thing was the silence after we talked. I was able to share that with them, share the fact that discussing these things weighted us all down. I offered them a little hope, Well, if anyone can help you, it’ll be Padre, I said. I know, I know, said Dulcidia.
No comments:
Post a Comment