ELSA HIJUELOS Y SU HERMANA GRANDE, FILOMENA

When the lawyers ask Elsa who paid the coyote, Elsa says yo no se, as if matters as sensitive as these were never answered by her. Also, she was just fifteen and as far as she knows the coyote just showed up one night from inside the jungle and left with her. Their party got caught right outside one of the blind deserts that abutts the Texas/Mexico border and was thrown inside a cell for a month.

Or at least it was a month before Filomena was given word in the Bronx and boarded a bus for San Antonio to get her sister. Elsa says that only thing she can really remember about that time is that it was really, really cold like a refrigerator. And Elsa thought that part of the punishment was being partially frozen to death every day and night, como un pulmon de hiero, she says to the lawyers. Of course, they ask her whether or not she was touched at any time by any of the INS guards, docket jockeys at INS, or any of the inmates.

Elsa says no, although there was one night that the guard at the jail where they were detaining her came through to do his rounds with his cock erect and showing through the zippermouth of his green trousers. Elsa did not worry because, she says, you can tell when a man approaches with that in mind, and when all he wants is to let you know that he could if he wanted to, but that he won't. I guess there is a slippery slope somewhere where sexual intimidation becomes intimation.

But that was the worst episode, really, that Elsa had experienced and truth be told she was quite fortunate, not in that she had been spared incarceration, freezing, and the horrid food of the Dept of Corrections of Texas, but that she was released to her sister as if she were a dignitary. From one day to another she had gone from vermin to object to handle with kid gloves, fragile. And all because her sister, Filomena had hired a lawyer in the Bronx to reach his hand in and pluck her out, and that's exactly what had happened.

Elsa used to think that giving money to the coyote had been the stupidest thing her parents could have done, but now she realized that the money that had been spent was a fair amount because even if she got caught she would be released eventually on American soil. In other words, the coyote does not even have to succeed to get paid, all he really has to do is take the money you give him and get you to the finish line. Whether or not you finished was contingent on whether the people who were waiting for you on the other side had immigration lawyers and a little money saved up to come and get your ass because while your status was being decided you got to reside in the country and find a little job and help out around the house by ensuring there was money to send back home.

The lawyers then asked her about her school life, and how she was acclimating. Elsa told them that she was going to Monroe HS over by Arthur Ave and that she had entered in the 9th grade last year but that this year she had jumped to the eleventh grade. And then one of the lawyers, who was totally conducting a training "observation" of the newbie lawyer, asked her about extra-curricular activities and Elsa told them that she couldn't have extra-curricular activities because she had to help around the house and that her only leisure time was when she could do her homework, watch novelas on television, and keep an errant eye on Filomena's daughters, the one that is sickly, and the two babies.

Elsa told the lawyer ladies that her favorite novela was called, Al Demonio con Los Guapos, which translated into something like, To Hell with Handsome Men. So the lawyer one observing the novice lawyer guffaws and leans back in her chair so her legs arch up and show her dark-rainbow color socks. The novice lawyer takes her cue and sniggles which is what gueritas do when they want to laugh but hide it in the folds of a sneeze (to lubricate propriety). As the only representative of Handsome Men around I agreed with Elsa that we should be sent away, reclused.