ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY

HOW I BECAME THE CRIMINAL YOU SEE BEFORE YOU TODAY
In 1995, before I was old enough to help much, my parents faced one of those classic dilemmas you get in a freshman philosophy course: to save the life of their dying child or to go back to their home country and slowly watch their daughter—my 7-year-old sister—suffer a painful death.

My parents never went to college, and they’re not what you’d call intellectuals. They chose their daughter’s life. We were on vacation, staying at Aunt Tina’s place in East Los Angeles, when my sister became seriously sick. We went to the hospital. A caseworker—perfect Spanish speaker, face like Vanessa Williams—told us my sister needed surgery. Now. And after the surgery she’d be immobile.

“Once she receives the kidney transplant,” she told us, “she can’t be traveling back and forth.”

My father had a good job back in Mexico. We owned a house there. He was a patriot—and still is: loves Mexico, likes everything one loves about home. I remember driving with my father in our town in Mexico, how his coworkers and friends always pulled me aside to tell me how funny my father could be, how his female coworkers winked at him when they thought I wasn’t looking.

He was a manager in Mexico; in the States, he would end up doing manual labor at a pallet factory.

“You’d think they would let me use the machines,” he once said. “Instead they have me cutting wood in the back.”

The idea that he had to sacrifice all that to raise his kids in a strange country—a place we’d come on vacation—was inconceivable to him. He bargained with my mom. We could stay in LA while he returned home to work and live in his beloved Mexico and send us cash. They argued, but not much. Mom won the contest quickly: If he returned to Mexico while my 7-year-old sister struggled with a donated kidney, he could find a new wife, she said.

I was sitting in my cousin’s bed, covered in a Crayola-brand blanket, when my parents gave me the news.

It turned out I have something in common with my old man. I was on the cusp of graduating from middle school back home. I spoke almost no English.

“We’re supposed to take the graduation trip,” I said. “What about my friends?”

And, God forgive me, but the idea of living in my aunt’s, sharing a room with my younger cousin? My toys back in Mexico?

“We understand it’s very hard for you, mijo,” my mother said. “Do it for your sister. There are things in life that are hard to explain, but we know you understand.”

I’d seen her connected to machines. I surrendered. And just like that, at age 11, I became a criminal.

In the fall, doctors at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles removed one of my mother’s kidneys and substituted it for my sister’s bad kidneys. While they healed, my parents considered the rules required for a legal stay in the U.S. But each step seemed likelier to expose my sister to deportation. And deportation meant death.

JUST NOD AND PRETEND EVERYTHING’S OKAY
The new sneakers that my mother bought at Payless the previous night were sitting by the door of our trailer. We had just moved out of my aunt’s house and into a trailer behind a three-bedroom house in North Long Beach.

We were finally on our own. The trailer wasn’t much bigger than the room I shared at Aunt Tina’s. At night, we magically converted the dining table into a bed. We could shower and use the toilet at the same time; I don’t think anybody else tried. We couldn’t buy too many groceries because the small fridge would give out every other week.

“They don’t have bilingual classes at that school, ma,” I whined as I rearranged my new Kmart backpack in preparation for my first day of school in Long Beach, at Alexander Hamilton Middle School. “I’ll probably be the only kid who doesn’t know a word of English.”

I begged my mother to let me stay at the school I was attending while living at my aunt’s house. The availability of bilingual classes at the other school allowed me to become one of the smartest kids in many of my seventh grade classes, with the exception of P.E.

How would I succeed at a school in which I couldn’t even ask where the library was?

“You’re pretty smart,” my mother would say. “You’ll pick it up sooner than you think.” It was a 30-minute walk from the trailer to AHMS. My mom urged me to keep up, but when you’re 11 it’s easy to believe that every step you take toward a new school is a step toward your imminent death. The kids would laugh at me. I was bound to be friendless.

We were directed by one of the staff members to a small office. She was older, the staff lady was, probably in her 50s, with a graying bowl cut. She wore high heels with white socks; at any other time, I would have laughed, but that lady had my future in her hands.

I can still recall the scent of coffee in the small office, and the diplomas and certificates on the wall alongside pictures of students of different races. This was something I wasn’t accustomed to seeing in my old East Los Angeles middle school.

