A Child Outside ICE Detention Unlocked a 30-Year-Old Memory
Annie remembers the Mexican women who fed, loved, and mothered her when she was raising two toddlers alone.
WOMN brings readers into the places the headlines never reach.
Come sit on Annie’s porch on her first day off in ten days, where a warm loaf of sourdough transports her to a memory she hasn’t touched for thirty years. As steam rises from the bread, she is carried back to a green bean factory, two toddlers, twelve-hour shifts, and the older Mexican women who loved her when she needed love the most.
This story shows how the immigrant communities of Minnesota are deeply embedded into the fabric of our society as a whole. When ICE abducts them, we lose a deeper sense of ourselves.
I am and independent author, self-employed and working full-time to interview women, research what happened, and preserve the stories the headlines left behind. I intend to bring this book into the world the same way Minnesota responded to ICE: grassroots, heart-driven, and sustained by ordinary people showing up for one another. Upgrade to paid and help us bring this book, and this message into the world.
“Knock Knock,” Alice says, waving at Annie through her porch window.
“Oh hi!” Annie says, stubbing out her cigarette. “Come on in, pardon my mess. It’s my first day off in a ten day stretch. I don’t know up from down.”
“Oh, I don’t care about your mess, what mess?” Alice says as she steps inside the porch. “I brought you some sourdough.”
“You know, last time you brought over a loaf, I think I only got one slice. My kids ate it all.”
“Well then, you’ll have to hide at least half of this loaf. Same thing happened to me with the bowl of strawberries you gave me. I left them on the counter thinking I’d make a pie that night, but when I got around to it, they were mostly all gone.”
“I got more, just pick as many as you want,” Annie offers, pointing at the strawberry patch.
“I just might do that,” Alice says as she opens the porch door to leave. “Make sure you have a slice soon, it’s always best when it’s fresh out of the oven.”
Ten minutes later, Annie cuts into the loaf and the steam rises from the crumb. Zadie is looking up at her hopefully, her tail wagging and her nose sniffing.
She closes her eyes and breathes in the scent of the fresh bread.
Thirty years ago, another kitchen. She’s a single mother with two toddlers looking up at her while she opens a package of tamales, steam rising out of the package.
“La Chica,” she says out loud to nobody in the room, mimicking the accent the Mexican women had when they called her that so lovingly. “Wow, I haven’t thought about them in so long,” she says looking down at Zadie who spins in a circle of hopefulness.
As she slathers butter on the thick cut heel slice of bread, she goes deeper into the memory of working twelve hour shifts at the green bean factory where she was the only white woman under 40. It was an absolutely terrible job. She hated every minute of it.
Except the people.
She loved her co-workers, older Mexican women who were so, well, maternal. They mommed her in a time in her life when she really needed momming. At the time, she hadn’t realized how traumatic being a single mom was, and how much she needed maternal support. And they just gave it to her, naturally, like it was the normal thing to do.
All they wanted to do was feed her.
And they were always bringing her food. The tamales were her favorite. She’s never had tamales like that since then.
She breaks off a tiny corner of the crust and hands it to Zadie, who chomps at it so excitedly that Annie snaps her hand back.
“Damn, being a single mom was hard,” she says to Zadie. “Feeding you is so much easier than it was feeding those two little munchkins, even if you do try to bite off my hand.”
She wraps the over-buttered bread in a paper towel and goes back out to the porch where she can eat it slowly.
She picks up her phone and starts scrolling through social media, stopping at a reel of a ten-year-old Mexican girl protesting at Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Facility in New Jersey because ICE won’t let her visit her mother who is locked inside.
Annie takes the first bite of the bread and holds it on her tongue without swallowing, the way she used to with the tamales. She doesn’t swallow until the reel is finished.
Then, she puts a hand on Zadie’s head before speaking out loud again, to nobody in the room.
“God, I hope they’re okay.”
Help keep WOMN alive
WOMN exists to preserve these quiet relationships—the immigrant women who fed us, cared for us, taught us, and became part of who we are long before ICE tried to reduce them to an immigration status.
I am an independent, self-employed author working full-time to gather, research, and write these stories. There is no publishing house, newsroom, or institution funding the work. This project is structured the way Minnesotans built the response to ICE: from the ground up, with heart, trust, and ordinary people contributing what we can.
A paid subscription keeps me at the desk doing the work. It also adds your voice to the collective message carried by this story:
Our immigrant neighbors belong in our communities. They are part of our lives. When they are torn away, we all feel the wound.
I love you fiercely,
Thanks for giving a shit,
Teri Leigh 💜
Thank you for inviting us into this moment of reflection with well buttered sourdough. I could feel the Mexican women mothering the single mother just as much as I could feel that little girl standing outside, separated from her mama from brick and wire. You help us remember that our hearts are always connected, and that our mission is to remove the brick and wire separating us literally, mentally, and emotionally from one another. Your words are the words of the wisdom of the ages. Thank you for sharing them. Thank you for sharing the stories of all the people who are shining their light on what is true and what is absolutely untrue!
What an endering story.