Hope for a Hurting World
by Melanie Hemry
Sergio Alvarado dropped into a chair on the front porch of the little house where he lived with his mother and brother in Fort Worth, Texas. At 14 years old, he looked like most other boys his age, except for his eyes. They were old. Not the eyes of a kid.
Tipping back in the chair, Sergio listened to dogs bark in the night and to a mother calling her children home. He wondered what it would be like to have a mother who cooked and cleaned, who fretted over him, making sure he washed behind his ears and finished his homework.
Leaning his head against the house, he wondered what it felt like to have a mother’s hug. Surely she hugged me, he thought. But try as he might, he couldn’t conjure up a single memory of one.
What he remembered instead were the sights and sounds of Juárez, Mexico, where he was born and had lived most of his life. Home had been an area known as “Heroin Alley,” a place where people from the U.S. flooded across the border to score heroin. The narrow streets were bordered with bars and brothels. People milled around, while others were cooking drugs in a spoon. Beautiful young girls prostituted themselves for heroin.
Sergio had been 2 when his father walked out on them; his little brother just a baby. They lived in several houses without roofs, floors or windows. Just walls, for all the good they did. His mother survived by prostitution, leaving the boys alone for days at a time. Sergio, at the tender age of 3, had been responsible for taking care of his brother. Occasionally his mother dropped them off with an aunt. Sometimes she just brought the men home with her.
22 : BVOV : MAR '14
