I WAS FOUND ON A STRAWBERRY FARM: A MEMOIR FOR MY MOTHER

Mary Sotz

7th Grade • Eliza Chappell Elementary School

In the year 1997 Mary Jude and Luis got married, two people truly in love and so happy. They tried for a baby, but in time they found out that Mary Jude couldn’t have children; she was infertile. By the year 2006, Mary Jude and Luis had both come to the acceptance point that they would probably never have children; adoption wasn’t something they could agree on, and they of course couldn’t have biological children, so Mary Jude prayed to Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases who she was named after. It can’t hurt, she thought.

Mary Jude had a friend named Jim who owned a fruit farm, the main attraction being strawberries. There were 2 parts to the strawberries on Jim’s farm; you could go and just buy fresh picked strawberries, or you could pick the strawberries yourself. Now Mary and Luis had driven to this farm every June for many years, as June is prime strawberry season and Jim was their friend. This year, Mary Jude was going alone because Luis had to work. She was going to stay on the farm for a couple of nights, pick strawberries and bring them home.

A week or so before the trip, Mary Jude got an email from Jim. The email stated that he needed help because there was a young Guatemalan woman working on the farm picking strawberries, but she had been caught without documents and had been taken to jail. Mary Jude felt her heart break for this woman, but she knew there was nothing she could do.

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On June 3, 2006, Mary Jude arrived on the farm. When she arrived, she unpacked and went for a walk. Later that night, she tried to go to sleep but had trouble sleeping. Around midnight, she got up. Not wanting to wake up anybody else, she went outside. Because it was a warm summer night, she laid down on the cool grass and looked up at the sky. “Wow!” she exclaimed. Above her was a sky filled with stars. It looked as if someone had spilled salt on the sky. Mary Jude stayed there in the cool grass staring in awe at the stars. Then suddenly out of the corner of her eye, she saw something bright — a shooting star was crossing the sky.

The next morning Mary Jude slept late and was woken by a knock on her door. It was Jim saying, “Mary Jude, I want you to meet someone,” so she quickly got dressed and went into the dining room. Sitting at the dining room table was Jim and a small girl who Mary Jude thought to be about 14.

“This is Sandra, the Guatemalan girl I emailed you about,” said Jim. It took Mary Jude a couple of seconds to remember.

“Oh, nice to meet you.” she said in Spanish. But Sandra just looked at her shyly.

“She doesn’t speak much Spanish,” Jim told Mary Jude. “Her language is Q’eqchi. She’s from an indigenous community.”

“Oh okay.”

But in that moment, Mary Jude knew she was supposed to bring this girl home. It seemed to flash across her heart, like the shooting star. After talking with her a little, she asked Sandra if she wanted to come home with her, and Sandra, to Mary Jude’s surprise, said yes. They agreed that Sandra would come back to the house the next day with her things.

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The next morning, Sandra was there at the door. She was holding a plastic grocery bag with everything she owned in it. Mary Jude was leading her to her car when Sandra stopped, and in what little Spanish she knew, she managed to say, “I need to tell you something. I’m six months pregnant. I don’t know if that makes a difference, but you should know.”

Sandra’s journey to Jim’s strawberry farm began in northern Guatemala. She was born in a small Q’eqchi’ village in the rainforest. She had 6 older sisters and 2 younger brothers. When she was 19, she got pregnant. She couldn’t tell her family. She knew she would not be able to give her child a good life as a single mother in Guatemala, so she borrowed money and made her way north.

It was a long and dangerous journey. She had little to eat and walked many nights. She worried about the baby. Would the child survive? Sandra was so thin, nobody could even tell she was pregnant, but she was glad nobody knew.

Even Jim didn’t know. Sandra arrived at his farm after a 3month journey. She had been told there was work there picking strawberries. But one day she got caught and was put in jail because she was undocumented. Now you might be wondering how she got out because she did, and I’m happy to tell you that Jim got his community to raise $20,000 dollars to bail her out of jail. That’s amazing, but what’s more amazing is that he did this for a seasonal worker that he hardly knew. And he reached out to friends, sending emails to ask for help. Friends like Mary Jude.

In the car on the way home, Mary Jude called Luis. “I’ve got the strawberries,” she said. “And something else.” Then she told him about Sandra.

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“Well, I guess I’ll meet her when you get here,” he said with a laugh.

Mary Jude thought she and Luis could help Sandra. But after Sandra had lived with them for a couple of weeks, they both felt the same. Sandra was so brave, and so honest. But she didn’t need help. She needed a family, a family for herself and her baby. They could offer her that, and when they did, she said yes.

Three months later, September 2, 2006, I was born. My mom didn’t know if I was going to be a boy or a girl, and she hadn’t thought of a name for me. Mary Jude was with her in the hospital, and when I was born, the midwife held me up to my mom and said, “You have a beautiful baby girl. What do you want to name her?” My mom looked at me and said, “Mary.”

This story is for my mother, Sandra Sotz, the bravest woman in the world.

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