The Radius of Us

by Marie Marquardt

  “So, I’ll start,” I say. “I’m a mess because I have been helping girls in green uniforms build this vegetable garden all week, with their nice—but also kind of clueless—dads.”

  “This is going to be a vegetable garden?” she asks, looking around. By now the little boy is digging around in the fresh dirt and the girl is standing over him, telling him he’s gonna stain his pants.

  “Yeah,” I say. “A community garden for the neighborhood.”

  “Wow, Ivywood Estates doesn’t really strike me as a community garden type of place.”

  I shrug. “Places can change.”

  If anyone knows how places can change, it’s me. Ilopango, where I grew up, it used to be a tourist destination. Honest to Christ. People would come out there from the city center of San Salvador on the weekends. They used to hang out by the lake and sit around in the restaurants, drinking batidos. Even bird watchers came from, like, Germany and shit, just to stare up into the trees outside of town. That was before the maras took control. Needless to say, not a whole lot of tourists are risking being caught in a gang-war cross fire just to see a rare bird, or to get a nice view of the lake.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I guess places can change. It’s great that you’re helping with it.”

  “I don’t really have much else to do.”

  Ni mierda. That was a stupid thing to say. I don’t want to get into why I don’t have anything to do. I mean, most guys my age would have, like, a job, or they’d be in school or something. I have a feeling that telling her the truth—that I just got out of detention, that I’m not allowed to work or go to school, that I’m in her neighborhood because I’m running away from a stupid pinche death threat—none of that would make her feel more comfortable.

  “Anyway, that’s my messy story,” I say, hoping she won’t ask more questions. “What’s yours?”

  “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “Okay, well … are you really sure?”

  I don’t know. All I know is that I want for her to keep sitting here—to keep talking. And I definitely don’t want to talk about me.

  “I’m sure,” I say.

  She tugs at her ponytail and looks away, not toward the kids this time. She’s looking out across the street, but I don’t think she’s really seeing what’s over there.

  “Six months ago I was leaving work. It was pretty late. I used to work in a restaurant.” She turns to look at the kids again. “I was a hostess.” Then she hugs her legs up to her chest and reaches down to touch the laces of her boots. “It was after closing. And I had to stop for half-and-half for my mom. I mean, she can’t drink her coffee without it. So she texted me and asked me to get some.”

  She’s playing with the laces of her boots, winding her fingers so tightly into them that her skin turns red. I watch, not saying anything, sort of wondering what half-and-half is.

  “Oh my God,” she says, looking over at me. “That’s so strange. I completely forgot that until now.” She goes back to wrapping the bright-yellow laces around her fingers. “I mean, about the half-and-half.” She’s not wearing nail polish, and the edges of her fingernails are ragged, like maybe she bites them. “I guess I was distracted, looking at the text from my mom. I didn’t see him coming.”

  “Who?” I ask. I’m starting to worry that whatever she’s going to tell me is bad. She looks back at me with those everything eyes. They’re getting shiny, like maybe she’s gonna cry.

  Oh Christ. What do I do if she cries?

  She releases one hand from her shoelace and wipes her eyes. “I think maybe we should stop talking about this. I get these, uh, panic attacks?”

  She says this like it’s a question, like she’s waiting for me to tell her Yes, you get panic attacks. I don’t think I’ve ever heard panic attack, but I’m pretty sure I know what she means.

  “Did seeing me give you one of those … attacks?”

  “You didn’t do anything,” she says. Her voice has gone wobbly. “I feel terrible about it. That’s why I wanted to find you.”

  She has been looking for me? Is this why she’s telling me this stuff? I don’t even care why. I’m just relieved that she’s sitting here with me and she’s not looking at me like I’m a murderer. She smiles again and my lungs fill with air. Looking at that smile, I feel like I can breathe better, like the air has just changed to pure oxygen.

  “What’s it like?” I ask. “I mean, when you have a panic attack?” I really want to know. Honestly, I think maybe I already do.

