Karina Itzel

Before I learned to read,

I learned not to wait up for my dad to get home from work.

I grew up

seeing the calluses on his hands and the paint marks forever splattered in his jeans, hearing horror stories about his clients in that half-angry, half-joking way he’d mastered

over the years.

Before I started middle school,

I learned which sneakers at the tianguis looked

enough like Converse to

keep my classmates from noticing I couldn’t afford brand name shoes.

Before I started high school,

I learned that to clean blinds,

you always have to start with a dry paper towel because

a wet one

mixes the dirt and muddies the surface.

I grew up

accompanying my mom into strangers’ homes,

cleaning up after kids with more toys than I could ever dream of having,

getting paid whatever people with jewelry more expensive than my dad’s monthly salary decided 

we deserved.

I grew up

knowing that there were a lot of things we couldn’t do,

a lot of things we couldn’t have,

but with the certainty that

food

had never,

would never,

be one of them.

And now, here was this mural of a boy who couldn’t have been much older than my brother at the time,

without a single thing to eat.

It felt painfully personal given how much I’d enjoyed the World Cup. It made me much more

alert

to the damage this event was capable of causing, 

the damage I, as a spectator, was capable of contributing to.

It made an issue that was happening thousands of miles away glide across the globe

and into my home.

It made me feel – even through a screen – a fraction of the sadness and frustration and anger that

the people in Brazil must’ve been feeling.

And with that, 

the dazzling nature of the World Cup dissolved.

I was moved to action.

I read about how the government insisted that hosting the World Cup would

create more economic opportunities for everyone; everyone

except for the low-income residents displaced so that they could build

big, expensive stadiums; stadiums

that were now nothing more than white elephants; elephants

in the room that nobody wanted to bring up

up

up

up.

The price of hosting the event surpassed $11 billion, kept going

up

up

up

and all across the country,

the number of people living in poverty

did too.