The man sitting next to me was wearing a watch that read 1:57 in small, glowing numbers. Maribel would be home at 2:15. I was supposed to be there to meet her when her bus dropped her off. Panic fluttered in my chest. What was I going to do? I must have gotten on the wrong bus. I had a feeling I was only getting farther and farther from the apartment now. I had to turn around.
I stood and tugged the cord that ran above the seats. The bell dinged. I squeezed past the man next to me and walked to the front of the bus, trying to stay calm. The driver pulled over and opened the doors.
Now what? I thought once I got off. I was standing on a deserted road in the rain. There were no houses or buildings as far as I could see, only wheat-colored fields patchy with dirt and cracked wooden telephone poles with drooping black wires strung between them. Dios, I said to myself. Where was I? Why had I decided to get off the bus in the middle of the country? I could be killed out here and no one would know the difference. I shivered. Then I forced myself to laugh. Who was going to kill me? The telephone pole?
Before long, I heard a sound and looked up to see a car approaching. I watched as it neared and got louder, then sliced by and faded into the distance again. I told myself, It’s a good sign. If there was one car, there will be another. You just have to wait.
The rain was falling harder now—my hair and clothes were damp—and I crossed to the other side of the street and stood, clutching my purse. Maybe I could call the school and tell them not to let Maribel get off the bus if I wasn’t there in time. The translator, Phyllis, had told me that for students Maribel’s age the school didn’t require that anyone be there to meet them. She was allowed to get off the bus whether I was there or not. But maybe if I explained that this was a special circumstance? Maybe the bus driver would wait?
I dialed the school and when a voice answered, I said in English, “Hello?”
“Hello?” the woman on the other end said.
I didn’t know how to say, “I’m looking for my daughter,” so I just blurted out her name. “Maribel Rivera,” I said.
“Hello?” the woman said again.
“Is there someone there who can help me?” I asked in Spanish.
There was silence from the other end.
I reached in my purse and pulled out the dictionary, flipping through the pages to find the English word for “help.”
The woman on the other end said something I couldn’t understand.
In Spanish I said, “My name is Alma Rivera. My daughter Maribel goes to your school. Is there someone who speaks Spanish?”
I waited for a response while I fumbled again with the dictionary, searching for any word that might make a difference.
“I need to speak to someone,” I said. “I need the bus driver to wait.”
The woman said something else that I couldn’t understand and I nearly wept in frustration. They were only words. I had the sense that I should have been able to unpack them, that there was only a thin veneer separating me from their meaning, and yet the veneer was impenetrable.
A second later, I heard the clap of plastic against a hard surface, as if the woman had put the phone down. I waited to see if someone else was coming, someone who could help me, but what I heard next was the beeping of a disconnected line.
In a fit of defeat, I threw both my phone and the dictionary to the ground, watching them skid and spin across the wet pavement. Why hadn’t I called Phyllis instead of the school? I was wasting time. But when I picked up the phone, the screen showed that there was no reception. I held it up like a torch and squinted. Still nothing. Even after walking a few steps in every direction, I couldn’t get it back. Chingada madre! I should have known better. It was a cheap piece of plastic, but it was all we had been able to afford since Arturo had insisted that we buy two—one for each of us—to be able to use while we were here.
Rain pattered against the ground like the sound of applause. The pebbles along the shoulder of the road where I stood were slick and glistening. Weeds bent toward the earth. I crossed my arms over my chest to cover my blouse, which was wet enough now that anyone could have seen through it to my bra, then uncrossed them again when I remembered there was no one here to see me.
What time was it? How long had I been out here? I imagined Maribel getting off the bus, standing in the middle of the parking lot, her backpack hitched high on her thin shoulders, confused because I wasn’t there. Then I imagined the boy from the gas station skating up the way he had the other day, looking for her, and dread welled inside me.
Why hadn’t I stopped that car earlier? I should have run into the middle of the street, waving my arms. I shouldn’t have let it pass by.
Frantically, I scanned the road in both directions. I started walking, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds to see if perhaps another car was coming down the road behind me. I jogged for a while until I was out of breath. How late was it now? I checked the phone again, but there was still no reception. I punched all the buttons and held it to my ear, praying for a tone. But still nothing. I leaned my head back and screamed at the sky. A useless scream. No one could hear me out here. And then I started crying, my tears falling as dully as the rain.
I heard it before I saw it: the rumble and the whir. I stopped and turned around. A bus. It wasn’t just a mirage, was it? Was it the same bus that had dropped me off before? It didn’t matter. It was going the opposite direction now, the direction I needed to go, and it was coming toward me. I waved my arms and started crying harder. In Spanish I yelled, “Stop! Please stop for me!” I didn’t care that the driver wouldn’t understand what I was saying. He would see me and stop, wouldn’t he? And when he did, I stood on the road and shouted up at him, “Kirkwood?” He nodded and I stepped up onto the bus.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I arrived, soaking wet and shivering, at my stop. I ran so fast to the apartment that my lungs burned.
