Jesús I. Valles
After Reading My Bio, The One Where I Tell Her How I Was Brought to This Country, The Agent Says
“You’re the truck!” and I think
Yes. I am the truck. And what was done to it.
My father had to first realize that he was thinking about putting a nine year old’s body inside of a truck seat. Then, he had to arrive at this being a good idea. Then, he had to think of what to gut the seat with. What instruments of surgery to best execute gutting? I imagine the guts of truck seats are cumbersome, but I’ve never seen a gutted seat. It was very dark that night. It was twenty-two years ago. Anyway, it wouldn’t be like gutting a pig or a snake. I know what that looks like. It’s easier, I think. No springs in an animal, as I imagine there are in car seats. Are there springs in car seats? Do they fight back when they are being ripped open? Did the pig?
Anyway, my father had to find the thing to gut the seat and the seat had to be gutted. And then, I would think, there was a moment of hesitation when the thing was done. Was there? Did he think at any point placing me inside a truck seat was a foolish thing? Did he laugh to himself when he made my chariot? Would being caught have been funny? How sure was he this would work? It would be funny, to me, to gut a truck seat and think to fit a child inside it. Like the best parts of sneaking your own candy into a shitty movie.
I know that sometime between being inside the truck seat and being told we were leaving I cried a lot. I cried a lot as a kid. Especially about leaving anything called home.
But yes, he placed me inside the seat and there were blankets and I was told to go to sleep. At what point did he account for snoring (but I guess kids don’t snore much) or farting (people fart in their sleep all the time)? I wonder if he cared for that kind of detail. This is all to tell you it wasn’t sad. It was ridiculous, the way sometimes dogs eat their newborns not for any reason but because it’s what there is to do. I’m saying that nothing about that moment made me mistrust any of the people in that truck. I’m saying my father is hilarious and brave and I can’t imagine my life any other way; not really.
But yes, my father made a womb for me, from a truck seat he gutted. He took a knife to this thing he loved to love me as best he could. He took a knife to a thing he loved, to present me to the altar of a bridge. A truck seat birthed me the second time I was born. This time, both my parents used their hands to pull me into breathing; they played midwife. It’s funny – the truck had a womb and my parents were the parteras.
There’s a posada image somewhere here. Some Mary and Joseph thing to say here. The parents walk a very pregnant truck through a bridge so she can give birth. Anyway, I don’t know where my dad bought the truck, so I don’t know if it’s a U.S. citizen. And if the truck was made here, and I emerged from the womb my father made me, am I a citizen if I was born out of this truck and two legal residents delivered me into a 7-11? Am I a citizen? Why not? Please explain in the space below:
Jesús I. Valles is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, storyteller, and performer based in Austin, Texas, originally from Cd. Juarez, México. Jesús is a recipient of the 2018 Undocupoets Fellowship, is a 2018 Tin House Scholar, a fellow of The 2018 Poetry Incubator, the runner-up in the 2017 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest, and a finalist of the 2016 Write Bloody Poetry Contest. Their work has been published in The Shade Journal, The Texas Review, The New Republic, Harvard Palabritas, The Acentos Review and The Mississippi Review (forthcoming). As an actor and theatremaker, Jesús is also the recipient of four B. Iden Payne awards, including Outstanding Original Script and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama for their autobiographical solo show, (Un)Documents. Jesús currently teaches social and emotional learning to high school students, focusing on those recently arrived to the U.S.