The World Doesn't Work That Way, but It Could

by Yxta Maya Murray

  I’ve probably removed, I don’t know, three hundred minors from aliens? I have no idea. It’s probably more.

  What did I feel when I did that? When I took the alien in this case from its mother or the other alien minors from their mothers? You want to know about the first time I did it?

  Well, Sharon, when I first took a child away from its mother or its purported mother, I suppose that what I felt like was shit. Okay? Because it’s a real to-do. Everyone is screaming and crying, and it is honestly a fucking nightmare, particularly from a parent’s, a mother’s, point of view. And, you know, some of my people were from Mexico originally, so it’s not like, it’s not as if [indistinct].

  Because, because—can we stop for a minute? Can we stop? I want to stop. I want [muffled].

  Okay, so, on May 2, 2018, I, Georgia María Beckett, was informed by my superior, Edgar Williams, to separate a minor child from a suspected illegal crosser who had been detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. I see from the papers here that her name, what I now understand to be the mother’s name, is Delmy Morales. And I guess the girl child’s name is Idania. I’ve never heard that name before. Idania.

  They were in the icebox, the room with the cooler temperatures. I had earlier brought them a blanket and some ham sandwiches and two bottles of water. I didn’t have enough blankets for everybody in there, but I did try to get them to the aliens with children. A hundred or so people were in the icebox. Delmy and this little Idania were sitting on a bench by the far west wall, and I entered the box and approached them. The mother knew. I could see she understood what was happening when she looked at me. Her face got extremely furious, and she started crying right away.

  Sometimes, when the mothers get like that, they can get sort of crazy. It can get physical. Now, you see that I’m not that big, but I don’t want it so that I’m always having to call male guards for backup, because then it’s going to swing back on me, and I’m going to get a reputation for not being able to do my job. So I have to sort of stand really tall and talk really loud. You can’t let anyone believe that anyone but you is in total control. So that’s what I did with the alien with the child. I stood in front of her, and I said, in the Spanish I learned from high school and at home, “You’re going to have to give her to me now.”

  And the mother, the alien, says, “Please don’t.”

  But I’d already got my hands around the child’s middle, her stomach region. The child was small—they’re smaller in Guatemala than you’ve got in Mexico and certainly in the US. Just a little itty tiny bitty thing, with delicate bones. So it was a difficult operation. I was worried that the little one would get hurt. It’s happened. The parents go wild and wind up injuring the minors.

  So what I said was, “We’re just going to get the doctor to check her out. I’ll get her right back to you.”

  But the mother’s screaming, “I heard you are liars and that you will be stealing her from me. Do not take her, please, please, please, please.”

  So it wasn’t easy. And in the end, I did have to get a male to sort of stand by and look on in a threatening way so that the mother would give up the child without my tearing it from her arms. And in the end, the mother just gave up. She knew how it was going. She didn’t want to hurt her kid. She just gave her to me. Oh, and then, yeah, she, the mom, was screaming and crying. And the baby, just screaming and screaming.

  I didn’t put the minor in the doghouse. We had a back room where there was a nurse, and I just left the child with her. The mother screamed for a long time and had to be sedated. From what I understand, the mother was deported back to Guatemala after failing the credible fear, and the child was sent to a Chicago shelter. Heartland Alliance, is what they’re called, the facilities there.

  That’s what happened.

  So, what, that’s it? We’re done? I think I’m allowed to tell my side, here. I think I’m allowed [muffled].

  No, no, no, no. Here, listen up. You listen up. My two sons are Nat and Johnny. Nat’s six now, and Johnny’s three. No, no. I’m just going to talk here for a second now. I’m just going to talk. I’ve listened to you plenty.

  I have two sons, Nat and Johnny. And I love them more than I can say. More than there are words. And so I want you to look and see the human in me, if you can, Sharon. Do you see me? Do you see the mother in me? Because I am a human too, and I am a mother. And if you for one second forget that I am, then you’re the one who’s going to be doing wrong. I’m an American woman, and I work sixty hours a week, and I have two sons, and I love them more than anything in the world. So you can look at me from your high horse, and you can judge, and you can ask all your questions with that face on you like you’ve never had a difficult day in your whole damn life, but when you are trying to understand what is happening in Dilley, don’t you ever forget that about me. Because that’s what you should be worrying about. People who are asked to do things that are so, so hard and for such low pay. A woman who is asked to do these things. Me. What? No, that’s what you should worry about, Sharon. Because people like me, little people in this country, they’re the real story.*

  Schey said many of the children his team and other partnering organizations have interviewed showed signs of trauma and emotional distress.

  DANIELA SILVA, “‘Like I Am Trash’: Migrant Children Reveal Stories of Detention, Separation,” NBC News, July 29, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/i-am-trash-migrant-children-reveal-stories-detention-separation-n895006

  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs . . . [are] those that ensure survival by satisfying basic physical and psychological needs (physiological, safety, love and belongingness, esteem); and . . . those that promote the person’s self-actualization; that is, realizing one’s full potential, “becoming everything that one is capable of becoming,” especially in the intellectual and creative domains.