“Maribel!” I yelled as I flew into the parking lot. “Mari!”
It must have been 2:45 by then, maybe later. I dashed up to our front door, but it was still locked. Through the window, I could see that the lights were off. I turned and shouted again. “Maribel!” I thought someone would hear me and open their door—Nelia or Ynez or Fito if he was home—but to my dismay, no one did. I stood on the balcony and scanned the apartments, wondering if Maribel was inside one of them. Maybe someone had seen her and brought her inside. Celia, I decided. I should try her first.
I hurried so fast down the wet metal staircase that I nearly slipped, but as I started toward the Toros’ apartment, suddenly there she was. And right behind her, Mayor Toro.
I gasped and ran to her, lifting her sunglasses off, cupping her face in my hands, studying it for bruises, for anything that might seem amiss. She winced as I turned her head from side to side.
“She’s okay,” Mayor said.
“What were—?”
“I saw her when she got off the bus. I was just talking to her for a little while.”
“Are you okay?” I asked Maribel.
She nodded and stared at me with her wide owl eyes.
I felt the punch of relief, swift and firm to my gut. She was okay. Maybe it should have bothered me more, the thought of Maribel out here alone with Mayor. But as boys went, Mayor struck me as the harmless sort. Besides, I was so overcome with gratitude in that moment that there wasn’t room for much else. She was okay. I didn’t even have the heart to ask whether she was sure because I didn’t want to give her the chance to take it back. She had said she was okay and that was all I wanted.
Mayor
The Riveras started going to the same Mass as us, and afterwards my mom usually invited them over for lunch at our house. They protested the first time—“No, no, it’s too much, we don’t want to impose”—but my mom, who was always eager to make new friends in this country, wore them down eventually, and the three of them got off the bus with us and walked straight to our apartment, laying their coats over the back of the couch, getting comfort
able on the chairs my mom pulled in from the kitchen and arranged around the living room.
My mom made sure everyone had drinks and then she got busy, week after week, making her special party food—ham sandwiches on white bread with the crusts trimmed off. She cut them into triangles and speared them with plastic toothpicks, then carried them out on a ceramic platter that she passed around to everyone along with square white napkins that we used to catch the crumbs.
My dad, on the other hand, didn’t let the presence of the Riveras interfere with his usual routine. He turned on the television, cracked open a can of beer, and put his socked feet up on the coffee table. He watched soccer if it was on, which inevitably led to him talking about Enrique and bragging about the latest goal my brother had scored against Georgetown or the assist he’d had in the big game against Virginia, which was Maryland’s main rival, and how almost every week Enrique’s name was in the paper under the sports stats that were listed for every high school and college within a hundred-mile radius of us. “Mayor plays soccer, too,” he said. “But I haven’t seen his name in the paper yet.” He didn’t say it to be mean. It was the truth, even though not for the reason he thought, and he looked at me with pity. “But he’s getting better. Aren’t you?” he asked. And I struggled to nod through the rush of guilt I felt about lying to him and the humiliation I felt about sucking so bad.
When soccer wasn’t on, my dad turned to football. One week during an Eagles game when Sr. Rivera cheered Donovan McNabb on, my dad rode him, saying, “Arturo, it’s no use. I’ve been watching this game since I got to this country, and yes, the Eagles are a bird, but let me tell you, they no can fly.” He said the last part in English, to be funny, and even though I’m not sure Sr. Rivera understood him, he was nice enough to laugh.
In the beginning I ate the crustless sandwiches and opened a can of Coke, then excused myself to my bedroom to do homework or to listen to my iPod. My mom would track me down sometimes and give a disapproving look and try to convince me that it would be nice if I came out and talked to Maribel because she and I were basically the same age and because she was new here so she would probably appreciate me talking to her. “Don’t you think that would be nice?” my mom asked. But I didn’t think so. I mean, maybe it would have been nice for Maribel, but otherwise what was the point? Looking at her, sure. I could have looked at her all day. But actually having conversations with her? That was a different story.
Then one week I was walking home from my bus stop in the rain when, from behind, someone said, “Where you going?”
I turned around and saw Garrett Miller grinning at me, his skateboard under his arm.
“Home,” I said.
“Back to Mexico?”
“I’m not from Mexico.”
“My dad says all you people are from Mexico.”
When I didn’t respond, Garrett said, “What are you looking at?”
Garrett didn’t have a single friend that I knew of. His older brother had gone to Iraq with the air force and had come back in a body bag. The rumor at school was that Garrett’s mom had a breakdown after that. She just couldn’t handle it, so she’d split and hadn’t been back since. Supposedly Garrett’s dad started drinking so much that he lost his job. They must have been living off benefits from the military or something. Or maybe they were on welfare by now. I didn’t know.