Then it happened. The lump in my throat metastasized until I couldn’t hold it anymore. A river of tears fell down my chubby cheeks.

“What is wrong with you, kid?” the lady asked.

“I just can’t do it,” I said in Spanish. “I want to go back to my old school.”

“You can go to your old school,” she explained. “But that means you have to take the bus early in the morning and come back very late in the afternoon.”

“I don’t care,” I said in a defiant voice. “I don’t want this school.”

“Don’t talk to the lady like that,” my mother quickly interrupted. “You’re staying here and that’s the end of it.”

I tried holding my mother’s arm, but she was unmovable. In that moment, my mother and the lady with the sensible footwear united, my mother’s betrayal like a knife in the gut.

I swore never to talk to her again if she left me at that school. She stared at me and slowly, pointedly, rose from her chair and made her way to the door. “I’ll see you at home,” she said calmly. “Be good.”

She tried to give me her blessing by doing the sign of the cross, but I furiously turned away.

The lady handed me my schedule of classes. She called another student to walk me to my first class. It occurred to me that the student had been standing there the whole time. All of a sudden my anger turned to embarrassment and I felt like a crybaby. I felt especially bad for acting so immature with my mother in front of strangers.

She was African-American and the embodiment of kindness. She smiled.

She said something I didn’t understand and I just nodded. From that day on, nodding became a regular thing for me. Every time someone said something to me in English, I nodded.

The classes weren’t so bad. By the end of the day, I managed to make one friend. His name was Luis and he had a bad eye. People made fun of Luis, and it made complete sense to befriend someone who was, like me, an outcast. Luis helped me with the rest of my schedule and we made plans to sit together in the cafeteria the next day. When I got home, I was expecting a sad face from my mother, but instead she made spaghetti, my favorite.

“I told you it’d be okay,” she said as she served me a plate. “You survived.”

“Sorry for crying in front of that lady with the weird haircut,” I said between bites.

She just smiled and watched me eat.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER
For the summer of ’98, I ended up scrubbing toilets.

Mrs. Mitchell, my ninth-grade computer education teacher at David Starr Jordan High School, had grown fond of me. She met me when I was an insecure, English Language Development-bound, computer-illiterate young freshman. I was terrified of Mrs. Mitchell’s class. If I touched those Mac keyboards, I feared, I would break them and my parents would have to give up food for a week in order to pay for them.

Mrs. Mitchell wasn’t so easy to like, either. She was a very tough Japanese-American teacher who would break your neck if you brought any liquids close to one of her beloved Macs. Liquids were to her what communists might have been for an earlier generation of teachers.

But I became one of her best students, not because of my typing skills—which were in the low words per minute—but because of my willingness to stay after school to help her out with some of the non-English speaking students.

I didn’t speak English fluently by the end of ninth grade, but I could keep up with Mrs. Mitchell’s conversations about computers and how they would revolutionize the world as soon as the new millennium hit. It was likely my enthusiasm for that new world order that translated easily.

So with my ELD-English, I helped other students. Mrs. Mitchell thanked me by allowing me access to the Internet.

When school was almost over, Mrs. Mitchell approached me and asked if I would be interested in a summer job.

“Most of the adult students are parents who don’t speak English but want to learn how to type,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “I can really use you. Plus, the pay is more than you get in allowance.”

My parents had stopped giving me an allowance when we moved to the United States.

“When do I start?” I asked.

“As soon as you fill out some paperwork, you know, like your parent’s consent to work and your Social Security number.”

Of course, my parents would consent. The Social Security number? How hard could that be?

At home, my dad put things in perspective.  “You don’t have a Social Security number, mijo,” he said.

We then had a long conversation about what it meant to be an undocumented immigrant in this country—the things we could do (like pay taxes and make more money in one day than our relative made back home in a week) and the things that we couldn’t do (like drive, vote, cross the border). “But you have one,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s your grandfather’s, may his soul rest in peace. Back when he was young, they’d give these cards to anyone willing to work. But the laws have changed and it’s not so easy to get one anymore. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to tell Mrs. Mitchell that we won’t let you work. Besides, your mom could use your help cleaning houses. She can give you some extra cash.”

