Don't Go by L.J. Breedlove

Author:L.J. Breedlove [Breedlove, L.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: College, student newsroom, coming of age, DACA, immigration, Latina, romantic suspense
Publisher: L.J. Breedlove
Published: 2021-03-17T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Noon, Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, Nampa, Idaho — Teresa Valdez had been with these three families for two days as they picked what remained of the fall fruit harvest in Idaho. Teresa’s attorney had made the arrangements for her to join them. She was looking after the children while the adults and older teens picked fruit. She had a curriculum pack a school farther north had given them, but none of the adults had the written language skills — in English or in Spanish — to use it. They’d been happy to trade out her meals for her abilities to teach the children.

It was eye-opening for Teresa. She was two generations — 1.5 really — away from the fields. Her father had worked in the orchards as migrant laborer as a teenager. But when he returned as a young adult, he came back with grafting skills that were in high demand and allowed him to find work in central Washington and to settle down in Yakima. She’d only recently learned that he had also been a police officer in Morelia, apparently that was not considered a transferable skill.

Nor was it a background that would welcome him back if ICE carried through and deported him. She worried about him. And about her abuelo who was no longer a young man — he’d been in the states for nearly 40 years! What did he know about life in Morelia? About staying alive in Morelia? His return, and even more, her father’s return, not only jeopardized their own lives, but also the lives of the families they’d left behind in the Michoacán. And of course, it was devasting to the lives and families they’d built here.

She was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she had a biological mother in Mexico. She hadn’t known that. The woman she called mama had lived in Yakima all her life, and so had her parents. She hadn’t known she was her adoptive mother. Come to think of it, that was probably more missing paperwork. She sighed.

Teresa helped the oldest woman of the three families, Abuelita, grandmother, the children called her, dish up lunch for the children — homemade tortillas and beans made with lard. Teresa ate hungrily too. It was good food and plentiful. These families were doing well on this migration trip. Up into Texas, through the southwest, up through California, Oregon, and Washington. They stayed in central Washington the longest with the apple harvest. It was there that the kids had attended class starting in September with the new school year and ending just a week ago. Then they’d headed down through Idaho. They would move slowly through Utah, and back into New Mexico, before crossing the border at El Paso and heading home to the Michoacán they called home, getting there in time for Christmas. Most of them had work permits and had them for decades of trips like these. Teresa asked no questions, and they had no questions of her.

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