My smooth moves didn't survive a second toss, though, and the keys fell, tinklingly, through the metal grate of a storm drain in the middle of the street. On my hands and knees, I peered down into the gloom beneath the grate, and could see them there, mired in ooze.
As I fished them out, I was shocked at how something that was mostly metal could carry stink so well. The gunk that covered the ring of keys reminded me of death, spoke to me of rot, and made my skin crawl.
I wrapped them up in newspaper, and made my way home, and did not think again about the storm drains that run under our streets.
Until yesterday, when I heard the story of Silvia.
Silvia is a Mexican national, a lovely, proud woman that I have known for fifteen years. She lives in Matamoros, Mexico, the city that is just a short walk across the bridge from Brownsville. Her children and her grandchildren and her great grandchildren all live on this side of the river, in Brownsville. For years, on each Friday afternoon, she would finish up her work in Matamoros, pack a small bag, and walk across the bridge to Brownsville. She had a tourist visa, she had her home, bought and paid for in Mexico, and she had the loves of her life just a short walk away.
This was this good woman's happiness, up until about two months ago, when, as she was crossing into Brownsville, an immigration agent took her Mexican passport from her, and then cancelled her visa. The agent gave her no reason for the cancellation, and Silvia returned to Matamoros, heart-broken, and stricken, wondering how she would get to see her family. The drug violence in Matamoros has made it too dangerous, especially for children, prime targets for kidnappings, to travel there.
After a good deal of thought, Silvia took the little bit of savings that she had, hired what is known as an alien smuggler and prepared to cross into Brownsville.
That was how she entered into the United States--a long, long crawl, in absolute, suffocating darkness, through the rot and the death that lay in the sewer.
She finally came to a manhole cover, and rose up from the sewer into an alley. The guide gave Silvia some sweatpants and a shirt. Silvia, a dignified 67 year old woman who just needed to be with her children and her grandchildren, had to strip naked, stooping behind a dumpster in an alley off main street, as she changed her clothing.
She made it to her daughter's home, and washed the stink off of her body and out of her hair. She dressed in her own clothing, a modest dress and sensible shoes.
She couldn't, however, wash away the stain of her humiliation. She was not someone who crawled through a sewer, undressed in a public alley, or sneaked through the streets like a criminal.
She was a grandmother who needed to hold her children.
Now, weeks later, Silvia sleeps until noon, this woman who was once the first one up and the last one to bed, who, with an inimitable élan, delightedly busied herself with the joys of attending to a home. Her face has aged considerably in these last weeks, and the spirit has gone from her step. It is as if she has become trapped by the pull of gravity, not the kind the leads to a swift fall, but the one of the long, slow pull downwards toward the sewer of humiliation.
I know Silvia's grandchildren--they are loud and they are many and the family gatherings trill with laughter. It is a good place for her to be, especially now, as there is nothing quite like the sensation of a child crawling up into his grandmother's lap.
The child knows much about light and joy. The child loves the smell that lies upon his grandmother's skin, the perfume called home, the scent, that of life.
