cross a border

I’m sitting in the air conditioned nightmare of an office and the maintenance chief comes by and tells me a little story.

He’s worried. He’s married to a woman from Mexico living here illegally. She migrated to the Pacific Northwest supporting herself doing migrant labor. Picking fruit. Delicious apples.

They met through friends, dated and got hitched. She doesn’t speak Engish and now they pay a lawyer BIG BUCKS to handle her immigration case getting exercise jumping through INS hoops and she’s preparing to head south and the chief’s afraid to death she will cross the border and never return.

In Mexico she broke down after her first husband, depressed about lack of work, sat down in front of her one night, opened a bottle of rubbing alcohol and drank the whole thing. He started foaming at the mouth, went into spasms and died in her arms as his liver broke down. 

That’s why she left.