Mexican Immigration / Antonia Mimic

Chapter XIII

April brought with it Spring Break, in which all of the schools in San Diego were released for one week of freedom. During that time my sister, Angie, and I watched the throngs of people in beachwear strolling along the streets, the sun breaking free of its wintertime haze and warming the waters and spirits again.
On a particularly nice morning, Carlos was brought to our house by his mother, who, after complaining about gas prices, went to work commenting on how my sister and I were lazing around instead of stimulating the economy so that she could afford to feed her family. According to her, everything that is wrong in America can somehow be fixed by two teenage girls. She says that if she were a legal immigrant, we would be working under her as she would be a CEO.
She was an egotistical, idealistic old thing and even though she fed on taxpayer money, she still felt that she should tell us off. I could not feel pity for their situation sometimes because, simply, of her attitude. This emotion was with me for the rest of the visit, even as Carlos told me that he feared that his two elder brothers had gotten involved with MS13, one of the deadliest gangs in America.
“They have been coming home late at night wearing not the same things that they left the house in. They smell strange and they are more and more not going to work at the junkyard with me for pay so the family suffers. Sometimes they will bring back dark purses and threaten us if we ask them.”
“Yeah, selling drugs and killing people is a sure-fire way to having people accept you in this country.”
His face flushed and he muttered something, but Carlos was not one for confrontation, having been raised in a very unstable and turbulent family. “…They did not want to come. Where we were, there was much fighting and after Father has been shot, we flee to America for safety.”
“Well you sure aren’t going to find it in MS13!”
“I am sorry that we are not accepted here and must find people who do! I am sorry that such a rich country can not help us in hard luck and instead call us wetbacks go back! I am sorry that my mother has dreams!” His voice had changed to the hiss of a rattlesnake poised to strike and I became very aware of my facial expressions.
Carlos was very defensive of his family, even if he did know their flaws. It was all that he had known for his fourteen years of life and it was his only support in America because, as he had said, illegal Mexicans aren’t readily welcomed here.
As they left after lunch in the old, beat-up car, my younger sister asked me why Carlos and I had been fighting earlier and I responded that it’s adult problems she wouldn’t understand. She went inside in a huff and the incident was soon glazed over by the sun.
That weekend, the sun gave way to torrential rain which left us inside. Mom decided because we had been ‘dirtying up the house’ for the last week, that we should clean it over the weekend. Angie, my little sister, can not clean for her life, so even with her effort, I was forced to pretty much clean each foot of the 2500 square-foot house. The kitchen was first. As soon as I finished with the house, Angie told me that she has spilled orange juice in the kitchen and I had to go back and do the floors all over again. That was a tiring, unnatural sort of day.