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Indocumentado
(After Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl)

Refugio Jones

Roll your clothes tight so you can fit more of them in your backpack and divide your money in four parts to hide in your shoes and on your body; this is how you stuff your money in your underwear; this is how you make sure no one can find your money when they feel your crotch; this is how you cross from Guatemala into Mexico; this is where you go outside of Arriaga, Chiapas to wait for the train north; this is how not to lose an arm or a leg when you jump on the train; this is the best time on Sunday morning to catch El Tren de La Muerte when everybody including the Federales will be at church; this is how you pick the better cars to ride; this is how you tie yourself down so you can rest at night and not fall off; this is how you doze with your pack tied to your body; this is how you cry yourself to sleep in silence; this is how you talk to someone who threatens to take your money or your backpack; this is how you haggle for a new backpack after your last one was stolen; this is how you walk through a gang area and not stop to join them like the pendejo you’re so bent on becoming; this is how you wash your own clothes while others from the train are busy plucking shirts and pants from someone’s clothesline; this is how you avoid the Federales; Were you actually caught by the transit police for selling dulces at the train station?; this is where you get off the train before reaching the center of Mexico; this is how you use a metro at the edge of the capital so you can get to the train yard north of the city; this is how you walk away from a man holding a gun; I wasn’t caught selling dulces, they were cups of sliced green mangos; this is how you catch the next train going north; this is what you do with the endless miles of boredom and loneliness; this is how you tell when you are close to reaching Reynosa, Tamaulipas; this is how you pick the moment to jump off the train; this is how you walk the fifteen miles around the town so you won’t be seen; this is how you avoid narcos; this is how to not get talked into being a drug mule like the pendejo you’re so bent on becoming; this is how to find a decent pollero to take you across to America; this is how you haggle for a lower price even though you won’t get it; this is how you remove your money from your underwear away from the coyote so he will not see where you keep it; this is how you pull your head low so you don’t draw attention to yourself; this is how you find the best seat on the truck that will take you to the border; this is where to be in your group of pollos when you cross El Rio Grande; this is how you swim; this is you tread water if you forget how to swim; this is how you put your feet down to check if you’ve been drowning in water a meter deep; this is where you go when all the other pollos scatter after La Migra comes to get you; this is how you navigate by night when the stars are out or when then moon is full; this is how to read gringo road signs; this is where to go when you’re well past the border and walking alone in the cold night; this is how you find a deer hole to sleep in by day; this is how you make it to McCallen, Texas; this is where to find the church that will let you sleep in their basement; this is how you call my phone number so I can wire you money to come to Chicago; this is where you go to get the money I will wire you; this is how you pay for a bus ticket to ride north; this is what you say when you are caught by ICE; this is how you don’t lose hope when you’re caged in a crowded detention center for ten months; this is how you take advantage of the system to learn English; this is what to do when they try to keep you another year so you can age out of DACA; this is who you call when they let you out before your seventeenth birthday; this is how you don’t get into La Mara Salvatrucha when you come to live in my house; What if La Mara Salvatrucha threatens to kill you and Abuelita?; Are you going to tell me that after all of that, you’re the kind of boy who will still let himself become a member of La Mara Salvatrucha?

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