Graduation Series Pt. 1: My Friend Ana

Hi blog world! I’m trying something a little different these next few weeks – in honor of my graduation this month, I’ll be posting some of my favorite essays/written pieces I’ve done during my English undergrad. First up, we have a short story I wrote for creative writing, a class and activity I ended up enjoying more than I thought I would! (maybe sometime you’ll see another short story from me!)

Following my story, I’ll have a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at my inspiration for the story, as well as what I believe is an important conversation on the topic of writing about things in which you yourself have not experienced. But for now, let’s get into it!

The following is a short story I wrote for a creative writing class at A&M.

My Friend Ana

I was definitely not looking forward to summer vacation. As my mom’s faded minivan began to leave the drop off loop at school, the pit of dread in my stomach grew to the size of a soccer ball. I already missed my teacher Mr. Pitts and my best friend Katrina, who was going to see her grandparents in upstate New York all summer. I guess it could be worse, I thought to myself. I could be stuck in a boring place like that. But also the third grade had been so fun, and now I was going to be stuck inside with my annoying 5-year-old brother watching his favorite show, Doc McStuffins, all. Day. Long.

“Can we go get ice cream now?” Ben squealed from his car seat next to mine. Speak of the devil. Mom is always too nice to him.

“Sure honey, we can go through a drive-thru,” Mom said evenly. “Is that okay with you, Olivia?” 

“I suppose so…” I said in my most dignified voice, the one I used when me and Katrina pretended to be grown-ups doing something exciting like own an ice cream shop or perform surgery on stuffed animals. “But that means I get to pick what we watch on tv.” I knew Ben would not be happy now.

“BUT…I…WANT….TO….WATCH…TV!!!!” Ben roared. Oh, I had done it now.

We used to not have to share a TV, back before Dad left one day and didn’t come back. After he left, things started disappearing from our house, first the fancy plates we use on special occasions, then the antique furniture in the spare bedroom. I always wondered where they went. I pictured the same thing that took Dad away coming into our house in the middle of the night and taking things one by one, until one day I saw a picture frame that had gone missing wrapped up in Mom’s closet.

Then right after Christmas we got our house taken away too, which is how we ended up in our apartment, which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Mom made it pretty with the things we had left, and I still had my own room and enough space for the toys I got to take with me. But sometimes I get scared that whatever took Dad away will take Mom one day too. I never told her that though. She said I have to be the “example” for Ben, so I still wake up every morning and make my bed and eat my cereal and pretend it’s all still okay.

Ben wasn’t quiet until there was a sticky vanilla cone in his hand and something he didn’t totally hate on the television. We were two episodes into my favorite Disney Channel show when there was a knock at the door, followed by some talking between Mom and an unfamiliar voice, and then,

“Olivia, Ben, get over here! I’ve got someone for y’all to meet!” Mom said in her “I’m pretending to be okay but if you don’t come here right now you will be sorry” voice. So Ben and I ran to the front door, seeing who could get there first. We looked past her to see a woman with kind, smiling eyes, and a young girl who looked about the same age as me.

The girl had short brown hair and big eyes that looked like they must be able to see more of the world than me. She was no Katrina or Gracie or even Marissa, but she seemed nice enough. I stuck out my hand to say hello.

“Hi there, I’m Olivia!” I said in my somewhat dignified voice, the one I imagined Princess Diana used when she met new friends. The girl looked at my hand for a second before she finally shook it.

“Hi, I’m Ana.” She said so softly I barely heard her. She must be shy. Mom says I need to back down a little bit when people are shy because apparently sometimes I’m a little ‘over the top’ which I don’t agree with at all, but I still put my hand behind my back and smiled wide at her. She smiled back.

Ben did not behave nearly as good as me. He waved at Ana, and immediately ran back into the house screaming, “It’s Lego time!” Me and mom really needed to teach him some manners. 

“You girls are around the same age. Maybe you can play together sometime.” My mom said, smiling. There was a lot of smiling happening here.

“I’ll have to check my schedule, but I think that sounds great!” I said, and Mom gave me a warning look. I didn’t think I was being that sassy. But Ana looked confused, so Mom cut in. 

“She means she would love to. Tomorrow?” The moms exchanged a “mom smile” and then Ana’s mom and Ana walked away. 

The next day, I woke up early and put on my favorite blue shorts with the soccer ball and the matching top. I brushed my teeth and even made my bed, which mom normally has to remind me to do. And then, I went over to my new neighbor Ana’s apartment. I could hear my heart thumping a little bit, like it does on the first day of school when you don’t know everybody yet.

