In the Country We Love

by Diane Guerrero

  Papi looked at the floor, then up at me. “I want you to know how badly I feel about all of this,” he told me. He sighed deeply. “We have to move forward.” His eyes looked tired from lack of sleep. He was scared.

  Near the end of the visit, my father stood, placed his hands gently on my shoulders, and leaned as close as he could to my right ear. “Te amo,” he whispered. “I love you. Se fuerte. Be strong. Don’t forget that.” He kissed my forehead and backed up a bit before the guards could call him out for getting too close.

  A bell rang to end our time. All the inmates stood. “No, Papi!” I called out, but before I could really flip out, my father shushed me with a hand gesture. Even in prison, he didn’t want to cause trouble or bring undue attention to us. Watching my daddy, my beach bud, my friend walk away in that orange jumpsuit was one of the hardest moments I have ever endured.

  The ride home was even quieter than the one there. Through mile after mile of freeway, I recalled the years my family had spent worrying about this day, the energy we’d expended fearing my parents’ arrest. I now wished we’d set aside the anxiety, refused to let it invade our every interaction, fully enjoyed one another’s presence. Instead, we’d allowed ourselves to be robbed twice. We’d trudged through our days with our stomachs in knots, our lives on hold, our hearts in our throats—and yet our worry hadn’t changed the outcome. I was still on my way from New Hampshire to Boston, facing a life I never wanted. If there was to be no happily ever after for my family, if we’d find no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then we should’ve lived as if the happiness we’d shared with one another was itself the prize. The dream. The Promised Land.

  Amelia made supper for us that evening, my favorite Colombian stew. I ate in silence. In the coming weeks, I’d need to write a paper for my history class. Help with the chores around Amelia’s place. Polish my solo for Springfest. Return to New Hampshire to visit both of my parents. And keep quiet about everything that had just happened.

  Hey, where are you taking my parents? I’m the one in stripes, take me! Take me!

  CHAPTER 8

  Left Behind

  In every life there is a turning point. A moment so tremendous, so sharp and clear that one feels as if one’s been hit in the chest, all the breath knocked out, and one knows, absolutely knows without the merest hint of a shadow of a doubt that one’s life will never be the same.

  —JULIA QUINN, novelist

  I will always remember that prison waiting room: Hot. Crowded. Musty. Several rows of attached metal chairs, the kind you see in airports, lined the cement walls. On my row, a teenage mother tried to calm down her screaming baby; two seats over from her, an old man dozed off with his cane at his side. No one spoke. Amelia leaned toward me.

  “You ready, hon?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I guess,” I said, although I knew that wasn’t true. I don’t think you’re ever actually ready to see your own mom locked up. And definitely not when you may never see her again. But I couldn’t say that out loud. Not to the one person who’d been willing to take me in.

  I’d been to a prison when I was small. A few times, my mother took me to an immigration detention center so we could see some neighbors of ours who were fighting deportation. “We need to go and lift their spirits,” Mami told me as she fastened the back buttons on my pink cotton dress. “They need us right now.” This is going to sound nuts, but I actually looked forward to going. The guards were so nice to me. My mother, who knew how much I loved sweets, bought me a big chocolate-chip cookie from the vending machine. At age six, the whole experience felt like a fun field trip. At fourteen, it was the most terrifying day I’d ever faced.

  The guard, a tall black man with dreads, lumbered into the doorway. “Ladies and gentleman,” he announced in a Jamaican accent, “sign in and line up here.” He held up a clipboard and nodded toward the entrance to a metal detector. The room stirred as the fifty or so people gathered their belongings. “Your bags will be thoroughly searched,” he said. “No cell phones are permitted in the visitation area with the detainees.”

