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J. Paul Ross "ONE FLAG, ONE LANGUAGE, ONE COUNTRY!" With her papa's voice rising and her vision blocked by a policeman's blue pant leg, Cricket looked down at her pink rubber boots and wished she could go home where it was warm and quiet and calm. She didn't like this parade, didn't like all of the shaking fists or the fingers pointed like gun barrels, didn't like how the grownups jabbed their signs into the gray sky like they were trying to punch holes in the clouds. People were making scary faces and yelling things no one should say in public and as the cardboard signs moved around her, all she wanted was to pull her woolen cap over her eyes and plug her ears. It had always scared her when her papa raised his voice and though he'd said he was only mad with the people marching down Main Street, his angry words still made her stomach feel heavy and tight. "Don't get too close to the Mexicans, sweetie," her papa warned, reaching down to tug her ponytail. "You stay beside me and don't forget to wave your sign, okay?" Cricket nodded but kept the flimsy square announcing, "NEBRASKA NOT A WETBACK COLONY!" by her feet. The sign had been given to her by one of her papa's friends and she was tired of trying to hold it up and tired of trying to flap it like everyone else in the two crowds. Its corners twisting in the November breeze, she was unable to lift it high and straight like the marchers or waggle it like her papa had shown her; and since she didn't want her papa to be madder than he was already, she cowered behind his thigh and hoped he would go on being distracted by all the other people and all the other signs around her.
Clumped together in groups and each caught up in their own dance, the signs wobbled and bobbed, and though she was already reading books meant for second-graders, none of them made any sense to Cricket. Some were handwritten with sloppy, hard-to-read letters and some were just pictures. Many of them were in Spanish-especially the ones coming down the center of the street-and every once and awhile, one of them would make the yells around her grow. She always knew these were coming because she could hear them from a block away, building like the barks of the neighborhood dogs when the mailman came. The voices would turn deep and gruff, and when the signs finally moved past, the almost breathless roar would make her cringe. It rose and it echoed and it made her feel sick because many of the words made her blush even though she'd never heard them before. |
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ISSN 2150-6795 |