The next day, I was too embarrassed to tell Mrs. Mitchell about my situation, but when she came up to me after the last day of school to ask me if I’d told my parents, I just started crying.

“Why are you crying?” Mrs. Mitchell asked. “Did your parents not let you work over the summer?”

“It’s not that, Mrs. Mitchell,” I said between sobs. “I don’t have a Social Security number. I think I’m an illegal.”

Then I remembered how my dad told me that I had to keep this a secret, that I couldn’t tell anyone about my situation because they could inform INS.

“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Mitchell said.

She seemed on the verge of crying herself.

“Listen, if you don’t have a work permit, I’m afraid I can’t give you the job. God, this pisses me off. You’re such a talented student.” I wiped off my tears and thanked Mrs. Mitchell for the job offer.

Every other day for the rest of the summer I awoke at 6 a.m. to help my mother clean houses.

At first, every nice house I entered inspired me. But I was quickly reminded why I was there. My high-value communication skills, so perfect for the new millennium, weren’t necessary to clean toilets and scrub bathtubs.

HOW TO BECOME LEGAL, SORT OF
In the morning, Huntington Park smells like bus fumes.

My father and I were looking for the men who promised to sell us the good stuff. His friend had a contact there, but we couldn’t find him. So we opted to risk a possible raid.

I’d seen the raids on the local news: FBI agents rushing into garages turned into clandestine Kinko’s, where thousands of fake green cards and Social Security cards were made and eventually confiscated.

Those who made and sold the identification were arrested, but so were those purchasing it.

All I could think of was my father and I getting handcuffed as we tried to purchase two pieces of documentation that could possibly lend me a job, a job I desperately needed if I wanted to continue my college education.

So there we were, committing a crime in the early hours of the morning.

The first man who approached us as we walked down Pacific Boulevard promised a good deal: a California ID and a Social Security card for $80.

We weren’t going to try and hustle for a better price, so we followed the man to a nearby photo studio. It looked like a family business. A young girl was doing homework, and the woman at the front desk was feeding a toddler.

“I’m going to need the money now,” the man said. “We’ll take your picture and you’ll come back later at night to pick it up.”

That seemed a bit odd. What if this man stole my money and I ended up short $80 and without my fake documentation?

“Do what he says,” my father said. I reluctantly handed him the four crumbled $20 bills and the man directed me to a room in the back where a young man was waiting to take my picture.

It took less than five minutes. He handed me a piece of paper and asked me to write the name I wanted on my California ID and to come up with a fake Social Security number. In the event that I couldn’t create a nine-digit number on my own, the man said he would provide a number.

That was probably among the oddest bonding experiences ever shared by father and son.

“You know that we can go to jail for this, right?” my father asked.

I knew.

But it wasn’t as though we were proud to do what we were doing. And we were far from sophisticated. If an FBI agent had caught us at that moment, I would have told him everything. In the years I’d spent trying to keep up a 3.8 GPA in high school, it never occurred to me to think through what I would do if I were caught purchasing false documentation.

We’d passed the first test of finding a documentation dealer without getting arrested. We still had to return for our final product.

My dad took me for lunch at a local seafood place.

“You’re a good kid,” he said between bites of ceviche tostadas. “I’m sorry you have to do this to pay for your college tuition. Your ma and I are very sorry for not providing you with that.”

“It’s not your fault, dad,” I told him. “We just have to do what we have to do. Pass me the Tapatio.”

The whole city became our waiting room as we walked from corner to corner, making sure the man didn’t run away with my money.

As patrol cars drove by, the fear of getting caught made us start senseless conversation.

“Your grandfather and I used to go fishing a lot,” he’d say. “But we never did catch a lot of fish. We weren’t that good. Your ma likes fish.”

“I’m sorry I scratched your old Beatles vinyl collection when I was little,” I’d say. “I never did get into the Beatles despite the fact that you played those records a lot.”

My father and I learned a lot from each other during that waiting period, like our obsession with tattoos and our fear of needles, or how we both misplace things and blame others for doing so.