  The detainees. His words hung there, thick and heavy. Just weeks earlier, my mami had simply been my mami. The loving mother who combed my long, black hair into a ponytail. The mom who made sure I brushed my teeth and finished my homework. Then on an afternoon I’ve spent a decade wishing I could undo, Mami had been suddenly labeled an inmate. A prisoner. A “detainee.” After spending two months in the New Hampshire facility where I’d already visited her twice, she’d been moved to this jail in Boston. And in less than one hour, she’d be forced out of the country.

  “Take off all of your jewelry,” instructed the guard, “and remove any coins from your pockets.” I swiped my fingers through the two back pockets of my jean shorts. Empty. I reached up to unfasten my gold necklace, the one my parents had given me for my tenth birthday. I lowered the chain into the guard’s plastic bowl and stepped through the detector. Amelia followed.

  We made our way down a hall and into a second waiting area, more depressing than the first. The guard rounded the corner into the room. He was holding the clipboard. “When you hear your name,” he barked, “please stand and follow me.” I held my breath as he read off the first name. Then the second. Then the third and fourth. Ten names in, I heard what I’d been listening for but dreading: “Diane Guerrero,” he announced. Amelia and I took our places among the others. I felt like I could throw up.

  The group filed out behind the guard. Halfway down the hall, he stopped in front of a steel door. Above it hung a sign: INMATE VISITATION AREA. With the full weight of his right shoulder, the guard leaned into the door and swung it open. He motioned for us to walk through.

  The room smelled like cleaning products. Under fluorescent lights, about twenty inmates sat lined up in booths. Each of them was on a stool behind a giant plastic barrier. Every booth had one of those old-school phones in its upper-left-hand corner. Five or six guards milled around, just watching. As the other visitors scattered to find the prisoners they’d come to see, I stood there and scanned the row, one booth at a time. There, in the middle, I saw Mami. I walked slowly across the linoleum and slid into the chair facing her. Amelia reached up and handed me the phone.

  I studied my mother’s face. In the eight weeks since her arrest, she looked like she’d aged twenty years. She seemed tired and frail, like she hadn’t slept for days. I’d never seen her so skinny. Her eyes were glossy, her skin pale. Her hair was disheveled, frizzy, and in a messy bun. Her wrists were handcuffed together and resting in her lap. A guard on her side of the barrier placed the phone in her hands. She lifted it to her ear and held it there for a long moment.

  “Hello, my princess,” she said. Her voice was so soft and feeble that I almost couldn’t hear her. “How are you?”

  My fingers trembled as I stared at her through the scratched plastic. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t get choked up—that I’d hold it together for my mom’s sake. But I could already feel the tears building up.

  “I’m okay,” I said. I bit down on my lip to keep the tears from escaping. It didn’t work. “I’m, uh—I’m fine,” I stammered.

  Mami dropped her head. “Don’t cry, baby,” she said, her own eyes brimming with tears. “Please don’t cry.”

  All around the room, different energies collided. To my right, an Indian woman laughed hysterically; to my left, the elderly man who’d been asleep in the waiting room now shouted obscenities. I inched closer to the barrier so I could concentrate.

  “I’m really sorry about this whole thing,” my mom said. “I’m so sorry, Diane.”

  She didn’t mean for her words to sting, but they did. She was sorry. My dad was sorry. The whole world was sorry. But none of it changed my situation. None of it altered the fact that, by dusk, my childhood would be over. This time for real.

  My mother sniffled. “Did you bring the suitcase?” she asked.

  I nodded. At the prison’s entrance, Amelia had already
given the bag to the guards.

  My mother looked intently at me. “What are you going to do, Diane?”

  It was an odd question for a mother to ask her own young daughter—and yet it was the one question I’d been preparing to answer since I was a small child. My parents had always had one set of realities; as their citizen daughter, I’d had a very different set. We’d lived with the daily worry that we’d eventually have to separate. Our fear was at last coming true.

  I sat forward in my chair. “I’m staying, Mami,” I said. “I’ve gotta stay.”

