A Blossom of Bright Light

by Suzanne Chazin

  “I just want to help you—”

  “No! What you want is to prove to yourself that I have nothing to do with this situation. I’ve already told you that, but you don’t believe me.”

  Do I? Vega couldn’t deny the nugget of truth to her words. She’d become a complex girl in her teenage years. He couldn’t always read her correctly. He needed to be sure.

  Joy clicked her remote, and the Volvo’s doors all powered open. She opened the driver’s side and tossed her backpack onto the front passenger seat. Then she turned to her father. “You know how you can help me?”

  “Tell me and I’ll do it.”

  “Back off.” She got into her car, slammed the door, and pulled out of the driveway. A moment later, she was gone. Like her mother. Like Adele. Women always walked out on him, one way or another.

  He couldn’t head home—not yet. Not with everything running through his head. He pulled off at the next side street and dialed Greco.

  “You better be calling me long distance from that lean-to in the woods you call home.”

  “I’m headed there now.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Well, here’s something else you might not like the sound of.” Vega began telling Greco about his conversation with Esme Gonzalez. Greco erupted in an explosion of curses.

  “What the—? Are you smoking something, Vega? You interrogated a respected member of the Lake Holly Hispanic community—in my backyard, on a case that you’ve been ordered to stay away from?”

  “It wasn’t an interrogation, Grec. It was a conversation while I was picking up my daughter from her tutoring gig. I have a right to pick up my daughter. And besides, I got a hunch Esme knows something.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  “Says you?”

  “Says a DNA test from the county lab.”

  Vega turned off his engine. “What DNA?”

  Silence.

  “Not Joy’s DNA?”

  “Relax. It’s not Joy’s.”

  “Then whose?”

  Greco sighed. “Let’s just say your Neto lead wasn’t a total waste.”

  “Don’t tell me Neto’s the baby’s father?”

  Greco laughed. “I don’t even want to picture that one. But you’re warm. The DNA came back a ninety-nine percent likelihood that Neto and Baby Mercy share the same father.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Vega. “So that means—?”

  “That gardener, Romeo Rivera, really gets around.”

  Chapter 24

  The rest of Thursday passed in a blur for Dulce, Mateo, and Luna. Doña Esme offered to take them to McDonald’s after they left court, but none of them were hungry and Mateo was afraid he’d throw up again. So instead she took them back to their old apartment and told them to each pack one black garbage bag of clothes and personal items to take to her house.

  “Only one bag?” asked Dulce. She had enough stuffed animals alone to fill a bag.

  “I can’t have all this stuff in my house,” said Doña Esme. She dismissed their mementos and family pictures with a wave of her hand. “Your things will be safe. Don’t worry. We’ll put them in storage for you.”

  The Gonzalezes had such a big house and their place was so tiny, Luna thought they’d be able to bring all their personal stuff with them. Dulce’s lips began to quiver. Luna knew she didn’t want to part with her animals. Luna helped her pack her favorites: a duck with an orange beak and oversized feet she’d had since she was a baby, a pink and blue cow Mami used to sing to, a flowered pig Papi won for her at the county fair. Mateo took his Matchbox classic car set, his baseball bat and glove, and a picture of Papi and Mami at La Bella Vita. Luna chose a few of her favorite books, some family photos, and her mother’s pot of pink begonias, which she rested on top of her garbage bag. She left her Better Homes and Gardens magazines behind. All they did was remind her of the things that could never be.

  Until this day, Luna had thought of herself as an American girl—no different from any other girl at Lake Holly High. She watched TeenNick and listened to One Direction. She recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at school. She knew all the words to “The Star Spangled Banner” (unlike most of her friends). She even shared a birthday with her adopted country: July Fourth. When she was small, she thought all those fireworks were just for her.

  Luna didn’t have a country anymore. Or an allegiance. Her father was her allegiance. The hole in her heart was so big, she couldn’t imagine filling it with anything except bitterness.

  Don’t let anything come between you and what you want to do in this life. Her father’s last wish. Luna was too angry to want to follow it. She was even angry at Papi. How could he bring her to this place only to abandon her with two young siblings to care for? Maybe if they’d stayed in Mexico, Mami would still be alive. At the very least, they’d be together. She’d feel whole.

