Near the cross of Jesús there stood his mother, his mother's sister, María esposa de Cleofás, y María de Magdala.

The Marías.  All of us standing together watching as my son is executed.  How many are condemned to a death simply because they think or speak differently, look differently?  At least I have my friends, las Marías, with me.  How many women suffer through such pain alone? 

How many women watch as discrimination kills their hijos? He's the only one with dark skin so he must be the drug pusher in this school.  I mean, they have no idea.   Words scar deeper than any sword.  They never called for an investigation.  They heard a rumor and my son was guilty.   As it turns out, the rumor came from someone of great intolerance.  But m'hijo was condemned.  We get what we expect.  That school never expected a thing from m'hijo.  "Woman, there is your son," they seemed to be saying, "The drug pusher.  The drug addict.  Selling to support his habit. A dysfunctional child from a dysfunctional home."  They said he has and is "a problem."  I told them that the problem is that fifty-one percent of our hijos e hijas will not graduate from high school.  Unacceptable statistic.  I told them that if we are not a part of the solution then we are a part of the problem.   In effect, our action or lack of action creates the problem.  The action they took was to condemn the dark-skinned student instead of question the intolerant accuser.  Unacceptable action.  They were not about to wash their hands of m'hijo, of our hijos e hijas, that easily. 

Okay, I did tell them about some of the problems we were having at home.  But I also told them that we were surviving fairly well.  That we had people who were helping us and supporting us through this struggle.  They didn't want to hear it.  "Not in my church. Not in my school." Couldn't they understand that this was their hijo, too?  Apparently not. 

I thought this was a community.  I told them that my child needed guidance and counseling, not expulsion and abandonment. There is an African saying:  "It takes a village to raise a child."  If something goes wrong, I expect those in charge to smack his face and get him in line, not remove him from the village. I expect them to straighten him out, not condemn him.  I expect them to help him learn from life's struggles so as to become a warrior of faith for the village.  Instead, they wanted me to send him to another village.  I told them that moving "the problem" to another village was not affective handling of said problem.

I can hear their poetry:
Woman, you must do whatever we tell you.
Woman, do whatever we say.
Woman, do whatever we tell you.
Woman, there is your son.
Now send him away.

"Woman, go back to your Samaria and take your bastard kid with you.  We don't want your kind here.  The clean and educated only need apply.  We want no single parent households here.  We want no alcoholism, no drug pushers or addicts, no dysfunctions here.  Take it to your own village, your own people. Don't you people have a school on the southwest side of Samaria?  He'll probably be better off there.  Don't bring the dangers of Samaria into this village." It was my father's mother, my grandmother, mi abuelita querida, that came to El Reino del Norte looking for something better to give her children.  She never would have thought that three generations later the townspeople would still be shouting at her granddaughter and bisnieto, "Go home, Spick woman. Go home, Spick kid." They fail to understand that three generations later means that this village is home now. 

In the end, I think they kept him in school because they were afraid I'd cry racism.  Smart move on their part.  They required him to go to counseling and wanted drug testing done on him every quarter for the remainder of the school year.  Clean.  No drugs in my son's system.  "Woman, there is your son," the psychologist said, "a very well adjusted young man.  There is no excessive anger, no paranoia, no drug problem or alcoholism, nothing. A teenager testing his limits at times, but then what kids don't?  Woman, you have good kid.  Woman, you are raising him well.  Woman, that school really overreacted."  He recommended to the school that these counseling sessions stop.  That school.  Condemning him before all the facts are in, not even searching for the truth.  The truth.  M'hijo knows the truth.  Slowly but surely as these scenarios are played out they drain the life from our children. 

How many women watch as racist remarks suck the life right out of their children?  And some of those remarks are so subtle.  Yes, maybe they are right.  Three generations in The States and we still haven't learned the language.  But I am learning the hard way.  I am learning with those subtle remarks that devastate.  "I'm sorry.  We don't think your son should take a Spanish class.  He's English grammar grades aren't high enough."  Translation: "Woman, there is your son: That Dumb Mexican. It's not good for a freshman to take a foreign language."  This "dumb Mexican" mother cannot understand. No one will ever tell me that a young Mexican-American high school student's grades are not good enough, and therefore, should not take Spanish.  No one will tell me that a freshman is too young to study another language.  I mean, I was bilingual from the very beginning. "Trust us.  We know what we are talking about.  After all, education is what we do. We know what classes your son should and should not take."  Translation:  "Woman, there is your son: That Stupid Spick.  He'll really need to study hard in order to keep up.  I'm not so sure he will be able to handle it."   It's subtle. It's about a hell of a lot more than GPA, but they just don't see it.   It's subtle.  It's quiet.  It is unacceptable.  It kills our children slowly.  If you hear these things often enough about yourself, whether directly or subtly, you begin to believe it.  The words kill.