Her door was right next to ours. I gave it a loud knock and Ana opened the door almost right away. We both looked at each other for a second without saying anything.

“Oh hi, I didn’t know if you were actually coming.” Ana said softly. “Do you want to play with me and my dolls? Their names are Ariana and Maya.” 

Wow, those are pretty names, I might have to use those, I thought to myself as I nodded and sat beside her on the ground. I took a closer look at the dolls. Their dresses were worn and their hair was neat but a little ragged. I thought about offering to go next door to my apartment where we could play with my dolls in the beach house I got last year for my birthday. But then I thought it might make Ana feel bad because her dolls weren’t as nice, so I didn’t say anything. 

I haven’t had any of my friends over since we moved. Not even Katrina, who keeps on asking why I always want to go to her house instead of mine. I haven’t told anyone at school what happened because I don’t know what they would say, and I don’t want them to look at me the way you look at someone differently when you find out their parents aren’t together anymore. But here was someone who didn’t know me as Olivia with the big pool and trampoline, but just as Olivia. And I liked that. 

Me and Ana fell into a routine pretty quickly of going back and forth between each other’s apartments. We played every single day and it was so much fun. I eventually showed Ana my toys and my doll house, and she didn’t look sad at all. She just smiled and asked me which doll I wanted to be that day. 

We also learned a lot about each other. Ana was the first person I told about my dad. And she told me that her dad had gone away one day too, when she was six. It felt good to talk to Ana about stuff. 

My mom is a high school teacher, which is lucky for us because she gets to stay home with us during the summer. But Ana’s mom was normally gone for most of the day, and one day I asked her what her mom’s job was.

“She does a lot of different stuff, I can’t really keep up. Right now she works at the Jack in the Box down the street, and sometimes cleans people’s houses.”
I thought that sounded terrible to have two jobs at once! 

“Why does she have so many different jobs?” I asked.

“Because she doesn’t have her papers.” Ana said even quieter than normal. 

She said it in a way that made me think I was supposed to know what that meant, but I didn’t want her to know that I didn’t, so I just nodded and quickly changed the subject.

Later that day, at home with Mom and Ben, I couldn’t decide if I should tell Mom what happened. Ana told me in the way that me and my friends would sometimes share secrets, like the time Jenny’s mom lost her job and so she had to wear her coat from last year even though it got to be too small for her. But I also told my mom everything. I told Mom about Jenny and she said she was sorry that happened, and I needed to make sure to be extra nice to her. I bet she would say the same thing about Ana.

“Mom, what does it mean to not have papers?” I asked carefully. Mom looked up immediately and looked concerned.

“Where did you hear that?” Mom asked. Well, it was too late now, I had to tell her or she might get mad.

“Ana told me today her mom doesn’t have papers, and that’s why she has a lot of jobs, and I don’t know what that means.” I knew my mom and Ana’s mom talked sometimes, but they must not have talked about this before.

“Well honey, you know how we all got passports a few years ago when we went on our trip to Cancun? Well, Ana and her mom wouldn’t be able to get passports because they don’t have the information the government needs to prove they are allowed to live here.” My mom talked slower than usual. She still looked a little upset, like she sometimes gets after she gets home late and has a lot of papers to grade. 

“So then…they’re not allowed to live here? But why not? What have they done wrong?” Ana was probably the nicest person I’ve ever met. I couldn’t imagine her doing something bad.

“Because they didn’t come to America legally. The government doesn’t know they are here.” Mom was starting to look more and more sad, but I didn’t understand why. There was so much I didn’t understand.

“So… they could… like… get in trouble if the government found them?” I was starting to feel a pit forming in my stomach.

“Yes, they could get sent back to Mexico. It’s called deportation.” My mom talked about strangers sending Ana and her mom away from next door the same way she reminds Ben to eat his vegetables. I didn’t want to hear anymore. Thankfully, it seemed my mom was done too because she quickly said,

“Don’t worry about any of this honey, it doesn’t affect you.” she then got up, and went to her room. I peeked inside. She didn’t even have any papers to grade. 

I didn’t think about the talk with Mom or deportation or any of that stuff for a while after that. The days continued to be more of the same as August came and it was suddenly time for back to school shopping. I did notice Mom was starting to act weird around Ana’s mom, like she was mad about something but she didn’t want to talk about it.

On the last day before school started, I was in the living room arranging all my school supplies extra neatly when I heard voices outside. They sounded mean. 

