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passing through LA and she already had a little girl. She was a tiny, ferocious stone cold fox. They’d jumped straight into each other’s lives like lemmings. JOHN moved them all over the world as his ARMY deployments progressed. Soon they’d welcome a sister in GERMANY and ultimately return to the States. Long Island held the promise of steady work as a firefighter and he could get a decent first home to let his new family grow. But things didn’t go to plan. They’d only been back a couple months when JOHN’s trips to the bar would turn into days occasionally where’d he just be off. The MOM took it and bit her rage only to carry on as she was stranded deep in the NORTH FORK. Eventually his drinking led to brutal beat downs and she feared for her life. In a moment of pure fear she ran. The bus was full that morning as she hitchhiked to STONY BROOK. The station agent could tell she was in a bad way and gave her a METS hoodie, wishing her well. She boarded the bus with the feeling of regret she would live with for the next 19 years. ROO awoke that Sunday to find her GRANDMA making breakfast. When she asked where mama was she replied that she had to take a trip because of a family emergency and should be back in a couple days. Ten years later they dropped ROO off in Arkansas. He greeted the AUNT warmly and thanked her for her help. The whole trip had been an elaborate rouse to discard her to the care of her aunt. JOHN had remarried a few months after the MOM ran off. They had another little girl. The ROO thought the whole time that JOHN was her DAD and they were all her family. She would proudly Dawn the colors on COLUMBUS DAY and sing the song eating TIRAMISU on her DAD’s lap. But this solider and servant of man could no longer care for this petite pistol who hated his WIFE and would pull insane capers to express her vitriol toward the pale-faced bitch who smacked her around and called her a SPIC. The ROO had been left to a clan the MOM was certain would look after her as she made her way through the wilderness. She wouldn’t have been able to leave otherwise. But these people had reached their limit, so off to TITI in the OZARKS she went. They had loved and cared for her for as long as she’d made memories. But now they had chosen to discard this angry 13 year old. She never forgave her JOHN for driving her MOM to run away. At first things in Arkansas were okay. But the ROO was wild and could not be tamed. She shared the same wild beating heart her MOM had. She would dream about her MOM coming back to take her away from the OZARKS. From her bewildered TITI. She ran away three times and never got further than EUREKA SPRINGS. She was hitchhiking once and passed a sign heading south stating: THIS HIGHWAY IS MAINTAINED BY THE KU KLUX KLAN This scared her. She was fully grown at 13 but stood only 4-feet 8inches. She looked very indigenous with pronounced AZTALAN cheek bones that one would expect on a MAYAN queen. Her MOM had told her as a child that she was MEXICAN. Her MOM was born as she was in EAST LA. Raised on dried meat and fry bread as the nomadic YAQUI people had for millennia. They were a tribe with ancestral lands as the space they had existed stretched across the border. It was recognized that they were a people who had no land or reservation, utterly stripped of a physical identity by a border between two broken lands. Her aunt and uncle really tried. They felt horrible that the ROO had been cast off by these heartless ITALIANS from LONG ISLAND. It was all too easy for them to give up on her and return her to her blood like a shirt that doesn’t fit. After her third attempt to run, her aunt chose to bring her to stay with her GRANDMA in BRISBE. It was harsh and isolated on the ZUNI reservation where she’d settle with her second husband decades prior. When TITI drove her across the acrid plane leading to the REZ, the ROO dreamed of putting her toes in the cool blue ocean of the NORTH FORK. GRANDMA loved ROO so much. She was overjoyed when TITI appeared with the wild-eyed teen. TITI left telling her that she was staying here until she could track down her MOM somehow. The ROO stayed in the desert for two years before she checked out completely and entered the wild as a 15 year old. The roar of the train was a constant sound in their lives on the REZ. At dawn and dusk the line would sound its horn and pull up to the tiny RAIL SHED where the men refilled their water and checked the line. She didn’t know she was leaving. She rode her bike to the edge of town and got a flat tire. She threw her precious pink Huffy GRANDMA had traded some tourist for a fantastic beaded belt. GRANDMA taught her to bead as their people had always done. It was the one thing that removed the pain and hurt she felt towards her MOM for abandoning her. As the ROO walked the long, lonely and dusty path back to GRANDMA’s trailer she heard the whistle. A wanderlust she’d never knew consumed her like a giant whale engulfing thousands of KRILL. She stopped in her tracks and turned to the left and started sprinting towards the mighty steel monster. She’d seen people hop trains for a long time and felt she could too if she could just get fast and close enough. As the roar of the mighty line clacked past she gazed up into the bowl of stars above her head. Taking a deep breath and pulling up her bandana over her mouth. She blinked and sprinted with everything she had toward the line and grabbed a grain car ladder, throwing her leg up to pull her body to safety. She had $40 and a hoodie. The ROO would end up in Chicago first, but bounce from Denver, Michigan, California, Arizona and Wyoming. She and her mother stayed estranged of each other for almost two decades before social media reunited them. The ROO even spent decent chunks of time with MOM’s family in EAST LA over the years.. Whenever she’d return her MOM would tell the story. The story of ALASKA and how her little ROO put out her hand and touched a MOOSE. The ROO is still in the wild blazing her path and writing her story. FOLLOW FOR MORE WORK — IG: @UZIEGO | TUMBLR: @WTFCRAIGSLISTNYC 3

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