“No sugar.”
He watched the contours of her neck as she tilted her head to sip the hot coffee. Relieved to be standing alone with her, studying her at close range, he wondered whose addiction he was feeding.
For almost a week Evan had been meeting Alma at the bus drop-off with coffee made exactly the way she liked, and every day, he got more jittery when she stepped off the bus. She seemed to relax a bit more each day, however, to soften. It was all so strange, like an old-fashioned courtship. Evan had never needed to work so hard to be with a girl, or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to. He tried to avoid the girls in his very small world—they came with too many strings attached. He wasn’t completely inexperienced, though, thanks to his mom’s charity events. Waitresses seemed to like him—or at least to take pity on him. They were easy to hang out with—usually in college and not really expecting anything except a quick escape from the boredom of their jobs. They also had the virtue of keeping things secret so he didn’t have to worry about the whole town weighing in on his romantic entanglements.
Until now, he had never really thought about how to get a girl to like him, or to trust him. Alma was a different story. He wanted her too much. It wasn’t just desire, though. There was something else.
“Do you want to sit down somewhere?” he asked.
They both glanced toward the cluster of benches that lined the courtyard. Each bench had a word etched into the stone at its base: “Respect,” “Restraint,” “Honesty,” “Fortitude.” They glanced toward two girls already sitting on the “Honesty” bench.
“Looks like we’ll have to go with ‘Restraint,’” she said, leading him in the direction of the empty bench.
Sounds about right, Evan thought.
He settled onto the “Restraint” bench next to Alma.
Evan picked up a book that had fallen from her bag.
“Still reading about random people in the South Pacific?” he asked, grinning broadly.
“Yeah,” she said, “and a bunch of other places I’m sure you couldn’t find on a map.”
“You’re probably right,” he said. “Why do you read this stuff, Alma?”
“I had this great teacher at North Atlanta,” Alma replied. “He got me into it. On the first day of tenth grade, he told us to ditch the textbook.”
“What did you do instead?” Evan asked. “Watch movies?”
“No, he passed out a great essay called ‘Body Ritual among the Nacirema.’”
“The what?” Evan asked.
“Nacirema,” she said. “It’s ‘American’ spelled backward. It talks about Americans like they’re some exotic North American tribe of people. Most of the kids in my class thought the essay was weird. It described doctors as ‘medicine men’ and prescriptions as ‘charms’ written in an ancient language. But I thought it was hilarious.”
Evan shook his head slowly. “You have a strange sense of humor, Alma.”
“Yeah. That’s what people tell me,” Alma said. She took a sip of her coffee and gave him a gentle nudge. “And it taught me something about you.”
“Huh?” Evan asked. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“It says bathrooms are like shrines. And you know who the more powerful people are by how many ‘shrines’ they have.”
“And what does this have to do with me?” Evan said, arching his eyebrows.
“How many people live in your house?”
“Three. Well, if you count my dad. He sort of lives there.”
“And how many bathrooms do you have?”
Evan looked down and counted on his fingers.
“Seven,” he said, triumphantly. He stood and stretched his fists to the sky. “I feel so powerful.”
* * *
Alma laughed, watching him pump his fists into the air. It felt so good to laugh, and to feel the caffeine making its way through her body.
“You’re lucky that I got that coffee this morning,” Evan said, nudging her.
“Why?”
“There were a bunch of yahoos on the town square for some kind of protest. They had the roads closed off completely.”
“A protest?” Alma asked. She took a deep swig.
“Yeah, they had a bunch of signs about illegal immigrants and some state law. Anyway, I had to fight through crowds for your coffee.”
Alma should have known something like this would happen today. She’d had the dream this morning. Maybe it was superstition, but whenever Alma had the dream, it seemed to usher in misfortune.
