Actually, I fall asleep too, which is even more boring.
And do you know what else is boring?
When we finally land at the San Jose airport, we have to stand in a really long line, starting right when we get off the plane.
While I’m waiting in line, it feels like my backpack is filled with a hundred bricks.
“Why aren’t we going home?” I ask.
“We are going home,” Daddy says. “This is part of the process of going home.”
“But I want to be home now.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Daddy says. “We all want the same thing. It’s the middle of the night, and everybody’s tired. Just be patient.”
“But why are we even in this line?”
“It’s the line to get back into the country,” Momma says. “It’s normal.”
I think about what Momma just said.
A line to get back in the country?
That is so silly.
“Um. Momma?” I say. “It’s too late. We’re already inside the country.”
Momma smiles. “Good point. But they need to talk to us before they can let us leave the airport. That’s all I meant.”
“But we live here,” I say.
“Right, but that doesn’t matter. They want to talk to everybody.”
“Even me?”
“Especially you,” Momma says. She makes a wink at me.
I think Momma is messing with me, but I’m not completely sure.
• • •
The line takes forever.
After around two hundred years, we finally get to a giant room made of shiny grey marble. Tall American flags are standing in black metal holders on the floor all along the walls—the flags look so sad to me, the way they’re curled up and drooping. I see a bunch of policemen all around us; as we walk in the door, we pass right by four of them. At the front of the room, I can see—one, two, three, four, five—five more policemen sitting at workstations and talking to people in line, one person at a time. Actually, sometimes whole families get to go as a group and talk to one of the policemen all together.
I tug on Momma’s arm. “Momma?”
She looks down at me and smiles. “What’s up, girl.”
“Why are there so many policemen here?” I ask, pointing.
Momma stares at the front of the room for a few seconds before looking back at me. “They’re here to keep an eye on everything, hon. You can just ignore them.”
That seems like a weird thing to do, in my opinion.
“Ignore them?” I ask.
“Unless they ask you a question. Then you respond calmly and politely,” Momma says. “Be a big girl about it. You know how to do that.”
I look at one of the policemen, a big man with a red beard and pink skin. “They’re going to ask us things?”
“Maybe,” Momma answers. “The way it works is that we stop at one of the checkpoints, then one of the officers looks at our documents and talks to us for a minute or two.”
“The checkpoints?”
“The points where they check you,” Momma says. “The checkpoints.”
I look at the policemen sitting at their checkpoints. “And that’s it? Just some talking and some documents?”
“That’s it,” Momma says. “It’s basically the same thing as when we landed in South Africa, only bigger. Nothing to worry about, hon.”
As we get closer to the checkpoints, do you know what I see?
It’s kind of weird.
I see a person wearing a white mask!
I mean, not like a Halloween ghost mask, but a doctor’s mask. The kind that goes over your mouth and nose, the same kind Daddy wears while he’s working. The person—I think it’s a girl—is walking around the room with a small flashlight, shining the light in people’s faces. It’s funny watching her do that. In her other hand, she’s holding a stick made of white plastic—it’s around the same length as a ruler. I see her use the stick to touch somebody’s forehead; when she’s finished, she looks closely at the stick and nods her head.
“Momma?”
“Yes, hon.”
I point. “What’s that girl doing with that stick?”
Momma looks across the room toward the girl. “She’s a woman, Jas. A grownup girl is called a woman or a lady. She’s checking people’s temperatures.”
“Why?” I ask.
Momma doesn’t answer right away.
“Momma?”
She puts a hand on my shoulder. “I heard you, hon. If somebody has a fever, it means they might be sick. And we need to be careful about the kinds of germs we let into the country.”
“What kind of germs?” I ask. “Like the bird flu?”
“The kind of germs we’re not used to,” Momma answers. “Look. It’s the same as when I take your temp at home when you’re feeling under the weather. It’s nothing.”
“But I don’t want to have my temp taken,” I say.
Daddy puts a hand on my other shoulder. His hand is bigger and heavier than Momma’s—I feel lopsided all of the sudden.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Daddy says. “She just swipes your forehead with that gizmo, that’s all. We have them at the hospital. It just takes a second.”
“Gizmo?”
“The thingy,” Dad says. “The device she’s using.”
I watch the masked girl walk up to a little boy with dark skin and touch his forehead with the gizmo. The boy shuts his eyes and pinches his mouth closed.
“I don’t want to do that,” I say.
“Jasmine,” Momma says. “You’re fine. Everything is fine.”
But Momma is wrong—it isn’t fine. I’m not fine. I stare at the girl as she walks slowly around the room, shining her small light in people’s eyes and touching their heads with her gizmo.
“I doubt you’ll even need to be scanned,” Daddy says. “They only check people who show certain signs of sickness. Don’t worry about it.”
“What signs?” I ask.
