Corinne O’Shaughnessy

Word Count 1585

Four gallons of water and packages of beans and tuna weigh down my backpack, and no matter how I adjust them, the straps dig into my shoulders. I dab at the sweat dripping down my temples. My lips hurt. I understand Gatorade now. We come to a cliff and follow a narrow cow path. Because it’s steep, I sit cautiously and scooch down on my butt. Which goes pretty well, until I try to stand back up. 

I raise my arms and legs into the air, then thrust them forward in an attempt to use momentum to right myself. I stay glued to the ground, a flailing beetle. Finally, I awkwardly twist and jerk, avoiding cacti and other thorny plants to get onto my hands and knees. Pushing myself up to standing works. 

Everything here--a few miles from the Mexico/Arizona border-- can kill you. The brilliant sun, the flowering cactuses, the mountain ranges--draw me in with their stark beauty and potential to destroy. The rattlers and scorpions seem less beautiful, yet I nod my head in respect. But of course, it’s what you don’t see—water—that will, most likely, kill you first. This is what the migrants have to survive. The organisation I’m volunteering with carries water into the desert to increase their chances of survival, even though humanitarian aid has recently become a crime.   

***

I slept under my coat my first night at college, literally a thousand miles from “home,” because I didn’t read the part in the acceptance letter that said to bring bedding. I was 16. When my roommate saw me in the morning, she lent me one of her many extra blankets and a pillow. I called my mother collect and a week later, a box arrived. In it was a moth-eaten, piss-stained industrial blue wool blanket, a light blue and white paisley comforter that had gone flat, and a set of fluorescent orange tie-dyed sheets. My roommate surveyed the contents and said, “Your mom sent these,” trying to process her own statement.

***

I am nearly forty years older than most of the other volunteers. I cannot keep their pronouns straight. I don’t understand he/they. Where is the possessive? I can carry almost as much water as they can, but I know a bad step could quickly transform me into a liability. I have lived my entire life avoiding just that. 

***

My father had said, Don’t get a job, focus on school, when he dropped me off at the Philadelphia airport to fly to Chicago. Then he handed me $100. It was 1977, but even then, most of it was gone after I bought my textbooks.  I never asked for more. It was safer to get a job than navigate his mixed messages.

***

Some days, we don’t hike. We go to the camp where the Coyotes bring the migrants. It is impossible to carry enough water to make the journey. They can refill their blackened water jugs here. Before they continue on, they can sleep on a cot, shower, eat a cooked meal, receive medical help if a volunteer with a medical background happens to be around. We bring clothes and sneakers and lots of extra insoles. The kitchen is restocked with oranges, sleeves of eggs, bags of rice, cans of beans and lots and lots of Gatorade powder. Some volunteers start cooking, others clean and churn the compostable latrines. 

Ey, a migrant from Guatemala, is journeying to his brother in California. He hasn’t seen him in nine years. I put Epsom salts in a plastic dish tub and have him soak the blisters covering the entire balls of his feet. A toe nail oozes clear liquid. He says he is 18, but looks closer to14. 

“Some died in Chiapas,” he says. Chiapas is the state in Mexico next to my adopted Oaxacan home, where I study Spanish. For this purpose. To connect, even briefly, and bear witness. Maybe help the migrants a tiny bit, but I know the drive to help my teenage self is just as strong. “We were hidden in a trailer,” he says. “In the heat. Children as young as four. So many of us, you couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die, too.” 

***

My cloth winter coat with layers of shirts and sweaters underneath did not keep the razor-like Chicago wind from ripping through me. After my walk to campus, I’d sit in my class thinking only of where and how I could stop shivering. As the professor lectured, I knew the heat in my parent’s home was a mirage. On payday, I’d put rent and phone bill money aside, then buy a family sized bag of M&Ms.  I’d eat them until the sugar left sores on my tongue, burned my throat and I wanted to vomit. The nausea took hours to go away. Self-loathing was my bi-product of powerlessness.