Against her will, the searing burn of the desert heat returned to her skin. She saw the blinding shine of a spotlight and heard the deafening roar of a helicopter’s propeller slicing through the sky. This morning, she had endured the strangest, most haunting part of the dream. Strong arms encircled her and tore her away from the coolness pressed against her own flesh. When she looked back, Alma saw her mother lifeless on the ground—eyes closed, black hair surrounding her head like a crooked halo entwined with the desert sand, white shirt opened, revealing swollen breasts with broad, dark nipples.
Whenever the dream went this far, she awoke with a sugary sweet taste in her mouth. The burst of sweetness made Alma queasy. How could such a horrifying set of images produce this taste?
She took another deep swig, relieved by the bitter taste. Alma never added sugar to her coffee.
“Are you with me, Alma?” Evan asked, taking her hand into his.
“Oh, sorry. Just lost in thought.” Alma squeezed her eyes shut. “It was probably about SB 529.”
“What’s that? SB whatever?”
“It passed last year. It’s supposed to, you know, make Georgia ‘tough on immigration.’ The anti-immigrant people are freaking out that counties and cities aren’t paying enough attention to it.”
They sat for a few moments, and Alma felt that familiar dread creep into her gut. She knew it would have to happen eventually—Evan would learn that she didn’t have legal status and then everything would change. Alma felt pretty sure that the nephew of a notorious “catch and return” senator would have some strong feelings about “illegals.” But she hoped that he might at least give her a chance to explain.
“Hey, Alma,” Evan asked, “do you know any? I mean, illegal immigrants?”
Alma shot a glance at Evan. She hated hearing those words come out of his lips. They sounded so ugly, and he was—he was too beautiful.
“You know,” he continued, “those guys who stand out by the Home Depot looking for work.”
“You mean day laborers?” she replied.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Are you asking me whether I know any day laborers or whether I know any, uh, ‘illegal’ immigrants?”
“Um … I guess I thought they were sort of the same thing.”
Alma bit her lip hard.
“Did I say something stupid?” Evan asked.
She sucked in a deep breath.
“No, Evan. It’s OK.”
This was it—the moment she wanted so much to avoid. She just had to gather the courage to tell him. If she couldn’t trust him—if this was going to be the thing that finally pushed him away—she figured she might as well get it over with.
She spoke fast. “I do know some day laborers, mostly from my church, and, uh, I’m an ‘illegal’ immigrant, but I prefer to use the term ‘undocumented.’”
“Come again?” he said, his head tilting almost imperceptibly, as his eyes narrowed.
“I don’t like to use ‘illegal.’ It’s more accurate to say ‘undocumented,’ or ‘unauthorized to work in the United States.’ The government calls it ‘unlawful presence.’”
“Wait. You are illegal, or undocumented, or whatever?”
Alma couldn’t read his tone. Maybe it was just confusion—or maybe it was revulsion.
“Yeah. My whole family is, except my cousin Selena. She was born here. And one of my dad’s brothers is a citizen. His wife and kids have status.”
Evan rubbed h
is temple, concentrating hard.
“I don’t understand. How can your dad be illegal? Hasn’t he been here for, like, twenty years? I thought, I mean, he owns a business, and a house. I, uh…”
Alma watched Evan searching, trying to make sense of what she was saying. A big part of her wanted to revert to sarcasm, to make some biting remark about Americans’ apparently insatiable desire for boneless, skinless chicken breast. But this was Evan and he was different, so she leaned in and spoke gently.
“I can try to explain. I mean, do you want me to?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m not following.”
Alma took a swig of coffee.
“Here’s the deal. After my mom and dad got married, my mom got pregnant with Raúl. Dad wanted to build a house. He didn’t have the money. Typical story, right?”
“Right,” Evan said, nodding.
“We’re from a really small town. People used to farm, but nobody makes money farming anymore. And there weren’t other jobs in our town. So my dad, he had a lot of cousins and brothers working in the U.S.”
“Here?” Evan asked. “In Gilberton?”
“Actually, in Los Angeles at first, but it was pretty rough over there, gangs and violence and crappy jobs. So one of my uncles heard about the poultry plants in Georgia.”