I can hear their poetry:
Woman, your son will do whatever we tell you.
We don't want him to speak his grandmother's tongue.
Woman, keep your son monolingual
After all, he is stupid and dumb.

"Speak the Latin of the Roman soldiers, not the Aramaic and Hebrew of the Jewish people."  "Speak the English of the educated, not the Spanish of Latino families." "And speak that English perfectly before you even dare to learn your grandmother's tongue." Poor Pedro.  He knew this struggle.  You know, you really can't hide it if you come from Galilee.  It might not be your language or your appearance.  It might be your value system.  It's in your corazon. The fact that you are a Galilean will show up sooner or later.  You can't deny it.   In the end, it was Pedro's  accent that gave him away.  He probably is still crying now.  Crying not only because he denied knowing m'hijo.  He denied himself. He denied being Galilean. What greater death is there than when the institution plays mind games on you and you end up denying who you are?

How I have grown to hate it when people say they don't see color, that all are the same.  The fact is, it is not about color.  Color is the external, that's true.  But it is so much more than that.   Es cosa del corazon. The fact of the matter is, we are not all the same.  No one can deny us our Latinidád.  And it counts because we own it.  It counts because that is how Diosito created us.  My son will tell you that he is Mexican-American.  He is not either/or.  He is not either Mexican or American.  He is both/and.  Mexican-American. Samaritan. He will tell you who he is.  Just ask him.  And it counts because that is how Diosito created him. It counts because he knows he was created by God and he knows that he is acceptable creation in God's eyes.  I hate it  when people, the school, try to silence him.  It's like they don't  want him speaking the language because he may actually want to return to Samaria. As if the place holding his roots were all that terrible. "Woman," they seem to be saying, "if your son goes to Samaria and then comes back he might bring a part of Samaria back with him, and don't you know that we have more that enough of Samaria here now? After all, don't you know that he is more educated now? He is cleaner and smarter now.  Wouldn't you rather have him with us and be like us than be with, with, with them?"  Do they think kidnaping him like that will be all that simple?  They can remove him from Samaria, but they cannot remove Samaria from his heart. And isn't it possible for him to be both/and: Educated and Samaritan?

I can hear their poetry:
Woman, you must do whatever we tell you.
Woman, take your bastard kid and go home.
Woman, take your filth to Samaria.
Woman, there is your son
Now take him home.
 

Rubi often writes about Gospel stories, drawing on Catholic beliefs and traditions to critique racial inequality.  She writes "I have written many Gospel essays.  In these stories the women of the bible take on two dimensions:  The woman of the biblical gospel story, and the contemporary woman of the gospel.  (And I
am sure most of what I write would not get the imprimatur (the seal of approval from the church that tells the world that the writing is not in
doctrinal error [As if what I feel and experience could possibly be in
error!])  I write this paragraph because some of what I just wrote about the borracho I married translated into these pieces. My life struggles
became my life's creativity.  I began to put myself into other situations and my imagination took off.  I wrote about the woman whose son was expelled from a private high school because "he had to be the
drug pusher." I wrote about the woman who was sexually abused as a child to only grow up and marry an abuser. I wrote about the woman who was caught in the act of adultery, but no one said a word about the man she was caught with.  I wrote about the woman caught between two cultures - ni de aqui, ni de alla.  All of these (and a several other) women in my
gospel stories are Latinas who struggle with the bureaucratic bull that "keeps us in our place."  Oops! My anger is showing!  That's what one publisher locally told me.  I'll probably end up writing about her
somewhere, somehow ..."

Yes, you can drop Rubi a note
 
 

  Cristina Serna, Silent No Longer Stand there, smug, in your thousand dollar suit, hundred dollar shoes, red designer tie, stained with the blood of a Third World sweatshop...
 

  Marisela Gonzalez, Vieja The pressure that little boys feel to fit into a socially constructed concept of masculinity leads them to assert their "manhood" through the subordination of others....

  Cynthia Rojas, I'm a Tourist in My Own Country
I struggle still to find my place; to figure out where I will finally settle down in my own country; my home sweet democratic home, that claims to give me a voice when it talks to me face to face, but attempts to drown it out when I turn my back to it...