The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Author:Karla Cornejo Villavicencio [Villavicencio, Karla Cornejo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 0399592687
Google: EcvSDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07H73JSTJ
Publisher: One World
Published: 2020-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

How many years have you spent in this country?

How often do you have nightmares?

Every night, they say. Esme dreams about concentration camps nightly, about having to hide people in her home, people who can’t make a sound. There was a time when she was so anxious that she could not fall asleep, so she would have a glass of wine, then another, then another, and before she knew it a whole bottle would be gone. “My dad was an alcoholic, so I shut that down,” she says. I tell them about my nightmares, about my mental issues, and say how grateful I am for my medication. “Couldn’t you just decide to not be a victim to those things?” Esme asks me. “Couldn’t you promise yourself you won’t succumb to your demons? I did that,” she says. “I’ve trained myself not to give in. The only thing that I can’t get rid of is that I take four showers a day, and I won’t touch food that belongs to certain categories I’ve created, but that’s all.”

“That…sounds like OCD,” I say.

“If they give us papers, psychiatrists will get rich because we’re all crazy,” Isadora says. We all laugh.

“Sweet Home Alabama” comes on the bar radio.

“I love this song,” Esme says. “I call it ‘Sweet Home Hialeah.’ ” She starts to sing at the top of her lungs. She may be tipsy. Some of the other patrons at the bar, white people, look at us, and it makes me nervous, and it makes me sad that it makes me nervous. I imagine one of them taking out an AK-47 and shooting us down, then walking over to our bodies, then shooting us in our heads, execution style, as we continue to sing the pretty redneck song, marveling at the mansions surrounding us, trying not to think of cleaning them, and then, as I feel those white stares on us, I pour a drink on my head. The girls cheer and I let out a bloodcurdling scream. My first ever.

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