The Weight of Shadows: A Memoir of Immigration & Displacement

by Jose Orduna

  That evening as the sun disappears behind a hill I try to trap a black widow that’s made its home in a screw hole at the table where volunteers eat meals. A black cat named Luther who hangs around camp watches me while lying on his side, flicking his tail. Some people are in their tents, and others are sitting and talking quietly by the campfire. I go to join them because the evening conversations have been illuminating. Most of the other volunteers are white, and I notice I feel close to them in a way that’s impersonal but intimate. I don’t know very much about their biographies—we’re just leaving the realm of being strangers to each other—yet I felt that these white people care for me, and others like me, in ways many of my white friends at home don’t. Before coming to camp I’d assumed most people would have very similar conceptions of what’s happening out here and what it means more broadly, but after several nights of long conversations the only overlap everyone seemed to share was the political primacy of human life—the conviction that any and all politics should emerge from this primacy. I noticed a lot of the residents of Arivaca left gallons of water on their doorsteps and on their property, and one afternoon in La Gitana, the only bar in town, I talked to an old rancher who after a long conversation said “I’m a Republican. I don’t give a damn what these people are doing out here—they shouldn’t be dying.”

  I follow Luther over to a shrine in a clearing. I’d been avoiding it since I got here, but Luther walked by me pressing his body on the front of my calf and I was compelled to follow him. The shrine is a pile of sun-bleached objects found in the desert. Placed next to a weathered log are a calling card with a shampoo ad on the front in which a brunette runs her fingers through her hair, an empty tan backpack, a pink wallet with a silkscreened cartoon princess, a small plaster statue of praying hands with a few fingers cracked off, a plastic pocket-sized Virgen de Guadalupe, a dirty and tattered Mexican flag, a photograph or drawing in a silver frame so bleached it looks like a human figure made of light, and a plaster statue of a kneeling, praying angel. At the very front of the pile is a stone slab with a candle in the center and a few rosaries, pesos, quetzales, and quarters surrounding it. A red-and-white Santería necklace is coiled around the candle. Its small glass beads are mostly white, meaning it represents Obatalá the father, creator of human bodies, of the city of Ife, and the owner of all heads. As our sculptor, he’s tasked with our protection and acts as a guardian for those otherwise without one.

  Luther rubs his slender black body on my leg again before he stops directly in front of the shrine. It’s uncanny, but he sits there for a while, seemingly considering the objects, quietly observing. On the trail earlier we’d come upon a small green backpack. It had been chilling to see an abandoned object on the remote trail where we were, surrounded by unforgiving hills for miles and miles. I wondered under what circumstances it was left behind, but quickly forced myself to stop thinking. One of the other volunteers said we needed to look inside for anything that might identify the person. I took a step toward it, but the volunteer grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back.

  “With a stick,” she said.

  It was empty, except for a few food wrappers and a used rehydration packet that NMD and other groups leave at water drops. Weeks later, when I get back home, I’ll find out that this month, July 2012, was the hottest month in more than 117 years on record, in more than 1,400 months. Seeing the electrolyte packet spent and discarded unsettled me. It brought two opposed realities together: the extreme value of the act of placing water in the desert but also its extreme limitation. I bend down to join Luther, looking at the individual objects that comprise the shrine; they had all been touched, carried, and imbued with some special meaning by those who gave them, and those who kept them. One dead man who was found and brought to the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office carried a dead hummingbird carefully wrapped in cloth in his pocket. Whatever the specific meaning of each individual object, it seems appropriate that they are kept in a shrine because they had always acted as prayers: repositories for hopes, fears, desires, and necessities too big to bear alone.

  That night I decide to sleep outside. I set up a cot from the medical tent next to the food storage container, unlock it, and turn the sign encouraging people to take whatever they need. The moon is full behind a layer of glowing white clouds, and every once in a while it peeks through a gap, creating a halo that makes it look like a giant eye. Somehow, it’s dark and at the same time the whole sky glows, making the tops of the black trucks shine. When I first got to the desert I wouldn’t have slept outside, but now I feel strangely at ease, knowing that my tent—a few poles and a thin layer of fabric—doesn’t provide protection from anything anyway except maybe rain. As I start to fall asleep, something in my peripheral vision catches my attention. I turn slowly toward it and see a few thick hairs on several finger-like legs climbing up my shoulder. It takes a few steps onto my chest, and I see the fat, bulbous body of a tarantula. I remain perfectly still. It takes a few more steps onto my torso and rests for a long while near the center of my chest. My impulse is to swat it away, and it takes every ounce of will to sit perfectly still and let it finish its climb all the way across my body, back down a cot leg, and into the brush.