  “I wanted to take all of my animals,” Dulce whimpered.

  “It’s just for a little while,” Luna whispered. She kept trying to tell herself the same thing.

  Doña Esme put her hands on her hips and surveyed their apartment. She sighed. “We’ll give the keys back to the landlord later today, and I’ll see if someone at your church can buy your father’s car. We’ll have to let the school know to pick you all up at our house tomorrow.”

  Luna knew what she was saying was practical, but it felt painful right now to contemplate. She couldn’t imagine going back to school. She couldn’t imagine sitting in class with Mr. Murphy yammering on about Catherine the Great and the Russian serfs and believing that any of it mattered. If Grace changed her mind and asked Luna to do the talent show now, she’d say no. Who cares about a dumb talent show? Who cares about anything?

  Doña Esme ordered the three children to grab their garbage bags to leave. Luna tried to help Dulce with hers, but she was carrying too many things. The terra-cotta flowerpot slipped from Luna’s hands and cracked in two on the bare floor. Dirt scattered everywhere. Mami’s beautiful plant lay sideways in the clay shards.

  “No! No!” Luna began to cry. Mateo and Dulce dropped their bags and tried to gather the pieces of pottery and dirt around the little plant.

  “Just leave it,” Doña Esme ordered. “The landlord will clean it up.”

  “But it’s my mother’s plant!” cried Luna. “I can’t leave without it!”

  Doña Esme sighed impatiently. “Find something to stick it in and let’s get going.”

  Luna found an empty coffee can in the garbage. Mateo and Dulce helped her scrape the dirt off the floor and into the can. They did their best to tuck it around the plant roots. The little begonia looked sad and displaced—just like them.

  In the car, Luna held the can on her lap. Dulce and Mateo were quiet.

  “When do you think we’ll be able to talk to Papi?” Luna asked Doña Esme.

  Doña Esme seemed annoyed by the question. Or maybe she just sensed that no answer she gave was the one they wanted. “Mr. Katz told me you have to search the ICE database by your father’s alien registration number.” Alien registration number. It made him sound like he was from Mars.

  “I don’t know where that is.” What if Luna couldn’t find the number? Then what?

  “It’s on his order-of-removal forms,” said Doña Esme. “Mr. Katz said they only update it every eight hours or so and your father has to be processed first, so I don’t think you’ll know anything until tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “Will he call? He still has his cell phone.”

  “I don’t think they let you hold onto your cell phone until you’re released from custody. I don’t know.”

  “Will he be here? In New York?”

  Doña Esme shrugged. “I had a cousin deported years ago. They moved her all around the country—Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Texas—before they finally deported her across the border. They don’t take you all the way back to where you’re from, you know. Your father will end up in someplace like Nogale
s, just across the border. He’ll have to make the long journey home himself—unless he decides to try to cross back right away. Then I guess he’ll stay around Nogales.”

  “Do you think he’ll try that?”

  Doña Esme bit her lip and considered the question. “I hope not. It’s very, very hard these days. Your father isn’t in the right frame of mind. Everything is very different than it was when he crossed with you and your mother.”

  “Would they deport him again?”

  “That is the lucky outcome.”

  Oh God. Luna wished she’d talked more to Papi about these things when he was here. She’d closed her ears and shut her eyes. She didn’t want to believe this could happen. And now her mind was filled with what-ifs. What if he tried to cross right away in a blind panic to get back to them? What if he died of thirst in the desert and they never heard from him again? Or he got kidnapped by a gang? Or some cholo in Nogales blew him away for the price of a pack of cigarettes? Her father was a very openhearted man. He took everyone at face value. She was a bundle of nerves just thinking about where he might be and what might happen to him. She’d give anything to hear his voice on the other end of a telephone.

