INSIDE:
NEWS/STORIES/ARTICLES
Book Reviews
Columns/Opinion/Cartoon
Films
International
National
NW/Local
Recipes
Special A.C.E. Stories
Online
Paper (PDF)
NW RESOURCE GUIDE
Archives
Consulates
Organizations
Scholarships
Special Sections
Upcoming
The Asian Reporter Eleventh
Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet -
April 2009
May, 2009
Asian Reporter Info
AR
Merchandise
Contact Us
Subscription Info. & Back Issues
ASIA LINKS
Asian Studies
Currency Exchange
More Asian Links
Public Holidays
Time Zones
Copyright © 2000 - 2008
AR Home
|
Talking Story |
 |
From The Asian Reporter, V18, #17 (April 22, 2008), page 7.
How girls get lost
We got the call late Thursday. Every father, every mother on our precious blue planet dreads it. That call. Asian or African or Arab or American, all the same. We hate late night calls.
This call was not about our bright son, not about our brave daughter. I quickly touched my heart, I quietly thanked God. For this nightmare not happening in our house, for it falling on another anguished ma, on another softly weeping pa, I felt relieved. For my private little celebration, I felt awful. Humans don’t do that. It’s not right.
And everyone knows this.
Before going on with this story, I want to tell you I’m removing from our narrative this sorrowing family’s race and nationality. Also, I’m not going to say a thing about the socio-political bramble their problems are part of.
I’m taking ethnicity and politics out because, I tell you true: it’s shocking how heartless some in our immigrant and ethnic minority communities have been about the problems of lovely families just like this one. Heartless.
Race and immigration debates are distractions.
Both are bad. Bad like when I open a morning Oregonian, scan last night’s car crashes but only focus on folks with names like mine. Lots of vowels. It’s as bad as when I peek at inside-page pictures of smiling kids who did real good, but skip the stories of those whose skin and hair differs from my children’s.
Making things matter only when it’s about people like us is wrong.
What went wrong
The call we got last Thursday was from a mom of a 16-year-old girl. Her oldest child. The daughter who walks her little brothers home from their school then cares for them then puts on dinner for them and their dad because mom works swing shift. She’s the girl who stopped speaking for almost a year when she was four, when she first came to Portland; but she’s in National Honor Society now. She laughs a lot, her ma said, tears hanging from her clenched jaw.
This daughter did not pick up her baby brothers Thursday afternoon. No call. No clue. Nothing. Gone.
By nightfall her mom was out of her mind. Her popi feared the worst. The worst.
We went to their home and put together their girl’s movements during that day — she took her brothers to school; she went to hers; lunch at Burgerville; back for class; out to DMV.
And that’s where her trail ended, where she went wrong. A government office. A place where public servants work.
By Friday morning our fears were confirmed. A counter clerk called the Immigration cops. That clerk was told to tell the Feds if a customer’s license looks funny. That’s what happened and that’s what this clerk did.
The ICEmen (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) came and handcuffed and took away their pretty daughter, that smart high school student, the one who’s been an American girl since the day she started talking again at the end of that long year of silence. The one over whom this exhausted father was now sobbing. Ashamed of himself.
They put her in a sealed bus to San Diego. They dropped her off outside U.S. borders.
What went wrong here is hard to fix. So many people did so wrong. But because our crew, us practical people best at fixing broken parts and broken hearts, can only work big problems at their simplest level — we cannot address the failings of big government leaders, we have little power over senseless state policy, and there’s nothing we can do about cold officers of the law messing up our lives.
So let’s not talk about that stuff. Big political talk.
What we do
If we were able (can you imagine us able) to do something about mechanisms and maneuverings at those high leadership levels, we would not be in Portland, Oregon today.
If someone that strong had been able to talk sense into those Khmer Rouge demons, if someone that wise had been able to stop Filipino politicians from plundering their economy, if someone that kind had been able to convince Indonesian leaders that it’s wrong to rub out Chinese and expel Eurasians — me and all my relatives and most of our friends would not be Americans now.
None of us had the power to prevent our tragedies.
So let’s talk smaller. Let’s talk about us. To us.
We small fish need not get smart or cruel about other little fish getting hurt by big bad politics. We could not control those ugly times falling on our families and neither can these folks, these parents missing their baby girl.
My father was a working man, doing his very best to protect his family. Me too. And so is that lost daughter’s pop. Working men, all of us.
And what do working people do?
When a scared girl comes to your counter, help her. Help her. Or whisper that you cannot. She is a child. Then shut up. This is how Jews survived. This is why slaves escaped. By these simple acts, by us.
We got that call, late night Thursday. It was the kind of call all parents everywhere on our precious blue planet pray is not for them.
We thanked heaven. Of course because the call was not about our daughter, but also because here was our chance, now was our turn, to do what simple people, what good family does in time of need. Protect each other.
This is what we do.
That’s how we are.