***

The first time I step on a rock that shifts and I lose my balance, I reflexively catch myself on one of the smooth boulders lining the dry river bed. My body slows, but the weight of the water on my back surprises me by continuing to bare down until I think my wrist may crack. The water eventually comes to rest with my wrist still intact. The giant whose hands have grabbed my shoulders to push and pull in different directions, has released me. I stand as straight as I can and continue following in the direction of the other volunteers, surveying each beautiful rock, trying to guess which ones won’t betray me. We don’t hike in a line, because there is no path. 

We come to a few scrub trees and a rock formation providing some protection from the sun, a known stop for the migrants. There are empty water gallons, and empty packages of tuna and beans scattered about. We place the garbage into plastic bags that we’ll carry out and write messages of encouragement with black Sharpies on the fresh water gallons we’ll leave. On some, I appeal to their probable religious beliefs. “Dios te bendiga.” God bless you.  On others, I write what I would have loved to have heard. “Eres fuerte. Eres amado.” You are strong. You are loved, even though I know that doesn’t guarantee anything.

After this drop is restocked, the coordinator and other volunteers stand and hoist on their backpacks, still laden with gallons, to continue to the next one. I struggle getting my pack from the ground onto my back until they show me how to stand like an ostrich, bracing my pack on the bent leg first, before swinging it around and pulling my arms through the straps. I am thankful for the tips on where to find strength and how to maintain balance. 

***

A few semesters in, I could not pay my tuition, even with grants and loans, and pay my rent and food. I thought about prostituting myself. But I was a terrible actress. My parents told me to drop out and come “home.” Go to the local state school. I knew that meant getting sucked into their dysfunctional vortex. I also knew I was not fleeing a civil war, gangs controlling my neighborhood, starvation, overt domestic violence. I knew how lucky I was to choose where and how to struggle. I secured another loan, and stayed in school.

***

After checking all the fluids and tire pressure, and making sure the pickup is loaded with the necessary gear, we drive back to the camp. Flies cover the kitchen counters, and a volunteer and a migrant start wiping them down. A plate left near the washing area is full of dead bees, a consequence of drought, I’m told. I meet a gentleman from Guatemala who tells me this is his third time crossing the border. He has worked for a painting company in Atlanta for six years. He likes his boss. He goes home to see his wife and child every few years. “I make $5 a day in Guatemala. I make $200 a day in Atlanta. More with overtime.” It’s that simple. I don’t ask how he gets back to Guatemala, but I can’t stop thinking about him walking through this desert three times…so far. 

We finish cleaning and taking inventory. A volunteer asks if I want to do more water drops before we head back to Tucson. I’m not wearing my hiking boots, just my sneakers, so I hesitate, but we fill the truck with water and I agree to drive. I keep asking, “Are you sure?” each time I head in the direction they tell me to, on what is clearly an eroded riverbed. I’m exhilarated when I straddle the ditches and make it to the spot on our cellphone map. 

I park in a small clearing and it’s a short walk to the drop. We find empty jugs and when I pick one up there is “Vaya con dios. Eres amado,” in my handwriting. Go with God. You are loved. I didn’t realize I’d been here before, so much of the terrain looks the same. My heart lifts as I stuff the dry plastic jug into my pack. I may have helped a migrant a tiny bit, but the teenage girl—often frozen, nauseous from self-hate, fervently hoping she’ll wake up someone else as she slept nightly under a piss-stained blanket—that girl, loves herself a tad more. I pray to whomever it was that drank the water and thank them for giving me such a gift.

Corinne is a retired New York City public school literacy teacher. Her essays have been published in Oldster.substack.com, TwoHawksQuarterly.com, sadgirlsclublit.com, the manifeststation.com, and this journal, among others. Her short stories have been published in survivorlit.org and bookofmatcheslit.com which recently nominated her for a Best of the Net award. She has also participated in live readings with Read650.org. She divides her time between Mexico and The Bronx.