“You mean somebody in LA knew about this town?” Evan asked.
“Yeah. ‘Gilberton, Georgia: Chicken Capital of the World,’ right?”
“Right. I mean who wouldn’t want to live in the chicken capital?” Evan said, grinning.
He kind of had a point, but really, it was the chickens that brought them.
“So he moved over here, and then my tía Dolores came up from Mexico to check it out. It was good work, and the supervisors loved hiring Mexican workers. What wasn’t to love? Most of them worked hard for low wages and didn’t complain.”
“But why didn’t they just come legally?” Evan asked. “I mean, is that a dumb question?”
“Here’s the thing: To come legally, you either have to get the company you work for to sponsor you, or you have to have an immediate family member—like a husband or wife—who’s already here legally. Companies like Silver Ribbon wanted workers, but they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—sponsor them. So people just started crossing over and using false papers. Everyone knew they were doing it. I mean, Silver Ribbon actually sent people to recruit workers right at the border. They told my aunt to bring her whole family.”
“So did your dad come to work at Silver Ribbon?” Evan asked.
“No, he came to work for my uncle at first, in landscaping. My dad was nervous about using false papers.”
“Is your uncle illegal?”
“You mean ‘undocumented’?” Alma couldn’t bear hearing the word “illegal,” especially coming from Evan’s mouth.
“Sorry,” Evan said. “Undocumented.”
“No. There was a law passed in ’86 that gave my uncle amnesty. After that, he could apply for his wife and kids to be here. They had to wait a long time in Mexico, but now they’re all legal residents. My uncle is a citizen, actually.”
Thinking about her uncle’s son, Manny, made her blood boil. Alma clenched her fist tight.
“Is this too hard to talk about?” Evan asked.
“No,” Alma said. “I was just thinking about my cousin—he’s Raúl’s age. He’s legal, but it’s a total waste. He dropped out of GHS and now he runs around Gilberton pretending to be a gangster. It pisses me off. He has all these opportunities, you know? But he throws them away.”
“Yeah,” Evan said. “I have a cousin like that, too. I mean, he’s not a gangster…”
“Thanks for clarifying,” Alma said, nudging Evan gently. “I was worried preppy gangs were starting to crop up around here—you know, instead of the Crips and the Bloods, it would be, like, the Navy Blazers and the Bow Ties. Maybe they’d use golf clubs as weapons.”
She stood up and pretended to take a swing.
“Shut up, Alma,” Evan said, pulling her onto his lap and laughing.
This was going fine. Evan hadn’t walked away. In fact, he was holding her pressed up against his chest. That had to be a good sign.
“So was Raúl born here?” He hugged her tightly as she struggled playfully against his arms.
“No,” Alma said, breaking free of his grasp.
“Your dad came alone?”
“Yeah. He was here when my brother was born, and my mom wouldn’t let him go back to see my brother. It was getting dangerous at the border, and she didn’t want him to risk coming back. My dad started going crazy, though. So he just showed up to meet Raúl on his first birthday without telling my mom.”
“Was your mom pissed?”
“I don’t know. I think she was just happy to see him.”
“But he came back?”
“Yeah, he wanted to stay home, but by that time, everybody needed the money my dad sent.”
“Does he still send money home?”
“Every week. Migradollars. I’m telling you, Evan, we’re all addicted to them. Migration’s like a bad drug habit: Once it gets started, it changes everything on both sides of the border. Americans are addicted to cheap labor, and Mexicans are addicted to the migradollars cheap laborers send back home.”
“I’m not addicted to cheap labor,” Evan said.
“Do you like tomatoes?”
“Yeah, good ones.”
“Do you eat boneless, skinless chicken breast?”
“All the time.”
“Is your room carpeted?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’re addicted to cheap labor.” Alma paused and leaned away from Evan. “Well, maybe you’re right. Your family could afford that stuff even if it cost four times as much.”