“Teresa Montoya, are you there?” I heard one of the mean voices above the rest, followed by loud banging on the door next to us. Oh no, I thought, I wonder if they found out about Ana’s mom not having papers. I scurried to the front door and tried to look out the peephole, but Mom told me in her meanest voice to “go to my room immediately, young lady.” I didn’t want to but I did it anyways because I wanted to be away from the voices.

I could hear them banging on Ana’s door some more. I heard it open, followed by more loud voices and what sounded like Ana’s mom crying. I had never heard a grown up cry before. 

I sat on my bed for a long time after it was quiet. I slowly walked out of my room to see my mom on the couch, acting like nothing had even happened.

“Sorry about that sweetie, everything is okay now.” she smiled. “Want to get pizza tonight?” 

“What happened?” I felt myself starting to cry as I clenched my fists.

“There’s no reason to get upset Olivia, someone at Ana’s moms’ work must’ve found out she was illegal. It was probably going to happen eventually, and I’m sorry you had to hear it.”

I thought there was definitely a reason to get upset. I had never heard Mom call Ana’s mom “illegal.” I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but I heard people on the news say it sometimes, so it had to be bad. 

“But what about Ana? What’s gonna happen to her?”

“Well, I’m not really sure… But school starts tomorrow, and you’ll be able to see Katrina and all your friends again. You love hanging out with them, remember?”

But I didn’t want to think about school starting tomorrow or my old friends. All I could think about was Ana being taken away. I wondered where she was now. I hope she had her dolls to play with still. I wish I would’ve given her one of mine, or at least a new outfit or something.

My mom just sat there smiling and not saying anything, and I didn’t understand why. I wanted her to tell me she missed Ana and her mom too. I wanted her to say it wasn’t fair that we got to have papers and other people didn’t. And that Ana and her mom are nice and don’t deserve words like deportation or illegal. 

And I wanted to tell her that none of the dumb things I used to care about mattered anymore becuase I just heard my best friend be taken from me by scary men with loud voices. That I still miss dad sometimes and it felt good to talk to Ana about that because she was different from my other friends and we could talk about more than tv shows and make believe. 

But for some reason, I didn’t feel like it would help to tell her those things, so instead I smiled, mumbled something about wanting pepperoni, and went to my room.

the end 🙂

Now I think it’s important to give you a little context into where my head was at, and what experiences this is (and isn’t) pulled from.

In this interview with one of my favorite Latinx authors, Valeria Luiselli, she discusses the distance she has from her characters and events in Lost Children Archives (literally one of the most well-written books I’ve ever written!!!).

At the same time I was writing this, I was also studying Latinx literature and reading a wonderful novel by Oscar Cásares, entitled Where We Come From. Cásares does a brilliant job of using different point of views to express a narrative, and I chose to use a young, third grader’s point of view in this short story to give me distance from the topics I’m writing about and allow me to write from a perspective I could more accurately and appropriately articulate.

We also discussed the novel American Dirt and the distance an author has from its work, and the use of fiction in documenting something the author has not personally experienced.

(important – if you get bored here and stop scrolling, please read one of the two works I’ve mentioned, or one listed here, before you try to pick up American Dirt. Thank you.)

Luiselli says this in her interview:

“I don’t think a novel written from an attempt to convince anyone of your particular political viewpoints can really do anything in the world, other than be incredibly annoying.”

It is not my intention in this story to write about something I have not experienced in order to create a strong emotional reaction and exploit the very real lives of those living undocumented in the U.S today.

I know that I can in no way relate to those whose reality is that of Ana and her mother in my story. So I’m not trying to do that here. I don’t take you inside Ana’s head, we don’t get to hear her thoughts.

I choose not to write from their perspective because I believe it is noise and takes away from the voices of those who have lived and experienced this trauma and who need to be heard.

Instead, I write from a voice I can identify more closely with. I remember being in the 3rd grade, and although I did not personally experience this, I remember seeing people treated differently at a young age. I have seen the way immigrants and undocumented peoples are treated in this country by the media and by the current administration. My heart has broken over the stories I have read and heard of people who’s lives have been impacted by U.S. immigration policy.

So this is where I write from. From a humble place of grappling with injustice and hard questions, and questioning my own role in this issue in America today.

But please, don’t just listen to me.

Here are just a few works that discuss this issue, some from a first hand, real-life experience, far better than I ever can:

• Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
• Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora
• Tell Me How It Ends and Lost Children Archives by Valeria Luiselli
• Where We Come From by Oscar Cásares
• I’m also reincluding this link from above that lists some other incredible books, all of which I’m currently adding to my need to read list!