  I’d somehow always known I’d remain. What would I do in Colombia, a place I’d never even been to? What kind of life could I have in a place that my parents had risked everything to escape? Besides that, things were looking good for me for the first time in years. So as far as I was concerned, I didn’t have a choice. I needed to stay.

  “You see that guy?” my mother asked. She tilted her head toward a Dominican-looking guard on my side of the plastic. He must’ve felt us staring, because he looked over at us. “He’s a nice guy,” she said. I wasn’t surprised she’d made friends with a guard; my mother has always been social like that.

  “You know what he told me?” she asked.

  “What?” I said.

  She moved the receiver as close to her mouth as she could. “He said immigration only goes after people if they get a tip.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they’re not going around looking for random janitors,” she told me. “Someone had to inform them about us.”

  I gazed at her. “But who would’ve done that?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” she told me. She inhaled and then slowly released her breath. “That’s why you have to keep your eyes open,” she said. “Be very careful, Diane.”

  I started to cry—and this time I didn’t hold back. Enormous tears rolled down my cheeks and dripped from my chin. I pulled up the edge of my T-shirt and tried to wipe my face. Amelia, who’d been standing beside me the whole time, began rubbing my back. The Dominican guard walked in our direction.

  “Are you her daughter?” he asked me. I nodded my head yes.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said. “We’re not going to hurt your mom.”

  For some reason, that made me cry even louder. “So why does she have to wear those handcuffs?” I shouted. I could feel myself getting hyped. “Can’t you take them off? She’s not going to do anything!” Several people looked over at me.

  “I’m sorry, but she has to have those on,” he told me. “That’s the rules.”

  Soon after, a guard on my mother’s side yelled, “Wrap it up! Five minutes!” Mami scooted to the edge of her stool, cradling the receiver between her neck and shoulder. She put her face right up to the barrier.

  “Mi nina, no llores mas,” she whispered. She paused, stared down at the floor, and then looked back at me. “Never forget that. I’m so proud of you. Be a good girl, okay?”

  I let go of the receiver and cupped my hands over my eyes. There were so many things I needed to tell her, so many words I’d stored away. I wanted to stand up and scream, “My mother is not a criminal! Don’t you people understand? You’ve got the wrong family! Please—let her go!” But as the phone dangled by its cord, all I could do was wail. “Bye, Mami,” I said between sobs. “Good-bye.”

  Our time was up. When the guard with the dreads gave the last call, the Indian woman pressed her palms against the plastic, like she was trying to touch the person on the other side. The old man stumbled to his feet, using his cane as leverage.

  “You ready?” Amelia asked. I stood and pivoted so I could avoid Mami’s face. As much as I’d longed to see her, I also didn’t want to remember her like this. Not with her wrists chained up. Not in an orange jumpsuit. The person behind that barrier wasn’t my mother. She was a stranger to me.

  With hardly a sound, the group shuffled back down the corridor. Amelia held my hand while we walked. “This isn’t the end for you, Diane,” she said as she tried to reassure me. But it felt like the end. As devastated as I was for my mom, I was even more scared for myself. She and my dad were going home to family. I was stepping into a future I’d prayed would never come.

  Outside, Amelia peered out over the lot, trying to recall where she’d parked her Camry. A few hundred feet away from us, near the prison’s side entrance, a white police van pulled up. Amelia and I exchanged a look. Seconds later, two guards herded some inmates out onto the curb. My mother was among them.

  Just as my mother was stepping into the paddy wagon, she turned and caught a glimpse of me. She froze. I could tell she wanted to say something, to run to me. But before she could make a move, a guard rushed her into the van. “Let’s go!” he snapped.

  The engine rumbled on. From her seat in the rear, Mami twisted herself around so she could see me through the bars on the windows. She was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then all at once, I understood. “I love you,” she was mouthing. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” She repeated the three words until the van turned from the lot and disappeared. I smiled. That was the one thing I could be sure of, that my mother loved me. Fuck anyone who tried to come between us.

