Anita Of America

Tonight I feel cold to the bone.

Last night I dreamt about Anita. Her and I were on a plane flying south. I was taking her home.

Last month her mother finally decided she wanted her and her brothers back. They'd been living with their aunt and uncle and six cousins in a trailer in a rural part of the south valley for nearly 2 years. Friends of the family drove the 3 children to Juarez, where they would meet their mother again for the first time in 2 years and be shuffled onto a bus headed for the southern tip of Mexico.

I gave her Henrietta. Henrietta is the stuffed dog I've had since I was 2,3,4,5, I'm not really sure how long. She's rough and worn. She's been chewed on and drooled on and come through countless laundry cycles. When I was 7, we had matching nightgowns...Henrietta and I. The nightgown had a picture of a cat playing with yarn. I think.

There was a day last fall when I thought her family wanted me to adopt her. Wanted us to adopt her. "You should take her!" They'd said (jokingly?) so many times in broken English and then one night I started to think they meant it. I spent a day calling every one in the city of Albuquerque who knew anything about the ins and outs of adopting a quasi-abandoned Mexican child who technically didn't exist.

Roxana is her big cousin. Roxana's been like a mother to her the past 2 years. Roxana is the 15 year old who's become like a little sister to me in the last year. She tells me everything. Sometimes she spends the weekend at our apartment. She needs the break from the cramped trailer full of 7 little boys and a girl. Several times she brought Anita.

Anita loves making art. I used to let her draw on my walls with chalk and glue and cut and paint all day long. This shy, polite, quiet little girl would turn into a different creature all together at my house. Running and shouting and laughing and rough housing until she was blue in the face.

She was obsessed with washing her feet before bed in the warm water in the bathtub. And I gave her a tiny gold tea cup that she used for everything whenever she was at my house.

One day Roxana and I dressed her up. I tore the American map that had been hanging on my wall for God knows what reason and started cutting and taping it on her. I cut and taped until she looked like she was wearing a little gown and then I cut a piece off to make a bow for her hair. For some of the pictures I told her to look sad (like the one where I had her hold her hands up). Roxana was trying to help me by talking to her in spanish. After a couple minutes I thought "Ok either this kid is the best child actor ever, or Roxana's being mean." "Roxana what are you saying to her?! Why is she crying?" Roxana said, "I told her that if she doesn't do a good job, you're not going to buy her ice cream." This is why 15 year-olds don't make the best mothers.

"Roxana! Tell her I didn't say that!! Anita! I didn't say that! I love you no matter what you do. You don't have to do a good job for me. Do you really want ice cream?"

This child is so sensitive and good. She cries at a moments notice but doesn't make a big thing out of it. She cries silently and she loves everyone. Absolutely everyone.

Roxana said Anita told her that her mom used to pull her by her hair. Once I was brushing her hair and I tugged on it a little. She immediately burst into tears and cried for nearly 10 minutes.

I've wondered about this woman. I've been told she drinks a lot. And gets into fights. And neglected her children. And that her sisters/brothers/parents always had to take care of them. I heard that when the time came for the children to leave, Roxana's father was on the phone with his sister begging her to just let them keep Anita.

In my dream, our plane made several stops at several airports as we flew further south. On the last lay-over, I took Anita off the plane to walk around the airport and go to the bathroom. As we were walking back to the plane I thought "What if we just missed our plane? What if I just kept her?"