Daddy doesn’t answer right away. He looks up at the ceiling like he’s thinking about something. “Maybe somebody’s too sweaty. Or breathing too hard. Or maybe they just look out of it. That kind of thing.”
“But you’re sweaty,” I say.
Daddy smiles, touches his forehead, and then looks at his fingertips. “Am I?”
“Is the girl going to check you?” I ask.
“The woman,” Momma says.
“Me?” Daddy says. “I seriously doubt it, hon. Look at me.” He rubs his tummy in the spot where it poofs out a little bit above his belt. “I’m as healthy as a horse.”
I don’t say anything else—I’m too nervous to talk at the moment.
The line slowly moves forward.
While I’m waiting, I look around the marble room to distract myself from the temperature-taker woman, and soon I see a policeman walking with a big yellow dog on a leash in front of him. The dog is sniffing people’s legs while they stand in line.
It’s pretty funny. A dog in an airport?
I wonder what the dog is thinking about. Does it know that an airport isn’t a place where dogs usually are?
While I’m wondering about the dog, I suddenly hear the loud voices of strangers behind us—I hear curse words in English and other words in a language I don’t know. It sounds like somebody is starting to have a conflict.
When I turn around to figure out what’s happening, I see the line falling apart before my eyes—everybody is scattering like leaves blowing away. I hear three loud pop sounds in a row and I see a cloud of white smoke in the air.
Before I can say a word, Momma grabs my wrist tight, her nails digging in. I hear even more popping sounds, and Momma starts to run forward—toward the checkpoints at the front of the room where the five policemen are waiting—towing me behind her.
I drop my backpack and run as fast I can run. I have no idea why I’m running so hard, but I do.
It seems like everybody from the airplane is running with us—n
ext to us and all around us—and it seems like everybody is yelling or screaming at once. We’re like a herd of wild animals on a stampede. I can’t see anything in front of me other than a hundred pairs of legs pumping back and forth.
The group rushes through the checkpoints like water through a funnel, exiting the marble room. As I turn back to look for Daddy, I almost trip over one of the policemen—he’s lying, bleeding, on the ground, reaching up to me with a broken-looking hand.
The group keeps on running, and Momma and I run with it.
We run down a bright, empty hallway with a tall ceiling and boarding gates on each side with black numbered signs above them. Every time I try to say something to Momma she tells me to shut my mouth and keep running. I hear more pop sounds coming from somewhere ahead of us, and then the group unexpectedly veers off to the right like a rollercoaster turning. I hear an alarm go off—wee-ooo, wee-ooo, wee-ooo—as the group pushes through a red emergency exit door leading down a set of stairs to the outside world.
We run out into the open air.
It’s nighttime. A full moon in the sky is giving everyone a shadow. I’ve never been so scared in all my life.
The group spreads out, and soon I can see that we’re moving across a runway, the actual area where airplanes take off and land. I don’t see a single plane coming or going, though; only parked ones. I hear the sound of everyone’s shoes slapping against the blacktop, and I hear the sound of sirens—police cars or fire trucks or ambulances—approaching from far away.
We keep on running—I don’t know where we’re going, but I see the red and green lightbulbs in rows on either side of the long airstrip, outlining a path to somewhere.
Before long we come to a chainlink fence with spiky, looping wire at the top. On the other side of the fence, I see a roadway with a line of cars waiting at a red traffic light.
We stop—Momma lets go of my wrist. Everyone seems to be breathing hard and looking around like they’ve lost their way. No one looks sure, not even the grownups.
“Momma? What are we doing?” I ask.
Momma wipes her face. She stares back the way we came, keeping a hand on her stomach like she has a cramp. Her forehead is crinkled and her eyes are wide—I can see the whites shining in the dark. I’ve never seen her look so scared, which scares me even more.
“Momma?”
She shushes me. “Just wait, Jasmine,” she says. “This situation is crazy—I know that. But I need you to wait.”
“But why are we running?” I ask.
“Jasmine. I’m not playing. Shut your mouth. Please.”
Before I can ask Momma anything else, I get distracted by a light shining from somewhere behind us. I turn around to look back, and I see a row of headlights at the other end of the runway—the lights are getting closer to us by the second. Red flashers above the headlights are spinning around and around. The sound of sirens is getting louder.
“Momma?”
“Dammit, Jasmine. What did I just tell you?”
I look around at the crowd. “Where’s Daddy?” I ask.
Momma doesn’t answer me right away. She bends over, putting a hand on one knee, keeping the other hand pushed tight against her stomach cramp. She’s breathing really hard.
“Momma?”
“I’m not sure,” Momma says. “I don’t know, Jasmine.” She looks back at the headlights while I look at her, trying to figure out what we’re going to do next. The brown skin of her face slowly gets brighter from the lights—it’s like she’s watching a sunrise, even though the sun isn’t coming.