  I wake up shortly after the sun rises when the insides of my eyelids glow red because there’s nothing to obstruct its rays. I’m covered in the moisture that accumulated and soaked into the various layers I wore to sleep, so I take off my outer shirt and wring it into Luther’s water bowl, which is just next to my cot. My eyes are filmy, and the lids feel sticky as I blink and scan camp. No one else is up yet. I notice the door to the food storage container is slightly ajar, which it shouldn’t be. Last night I opened the padlock but left it in the door so animals wouldn’t get in. The dirt around me is disturbed, and when I blink a few more times, clearing my vision, I see that it’s covered in hundreds of shoeprints. I pop up and yell for others to wake. I check the storage container, and a few large bags full of food and rehydration kits are gone. About two dozen packets of new socks have also been taken. From under the white tarp where donated clothes are kept, a volunteer yells that some shoes, pants, and shirts are also gone. Someone else yells from the kitchen tarp that the refrigerator is nearly empty. There are footprints all around my cot, some less than a foot away from where I slept.

  Places like Arivaca, and other southwestern border regions, are often thought of and depicted as lawless, dangerous vestiges of the old West. Border Patrol agents are thus valorized as heroic law enforcers, but since being out here I’ve felt most in danger when the Border Patrol shows up. Since 2003, thirty-three CBP agents are listed as having “died in the line of duty.” Of the thirty-three, only three were murdered. Of the others, one was killed by friendly fire. Fifteen died in car accidents, two when agents’ vehicles hit large animals in the road. Four drowned. Three hearts gave out. Three aircraft crashed. Four agents collapsed. The Washington Post reported that during a two-year period between 2008 and 2010 fifteen agents committed suicide, meaning that during that same period more agents died by their own hand than in all other ways combined.

  On one of my last days in the desert a group of us drives toward a drop location deep in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Almost two weeks at camp has been a dose of concentrated something, but I’m not sure what. Later, when I get back to my life, the effects of being out here really start to become apparent. When a news helicopter flies overhead in Tucson I wince, and for a long time I can’t look white people in the eye without feeling a pinprick of rage I have to work hard to contain. I can’t concentrate on anything because the August sun on my skin and the record-breaking heat in which I move keep me constantly thinking about how, now, right now, there are people walking in the desert. I spend the rest of the summer drinking heavily, compulsively, with the intended purpose of blacking out. And when this feeling of catastrophic urgency starts to fade, I feel a paralyzing guilt. In the backseat of the pickup between two volunteers I’m trying to
formulate in language why I’ve come out here, not as an explanation for them, just for me, inside my head, but there isn’t a singular reason I can pin down. It’s more like an accumulation of intensity that has reached a point of saturation and needed to be spent, a sense of obligation, and a rage.

  Up ahead, about fifty feet beyond the windshield, I see a gray ironwood tree full of fat black buzzards. One of them glides to the ground to a dark mound and begins tearing. I point at it without being able to say a word, and the others in the back with me gasp and then look in silence. I tap the driver on the shoulder, lean forward, and point.

  “I see it,” she says.

  A few of the other buzzards glide down and join the first one. The person to my right clenches my forearm, and I feel like there’s something pushing down on my diaphragm. Music I hadn’t known was playing is turned off. The sound of my own breathing fills the space. It becomes shallow and spastic, picks up speed as the truck slows down. The buzzards’ fat bodies covered in shiny black feathers obstruct the mound, their horrible black heads darting down and then jutting up when the flesh gives way. The car stops, and the driver honks the horn. They all take off in a black cloud, and the mound becomes visible. It’s a blue-black pile from which a large round ribcage protrudes.

  “It’s too big. It’s too big!” says the driver, out of breath. “It’s a cow! It’s a fucking cow!”

  I let go of the headrest I was clutching, and for the rest of the drive no one says a word.

  When we get to the drop we find gallons of water with the tops slashed off and cans of beans with the pull-tabs removed. There’s a yellow plastic rosary hanging from the branch of the tree under which the empty gallons are strewn. We collect them and replace them with full ones.

  On our way back, on a dirt road not far from camp, we see six men struggling to remain upright and moving forward. When they hear the truck, four of them let themselves fall to the ground, and the other two throw their arms up to flag us down. As we approach, our driver, a tall white woman volunteer, tells us she has medical training and thinks a Spanish speaker should stay with her. She says the truck should be driven to camp and not come back for at least an hour. She explains that since they’re on a main road approaching town, BP has probably already been alerted of their presence. We’ll want to treat the men as quickly and as best we can before agents arrive. So many people go through the entire process of apprehension and repatriation without receiving medical attention, being given any or enough water, or being fed much (if at all), and almost no one is informed of rights. She also explains that we want to stay and observe the apprehension because our presence might deter a beating or other forms of abuse, at least during these moments.

  The two of us get out of the truck with a backpack full of emergency medical supplies, four gallons of water each, and a few packs of food. The truck takes off down the road. Two of the men, the two still standing, are unmistakably brothers, in their late twenties or early thirties.

  “Hola, muchachos, somos amigos. Por qué no nos sentamos aquí en la sombra?” I say.

  “Gracias, gracias.”

  They all nod, and we help the ones who are already sitting to stand back up, which looks painful for all of them but especially agonizing to one who pulls hard on my hand as he stands without bending his left leg.

