Shut Up, This Is Serious by Carolina Ixta

Author:Carolina Ixta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

WHEN MY PARENTS TOLD ME AND AVA ABOUT THEM IMMIGRATING to this country, they described it as a curtain that divided their lives into a before and an after, change nestled somewhere at the center of that partition. Sometimes they’d tell us about what they saw, what they witnessed, but most days they’d just tell us that they just try to forget.

At times, my ma says this is where she lost my pa, someone who actively attempted to erase his memory with other things, other people, other women. My ma describes it all—coming over, gaining him, losing him—as the type of growing pain that throbs along the stretch marks of her brain.

Like my parents’ story, everything I know about the Barragón family’s migration is told to me in pieces of reconstructed history.

Leti heard this once, then overheard that, then was told this in spite. From what she’s learned, she’s explained to me that her parents’ migration story is the scariest thing she’s ever heard. Worse than the time in the seventh grade when Marta López told her about Bloody Mary appearing in the library’s bathroom mirror. And that’s saying a lot for Leti.

I remember Leti leaning her head against the bus window that was etched with graffitied initials, proving that someone else had been here before us.

“I think that’s what made them how they are today,” Leti said, thinking of her parents. “They think they’ve been through the worst life has to offer, so anything they do can’t be half as bad. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think it’s right. It just is what they think.”

That’s why, when I sit on the vinyl-covered couch in the Barragón living room, I feel sweat beading behind the creases of my knees. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s Sunday afternoon, right after church, and Leti, her ma, and her pa just got home. They’re still dressed in their church clothes—ironed shirts, starched pants, lace-trimmed socks. Quentin and his parents are supposed to be here any minute in their own Sunday Best, to announce he and Leti are having a baby. And I’m here to serve as a mediator, or as a witness. The only thing looping around in my brain are Leti’s words on that bus ride: I think that’s what made them how they are today.

I know whatever empathy the Barragóns gained crossing the border will find its limit when they learn Quentin is the father of this baby.

Even if their racism is plainly clear, Leti’s parents believe all the harm they faced in their migration somehow makes them exempt from inflicting harm on others. How could they be racist when a border denied them access? How could they make someone feel unwelcome when they were still undocumented? How could they cause pain when they are still wounded?

I fidget on the couch, the plastic liner squeaking beneath me. Leti told her ma I was coming over to help her study for a test. But when her ma

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