We made our way back to the photo studio at the exact time the man told us to meet.

It was closed.

I was convinced that the man had taken our money and had run to Tijuana. I was about to go off on my father and tell him what a stupid idea this had been in the first place when the man arrived in a white truck.

He signaled us to get close to the truck.

“Here you go,” he said and sped off without even saying goodbye. I looked at the finalized products in my hand. They looked extremely fake. The type was wobbly, my picture a grainy distorted image, the paper like something you’d pick up at a drug store, the state seal a bad photocopy. I had no other alternative but to pray that it would pass for the real thing.

After a long and stressful day, we headed back home and continued our conversation about Beatles music and our fear of needles.

THE ADVANTAGE OF RAINY DAYS
I was riding the Long Beach Transit Bus 61 with those two little cards in my back pocket, wondering if I could really get away with my documentation facsimile at the follow-up job interview, where I was up for the position of men’s department sales associate.

The rain was hitting even harder by the time I arrived to the discount clothing store.

This job would definitely beat my previous job as a piñata-maker at a party supply store.

“Leticia is running late,” the assistant manager told me.

I waited in the employee break room for what seemed like an eternity, holding the ID and the Social Security card in my hands, wondering if I would end up in jail for doing this.

I’d been out of high school a year, and buying false identification with the probability of going to jail was definitely not part of my four-year plan.

I needed to pay for books and help out at home. I was raised Catholic and was always told—always believed—that stealing was a very bad thing. So I opted for honest work, regardless of the fact that I lacked a job permit to work in this country.

After a 20-minute wait, my potential boss showed up soaking wet and apologizing over and over for being late.

“It’s raining, and I don’t want to keep you that long,” Leticia said. “I think you’ll be a great addition to our store. Let me just see your documentation and fill out the appropriate paperwork and you’ll be part of our team.”

She quickly glanced over at my fake documentation and had me sign a few forms.

I walked out of the store unsure whether I’d successfully played the system.

Every day for a week I asked my mother if anyone had called for me.

No messages. I’d given my two weeks notice at the party supply store.

I began to panic.

The following morning, I got a call from Leticia, once again apologizing, this time for not calling sooner. I’d gotten the job and she was wondering when I could start.

I don’t know if it was the rain or just plain luck, but ever since that day, when rain approaches I know that something great is coming this undocumented immigrant’s way.

ALMOST KILLED FOR MY ART
My hands froze at the steering wheel.

“Just do what they say and don’t panic,” my dad had advised me in the past in preparation for this moment.

It was too late. I was panicking and freaking out.

“License and registration, please,” the cop said. I didn’t move. I just looked straight ahead and didn’t say a word.

“I said license and registration, young man,” he said again.

I finally opened my mouth and managed to say that I didn’t carry either. When I bought that 1983 Chrysler Plymouth for a mere $500, I knew this was bound to happen.

I always told myself that if a cop ever pulled me over I wouldn’t get scared and I would tell the truth.

Now that it was happening, my whole body went numb.

“Where are you going at 3 a.m.?” the cop asked. “I’m on my way to work.”

“Do you have any form of identification?”

I pulled out my Mexican Consular ID and the cop walked to the patrol car. He came back and asked me to pull into a nearby McDonald’s parking lot.

“You know you can’t drive without a driver’s license, right?”

“I’m aware, officer.”

“Then why don’t you have a driver’s license? You’re old enough.”

I hesitated to answer. I’d heard stories about police departments in nearby Orange County contacting immigration officers as soon as they caught undocumented immigrants driving without a license.

I looked at the cop. He was a young Anglo guy with green eyes. Couldn’t have been older than 25.

“I don’t have papers, sir,” I said, almost in a whisper. “If I don’t have papers, I can’t get a Social Security number. Without a Social Security number I can’t get a driver’s license.”

There was silence. Then he said something into his radio and in a few minutes, there were about four more patrol cars.

“You don’t mind if we search your car, do you?” the cop asked.

“Be my guest,” I replied.

Five Long Beach Police Department officers began to search my old bucket. I wasn’t sure what they were looking for.  They found something and the young cop with the green eyes changed in an instant, pulled his gun out and screamed, “Stay where you are and don’t move!”

