Fragmentation - Life in Pieces

My mother was a sheep

*Before I begin this retelling I would like to stress that this particular story contains two different border crossings at different times, but I do not know the proper time line so I will do my best to tell it how it might have occurred*

As my mother and her siblings grew older they would begin to get ready to cross the border from Mexico to the U.S with my grandmother. My mother was only a preteen, but destiny classified her as a women. Her siblings therefore, were not children, but adults. When crossing the border my mother told me that that there were several vans that carried many immigrants gathered like sheep and traded between vans like life stock. This trade would be my mothers saving grace. My mother told me her van had a driver who looked out for my grandmother and her siblings as if they were her own. During their crossing, another driver attempted to have them switch vans but he said, "No la señora con los moros va a ir conmigo"

My grandma was a soldier. She fought not physically, but mentally. My mother told me a man had tried to rape her during one of the nights as they made their way to the U.S. He stopped because she was bleeding. He was disgusted. She was broken. She suspected it was a miscarriage but was forced to continue the journey. 

As they reached the border, immigration stopped the van that my mother was destined to get onto if not for the herdsmen who refused to trade them. The people they had been traveling with up to this point were all sent back. My mother's van wasn't and she was officially no longer a sheep.