Children’s Lessons in America

Mamí talked for weeks about the trip before we got in that old truck.  
    
She rambled on and on about the amazing, beautiful things we would discover.      
     
She spoke of our trip, painting it all in red, white and blue.      
     
The grand people we would meet, the sing-song languages they would speak.    
     
About the rainbow of skin, hair and music we would discover when we arrived.    
     
Once there, she said, we would get to eat our fill of the food in colorful packages I’d passed by so often and begged for her to buy.      
     
How we would dream and we would sleep and we would play on big beds, built like clouds.    
     
She spoke endlessly, sometimes using adult words I didn’t quite get, like freedom and hope and betterment.      
     
Just one rule, Mamí said, and it was the most important one. We had to be really, really quiet for a really, really long time first.    
     
Quiet as a mouse, she said.      
     
And I was. I promise I was as quiet as I had ever been. So quiet my heart moved straight into my ears the whole way.    
     
But, I guess not quite quiet enough. Either that, or she just...    
     
...forgot to tell me about the moment the pounding silence would come to an end.      
      
How I would be ripped from her arms by men barking commands I couldn’t understand.      
     
About how everything in the whole wide world would turn straight to black and white.    
     
Forgot to mention that the sleeping clouds would be cold and dark as a storm.      
     
About how fear would hurt your tummy so much more than hunger ever did.      
     
She didn’t warn me how hard I would have to will myself to eat from those multi-colored packages I’d dreamed so much about.      
     
About how the rainbow of kids I’d meet would either be scared silent, or scream endlessly.    
     
Nor that every last one would be sadder than the rain that had brought them in.    
     
She didn’t mention how I would learn more adult words, like internment and unlawful and alien.    
     
Nor about how I would wait and wait and wait and she still wouldn’t come for me.    
     
How days would turn into nights then turn back to day and no one would tell me where she was or why she’d left me.    
     
I promise I tried to be as quiet as that mouse. Tell her I learned my lesson. I swear to do better next time if she would just come get me. Please. Please tell her to just come get me now.    
     
R.