We left the vans in the parking lot of an Econo Lodge at the south edge of El Paso. Three fifteen-passenger vans had carried us from the March chill of Minnesota to the warm desert of Texas. These vans had become homey and familiar to us: for thirty hours we had settled into their soft tan seats, played the alphabet game, listened to music, knitted, read, and bonded over gas station Big Gulps as we drove all the way down Interstate 35. We left the vans in the parking lot and boarded an old, paint-covered bus that would take us across the border into Juarez, Mexico: our spring break destination, not for bikinis and fruity drinks, but for ministry and manual labor.
The vans had been air-conditioned, carpeted, clean; our living site for the week was to be none of those things. As we bumped along narrow dirt roads full of cars and people, stopping at the “Alto” signs and riding past pink and turquoise storefronts on our way there, I started to feel nervous. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, I was already obviously a stranger amidst women with thick coffee-colored hair and children with chestnut eyes. But something about the bustle of poverty and pedestrians managed to worsen my feelings of inferiority.
We arrived at our site – a four-building complex built behind a small church, protected on all sides by a brightly painted cinder-block wall – and unloaded the bus. We were the new curiosity to a group of brown-eyed children who had been swinging and sliding on the church playground. They crowded around us, asking for piggyback rides (“Caballito! Caballito!”) and playfully grabbing at Tricia’s baseball cap. This inquisitive gaggle of children followed us around as we toured the entirety of small complex: an unheated dormitory for women with plywood bunk beds in cramped rows, an identical residence for the men, a meeting house with one large common room and a small kitchen with a pass-through window, and a small building with two toilets and two cold showers. The dormitories were padlocked from the outside at all times, and they told us that if we left anything in the showers such as shampoo or soap, there was a good chance it would be stolen. And that was if we even chose to take showers at all, given the low water pressure, the unheated water, and the unspoken group imperative to rough it. As we shuffled across the dust from building to building, the children followed us and peered into doorways from the outside. Those were the rules. They could play on the playground, follow us around outside, but not enter any building except perhaps for the meeting house, but only rarely and with permission. I was secretly glad that they couldn’t follow us into the bathhouse, because then they couldn’t see me wince and blush when our site staff informed us that the plumbing in the area was too weak to support any paper products, and so we would have to throw our used toilet paper into a small garbage can on the floor instead.
I wondered to myself if I would be strong enough to make it through the week. I wanted so badly to be here and to offer myself as a servant to God and to others. But I also wanted so badly to be back on the El Paso side of the border, where I could speak the language, where I could take a warm shower, where there were paved streets and carpeted rooms and buildings with insulated walls. We gathered for orientation in the middle of the common room, sitting on rugs on the packed-dirt floor. Orientation was mostly a series of cautions and warnings. Laura warned us that it was unsafe to leave the complex alone, and that tap water would make us sick, so we could only drink from the blue coolers that were propped up outside the kitchen. She cautioned us against giving gifts to the children or letting them talk us into taking many pictures of them, because it was hard for them to understand that we were only there temporarily. She further reminded us that we had to respect cultural mores concerning touch, meaning that we were to refrain from hugging anyone, even each other, when we were in public.
At this point, all I wanted to do was go home. I already felt lonely and disturbed by our living conditions. I already doubted that I had the strength to have a meaningful week. And now, each piece of orientation information added a new layer of uncertainty to my existing doubts and fears. I was already overwhelmed. Laura finished explaining the rules and guidelines, and then paused. Perhaps she was about to give us a short break to try to get ourselves settled before dinner, I thought. That would give me some time to hide away in a quiet corner and process all of my thoughts. As I scoped out potential hiding places, Laura broke the silence, foiling my plans for escape. She said that she had something else important to tell us. If anyone in the circle felt some sort of fear or premonition over what was about to be said, it certainly wasn’t me.
The announcement came in pieces. The first piece: she had checked her email right before we crossed out of El Paso, and had found there a message from Pastor Benson, one of our college pastors. (I was a sophomore, but for some reason had not yet learned the unspoken fact that college pastors only send out emails when there is bad news to be passed along.) After a short pause, the second piece: five of our fellow students had been driving to New Orleans to do volunteer work over their spring break, not unlike our own decisions to travel here to Mexico. On the way there, in the middle of their first night of driving, a drunk driver entered the highway going the wrong way and had hit them head-on. At this moment, the already-silent room quieted further. We knew that we were about to hear some very bad news. The third piece: three of the five students were killed. “Anna Bonde,” she said, reading from a printout of the email, “Chris Hoppe, and Sarah Heitman.”
Some people sitting near me cried immediately. They formed into small sitting groups of twos and threes, weeping together and clinging to one another. All of the hugging rules were irrelevant at that moment. As for myself, I wasn’t sure how to feel. I guess I knew who Chris was – he was one of the school’s best clarinet players in the band and as such was notorious around the music department – but I had never actually talked to him. And the two girls? I didn’t think I had even met them. Without being friends with any of the three, my grief came at a distance. I wasn’t sure if God was protecting me or deeming me the outcast. Should I feel grateful? Should I feel strong? Should I feel sympathetic? Honestly, I actually just felt left out. I cried a few sympathy tears and felt as if I were observing the whole group – the whole room, even – from someplace far removed. I listened casually as someone from across the room repeated the three names, correcting a mispronunciation. “Ahn-na Bond-ee,” Alex clarified. The name suddenly became too clear to seem real. I saw the name in my head and matched it to the face of a girl who had been in a small and interactive acting class with me. Just as the rest of the group was finishing their first wave of tears and dispersing to find water and tissues, my tears came, late and plentiful.
It was a selfish brand of crying, I knew. Many members of the group had known all three of these students much better than I did. Alex had been in a play with Anna. Heather and Chris had considered dating at one point. I was crying for Anna, but in truth, many of my tears were also my leftover anxiety about the week itself. I had wanted to cry about feeling out of place in Mexico. I had wanted to cry about having to throw away used toilet paper into a garbage can. I had wanted to cry because I had no close friends on the trip with me. These deaths had stirred up in me the tears that I hadn’t yet been able to cry. Amy saw how hard I was crying and came over to comfort me. I let her believe that I was crying about the accident, just like everyone else was. My nose was all drippy, and so she and I stood up to go find some toilet paper in the bathhouse. Before we got to the meeting house door, however, two small sets of brown arms wrapped themselves around our waists. I wonder if Tricia had given them permission to enter, or if they had snuck in on their own. “¿Por qué lloras?” I looked down at a small girl with enormous brown eyes. She hugged me tightly and then pointed to my tears. “¿Por qué lloras?” I shook my head and glanced at Amy. “I don’t understand…I don’t speak Spanish.” Amy looked down at the girls and then back up at me. “They want to know why you are crying.”
I couldn’t give an answer, not in English or Spanish. I could only stand there and keep crying. I was a stranger to everyone, and yet these two children loved me. One of the girls went into the kitchen to find a paper towel while the girl hugging me reached up and wiped the tears from my cheek with her hand. “No llores, no llores,” she repeated to me. She was telling me not to cry. She was telling me that things were okay and that I didn’t need to cry. I don’t remember how long I let these two girls hold onto me and feed me dry paper towels. I don’t remember the rest of the afternoon. I don’t even remember the shape of these children’s faces. But I do remember the big brown eyes that looked into mine and assured me with every blink that things were going to be all right.
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