Deported husband is missed

Maybe Maria wonders how she will afford a Christmas this month, but at least there is the tree. She was driving home one afternoon when she spotted an artificial Christmas tree in someone's garbage a few miles from her home. It now stands in the corner of her tiny living room, covered with decorations.

What some people consider garbage in this country is another person's Christmas, she says quietly.

As for what goes under the tree, that's always a challenge, but then, everything is a challenge when your husband has been deported and you're left to care for five children and a granddaughter in a tiny ramshackle house on one of the west side's most crowded roads.

Last December, with her husband in jail, she used a necklace — a family heirloom — as collateral at a local pawn shop to borrow $100 for Christmas presents. That wouldn't pay for Junior's Xbox in most American homes, but she managed to cover a family Christmas with it, paying $10 a month in interest until she could repay the debt and recover the necklace.

There have been Christmases when she bought a single toy for each child for a few bucks at a thrift store. She wraps them up and puts them under the tree.

"They're happy with small things, especially if it's a toy," she says.

She pauses, looking around the living room. "Sometimes it's good when you don't have money; you appreciate things more," she says. "For me, it's kind of a blessing."

If that's true, then she has been richly blessed.

She came from Mexico to the U.S. illegally when she was 18. She and Juan wanted an opportunity to earn enough money in America to get married. That was 21 years ago. Last December, Juan (not his real name) was pulled over by a police officer for driving with an expired license plate. He was taken to jail for three months, then put on a bus and sent back to Mexico. Just like that, their life in America, where all of their children were born, was finished.

Juan hasn't seen the family since he left jail. Maria and the kids could return to Mexico, but they would not be allowed re-entry into the U.S., and life in Mexico, they believe, would be a step backward — few opportunities for the kids, a meager standard of living, a lawless, impoverished environment. Maria remembers growing up there without indoor plumbing and heat. A poor life here is a rich man's life there, she says.

"When is he coming back?" the kids ask about their father.

Juan and Maria talk rarely on the phone. It can be months between calls. Too expensive.