It was not until I was fifteen that I learned the circumstances by which my grandfather came to America.
He was sixteen and shoeless and illiterate, too. It was 1949.
It went something like this: dirt and darkness, a boy traversing a spot along the Mexican-America border without guards, guard towers, guard dogs or wire. It may have been a waterway or a tunnel or a sun-scorched field. Whatever it was, it granted him reprieve on his third attempt.
It was never explained to me what compelled him to leave home, a farm in Aguascalientes — a state in north-central Mexico — and travel 500 miles to the border. Or what compelled him to desert his mother, his father, his brothers Carlos and Gilberto, or his sister Ines.
On the day he left, the family hen laid a single egg. That morning, it was the only egg, the only breakfast, the only food on the farm. It was given to my great-grandfather. From this I infer that my grandfather was poor, that opportunities in Mexico were limited, that in leaving America, he went in search of something better.
***
I recall a day — months before I learned the circumstances by which my grandfather came to America — when I felt superior to him. I was fifteen and he was sixty-five.
It was a holiday and I was playing Scrabble with my father and my grandfather at a table scattered with dessert. Sunlight spilled into the room and I felt bloated from dinner. My father and I put down words that earned us twenty, thirty points. My grandfather could barely earn five points. He put down two and three letter words. He put down words that weren’t words at all. He appeared completely baffled by the game.
Initially, his incompetence made me feel awkward. The game continued, the sunlight dimming, and we were inundated with the sound of relatives conversing, a song on the radio. Despite my satiation, I ate another slice of pie. The gap between our scores widened and my awkwardness turned to arrogance. I was fifteen and beating a man fifty years older. I put down word after word. I remembered what my mother had told me, years earlier: your grandfather dropped out of school in Mexico in the seventh grade. It occurred to me that I’d already succeeded his education level.
My arrogance was a nugget inside my chest, a nugget that would not dissipate for years.
***
It was only in my twenties, when I learned of the other circumstances — the circumstances of his life after the border crossing, his life as an illegal immigrant — that I felt ashamed by this nugget I’d harbored after Scrabble.
I learned that the shoeless, illiterate boy had worked in a mine and on a plantation. He’d taken a train to Minnesota where he met my grandmother — a Chippewa Indian from the Red Lake Reservation. Their conversations were stilted; he barely knew English. She taught him to read.
From what I know, he never leached money from the American taxpayer. He worked for years on the railroad. In blistering heat. In blistering cold. In all the temperatures in between.
Once, when he asked a foreman for permission to duck off into the bushes to use the bathroom, the foreman instructed my grandfather to spear his shit on a stick and to bring it back to prove he wasn’t goofing off, to prove that his five-minute break was warranted.
***
Maybe it was the shit-on-a-stick story that finally softened my nugget of arrogance.
I was in my twenties by then. I was two generations removed from the farm in Aguascalientes. Because of my Caucasian father, I was less than fifty percent Mexican and no one referred to me as backback, greaser, spic, taco bender, or river nigger. I’d been an American citizen from birth.
I’d enjoyed all the privileges inherent with this citizenship, a life completely different from my grandfather’s. I’d never experienced the weight of poverty, illiteracy, or racism. I’d grown up in upper-middle class suburbia and I’d graduated from one of Minnesota’s top high schools, a high school where most students went to college. Once, at a pep rally, the announcer asked one of the students — a Homecoming Queen, maybe, or the Senior Class President — to tell us her “biggest pet peeve.”
“I hate when I’m making a sandwich and I get peanut butter inside my jelly jar,” she said.
***
Years have elapsed, and I’ve continued to enjoy the privileges of my citizenship. I’ve lived lavishly on an Army captain’s salary, traveled to thirty countries, and gone to graduate school — twice.
And still, I recently caught myself taking the conservative stance — a remnant from my military time — and arguing for stricter immigration laws.
I admit that I supported Arizona SB 1070, and that I dismissed the people who told me it would encourage racial profiling. “Illegal immigrants take away taxpayer jobs,” I told a friend a short while back, forgetting that my leisured life would not exist without a man who fled Mexico on the day a hen laid an egg: the only egg, the only breakfast, the only food on the farm.