No One Is Hiding Here

Immigrants make my small Southern city great.

Last night I was walking home from a friend’s and passed the corner house where I often see my neighbors outside.

As I came up the block, there they were with their young daughter, who is maybe two, rolling a red inflatable ball around the yard. “Hola!” I said and smiled, using the only Spanish I know.

“Hello!” said the mother, rolling the ball to her daughter who looked up at me and grinned as she caught it in her small arms.

Good God, I thought, don’t let my neighbors disappear.

Don’t let the music go away. Don’t let the bachata and merengue get turned down, as they play from the radios in the garages on Saturdays. Don’t let the smell of cumin and chili stop pouring from the neighbors’ windows in the evenings.

Don’t let the children disappear, the ones who translate for their grandmothers in the grocery store line while they clutch the box of freezer pops she is buying them. Don’t let the man across the street who brings me ghost peppers that are too hot for me to eat — don’t let him stop coming over. Don’t let the woman who sells empanadas at the gas station fold up her table, don’t let the man twirling cotton candy on the pole at the intersection drive away.

Don’t let this family, with their little growing daughter and her bright red ball, feel like they can’t come out to the yard anymore.

I want them here, with me.

I went to bed worried about my son’s friends whose parents might feel that they have to hide. Perhaps they won’t come to the school anymore for their children’s recitals? For their soccer games and track meets? What does that do to a parent? A child? A family?

But tonight, we drove to the grocery store. A normal, Sunday evening occurrence for me and my teenage son. And as we headed home, with our groceries in the bed of our truck, a friend texted me — “Did you see High Point Road?”

We parked at drug store. Hundreds of people lined the street. We ran into his friends, who hugged us exuberantly, yelling over the noise. The music was loud, their faces exuberant. Someone was setting off fireworks in the street. Cars were honking, people were singing. Mexican, El Salvadorian, Guatemalan, American flags everywhere. It went on for hours. Relief and joy swept over me.

No one is hiding here.