WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES AUGUST 19, 2021 19
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��hen Vanessa from
Honduras hugged her
mother goodbye, she
didn’t realize it might be the
last time she ever would — but
her mother knew.
“She was crying so much
when I left that my last memory
of her was her face with
streams of tears,” said Vanessa,
who was just 21 at the
time of her departure to the
United States in 2005. “She
held me tight as she hugged
me. She didn’t want to lose me.
I cried too as I said goodbye to
her and my little brother who
was only eight at the time. My
mother was sobbing and saying,
‘I might never be able to
see you or hold you again.’”
She was right about a few
things. Not only was the trip
more dangerous than her
daughter understood at the
time, but also since Vanessa’s
journey to the US, she and her
family back home have only
been able to Skype. And, while
she has no regrets about coming
to America, Vanessa says
that looking back, she had no
idea the kind of danger she
was putting herself in trying
to cross the border.
“Looking back, I cannot
believe how naïve I was. I got
dressed up for my trip. I was
wearing suit pants with a nice
blouse and jacket. I looked like
I was going to the office!” Vanessa
recalled. “I had even done
my nails and hair in preparation
for the trip! I thought I
would be driven to the United
States, that this would be a
civilized, albeit rigorous journey.”
Instead, Vanessa endured
a long and treacherous journey
which began with a coyote
telling her to change clothes.
“I was young and pretty,
and he was concerned that
I would be singled out and
would be at risk from the men
that I would encounter on my
trip,” she said, but as her journey
went on, Vanessa would
eventually come to pass with
other physical and even environmental
dangers.
Her first shock came
aboard a freight train —
which she hadn’t realized she
would have to jump onto, and
upon which there would be no
real seats — where a young
boy playing with the machinery
had his finger cut off.
“I remember being horrorstruck
by all that blood,” Vanessa
said. “There was nothing
they could do for the boy except
wrap his severed finger
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in a piece of cloth, and he had
to stay on the train. There was
no chance of getting off and going
to a doctor.”
And, weeks later on what
felt like Vanessa’s never-ending
journey, she would not
have access to a doctor when,
after getting separated from
her group, she was alone and
lost in the desert.
“I didn’t know if I would
ever get out of there alive,” she
said, adding that, “Just when
I felt things couldn’t get any
worse I found myself falling
into a pit, and when I picked
myself up I realized there
were human skeletons all
around me.”
By the grace of God, she
says, she clawed her way out
— and just when she was at the
end of the rope, she asked for
Heaven’s help once more.
“I begged God to not let me
die in the desert, to please let
me arrive at my destination,
or at least let immigration
pick me up and take me back
to Honduras,” Vanessa said.
“I saw a plane overhead, and
I screamed and waved, hoping
it was an immigration plane,
but it was only a passenger
plane. I kept praying to God to
save me.”
Vanessa then found herself
walking toward a bright
light before fainting. When she
awoke, she was in the home of a
friendly couple — the woman,
a nurse.
“She was American, and
her husband was Mexican. I
was so dehydrated that the lady
put me on a drip. At the time I
couldn’t even remember my
name. I was covered in spines
from the prickly bushes and
cactus plants. I had been sleeping
with these 48 prickles in
me, and I hadn’t even noticed,
as I was so close to death,” Vanessa
said. “The lady gently removed
all these prickles and
spikes from all over my body. I
felt the light of God had now delivered
me to an angel.”
She’d made it.
Vanessa’s uncle, who is a
US citizen, flew to Phoenix to
meet her — and the American
angel who’d nursed her back
to life drove her there to meet
him. She spent about a year
and a half with him and the
rest of her family in Tennessee,
before moving to New York to
meet her boyfriend from back
home in Honduras. Today, the
two have a little boy, and still
send money back home to their
families.
“I often think back on my
nightmare trip and wonder if
it was worth risking my life.
For me, I believe the answer is
yes, because I did make it,” she
said”
But her dream is to return
to Honduras and to the life that
she is building there in the
meantime.
“My dream is to save up
money, so I can have a good
life in my own beautiful country,”
she said, “and I can’t wait
to return and be reunited with
my family.”
This story is part of a bi-weekly series containing edited chapters of Sharon Hollins’ 2021 book “Crossings: Untold Stories
of Undocumented Migrants.” Each chapter of the book tells a different story of an immigrants’ journey to the United States.
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