A Girl like Me

Wednesday, 22 July, 2009

 

I’m sitting on the sticky leather couches of the mission, biding time until José is ready to go to the Factory with me. A girl who I have met before, but whose name I have forgotten, sits down next to me. We begin to chat.

I learn, during the conversation’s course, that the girl I am speaking to is my same age. That’s always interesting to consider—the parallel life that I could have. She is at college now, at a Catholic school, studying to be a teacher. Her father pushed her to enroll and though she was resistant at first (scared about her still shaky mastery of English), she is now glad that she is there. She isn’t a rough girl, doesn’t get into trouble or gangs and the people she has met at college are good, too.

Life is scary for her. Here, her neighborhood of little brick houses is the site of gang activity. She doesn’t go out at night. She used to love to return to Mexico, to stay with her Grandmother in the north of the country. But that area is scary now, too, since the drug ring gangs have started moving in to the area. 

Her eyes widen, big and fearful. Is anywhere safe to live? She asks.

 

Internship: Araceli I

Wednesday, 22 July, 2009

*

Before I enter the mission, I stop a few moments to talk business with the kids standing

outside. It is church fundraising season and the kids of the Mission are stationed behind a little table, peddling soda and candy, water and orange or grape drink. I ask them what is selling well, and the reports are mixed. In the past four hours, they have made about twenty-six dollars. Nicely done, I say, secretly wondering if their own parents or siblings contributed the most to that total.

*

It starts with a tap and a jump. I tap the glass storefront window of the mission and the little, round-faced boy at the other side hops back with fright. A second later, a huge grin spreads across his face. A tiny, balled fist taps back. We begin a game where I splay my fingers on one side and he mirrors me on the other. Soon, his two sisters join in and we are laughing and smacking the glass. I feel terrible about the greasy paw prints we are marking the window with, but the giggles are just too pure, the fun too extreme. We play for a long time, until finally I pry myself away. Embarassingly enough, my interviewee is inside, waiting for me. I am in the process of apologizing when the kids I had just played with crowd around her. I learn that my new friends are her children. They dart back and forth from me to their mother, smacking my hands. In winning their trust, I win their mother’s trust, who smiles a weary, appreciative smile at me.