hija mia Alejandra Calleros

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hija mia

Alexandra Calleros

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to lie in a field of thorny cactuses and hold your breath. To see the desert as home. A familiar cold sweat. Condensation. A silence between nations.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to have a key to your father’s prison. To see the sun rising but never shining. She laughs at your little heart. Your little heart wishing and breathing. Wishing and breathing for truth. Or retribution. Asking questions meant to shatter, meant to die unspoken. Tangled tongues and bottled oceans. A sense of belonging once again stolen.

How long have you lived like this? For generations.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to swallow clumps of sand and lie weightless. To breathe air with no lungs and float to the edge of the Pacific. Your face approaching the quivering surface, but never intended to reach it. Never meant to breathe in that abundance of air. Never meant to rise that far.

How tall will they let you stand? Just to where the breeze teases the wrinkled palms of your hand.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to hear whispers from below this nation’s skyscrapers. To follow the hums of hushed rage to nameless graves that hold your lineage. To find spirits

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peeking from behind the moon’s mockful face. Warning you. To turn away. To walk away. To step onto a vanishing surface and fall cyclically. To have blood flow away from your blanched heart.

Does it live to the north or south? It lives in the cracks, rupturing rivers of red, green and white.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to think in two languages. To live in two worlds. To speak with two tongues. To kiss and make love with the enemy who haunts you. To love him with half of your heart, the other half wandering about. Trapped in a land between past and present.

Where is the line that separates them? Blurred by injustice.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to find a good man. What is a good man? A white man with papeles. Lord forbid I go the route of the undocumented! Lord forbid I do what my mother did!

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to birth children of mixed origin. Hopefully güeritos to validate your father’s sacrifice. Hopefully with a light complexion to justify why he left the motherland.

Why did he leave? To give you breath.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to know better. To do better. To be better. To pluck the thorns from your father’s back and then marry the son of the man who put them there.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to cure Apa’s wounds with pink salt and pack them in Malinche ash. To kiss his tender

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forehead and say “Apa, I love you.” To visit his grave below his stolen land and whisper “Apa, where are you?” To bang your head against his ragged stone until it bleeds. To crack open your veins and pour out the glistening colors of his querido Mexico.

De donde soy? Only time will tell.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to visit Mexico as a tourist. To view the Mayans and the Aztecs as your Apa’s ancients. To view them as insignificantly significant. To view them as integral to Mexican history, but never a part of your story. Never sensing the trace of their blood that nourishes your body. Always failing to admire them as humble innovatives. Admiring them selectively without seeing the whole. Without seeing your face.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to learn of indio stories from inside American museums. To learn your ancestry through the white man’s point of view. To pity them like your fellow white men say to do. To ignore the fact that you are an indía’s daughter. To walk in circles and never reach the center.

Where is the center? You’ve worked hard to avoid her.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to forget. To forgive. And to forget again. To remove your right eye and see the world in a half light. To water your mestizo blood with whiteness in hopes of concealing your indía scent.

Is this how you become one with this nation? If you choose to live.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to solidify your father’s sacrifice with your last breath. To offer your flesh in exchange. To

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increase your chances at success by losing your accent. To skin yourself alive and assimilate.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to lie on your back. To seduce that good man with your brown skin and brown hair and brown eyes. Give him something different. Give him children. Earn your place in his country and you’ll be golden.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to have his white hand caress the nape of your neck, your dark curls tangled around his thick tips, while the red bones of your elders lie below your precious bed.

To be the daughter of an immigrant is to split your own flesh and say,

“I am American.”