Longing for Familia

Warning: story of immigration and deportation.



It was Sunday again. The one day Misael looked forward to all week. 

It was also the day he dreaded the most, but he wouldn’t think about that now. He jumped out of bed and headed straight to his closet, or rather, the suitcase he called his closet. Housed neatly inside were all his new clothes that were reserved for his only day off, which was finally today. Once he carefully pulled out some Nike basketball shorts and sneakers, at least the lady at the pulga had sworn they were Nike, he called out for his roommates. 

“Vámonos!” He jovially called out to his 7 other roommates. 

“Vámonos Joker?” Hector teased, although with the man’s heavy Mexican accent, it sounded more like yoker. Misael laughed. He didn’t mind that the other men called him Joker since he was always smiling. Other guys had worse nicknames, like Muerte, for the guy that was so pale he could only be called Death, or Cabezón, the other guy that everyone swore had a too-large head. The men laughed off the nicknames or cursed each other out light heartedly. They had all become familiar friends since they worked at the same cuadrilla, or group of field workers, that tended to the local farms’ vegetables. They worked together for 60 hours, 6 days a week. But that’s about where the similarities ended. They were all from different states in Mexico, and sometimes couldn’t understand each other’s idioms, much less each other’s customs. But even with their differences, they all stuck together. Working and living together to send money back home to Mexico bonded them in a way no one else understood. 

Today, they would all be walking 2 miles to and from the nearest grocery store, Vallarta, to get the basics they need for the rest of the week. Once they arrived at the store, sweaty from the hot walk in Bakersfield’s summer heat, the men split up to get their items. Misael was in charge of the toiletries. There was something comforting about getting the same list every week: toilet paper, toothpaste, and garbage bags. The other men could be heard joking and laughing around Vallarta. Misael smiled as he lingered by the checkout stand, ready to pile his items with the others’ and pay with their pooled money once everyone was done. As he looked around the displays of pan dulce, Mexican spicy candy, and locked up liquor and baby formula, a colorful game caught his eye. It was a larger-than-usual Loteria, the game that his family played every Friday back home. Misael’s smile faltered as he remembered the beans being placed on the game mats when matching cards were called out, quarters clinking in the center of the wooden table as family members joined in the next game, the smell of atole and hot chocolate Abuelita wafting from his wife’s giant pots on the stove, ready to be doled out to whoever’s mugs emptied as the evening wore on. These small, but intensely nostalgic memories only speared themselves into his mind on Sundays, when his usually busy hands could no longer block out his wandering thoughts. He suddenly wished for his roommates to stop joking around and hurry to find their items so he could leave the store before bursting into tears. He hunched over, finding a crack in the store floor tiles to stare at while waiting. The añoranza made his shoulders heavy: the longing, the images of his family, the not knowing if he would ever see them again. It was all too much. 

“Sabes, El Joker también se pone triste”, Hector softly spoke next to Misael, who nodded. Misael did know that even though he had a permanent smile, it was against his will, and even the Joker’s smile faded when he was depressed. 

Hector patted Misael on the back and placed his items on the conveyor belt, just as the rest of the cuadrilla showed up and gathered all their items to pay. 

On the walk back home, Misael thought about his little family. He had just spoken to his wife on Friday afternoon, one of his weekly calls back home. His wife always talked about the difficulties in Celaya, the town in Mexico where she and their three kids still lived. It was starting to get tough there for their sons; as they grew into adolescents, they had to be kept away from bad influences in the town. Their daughter was still a toddler, but soon they would have to start saving up for her quinceañera. Misael loved hearing his wife’s voice, but his guilt made it very difficult to express what he felt. How could he provide any opinions or parenting advice when he wasn’t there every day to be a father in a truly present way? He had given up everything to come to el otro lado, the United States, and provide for his family, but that included giving up his presence and the ability to be there for his children every day. Talking was too hard. He usually found an excuse to get off the phone until next week, blaming it on one of the men that also wanted to call back home. 

With every footstep back to the cuadrilla’s small home, he thought about his greatest fear: how would his family remember him if he barely talked during their weekly 10 minute calls? 

After grocery shopping, cleaning, and eating some menudo at the small Mexican restaurant down the street, there was nothing else for Misael to do but wait for night to fall. 3 hours of free time was much too long, enough for the pain of longing to settle in again. He could watch some TV, but that was often too hard to hear over the 7 other men horsing around as they huddled over a portable TV. He could turn to alcohol, like some of the other men. But unlike the borrachos, he had family to worry about, and he couldn’t afford to indulge in some Tecate or Jose Cuervo as easily as they could. It was just too expensive. 