I thought of my mother and how she would react at the sight of a cop pointing a gun at her son’s head.

“Is there a problem, officer?” I asked, nearly crying. “Why are you pointing a gun at me?”

“Nevermind,” another officer screamed. “False alarm.”

The young cop lowered his gun and apologized. I held back my tears.

“You can’t drive your car,” the cop said. “Is there anyone you can call right now so they can give you a lift?”

It was almost 3:35 a.m. and I was late for work. I couldn’t call my dad. What if they asked him for a license? I pretended to make a call in a public telephone outside McDonald’s.

The young cop asked if I needed a lift to my job. As much as the idea of being dropped off in a patrol car at my place of work sounded super cool, I couldn’t imagine sitting in the same vehicle as the man who’d just pointed a gun to my head and almost made me pee my pants.

As the cops got back into their cars and disappeared into the cold morning, I walked back to my car to sort through the mess of books and papers these men left behind. I noticed that a bunch of T-pins, which I’d used for an art project, were all over the floor and in the driver’s seat. I figured that one of the cops must have poked himself with a T-pin while searching my car and that’s why they freaked out.

I waited another 20 minutes—breathed deeply, sorted things out—before calling my dad. Luckily, I didn’t lose my job for being almost an hour late.

After work, I went back to the parking lot to see if my car was still there.

It was there. I pulled the keys out of my pocket and opened the car. The books, papers and T-pins were still there, as well as the memory of a gun pointed in my head.

That was the first time I’d ever seen a gun.

‘WE DON’T TAKE THAT HERE’
I remember the first time I had to use my matricula consular, or “Mexican ID,” as some call it. Even as I type this, the computer’s spellcheck automatically highlights both Spanish words in red and green as a sign of an error. Ironically, those are the colors of my Mexican ID.

I had just turned 18, and a couple of friends took me to an 18-and-over nightclub. I was finally legal enough to buy cigarettes and join the Army.

I anxiously stood in line with my friends outside the crowded Orange County hotspot, wondering if my matricula consular would be good enough to prove I was 18.

From the get go, there was a hidden shame as I held my matricula. My friends were legitimate, had their vanilla-colored California IDs. All I had was this crappy document that looked more fraudulent than the Social Security card I’d bought in Huntington Park.

The more I inspected the card, the more ashamed I felt.

Then Pete had the marvelous idea of snatching everyone’s ID to see who had the worst photo. One by one, Pete snatched up IDs and made fun of their picture.

When he reached for mine, I told him to fuck off. His sister grabbed it from my hand. She looked confused.

“What kind of ID is this?” she asked.

I panicked.

I broke out in a sweat. My brain locked up on the puzzle I’d failed to figure out so many times before—how to explain to my friends that I was an undocumented immigrant and that the awful Mexican ID was the only proof of my existence in this country.

But Pete just shrugged and moved on to Luis, who looked like a drunk viejito in his California ID.

I was surprised how lightly they all received the news of my illegal status in this country. Why had I been freaking out this whole time?

Then we got to the door.

A tall vato who looked like one of my cousins inspected my matricula consular and literally threw it back at me.

“We don’t take that here,” he said.

We don’t take that here. Those words just kept ringing in my head as I blushed with embarrassment and swore to God I’d never go out again.

Luis cursed the guy and played the ethnic card. “How can you treat raza like that?” he asked. Everyone decided on a boycott: If I wasn’t allowed to go in, nobody would go in.

I was deeply touched by my friends’ solidarity, but I also felt like shit.

REALISM
At a Long Beach City College fair aimed at undocumented students like me, a woman told me “to be realistic. Once you graduate from college, there’s no way you’ll get a job unless you work out something with a possible employer”—something marginally legal, she seemed to suggest. “In the meantime,” she said, “go get another degree.”

I had met other students in my situation who attended UCLA and even Berkeley. But I had loved Cal State Long Beach from my junior year of high school. Walking the campus, I could see my future: I’d study art and become an artist—who’d care about my lack of documents then?—and move into an East Village loft.