  “You know what?” she asks. “You’re the first person who has ever asked me that. Everybody just wants me to snap out of it—they don’t want to hear about it.”

  “Snap out of it?”

  “You know, like, get over it.”

  “Oh. You’ll get over it sometime,” I say. “But until then you might as well be straight about it, right?”

  She nods once, like she’s concentrating on something. God, she is so pretty. With absolutely no makeup on at all and her hair pulled back into a ponytail and that enormous sweater swallowing her up, she is really beautiful.

  “So, okay. Here goes.” She slides a little closer to me. “First my heart starts beating fast. Then I feel sort of tingly in my arms and legs, and then I can’t breathe—I mean, I am breathing, but I feel like I can’t take in enough air. I keep sucking it in, and sometimes I start crying, like freaking out, sobbing. But other times, I curl up into a ball, or I just bolt. I mean, I run away, like I did the other day.” She tugs on her hair again, and she’s moved so close to me that her elbow brushes my shoulder. “After a while it ends.”

  “That sucks,” I say, trying not to think about the last time I curled up into a ball like that. It wasn’t that long ago.

  “Do you feel better?” I ask her. “I mean, after it’s over?”

  I do, I’m thinking. Sometimes.

  “I guess,” she says. “But I’m afraid to go anywhere or do anything, because I never know what’s going to set it off.”

  “Maybe you should, like, do something that makes you feel calm first. I mean, before you go out and try something new.”

  “Like visualizations?” she says. “Or breathing techniques?”

  Visualizations? Techniques? I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about. “No, like pupusas. Whenever I’m about to face something kind of scary, I eat pupusas. They make me think of when I was a kid, and of my grandmother.”

  “What’s a pupusa?” she asks.

  “Damn, girl. You don’t know what a pupusa is?”

  She shakes her head and shrugs. What am I thinking? Of course she doesn’t know what a pupusa is. They’re impossible to find around here. I’ve looked, many times.

  “You’re missing out,” I tell her. “They’re like a thick tortilla filled with cheese and stuff, and they’re the best food ever invented.”

  “I guess I need to try them,” she says. “I mean, if they’re the best food ever invented.”

  “Let me know if you find some,” I tell her. “I’m dyin’ for one.”

  We both laugh, and Gretchen leans in toward me.

  “Anyway, you seem pretty brave to me,” I say. “You came over here and talked to me, didn’t you?” I wipe my dirt-stained hands on my filthy jeans. “And I look a little scary, after working in this garden all day.”

  “You’re right.” She smiles at me. “I mean—not about looking scary, but…”

  That makes me laugh. “I get it.”

  “So I know this is really weird,” she says. “But I’m going to hug you now.”

  And then that girl climbs halfway onto my lap and wraps her arms around me, folding us both into her enormous sweater.

  I hear myself talking to her, but I have no idea what I’m saying anymore. All I can hear is my heart, running like a goddamned freight train. It’s like la Bestia’s barreling through my chest. Where I’m from, people always say the road to the American Dream runs thr
ough the Mexican Nightmare, but it’s not a road. It’s a train track, and if you’re poor and stupid like me, the only way through that Nightmare is on the back of la Bestia. If you’re lucky—if you find the tracks after you cross into Mexico, if you get space up on top of the train and something sturdy to grab on to, if you have a strong enough grip to stay on the roof when the Beast jolts to a start and the wheels begin to squeal, if you’re awake enough to hold on through the night, or if you’re smart enough to have remembered a belt or rope to tie yourself on, if you survive the rain and the sunburn and the bandits and the kidnappers, la Bestia will take you all the way to the border—all the way to the edge of the Promised Land. But if you’re not lucky, if you let go for even a second, you’re done. Crushed under the rails. Or worse. Torn apart, limb from limb.

  I’ve seen it.

  I’m not gonna let myself fall off this train. So I don’t move. I grasp tightly to my stupid beating heart and I let Gretchen hug me.