  Ten minutes later, Doña Esme pulled up to their house. Its fake grandeur no longer excited Luna. It looked tacky and cheap, like a roadside motel. Even Dulce and Mateo, who had liked the place so much as visitors, were decidedly more subdued now that this was their new home. Doña Esme took them in through the side entrance again. Luna got the impression they’d never enter through the front door. Just to make sure the children understood this, Doña Esme gestured to the front foyer, with its crystal chandelier and huge, brightly colored glass and ceramic vases.

  “You do not play in or near this area. Do you understand?”

  Mateo and Dulce nodded silently. They both seemed a little overwhelmed and frightened by this first formal introduction to Doña Esme’s house.

  “Also, the living room,” said Doña Esme, gesturing to a room on her right. “You do not play in there, either.”

  The living room was two stories tall with a white marble fireplace mantel, a black leather sofa, and a cream-colored rug that looked as if no one ever walked across it. A sound Luna wasn’t expecting floated out of the room: chirping.

  “Birds!” Dulce said excitedly. It was the first happy sound Luna had heard from her since they took Papi away.

  By the living room window, Luna could see a parakeet with a sky-blue breast clinging to the outside of a large white birdcage. Another parakeet with a lime-green breast perched on the fireplace irons. Dulce began to walk in the direction of the birds.

  “No,” said Doña Esme, blocking the way. “The birds are mine. You are not to touch them.”

  The light went out in Dulce’s eyes. She wouldn’t have hurt the birds, thought Luna. They would have soothed her. But maybe the birds frightened easily. Luna didn’t know birds, so she tried to give Doña Esme the benefit of the doubt. Still, she wished the woman had let Dulce pet or feed one, even with her supervision.

  Doña Esme must have realized she was a little abrupt with Dulce because she added, “The blue-breasted one is the boy, Chavo. The green-breasted one is the girl, Flor. They are my babies.”

  Luna thought it was a strange thing to say given that Doña Esme had three healthy sons. And yet, looking around, she noted that there wasn’t a single photograph of the children anywhere. Not on the mantel. Not on the bookshelf with its perfect groupings of pottery and glassware. Not in the front hallway. The whole house looked as if no one really lived here. What did it say about people when they could live in a place without showing a trace of their true selves?

  The Gonzalez boys came home from school in the afternoon. They tried to be kind and respectful of Luna and her siblings’ grief. They didn’t ask a lot of questions or talk too animatedly about their day. After their homework, Alex and David took Mateo and Dulce outside to play. Luna sat with them while Christian got tutored in math. After the tutor left with her father, Luna asked Doña Esme for a container to repot Mami’s begonia. Doña Esme found an old plastic pot, and Luna did her best to tuck the roots back into the dirt they’d managed to salvage off their floor. Doña Esme offered to keep the plant in the kitchen, but Luna opted instead to keep it in the bedroom she and Dulce would be sharing. That way, she could look at it all the time. She hoped there would be enough light on the windowsill there.

  After she replanted the begonia, Luna offered to help Doña Esme prepare dinner. Doña Esme set out a cutting board and some vegetables to slice, but when Luna was finished, Doña Esme complained that the tomatoes weren’t thin enough and the peppers still had seeds in them.

  “Your mami didn’t teach you how to cook?”

  Her question sounded like a criticism of Luna’s mother. “Papi was such a good cook,” said Luna. “He always did the cooking. I did other things.”

  “Hah. He spoiled you.” Maybe it was because Doña Esme only had sons, but she seemed prickly with Luna and even Dulce in a way she wasn’t with Mateo.

  In the evening, the señor came home and softened the atmosphere a bit. Luna could tell he was happy they were here. He talked baseball with Mateo and promised both Dulce and Mateo that he would get them bikes, which brought a bit of light to their faces. He didn’t promise Luna anything, and she was glad. She didn’t want anything from anyone right now but to talk to Papi.

  She barely touched her dinner—chicken enchiladas. They were soggy and under-spiced. Papi was a much better cook. But she was glad that Dulce and Mateo were eating a little better again.

  After dinner, the señor checked the ICE website on his computer. It had been updated to show that Papi was in Pennsylvania, in a place called Lords Valley, at the Pike County Correctional Facility.

  “Correctional facility,” said Mateo, mouthing the words like they were coated in something rancid. “But Papi’s not a criminal.”