  BASSANT PURI and IAN TREASADEN, Psychiatry: An Evidence-Based Text (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2009), 214

  The Hierarchy

  (Physiological)

  EVERYTHING’S GREAT. It’s good. The food’s good. No, I’m happy.

  I just think it’s funny, this place. Dilley’s Restaurant, I never heard of it before. I don’t know, the name. The name’s funny.

  Yeah, go ahead and have it. It’s good. I’m just not that hungry.

  No, of course! I’m not mad. I’m just tired.

  Honey, I don’t want to get into a fight. We’re not having problems. No, I am not emotionally unavailable. I wish you wouldn’t say that.

  I’m just not like you, always wanting to talk about every single feeling that I have as soon as I have it.

  You’re getting all worked up about something that doesn’t have anything to do with you.

  What does it have to do with? Have some more pizza. Have some more wine.

  Fine, it has to do with my mother. But you know I don’t like to talk about that.

  I’m upset because of that thing that happened when I was really young. I’m just sort of weirded out right now because coming here has brought up all this stuff that I went through with my mom. I’m talking about when we first tried to get over here.

  I mean, when you picked this place, didn’t you even once think about it? How I would react?

  Dilley’s Restaurant?

  I’m not sure why you would think it was okay to bring me here.

  How do you not know what I’m talking about? I told you about it when we first got together. I told you about it when we were talking about having kids.

  Dilley, you know. Dilley, Texas?

  I did explain it to you. I told you on our second date, so that you would understand completely what you were getting into with me. I said, “My mom and I had this thing where they separated us when she came over, and it was really hard. And it was at the Dilley Center, in South Texas. I got separated from her, and they sent me to Chicago, and I spent several months with a family whose names I don’t even know, because I don’t re
member any of it, except for very little.”

  And that’s why Mom later had those problems, and she and I had our problems. And why I didn’t want to have kids.

  I know that you can’t tell that she has it rough mentally, but that’s because you don’t know her like I do. But you do, too. You see how tense she gets even now when we’re over there for dinner and it’s time to go home. And how she can’t relax, how she’ll start crying sometimes. It’s worse now that she’s older and her memories are coming up on her so intensely. She used to be very, very strong. Just strong as hell. But now, she doesn’t have to be so tough. Also, I guess she can’t put up as much of a fight against things that hurt her mind.

  I think that’s what happens when you age. Your memories come back really vividly, and it’s like they’re almost happening right that second, like you’re reliving them.

  We do have Alzheimer’s in the family, but I’m not sure that’s it.

  The first time I realized that it was a serious problem was probably when I was seven, and I think that’s my first complete memory. Like my first full memory.

  We were over here already. We’d sued the government for splitting us up, but we lost the lawsuit that would have gotten us money. The civil lawsuit. We’d gotten sponsorship, though, and had made it over. We were living here, in San Antone, already. She’d gotten a job making food for the laboring crews who workwed around the Plaza.

  Oh, she was tough. Normally. She’d be on her feet making empanadas and stews for fourteen hours a day. And if any of the guys gave her trouble, she’d just look at them with this wicked glare, and they’d stop. And you know how small she is. Well, how small we are. But they could tell that she was not a woman to mess with, and then they’d get really polite. Most of them. Some of them called her bruja, la chica fea, all that mess. But it wasn’t the men that made the problem.

  It was a social worker. A teacher at my school apparently was worried about how I was doing. I still wouldn’t talk a lot then. My mother later said that, for a long time, after she’d gotten me back from Chicago, I wasn’t the same. I was slower. I don’t know if it was intellectually. I mean, I hope not! That I was withdrawn. There were a few weeks they thought I might be deaf.

  Anyway, so the social worker gets a tip from the teacher and comes over to our apartment to check up on us. And my mother’s standing there in the doorway talking to her—one second she’s standing there, making nice with the lady, and the next second she’s ripping my arm out of the socket because we’re running through the apartment. She pushes me out of the back window to the fire escape. And we’re running down the fire escape, and she’s screaming. The police arrested her. They were confused. They thought it was child abuse. After that, we were separated again for like ten weeks, while the public defender was sorting everything out. I got put in that home.

  But, no, it wasn’t child abuse. On her part, it wasn’t.

  No, you can’t call that child abuse. That’s not—she was the one who was abused.

  Well, you were raised in Minneapolis, and so, I don’t think you really can know.

  Are you done eating? Baby, let’s go.

  I just want to go.

  (Safety)

  No, I don’t really feel like—I’m just tired.

  Babe. Babe. I’m just, like, so tired.

  All right.

  Yeah, it feels good. It feels good. Okay.

  Yeah, yeah. Okay. Right? Good.

  Good.

  Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, I love you.

  (Love and Belongingness)

  Hey, Mom. Hey, hi. Can you hear me? Yeah, how you doing? Everything okay? Your message was a little. I didn’t call because I just got busy.

  Oh, that? No, not because of that. The test was fine. I just had to do my annual. It’s just a regular checkup, like the kind you get.

  Yes, yes. I pray every day. I pray. Just like you taught me.

  Mom, Mom. Mom.