  Then, gracias a Dios y a la Virgencita, a single clear thought enters my head. I decide to imagine that she is Sister Mary Margaret. They’re about the same build, both tall, so it isn’t impossible. Of course, Sister Mary Margaret is about sixty years older than this crazy beautiful girl, but I figure thinking about the nun will help keep me from going completely haywire.

  “Thank you,” Gretchen whispers in my ear.

  That about does me in. It’s like I’m way up on the roof of that train again, in the very front. Hot steam is hitting my face, the loud thump and high-pitched squeal of all those metal wheels is growing faster and louder.

  I’m holding on for dear life, and a wild thought speeds from my stupid heart into my stupid head: I cannot let go. Because even though I’m terrified, I have this strange feeling that maybe we’re both on our way to someplace better.

  And then I’m thinking about other things, like: Damn. Sister Mary Margaret does not smell this good.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GRETCHEN

  “I DID IT.”

  Bree and I are sitting across from each other at a metal picnic table in Woodruff Park. It’s the first time either one of us has ever been here. There’s really no reason to come to this part of downtown, nothing but ugly office towers and this dingy park with a fountain and a big statue in the middle of it.

  “Did what?” she asks.

  “I talked to him,” I say. “The guy from the playground.”

  “Seriously? You saw him again?”

  “Yesterday the kids and I were on a walk in the neighborhood, and he was there alone in that empty lot—I guess they’re turning it into a community garden.”

  “A community garden?” Bree leans back on the rickety metal bench. “In the Place Without a Soul?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, that’s unexpected. I didn’t think they did community in Ivywood Estates.”

  “I know. It’s weird, right?”

  We both look at the fountain for a while, not saying anything, waiting for Mom and Dad to show up. Bree brought me down here to meet my parents, for the thing with the prosecutor. My mom had to come straight from a luncheon she was working in Buckhead. She’s an organic florist. Everybody around here seems to be going green, and she’s the only person in town who can give them “bright bouquets bursting with color” that don’t rely on exploited third-world workers and scary baby-disfiguring chemicals. She’s always busy, and she usually works nights and weekends.

  I think that’s why, at some point, Dad decided to quit his job. He must have figured someone needed to be around to change my diapers and pick me up from preschool—and then later, to help me with homework and drive me to piano lessons. For fifteen years he was a stay-at-home dad with some contract work on the side. When I finally got old enough to drive myself, he applied for teaching positions, and last year he nailed his dream job—teaching history at a super-liberal private school just down the road, where all the kids call teachers by their first names. But then I fell apart, and he had to pick up the pieces. So Dad quit his dream job after only one year and went back to teaching online classes to homeschoolers. The only difference is that now I’m one of those homeschoolers. My dad not only teaches me, but also chauffeurs me, since I’m still not ready to get behind the wheel. Today Dad has an appointment with the eye doctor that he couldn’t change, which meant Bree had to step in as my driver.

  He told us to park in a pay lot nearby and wait for him by the fountain. So here we are. The water smells a bit skanky, like chlorine mixed with algae, and nobody else is here, except for a couple of homeless guys with shopping carts.

  “So, what was that guy doing there?” Bree asks. “I mean, does he live in the neighborhood?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t really ask.”

  “You didn’t ask?” Her voice is going in that direction—the one that tells me she’s about to launch into critique mode. “Okay, so what exactly did you talk about?”

  “I told him about the panic attacks.”

  I glance away, toward the huge metal statue lurking over us, but I know Bree is looking right at me. I don’t even have to look back at her. I can feel the judgment coming on.

  “Oh no. No—you—did—not.”

  “What? What’s wrong with that?”

  “Um, hello? You just unloaded your crap onto a complete stranger. That’s what’s wrong. He must have thought you were a lunatic. I mean, did he run away?”

  I remember what it felt like to lean against him, to feel him solid against me. I think back to the feel of my arms around him, and the way he sat so still, how he apologized for being covered in soil.

  “No,” I say. “He was sort of amazing, actually.”

  “Amazing?”