  The summer I lost my parents, it was the strangest kind of heartache. No friends gathered to grieve over the departed. No flowers were sent. No memorial service was planned. And yet the two people I’d cherished most were gone. Not gone from the world itself, but gone from me. We’d find a way to move forward, to carry on. Just not with the promise of one another’s presence.

  With all of my heart, I wanted to reverse time. Rewind the months. Go back to those days, warm and innocent, when I felt safe. When the smell of Mami’s freshly cooked rice and plantains greeted me at our front door. When the sound of Papi’s laughter made me feel like the most precious girl in the world. When everything still made sense. But I couldn’t go back. The only way out was ahead.

  Amelia spotted her car in the lot. On the drive to her house, I stared from my window in silence. My mother’s warning, the haunting admonition, echoed through me. Be careful. Be careful. Be careful. Tomorrow, I’d begin a new life, one uncertain and frightening. A makeshift family. A different home. A path I’d prayed so hard that I’d never end up taking. I glanced over at Amelia, settled back into my seat, and watched the sun descend over Boston Harbor.

  Me and Gaby, sophomore year, in the BAA music room. This picture hung all year in our humanities teacher’s room. As you can see, some hater vandalized it. Joke’s on you, pahtna!

  CHAPTER 9

  Second Family

  If you go anywhere, even paradise, you will miss your home.

  —MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Pakistani activist and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize recipient

  On the afternoon my father was deported, I didn’t get to visit him. Immigration officials hadn’t told us exactly when they’d send him off, and since they deported him in the middle of a workday, Amelia couldn’t take me to the detention center. I was relieved to miss the final meeting. Seeing my parents with their spirits broken, their heads dropped, had brought almost more sorrow than my heart could hold. Following any loss, there comes a moment when you shift from mourning; if you continued to linger in the grief, you couldn’t function. So a little at a time, you create a so-called new normal, although there’s nothing normal about it. With a gaping hole in your life, you move on. And it’s impossible to do that if you keep peeking over your shoulder. I needed to look ahead.

  Amelia was wonderful to me. She, Gabriela, and her other two children, both of whom were in their twenties, made me feel part of the family. They were beyond hospitable—and yet I knew I was a guest. “Mi casa es su casa,” any polite Latino host will tell you. But everyone understands the truth: Remaining welcome means abiding by the rules. I found it hard to relax. I had this nagging fear that I might do something to get myself thrown out. Amelia didn’t hint at such a thing; but I, aware of the major sacrifice she was m
aking to have me there, became vigilant about respecting boundaries.

  Perfect example: I minimized the space I took up. I stuffed my few belongings into a couple of bottom drawers and one area of the closet. I stored my toiletries inside a travel bag rather than on the sink top or in the shower. With five people in the house, things were already cramped. I didn’t want to make Amelia or her children regret her choice to take me in. I also recognized how much responsibility she had as a single parent and as a hardworking nurse’s assistant. I did all I could to lighten her load.

  I’d been around Amelia’s home so much that I’d caught on to the way she ran things. Without her having to ask, I helped with the chores. Each time I used a plate, I washed it, dried it, and put it in the cabinet. While I was with my parents, I’d been going through a no-meat phase. I got over that real fast. A permanent boarder can’t be picky. I mean, I’m still pretty picky, but maybe less so because of my experience, which, in retrospect, is probably a good thing. My parents had babied me when it came to food. Between meals, Gabriela would sometimes grab a snack from the fridge; I got Amelia’s permission before I ate anything. “You know,” Gabriela would tease me, “you don’t have to ask my mom every time.” But I was reluctant to be so free. She was the daughter; I was the company. She could get away with things I wouldn’t try.

  I was so mindful of not rocking the boat that you can imagine how upset I was if I somehow did. Several weeks into my stay, Gabriela pulled me aside.

  “Um, can I talk to you for a sec?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. My throat tightened.

  “I know you don’t mean for this to happen,” she continued, “but my sister has been finding a lot of your hair in the bathroom.”