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<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson">Nochebuena: Part I</a></p>
Ave remains with Isabella for three months, until her cousin gives birth to her son and settles into her new life as a mother.

In her time in America, Ave has managed to find enough work — paid only in cash — to purchase a few incidentals and a bus ticket to a small town in Alabama where a job in a factory and a few friends await her. Despite her best efforts, she’s not managed to find any more information on her boyfriend. She has tried all the names and aliases he might be using — José Mann, José David, José David Mann — but all her leads turn into dead ends. Maybe once she makes it to Alabama, her search will get easier, but she fears the worst, death or detention.

Ave is sitting at the breakfast table worrying over her boyfriend’s fate when Isabella offers her a plate of eggs, beans and corn grits.

“Eat, your baby needs it even if you don’t feel like it,” Isabella says, sitting down next to her. “I wish you’d reconsider this trip. You can stay here as long as you like. I could use the extra hands. And my baby could use a little brother to grow up with”

Ave shakes her head. “No, no. You have been kind enough. I have a job waiting for me and friends. And maybe José will be there and I can tell him about the baby. Don’t worry, Isabella. I’ll be fine in Alabama.”

Isabella clucks her tongue. “It’s different there than here is all I’m saying. They don’t like us over there, not one bit. Don’t give them any excuse to talk to you. You’ve got that baby to think about.”

Both women fall silent as they run through various worst-case scenarios better left unsaid.

“I leave tomorrow,” Ave reminds her. “I can’t thank you and Zach enough for all your help and generosity. I would have been lost without you both.”

Isabella grins. “I know. Well, let’s get you packed. We’ll go up to the store and get you a few things for your trip.”

“Thank you, Tia,” Ave says, leaning over to kiss her cousin on the forehead. “I think I hear baby Juan crying. He must be awake. Would you like me to rock him back to sleep?”

Relieved, Isabella replies, “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Ave says. “I want all the time I can get with him before I leave.”

***

There is more Spanish than English in the San Antonio bus terminal which reassures Ave after Isabella and Juan leave her on her own. Her belly has begun to show now that she is four months with child. The baby growing inside her is strong, loves to kick and wakes her up at all hours. The trip on the bus won’t be the most enjoyable, but she has been in more uncomfortable traveling arrangements before, she thinks, remembering the 12 days she spent crossing the border.

Her trip and arrival in Alabama are blessedly uneventful. Her job in the factory is tiring and monotonous but the pay is better than back home. More to the point, they actually hired her in the first place, even though she was clearly pregnant. In fact, her belly might have helped her get the job as her lie about her age seemed more believable to the hiring boss. For the next four months, her life falls into a pleasant routine unlike she has ever known and she comes to think of the tiny Alabama town as her home.

She rooms with three other women, all from her state in Mexico, and they all commute together to work. None of them are in the country legally, but each has managed to obtain forged papers. Every so often rumors of immigration raids on the factory ripple through the ranks, but nothing ever pans out, so eventually, the edge that comes with the warnings diminish, replaced by a generalized anxiety that becomes easy to ignore.

One morning, Ave announces to her roommates that she is leaving the factory floor.

“Today is my last day,” Ave says on their way to work. “I’m eight months pregnant, my back is killing me, feet are swollen and my hands are so puffy I can hardly work the machines any more.”

It doesn’t surprise her friends. They have been urging her to stop working, but Ave has insisted, explaining that every little bit of extra cash will help with all the baby expenses soon to come, especially with José nowhere to be found and unable to offer any financial support. The last anyone had heard of him, he had gone two counties over to pick a harvest of peaches. He had never returned. No one knew any more of his whereabouts, and her greatest fears about him — his death or detention — seemed more likely the longer no one heard from him.

“Well, it’s about time,” says the oldest woman in the group, Anna, a woman the rest consider a kind of surrogate mother in America. She cooks, fusses and reminds them to go to worship every Saturday night instead of out dancing. “You’ve been needing to get off your feet for a month now at least. It will be nice to have a little baby around the house again. Mine are all grown and gone and scattered throughout the Southeast.”

“Let’s throw her a party,” one of the girls suggests from the backseat. And for the remainder of the commute, the talk is all of streamers, and baby shower games and cakes and presents. Ave smiles.

On the factory floor, the day thrums along as it always does. The factory break room at lunch is filled with smells of home mixed with the aroma of greasy fast food, reheated. The afternoon churns on, until about 2 p.m., when the factory doors burst open and black-armored men, guns drawn and chests emblazoned with the letters I-C-E, flood into the cavernous room like ants scurrying from a caved-in hill. The clatter of chairs falling to the floor, shrieks of fear and deep, gravelly shouts to halt echo in a nightmarish cacophony.

Ave feels her breath grow shallow and then her body sinks on weak knees. When she wakes, her head is throbbing but she cannot reach her hand to feel the knot on her forehead. Her hands are in plastic cuffs behind her back, and she is slumped on her side against a wall with the other factory women. She hears them crying, sobbing about the children who will return from school to homes without mothers, and perhaps fathers, about the thousands of miles that will soon separate them from their sons and daughters.

Reality begins to sink in for Ave as one of the ICE agents lifts her to her feet and helps her to one of the buses in the parking lot that will take her and the other workers to the immigration detention center. The bus ride to the detention center takes an hour. Some of the women whisper. Some sleep. Many weep.

“I just can’t believe my luck,” Ave whispers to no one in particular. “Today was my last day at the factory. My last day and ICE shows up. If only I’d just stayed at home.”

Across the aisle, an older woman, her gray hair wrapped in bun on top of her head, replies, “It’s got nothing to do with luck, <em>niña</em>. It’s not a matter of if but when you get sent back to Mexico when you live in Alabama. If they didn’t get you today, they would’ve found you in a couple of weeks when the census takers come out knocking on doors.”

After an uncomfortable hour on the bus, it arrives at the detention center, a massive, lifeless gray building with slits for windows like narrowed, suspicious eyes. A female guard boards the bus to greet them.

“Welcome to the Stable, my <em>vacas</em>,” the scrawny-haired guard shouts. “Hope y’all enjoy your stay here on your way back to whatever rotten country you came from. Showers are mandatory. I don’t want to smell you heifers any more than I have to. Now, off the bus for processing!”<a href="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/christmasundocumentedlogo.jpg">
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