Sitting on a small stack of newspapers by the door, Misael suddenly remembered his paper collection. He had taken to gathering small scraps of paper he collected from magazines, newspapers, or ads so that he could write or draw, but he wasn’t very good at drawing. He gave up at a young age when his dad called drawing one of those babosadas that distracted men from true work. He had once tried to write his wife a letter but gave up when he didn’t know how to start. 

‘This time I won’t give up’, he told himself, and pulled out the largest piece of blank paper he could find off the back of a car ad. He borrowed a blue pen from Manuel, who liked to write notes with local immigration lawyer phone numbers and place them on their fridge with free pizza and county health magnets. And then he wrote.

For the next three Sundays, Misael wrote more than he had for years, ever since he dropped out of la secundaria at 16 years old to go to work for his family. Misael’s letters started as a small retelling of his daily life: the new vegetables his farm company brought to crop (he had no idea how to eat kale but it looked pretty in the neat green rows in the ground), his favorite market stall at the pulga (the churros tasted exactly like back home and he wished he could send some in the mail to his kids), or the big toros that were part of the yearly rodeos (even American cowboys tried bullriding- who knew!). But soon the letters turned into the unspooling and threading of past and new dreams: his childhood dream of opening his own store (that came about when he sold gum in the streets as a boy), his parents’ dreams for him of completing high school (no one in his family had yet met that accomplishment, maybe one of his sons would be the first), or his dreams for his children to be able to follow their own dreams (no matter how far reaching they might seem). Misael poured his heart into those weekly letters, and soon he had his writing to look forward to every Sunday. The week no longer felt like sludging through the swamps of past memories but like weaving through the fabric of new dreams. 

On the fourth Sunday, Misael gave his share of the weekly Vallarta money to Hector, and asked for him to purchase his items. “Por favor hazme el favor esta vez”, Misael requested. “Please do me this favor and I’ll do one for you next week”. 

Hector smiled, “Va, Joker. I’ll help you out. Add me to your letter”, he ended with a wink as he closed the door behind him, following the rest of the cuadrilla to the store. 

Misael grabbed his Club America soccer jersey, his weekly field paycheck, and his few extra dollars he made selling oranges at the local school parking lot this week. He headed to the corner liquor store, with the plan to buy three more stamps and some Pokemon cards for his sons. He had just gotten a return letter from his wife last week, with a request from their sons for some Pokemon cards; they had just started a collection and requested to add to it. Misael smiled as he remembered his eldest son’s scribbly handwriting. At 8 years old, he was getting good at writing full sentences. 

As he approached the yellow and brown painted bricks of the liquor store, Misael heard a truck door open and shut from the adjoining parking lot. He turned to look slightly over his right shoulder and saw a man in a uniform with the patch “POLICE” on his black vest. Another uniformed man joined him, exiting the left side of the white and green truck with a dark green shirt, matching black vest, and holding the leash of a dog with an “K9 CBP” vest. Misael stood rooted in the spot, unsure of what he was seeing. He turned slowly, thinking of Manuel and his tip to always run when he saw any uniformed officers, but before he could make up his mind to run or walk into the store and hide, he heard a loud shout from inside the liquor store. 

“La migra, corran!” Five other men ran out of the liquor store, all dressed in their Sunday best just like Misael. The two uniformed officers from the truck unleashed the dog, then split up and ran after the men. The dog lunged at the closest running man, tearing at his black Adidas sweat pants and dragging him to the ground. The man let out an involuntary grunt as he hit the ground, scraping his chin. Misael stayed rooted in his spot as two white and green SUVs screeched to a halt at the other corner of the liquor store, cutting off the other four men attempting to run away. 

“Parrar!” the uniformed man with the dark green shirt shouted out in broken Spanish. “Get down now and we’ll take it easy on you!” He continued to shout at the men to stop moving as he dragged them down with the help of the other officers. 

Misael’s heart was thundering through his jersey, threatening to burst out of his ears. He hunched down slowly and laid on the ground. He had always been afraid of dogs since he was bitten as a child, and if he was going to see his own children soon, he didn’t want to see them with a limp. A uniformed officer with a walkie-talkie and the last name Mendoza approached Misael, lifted him off the ground, handcuffed him, and placed him in the back of the open bed truck. It all happened so quickly that Misael didn’t even register if the officer had issued any commands. All Misael remembered in the next few hours was how the truck with the five men, and the SUV convoy, drove him down to a CBP office 2 hours away, then told the men that they would be “deportados to Tijuana soon”. At the CBP office, Misael gave up his fingerprints, his check (pesos were returned with a $50 processing fee deducted), and his freedom in America. 

‘Well’, Misael thought bitterly, ‘I won’t see the men in my cuadrilla again, but at least I’ll see my family again and end this pain of missing them’. 

On the way to Tijuana, Misael promised himself that once he was dropped off, made the 29 hour bus trip back to Celaya, and reached his family, he would never give them the chance to miss him again. He would never leave them again.