  “Of course not!” said the señor. “But he won’t be there for long. The government here is like Mexico in one way: they don’t work so much on the weekends. Tomorrow is Friday, and there is too much paperwork to do for one day, so he will probably be there until Monday. I think by Tuesday he’ll be back in Mexico.”

  Luna wondered if Papi knew he was in a place called Lords Valley, and if he could take any comfort from that. She suddenly realized that the three of them hadn’t prayed since her father was taken away. She vowed to try with Dulce and Mateo tonight, if only because she suspected that Papi would also be praying, and maybe somewhere in heaven, God would hear the same prayer twice and remember. She knew what their prayer would be too: the 23rd Psalm:

  Aunque ande en valle de sombra de muerte,

  no temeré mal alguno,

  porque Tú estarás conmigo . . .

  If anyone was walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death right now, it was their father.

  At bedtime, the Gonzalezes set up a cot in Alex’s bedroom for Mateo. Maybe this will be good for Mateo, thought Luna. He’d always wanted brothers. Maybe having Alex around would help keep his mind off Papi.

  The Gonzalezes put Dulce and Luna in their guest bedroom. It had its own bathroom and a queen-size bed.

  “I’m sorry you have to share the bed,” said the señor. Luna didn’t mind. Dulce would have probably ended up in her bed anyway. The Gonzalezes left them alone to settle in. Luna led them in prayer. Then they split up.

  Dulce had Papi’s gift: no matter what was going on in her life, she always fell asleep easily. Luna suspected Mateo—like her—had more trouble. She couldn’t sleep at all. The house was so big and sterile-feeling. There was even a bleachlike scent to the place. Luna was used to the hiss of their old steam radiators, the footsteps of neighbors overhead, the slam of car doors in the parking lot. Here, there was nothing. The only sounds of life came from those parakeets. Doña Esme put them in the kitchen in the evenings. The kitchen was directly below the guest bedroom so she could hear their fluttering and chirping
through the floorboards. It was the one sound that comforted her.

  Just after midnight, Luna sat up in bed. She could hear footsteps headed in the direction of their bedroom. The footsteps stopped outside their closed door. Someone knocked softly.

  “Luna?” It was Mateo.

  “You can come in.”

  Luna figured her brother was scared and couldn’t sleep, but from the look on his face in the pale shadow of moonlight, she knew it was something more. A strong ammonia scent filled the room. He began to cry. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  His pajama bottoms were soaking wet and plastered to his legs.

  “Ay, Dios mío! You wet the bed?” Mateo hadn’t done something like that since he was three years old.

  “I’m so sorry, Luna. Please! Please help me!”

  “Is Alex awake?”

  “I don’t think so, no. The Gonzalezes—they will throw us out on the street!”

  “No, they won’t. Go in the bathroom, take your pajama bottoms off and get cleaned up. Then climb into our bed. I’ll see how bad it is. Maybe I can get the sheets and your pajamas clean and dry and no one will ever know.”

  Mateo handed Luna his wet, smelly pajama bottoms with more apologies. She balled them up and left her brother to wash himself. Then she crept down the corridor to Alex’s bedroom. She just hoped Alex didn’t wake up to see her standing in his room. He might freak out and then they really might be shipped to Queens (though she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t be happier with Alirio and Maria José anyway).

  Luna opened Alex’s bedroom door, thankful that the door was so flimsy, it didn’t squeak. There was just enough moonlight to navigate to Mateo’s cot. The sheets and underpadding were wet, but the mattress and blankets seemed dry. If she could just put the wet stuff in the washer and dryer tonight, no one would be any the wiser tomorrow. Alex Gonzalez was turned to the wall, breathing heavily. If Luna was careful, she could do this without him waking.

  Carefully, she removed the plaid quilt and pulled off the race car sheets that clearly used to belong to Alex and probably were used on his little brother David’s bed these days. They reeked of urine. Luna hoped this was a onetime occurrence. She couldn’t go to school and spend every night secretly washing her little brother’s sheets. On the other hand, she knew he’d be humiliated if Alex found out.