Evan stood up and threw his hand to his head. “Why do you say stuff like that?”
He started to pace and rub his forehead.
“It’s habit,” Alma said.
“Yeah,” he said, stopping to look at her. “It’s getting old, Alma.”
“I’m sorry, Evan,” Alma said. She reached out to take his hand and pull him back to the bench. “It’s just that sometimes I think you don’t see it, you know?”
“See what, Alma?” Evan asked, not letting go of her hand.
“How easy you have it,” she said. “How charmed your life is.”
“Maybe you’re right, Alma,” Evan said, turning to face her. “But my life doesn’t really feel all that charmed.”
* * *
When Evan came home from school, Whit was sitting at the breakfast bar.
“What’s up, Evan?” his cousin asked casually, as if he belonged in Evan’s kitchen—as if he wasn’t supposed to be in school several states away.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in New Hampshire, Whit?” Evan asked, opening the refrigerator door.
“Virginia,” Whit replied. “New Hampshire was two schools ago. Really, you must try harder to keep up.”
Whit was like a modern-day Holden Caulfield—sick smart and completely incapable of staying in the same boarding school for more than a few months.
“Whatever,” Evan said. He chugged some Gatorade and then picked up the remote to switch on the news.
“Really, Evan?” Whit said, in his most annoyingly whiny voice. “The local news?”
Evan glared at him and tried to focus on the perky voice of the anchorwoman.
“Seeking vital information about the most recent house fire, are we?” Whit asked. “Or perhaps we need a preview of the most riveting reality TV programs?”
The young female anchor broke into Whit’s monologue.
“In Gilberton’s town square today, more than two hundred anti-illegal-immigration activists gathered for what they called a ‘No More Amnesty’ rally.”
“I stand corrected,” Whit said, turning intently toward the TV.
The television showed a rough-looking white man in his fifties, with a gray beard and wide-brimmed h
at. He held a handmade sign that said “WE ARE AMERICA!”
“Ah, behold the dregs of humanity,” Whit announced.
“Shut up, Whit,” Evan said. “I’m trying to listen for chrissake.”
“Activists are pressuring city and county government to enforce the state’s tough new immigration bill, SB 529.” The cameras cut to the television studio, where the anchor sat across from a balding, middle-aged white man in a polo shirt and blue blazer.
She introduced the man as John D. Barnes, the head of a local organization called Save This State. “Illegal immigration is organized crime,” the man said. “When we fail to enforce the law, we’re basically offering sanctuary to illegal aliens.”
“I stand corrected,” Whit said. “Local news does cover real issues, with the assistance of racist idiots posing as experts.”
“Why don’t you go annoy people in your own kitchen?” Evan asked.
“Because my parents and I can’t bear to be in the same room for more than ten minutes,” Whit said.
“Oh, yeah,” Evan replied. “That.”
“Activists will continue to press for local enforcement,” the anchorwoman concluded, “while also putting pressure on U.S. senators and congressional representatives to enact tough new border-enforcement laws.”
“And the fearless Sexton Prentiss will lead the charge,” Whit called out. He grabbed a pewter flask from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swig. Then he walked toward the kitchen door.
To his shock, Evan didn’t want him to leave yet. He wanted more information.
“Wait,” he said. “So, uh, your dad’s not a big fan of undocumented immigrants?”
Whit turned to face Evan. “You mean illegal aliens? Uh, no, Evan. Here’s a little civic education: your dear uncle Sexton has introduced three border-enforcement bills in the past four months.”
“Why does he care so much about the border?” Evan asked. “I mean, we live in Georgia.”
He knew he sounded clueless to Whit, and he hated it.
“Uh, votes? It’s always votes, Evan.”
He threw open the kitchen door.
“It’s been lovely. Give my regards to BeBe, will you?”
Then he sauntered out, taking another swig from his flask.
How was it possible that he and Whit had the same blood coursing through their veins?
Dream Things True Page 9