  Hey, Mom, okay, I’m going to come over. It’s okay. Please, I’m sorry I didn’t call back. Just don’t get upset.

  I’m going to come over later tonight, after work.

  Yes, I’m at work right now. I’m at the office.

  (Love and Belongingness)

  See, Mom? Alive and well. No, I’m not hungry. Okay. Okay. Sure.

  Do you want to watch TV? I don’t know, whatever’s on.

  I love you, do you know that? I love you. I love you. I love you, do you know that? Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. I just have to go, to get back to Rex. He’s fine. He’ll come next time. I just have to go home.

  I love you. I love you. Okay? It’s okay. I love you.

  (Safety)

  Well, they had fucking concentration camps here, and that’s where we were. And that’s why I got so tense at the restaurant. It’s not because I don’t love you anymore.

  Why do you want to hear about it again? I did, I told you already. It was a concentration camp, and they put us in it, and then they sent me away from my mom. And we’d come here because there were gangs in Guatemala, and one of these gang guys had raped her, several times. But that apparently didn’t qualify as a reason to get asylum. And I don’t know why they separated us. Just to be cruel. Just for the hell of it. Later they said it was illegal, unconstitutional.

  I don’t know if my memories of it are real memories or memories that I picked up from Mom talking all the time about it.

  It was in Dilley, Texas. In some huge facility. It’s still out there. They haven’t dismantled it. Over thirty years later, and they’re still housing people there.

  It smelled and it was crowded. They put us in a pen like we were animals. And you didn’t get bathroom breaks and, and—it was like that. It was unsanitary.

  They gave you these frozen bologna sandwiches and water. If they fed you at all. And they wouldn’t let the adults sleep. I don’t know why. And they kicked you and they laughed at you. And there were some people talking about suicide. Everybody there was all the way scared and screwed up from what they’d been through already. Some had been raped and beaten and stalked by gangs. Political persecution in other cases. Not everybody was Latino. Some were Romanians, and some were from Congo.

  It was a woman guard. She took me from Mom and sent me to Chicago.

  In Chicago, well, it was nice. I guess it was very, very nice. Compared to what Mom could give me.

  And when I got back to Mom, apparently I didn’t want to be with her. I screamed and I bit her. I cried for the other mother, the foster mother. And I did that for a long time.

  (Safety)

  Rex, if you have a problem with me, then why don’t you just leave? You’re just exhausting me. Really, I can’t take it anymore. I just can’t take you anymore, being all over me and demanding everything of me. Take, take, take. That’s all men do. Just taking.

  No, don’t touch me.

  No, don’t touch me! You don’t even listen to me!

  You don’t even care, if you loved me, you would care. You would care more about me.

  You would see that I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to talk about everything all the time!

  It wasn’t child abuse. Yes, you said that. Yes, you did. Yes, you did.

  You said that. That you don’t remember is making me insane. You said my mother abused me, but you don’t understand what we went through.

  Just stop.

  (Safety)

  So you’re not talking to me anymore? Can’t we just forget last night? I’ve been stressed. That’s the issue.

  Why are you looking at me like that? That hurts me when you look at me with those kind of eyes, because I can see what you’re thinking.

  Let’s just forget all that. I was just in a bad mood.

  Come on, I was just in some bad mood. You know how women get.

  Yes, it is. It’s normal for women to get bitchy sometimes. It’s just something that you guys have to put up with.

  Hey, come on. Can’t we laugh about it?
<
br />   Of course I am. That’s what I’m saying. I’m sorry I was like that.

  I’m sorry. No, I really am. I mean it. I’m sorry. Please. Okay? Just forgive me.

  Please, sweetheart, darling, please.

  I know I’m not—I wasn’t, I wasn’t nice to you.

  I love only you. Only you. There’s only you. If I didn’t have you, I would die. I wouldn’t be able to live. Please, I swear, I’ll never talk to you like that again.

  I don’t want to get a divorce. Don’t say the word “divorce” ever again.

  I need you so much. I love you so much.

  I love you so, so much. You’re my whole life.

  I don’t know what I was thinking. I was crazy.

  Don’t leave me. Say it. Don’t leave me. You won’t leave me.

  You’ll never leave me.

  Swear it, promise it.

  (Safety)

  Dear Nigel,

  I am so sorry that I forgot to send you the memo. I completely blanked. It won’t happen again. I’m attaching it here. I crunched the data on the T5215 project, and it looks good on cost. We’re actually coming in $3,260 under budget, which I think the client is going to love.

  Again, I apologize for not sending this last week. I’ve had some family issues occupying my attention, but I think that’s all cleared up now. Still, there’s no excuse, and I know that.

  Yours sincerely,

  Miranda

  (Safety)

  Sorry, I’m in here! Just hold on.

  Yes, yes, I’m coming out!

  I wasn’t in there for that long.

  Well, sometimes mascara runs. Thanks for letting me know.

  Also, there’s another bathroom down the other hall.

  (Love and Belongingness)

  amy girl how u been long time no talk

  u want 2 get some drinks next week on me

  i don’t care wherever u want

  (Safety)

  Rex, you won’t leave me. Say it. Say that you won’t leave me.