Folks Lena Knew

Slowly, slowly, the black butterfly advanced toward them. When it was only a few feet from the river bank, the head was lifted and shoulders appeared. And Lena realized that it was not a butterfly at all, but a naked, black-headed boy pulling two plastic bags beside him as he swam the river from Mexico into the United States. As soon as his feet touched dry ground, the boy pulled his sacks out of the water, removed his clothes from them and began dressing himself. Only when he had slipped on his heavy thongs fashioned from pieces of an old tire did he look up and see them. In his eyes was a look so frightened that Lena thought he was going to jump back in the river with all his clothes on. But Annie put her finger to her lips and shook her head at him. Reassured, he left his plastic sacks and walked cautiously along the U.S. river bank away from them. On his shining black head drops of river water glistened as he disappeared into the brush. Annie let out a deep breath and squeezed Lena’s hand. “That, Lena, is a ‘wet-back’. You have just met one face to face.” They were silent as they returned to the marked path which led to the camp ground. Lena did not know what Annie was thinking, but she was thinking that the “wet back” looked like a great many boys in her school. And his frightened eyes looked like Maria’s had looked before Mrs. Munoz had come. Lena could not go to sleep that night for all the jumbled thoughts that ran through her head - the beautiful ducks, the yellow breasted kis-ka-dee, and most of all that black butterfly that had turned into a boy about the age of Carrie Lou. Then softly on the low camper roof just a few feet above her Lena heard a sound she had not heard for a very long time. Rain drops! Great, splattering raindrops rained down harder and harder. As she dozed off to sleep she wondered if it were raining at the ranch, and if Flat Rock Creek would soon be running again. And then she thought of the butterfly boy. Would he have found shelter? Did he have any place to go? Or would these rain drops be falling on his glistening wet head? Chapter 4 - Lena Rescues Tiny Moses In the following days Lena could not get thoughts of the wet-back out of her mind. At school she looked at all the older boys with questioning eyes. How had they got here? They had the same glistening black hair and brown skin as the butterfly boy. On the school grounds they all spoke to each other in Spanish as they jostled and played. Had Mrs. Munoz, or some other person, had to sit by them and explain that “duos” was two, and “diaz” was day? Did they all still live in two different worlds that were gradually merging into a life that was like neither, yet was a part of both? She now looked at Maria in the seat beside her with different eyes. how had she got here? Could Maria swim? Or had she ridden on someone else’s shoulders? Lena felt a bit ashamed of herself for these thoughts. It was as if she were poking around in private places in Maria’s life, about things which she had no right to know. Maria was now her friend and seemed to trust her. There was no fear at all in her eyes when she turned them toward Lena and said “Good morning!” carefully pronouncing each syllable. “I don’t care how you got here! I’m glad you sit beside me,” Lena told her one morning. “I ride bus!” Maria told her proudly. During the last days that they could stay in the park Annie and Lena took long walks, and at every opportunity Lena forsook the marked trails and headed toward the river through the trampled grass and weeds. At the river’s edge she would stand gazing at the green-black water letting her eyes travel all the way to Mexico. An occasional waterbird would swoop down and dip its wings in the water; a turtle would emerge for a breath of air; and frogs plopped into the stream making ever widening circles that almost reached from shore to shore. One evening Annie came up beside her and placed her arm around her shoulders. “I don’t think we are going to see another ‘crossing’ before we leave, Lena. But never forget the one we watched.” “I won’t forget,” Lena promised.