I started walking away. I could hear Garrett trailing me, the shuffle of his sneakers on the pavement, the drag of his jeans. What was I supposed to do? Was he going to follow me all the way up to my door? What did he want? And then I heard another sound—the low rumble of an engine. I looked back and saw a bus, Maribel’s bus, turning off the road. It drove past Garrett and me and pulled up in front of the building. I watched as Maribel got off, walking down the steps like a deer carefully picking its way down the side of a mountain. At the sight of her, I forgot about Garrett for a second. She might have been one of the Evers kids, but she was still the prettiest girl I had ever seen in real life.
After the bus bounced back onto the road, Maribel just stood in the middle of the parking lot in the drizzling rain. She didn’t move.
“Hey,” Garrett called.
Maribel turned.
“You remember me? I saw you a few weeks ago at the gas station.”
Maribel stared at him.
“What’s your name?” Garrett asked.
When she didn’t answer, he said, “What’s the matter? You don’t speak English? ¿No inglés?”
She shook her head.
I watched as Garrett took a step back and surveyed Maribel from head to toe, nodding in appreciation. She didn’t squirm, didn’t shift, just stood there letting herself be ogled.
“Take off your sunglasses so I can see your eyes,” Garrett said, but instead of waiting for her to do it, he pulled her sunglasses off her face himself. When Maribel reached for them, Garrett held them up in the air where she couldn’t get them. Reflexively, Maribel put her hand over her eyes.
“What?” Garrett said. “Something wrong with your eyes?”
He pried her hand away and held on to it.
I cringed.
He snaked his head closer to study her face and then pulled back, looking confused. “Something wrong with you?” he said, dropping her hand like he’d just been burned. Then he whistled as if he’d put it together. “That’s why you were on that bus, isn’t it? You’re some kind of retard. How do you say ‘retard’ in Spanish? Hey!” Garrett said, waving his arm in front of her blank face. “I’m talking to you. Can’t you hear?”
I took a step, then stopped. What did I think I was going to do?
Garrett twirled her sunglasses around. “You need these back?”
When Maribel reached for them, Garrett tossed the sunglasses up in a high arc over her head and let them land on the wet pavement. Maribel bent down to get them, and Garrett crowded up behind her, settling his hands on her hips, drawing her against him.
“Hey!” I yelled.
Garrett whipped his head around like he’d forgotten that I was there.
“Leave her alone,” I said.
“Fuck you.”
“She hasn’t done anything to you.”
Garrett narrowed his eyes to slits and sauntered toward me, nudging his skateboard along with the toe of his shoe. My heart was thudding so hard it felt like it was taking up my whole chest, but at least I’d gotten him away from Maribel. Over his shoulder, I saw her stand and put her sunglasses back on, pushing them up the bridge of her nose with her finger.
“What are you? Her fucking fairy godmother?” Garrett said. He was right in front of me now, a head taller and at least thirty pounds heavier. I should’ve just stayed out of it, I thought. Why, why, why didn’t I just stay out of it?
“No,” I managed to say.
“You wanna be a hero?”
I shook my head.
“Because I was just talking to her,” Garrett said. “That’s all.”
But that wasn’t all, and both of us knew it. “I saw you,” I said.
Garrett grabbed the collar of my shirt and twisted it into his fist, pulling me close. “Saw what, shitface?”
I didn’t dare look in his eyes.
“Couldn’t hear you,” Garrett said, squeezing my collar until it felt like a noose around my neck.
“Nothing,” I managed to get out.
It was probably only a matter of seconds, but it felt like a full minute passed, maybe more, before Garrett finally let me go, sending me stumbling back onto my ass.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Fucking none of your business.”
He kicked a spray of pebbles in my direction, then turned around and looked at Maribel, who was still standing basically in the same place she’d been the whole time. “I’m not done with you,” he called to her.
He picked up his skateboard and started walking out toward the road, through the gravel.
I brushed myself off and walked over to Maribel. “Are you
okay?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Don’t pay attention to him,” I said. “He’s a jerk.”
And then we were just standing there, and the rain was still drizzling like static, and I didn’t know what to do next.
“Are you going home now?” I finally asked after a traffic jam of silence.
“I’m waiting for my mom.”
I looked up and down the length of the building, but besides Maribel and me, no one was around. “Where is she?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Your mom.”
“She meets me at the bus.”
“Do you think she’s in your apartment?”
Maribel shook her head. “I’m meeting her here.”
What was I supposed to do? I didn’t really want to stand out in the rain with her for who knew how long. Maybe Micho or Benny would walk out and one of them could keep her company. After another minute, though, it was still just her and me, so I said, “Well, let’s wait on the fire escape at least. It’s covered, so we can get out of the rain.”
As soon as we sat on the metal fire escape landing, Maribel slid her backpack off and pulled out a green notebook. She snapped the cap off a pen and started writing, hunched over the paper.
The Book of Unknown Americans Page 6