  Bree leans across the table that separates us. “Um, what is this I’m hearing in your voice right now? Because you’re kinda freaking me out.”

  “He listened. And he asked the right questions, you know?”

  “Not really.” Bree shakes her head. “But I guess I’m proud of you, I mean, for doing it.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Me too. It sort of feels like I’ve turned a corner or something, like maybe I’m getting better.”

  We sit together in silence for a while, looking up at the statue. It’s beautiful, actually, when you really look at it. It’s huge, like, two stories tall. There’s a woman holding on to the feet of this enormous bird, and it’s lifting her up off the ground, beak pointed directly into the sky, wings jutting forward. I don’t know what kind of bird it is, or what it’s supposed to mean, but it looks like it’s going to lift that woman right up off the ground, with no effort at all.

  It makes me feel peaceful, seeing that bird about to take off, a woman holding tightly to its claws.

  My dad arrives, wearing those stupid plastic glasses that they give you after the doctor dilates your eyes. Bree stands up and reaches out to give him a hug. “Looking good, Dan.”

  “I do my best.” He smiles a goofy smile. Then he looks at me, and his face goes all concerned. “Ready?” he asks.

  “Not really,” I say.

  Bree shoves me gently. “You’ve got this. Remember? You’ve turned a corner.”

  “Yeah.” I wrap both of my hands around the cold metal armrests and push, propelling myself to a stand. “Corner turned.”

  * * *

  Here’s the thing about going down to have a little chat with the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of “major crimes.” You think you’re heading to a fancy courthouse—marble columns, mahogany desks. I mean, that’s what these places always look like in the legal thriller movies. But actually, you’re going to a dumpy high-rise in a questionable part of downtown Atlanta.

  They have just taken away our cell phones and we’re stripping off our shoes and belts when my mom launches in. Again.

  “This is just so infuriating. Where were the Atlanta police when all of this happened? Absent. Couldn’t have cared less.” She thrusts her phone into the little plastic basket and shoves it to
ward the X-ray machine. “They barely even filled out a police report. And now, suddenly, they’re so interested that they’re putting us through all of this.”

  Mom marches through the metal detector and takes her salmon-colored flats from the bin. She’s tall, like me, and she almost always wears flats. I guess she spends most of the day on her feet, which means that heels don’t make much sense. Even without the heels, people tend to watch her when she walks by. I’ve seen it so many times, at airports, in restaurants. My mom is beautiful and confident—lean and long, with thick gray hair cut into a stylish bob. She wears big, bold earrings and pencil skirts, lots of color, but always in the perfect combination. All of her clothes are “finds,” since she loves to shop at upscale secondhand stores.

  We used to do that together—it was one of our Saturday afternoon mother-daughter bonding rituals. But not anymore. I think she knows I want to be invisible now, and I must be doing a good job, since she never says a word about what I’m wearing. We haven’t been on one of those “hunting expeditions” in months.

  Dad and I quietly remove our belts and shoes and walk through the metal detector behind her. There isn’t much to say. Sure, she has a point. The police were outright bored by my story. They did nothing to investigate, and then a few months later we got a call from the Feds and suddenly everyone cares.

  I pull my shoes from the bin. It’s just like at the airport, except here they keep your cell phone until you come out of the building. Oh, and we aren’t exactly going on a vacation.

  We ride an elevator to the sixth floor, where we have to show our driver’s licenses to a receptionist, who sits behind a Plexiglas window, not even looking at us. Then we’re handed stickers and told to put them on our shirts. They read: VISITOR: MUST BE ACCOMPANIED AT ALL TIMES. After checking us in, the receptionist sends us (unaccompanied) back down to the fifth floor, where we wait in a lobby that looks like a dentist’s office. Except everything is red, white, and blue. No joke. Blue carpet with thick red stripes, red vinyl couches that look entirely uninviting, white walls that really need a paint job. There are several doors around, but they’re all closed tight. One of them has a big sign in red, white, and blue that reads: PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK ON THIS DOOR.