Immigration · fiction
The thread no one can withhold
A story in the form of a prayer: an immigrant mother, without her documents in hand, remembers her grandmother who wove counting the threads by heart.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
A vision — a short story.
To whoever is listening, be it God, be it silence, be it only the wall of this room:
I came from far away. I came from the mountains where the air is thin and you learn early to breathe slowly. I crossed a border by bus, with a cloth bag, a photo of my mother and a promise of work a man made me on a paper with no stamp.
The work existed. The rest didn't.
In the third month, the man asked for my documents to, he said, regularize my situation. I handed them over. And I never saw my name written on any paper again.
Since then, I walk through the city like someone walking inside a bad dream. I'm afraid of the police officer on the corner, of the building's doorman, of the man on the bus who stares too much. I'm afraid of getting sick and not being able to go to the clinic. I'm afraid that one day they'll knock on the door and take my daughter, who was born here and has all the papers I don't.
She is four. Yesterday she asked me why I speak so quietly in the street.
I didn't know how to answer.
Tonight, while she slept, I had a vision. I don't know if it was a dream. I saw my grandmother, who never left the village, weaving a poncho of llama wool. She used no pattern. She counted the threads by heart, one, two, three, and said that every thread you forget undoes the whole design. I saw my mother, who came to the big city of my country and cleaned houses for thirty years, never with a signed paper either. I saw a line of women from my family, each in her own time, each far from where she was born, each with no paper saying who she was.
And none of them stopped existing because of it.
I understood, in the vision, that the document says where I am. It doesn't say who I am. The man took the paper. He didn't take the thread my grandmother counted by heart, nor the slow breathing of the mountains, nor my mother's thirty years of cleaning that I carry on my back, nor the song I sing softly so my daughter will sleep.
That, no one can withhold.
Then the vision moved forward. I saw my daughter grown, in a room full of people, speaking loudly. Speaking loudly in a language that is hers and mine, without fear of any police officer. I saw that she was telling my story to other people, and that people listened with the respect given to hard things.
I don't know if this will happen. I don't ask for a guarantee. I ask only for courage for tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I'm going to do what I'm afraid to do. I'm going to look for help. A neighbor told me there's a place where government lawyers help for free those who can't pay, even those with no papers. She also told me that, here, withholding a worker's documents is a crime, and that it isn't my fault.
It isn't my fault.
I'll repeat it until I believe it.
To whoever is listening: thank you for the night. Thank you for my daughter breathing beside me. Thank you for the grandmother who counted the threads.
Tomorrow I'll speak a little louder.
Bairo says he too was left without documents in hand, far from home and afraid, and that it took time to get back on his feet. Read: Capoeira was the bridge.
The way forward
The document says where you are, not who you are. In Brazil, the Federal Public Defender's Office assists migrants for free, and withholding a worker's documents is a crime by the one who withholds them, not your fault. Seeking help is the most concrete act of courage there is.