I check the crowd again, trying to find Daddy, and I see a few of the passengers pushing against the chainlink fence separating the runway from the road, shaking it back and forth. A dark-skinned man with long dreadlocked hair stops pushing, turns to the rest of the crowd and whistles once through his front teeth. He says something in a language I don’t understand, and more people run up to the fence and start to push. Then even more people notice what’s happening and they join too. Soon, almost the entire group of passengers (except Momma and me) is pushing against the fence at the same time. I can hear the metal fence posts creaking, even though the sirens are getting louder and louder.
“Okay,” Momma says finally. When I refocus on her, I see her wide, frightened eyes. “Jasmine, I want you to do what the hell I do. Exactly what I do—no questions asked. Do you understand?”
“But Momma—”
“Stop speaking,” she says. “I’m telling you to do what I do. And you don’t ask a single goddamn question during. Do you understand me?”
I nod my head.
“Tell me,” Momma says. “Out loud.”
“I’ll do what you do, Momma.”
“Okay, then.” She takes a deep breath. “That’s good, Jasmine.”
“But what about them?” I ask, pointing back to the crowd. It looks like the fence is about to fall over—I can see the metal posts kinking where they go into the ground.
“Those people aren’t mine,” Momma says. “You’re mine. So you do what I do. Not what they do.”
Momma pauses for a few seconds before raising her arms high in the air above her head and walking slowly away from the fence—away from the crowd of passengers—toward the oncoming headlights.
“Get behind me,” she says. “And put your hands up high like you’re reaching for something above you.”
“Momma?”
“Do it, Jasmine. Don’t you say a goddamn word. Stay behind me and keep your hands spread open—show them that you’re not carrying anything.”
I do what Momma tells me to. I put my wide-open hands up in the air and walk behind her. I don’t say a single word.
After a few steps, Momma stops walking and waits, her arms stretched high. I stand frozen behind her, peeking around her hip, squinting at the headlights and keeping my hands above my head.
The cars stop in front of us (four police cars; I can see them now). The sirens go silent. I hear the sound of car doors opening and closing—the headlights are still shining in my eyes and the red flashers are still spinning, so it’s hard to see. One of the policemen yells something at us, but I don’t understand what he says.
“I have no type of weapon on me,” Momma calls out loudly. “I’m not resisting you or anybody. My daughter and I are surrendering ourselves.”
The policemen yell some more (this time, I can understand the word Stop) and that’s when I realize that they’re not yelling at Momma and me at all—they’re yelling at the rest of the crowd, the people pushing against the fence behind us.
I turn around and look back.
The metal posts are completely broken, and the chainlink fence is leaning over so far that it’s almost touching the ground. A bunch of people are walking up the fence like it’s a ramp, and when they reach the looping wire at the top of the fence, they pick their way past it and jump to the ground on the other side. Some people are already running across a small dirt lot toward the street with the traffic light.
“Momma,” I say.
She doesn’t answer me. She’s saying something to the policemen—her voice is very calm.
I pull a few times on her shirt. “Momma.”
“Goddammit, Jasmine. Shut your mouth,” she says under her breath. She starts talking to the policemen again, but this time she uses her stern voice.
I turn back to look at the fence. People are pouring over the edge like it’s a waterfall.
I see the man with the dreadlocked hair—it looks like a thousand black power cords—standing in the dirt lot on the other side of the fence. He looks right in my eyes, and my stomach goes cold. As everyone else runs by, he bends down, picks something up from the ground—a rock?—and throws it in a high arc over the fence, over my head, toward the policemen and their cars.
“Momma?” I yank on one of her belt loops as hard as I can, hanging on with all my weight.
Suddenly I hear loud pop sounds—one, two, three—just like the ones I hear
d inside the airport, and my knees buckle.
“Momma!”
She doesn’t say a word; she grabs my wrist and starts pulling me backward, away from the police cars, toward the broken fence.
We start running again.
We run up the broken fence and jump to the other side. I don’t see the man with the dreadlocks anymore.
We run across the dirt lot. I almost fall down a bunch of times but I manage not to.
We run right into the middle of the street—cars screech on their brakes and honk their horns at us as we cross through the beams of their headlights.
We follow the crowd of passengers from our plane wherever they go. I’m crying really hard the whole time. I can’t stop myself, even though I want to.
Eventually we run through the front entrance of a building—I have no idea where we are. When the doors swing close behind us, I fall down onto the tile and scream, covering my face with my hands.
• • •
When I open my eyes, I look around.
The place looks familiar.
The stores, the signs, the escalator.
Then it hits me: we’re inside the mall.
I’ve been to this mall a bunch of times—it’s a brown, two-story building near the airport—but I’ve never been here at night, and never while I’ve been this terrified.
I see my momma almost right away; she’s standing nearby. My heart grows really big in my chest, and I start to cry.
the two levels Page 4