  “Me jodí la pierna, carnal.”

  Their eyes look the kind of tired no amount of sleep can fix. They’re all wearing tattered blue jeans and their shoes are curled upward from walking countless miles on uneven terrain. We help them all sit in a small clearing near a tree that provides a few slivers of shade. I tell them we’re friends, friends with a humanitarian aid group, as we crack open a gallon of water for each of them and advise them to drink it slowly or they won’t be able to keep it down. One of the brothers says they want to turn themselves in to Border Patrol—no more, no more, we want to go home. The other volunteer begins explaining in English what the process of turning themselves in will be like, that they’ll be offered voluntary departure papers to sign, and that they’ll tell them if they sign them they won’t be charged with a crime. We explain that a first crossing attempt isn’t a felony and that they have the right to a trial if they want to have one. We give all of them cards with a phone number for pro bono legal aid in Tucson and several other numbers, including that of Grupo Beta, a group funded by the Mexican government that offers assistance and shelter to newly repatriated migrants. I tell them they might be transported laterally along the border and repatriated hundreds of miles from where they crossed, but that calling Grupo Beta will at least provide them with information about whatever sector they find themselves in, and that they’ll pay half the price of a bus ticket back home. I remind them they have a right to demand a phone call once they’re back at the station, and that agents might lie and tell them they don’t have this right when in fact they do.

  One of the brothers has been smiling at me as I speak, and when I pause he asks me if I’m from Puebla. I smile and tell him I’m from Veracruz, recognizing that he asked because we both have the flat accent of central Mexico, specifically the accent that Poblanos have. Jarochos, people from Veracruz, usually speak a bit more emphatically, while Poblanos have a slower, rounder cadence. I tell him my mother is from Puebla, but since I wasn’t raised in Veracruz, and since my mother was the one whose Spanish I modeled because my old man was always working, I spoke Spanish like a Poblano without ever having lived in Puebla. The group cracks up.

  “Cabrón,” says one of them, slapping the ground laughing.

  One of the brothers asks the other if he’s hallucinating, seeing another paisa all the way out here, laughing and tugging on his brother’s shirtsleeve.

  We ask them how their feet are as we begin untying their shoes. The other volunteer retrieves blister kits from the backpack and begins washing one of the men’s feet. A thick yellow bubble nearly covers the entire sole of his right foot. He winces as she lances it with a sterile needle and begins pressing the liquid out slowly. I give each of them a new pair of socks, which they take as if I were handing them the most precious gift. I ask the man who couldn’t bend his leg earlier if I can see his knee. His jeans are already torn, but he tears the hole a bit more and shows me his kneecap, which is the size and shape of a baseball. I give him an icepack and aspirin and tell him he has the right to receive medical attention, that his kneecap might be fractured, and that he can demand to see a doctor. The other volunteer asks me to ask the group if they’re sure they want to call BP, and they all nod.

  “Sí. Ya. Ya no más, cabrón.”

  She calls while I ask the two who look like brothers who’s older. They both smile, and one raises his hand slightly.

  “Yo.”

  Even though his face is pained and his eyes are half closed, his smile is genuine, and I can tell that, at least in these moments, he and the others feel somewhat at ease. They made the trek through a pollero, which most people now have to do, so this is probably the first time in many days—maybe weeks—that they’re dealing with someone who isn’t harsh and from whom they don’t feel imminent danger. The other volunteer is done wrapping the man’s foot. He thanks her, and she says you’re welcome in heavily accented Spanish. They share a smile.

  She shuffles over to another man with a blister that runs along the outside arch of his foot from heel to toe. I ask the group if any of them are urinating or defecating blood. A few of them look at each other, but no one immediately answers. I explain that if they drank contaminated water they may have a severe infection and that they probably won’t be given medication in custody. Two of the men signal with their hands. I remind them we’re not doctors but that my partner is a certified wilderness EMT. She asks if they’re allergic to any medication, and I translate. She gives them a strong single-dose antibiotic.

  A few of them have ripped open Clif Bars and crackers and are struggling to swallow what they’ve chewed. One man says they’ve been walking for four days and that
the night before last they went to sleep, and when they woke up, the rest of the group, including their guide, was gone. They had run out of water the following morning. Another man asks me how long I’ve lived “on this side” and how my family got here. I tell him as briefly as I can, and when I finish, the younger brother from Puebla asks what my mother’s maiden name is. I tell him, and I also tell him her mother’s maiden name and my grandfather’s name. He says he knows some people with the last name Flores, who live near his family. I brush it off, until he says the grandfather is tall, abnormally so, and very dark with light-colored eyes and white hair, so they sometimes call him El Puro because he looks like a lit cigar. I remember Yoli showing me a photo of her father as a young man standing with five of his brothers, a couple of them towering over the others, and her telling me some of my great uncles were over six feet tall. The photo was sepia, and all of them were a deep brown with shiny foreheads, slicked back hair, and strangely light eyes.