But I could barely pay the fees at LBCC. Could I afford the higher—and rising—tuition at CSULB? The school accepted me. I applied for scholarships, asked for overtime at work, found a state regulation that allows kids like me—who arrived here more or less by accident—to qualify for in-state tuition.

In the end, I walked onto campus paying for just two classes. I didn’t have a car (still don’t), I was living with my parents (still am) and the money in my pockets was mostly small bills (still is). But I had finally arrived.

I felt joy. And then panic. Who was I fooling? I couldn’t possibly do this every semester, couldn’t expect to get a scholarship all the time and get more hours at work to pay for my education.

But I have.

But I have.

MY RESEARCH PROJECT
“Dime uno plato limpie, per favor,” the young waitress asked as I emptied another load of dirty plates into the sink.

I handed her the clean plate and introduced myself as the new dishwasher. Noticing that she was having problems communicating in Spanish, I introduced myself in English.

“Oh, you speak English.” She sounded impressed. “Most of the people that work back here don’t speak a word of English. Why aren’t you waiting tables instead?”

“I’m an actor and I’m doing research for a movie role as a dishwasher.”

She wasn’t amused.

Every time somebody finds me fluently speaking English and working in the back of a restaurant or loading cement bags onto a truck, their facial expression changes to something like confusion. When they find out I’m also a college student, they’re simply left scratching their heads.

I’ve done a lot of head scratching of my own.

It’s hard to keep a straight face when you’re cleaning restaurant windows in front of your old high school friends who’ve already graduated from college.

“So what are you majoring in at school?” the same waitress asked me on another occasion.

“I want to be a journalist,” I said. “I want to change the world by writing about it.”

“I’m an English major and I’m graduating in the spring,” she said.

“Congratulations. So have you started on that big novel already?”

“Nope. I have too much drama with my boyfriend to even think about anything else.”

Here you had a young college student who was about to receive a college degree, but was so caught up in her love life that she couldn’t even recognize the greatness of what she was about to achieve, a greatness that many in my situation don’t ever get to experience.

“But you’re excited, right?” I asked. “I guess. I mean, my parents are totally not going to send me any more money and my boyfriend is probably breaking up with me.”

I wanted to tell her that the real reason I was washing dishes was because my job choices were pretty slim. Plus, my father had just been laid off and I had to figure out a way to pay for school and help my parents with rent, but I didn’t want to bring her down.

Throughout my college years, I’ve encountered a lot of students like her, students whose parents pay for most of their expenses or who qualify for the financial aid that allows them to throw themselves single-mindedly into school.

When I come across these students, they share a kind of universal disappointment. They have so much, but it’s not enough. It probably never will be. I can’t help but feel sorry for them. They didn’t have the advantage of my disadvantages, the knowledge that I’m doing something no one else in my immediate family has done.

Of course, there’s the possibility that I’ll be a well-educated articulate dishwasher.

DATING A CRIMINAL, PART I
My date and I sat at the bar in a Lakewood restaurant at happy hour. When the bartender asked to see our identifications, I pulled out my Mexican consular ID card and the bartender said he needed a real ID.

He directed us to the regular dining tables and he told me that if my date ordered a drink for me, we would be escorted out.

That was our second and last date.

A friend, also illegal, advised me, “Try dating another wetback. Now that’s some dangerous territory.”

I did. When I first started that relationship, I figured this person could understand where I was coming from because we were going through the same things.

Some of the things we had in common were the possibility of deportation, crappy jobs, not qualifying for financial aid and a lack of transportation.

But instead of bringing us closer as a couple, it more than doubled our anxiety.

The sum of our fears was greater than the parts.

DATING A CRIMINAL, PART II
I once had to explain to my girlfriend that I couldn’t go to San Diego for spring break because I might get snagged at the border check in San Clemente.

THE END
I work at a restaurant. The fake documents passed as the real thing. But we recently got word that the company will start checking Social Security numbers. A well-meaning friend told me to go home. He meant Mexico. I remember looking at him for a moment, all of the moments of my life distilling themselves into a single utterance. “I’m already home,” I said.

A version of this story first appeared in Cal State Long Beach’s El Reflejo magazine.

Tags: cal state long beach, immigration, Long Beach, undocumented