Three Keys

by Kelly Yang

  The motel was eerily quiet that night. The air, charged and heavy, sent the few customers hanging out in the parking lot back to their rooms. Every so often, I fought the urge to turn our TV on, to see who was winning, but I made myself go to bed early too.

  As I crawled into bed next to Lupe, I closed my eyes and whispered, “Please don’t let Prop 187 pass.”

  I woke up the next morning to bright, blazing sunshine and chirping birds. It felt like it was going to be a good day, the start of a new chapter. I glanced over at Lupe’s bed. She wasn’t there.

  I jumped out of bed and threw on a sweatshirt. As I turned the doorknob, I hesitated for a second, readying myself for whatever news awaited me on the other side. It’s going to be okay. No matter what happened, it’ll be okay.

  But nothing in the world could have prepared me for the sight I was about to see.

  Lupe was in the kitchen, bent over my mom’s lap, crying. Her knuckles were in her mouth. The newspaper was on the floor.

  Proposition 187 had passed.

  The loud telephone ringing echoed in my ear. I walked over to get it, still in a daze of shock. It was Mrs. Garcia, reminding Lupe to stay home that day. Even though the news was saying that Prop 187 wasn’t going to go into effect right away, Lupe’s mom insisted it was too risky to go to school, and my mom agreed. So Lupe stayed with Hank and my parents, and I walked to school alone.

  In class, I stared at her empty seat while Mrs. Welch took roll. In addition to Lupe, Hector, Rosa, and Jorge were also absent. Stuart raised his hand and immediately asked whether this meant they were undocumented. Mrs. Welch snapped at him, “That is none of your concern.”

  It was, though, the concern of a majority of Californians. In the end, it wasn’t even close. Wilson had won by fifteen points, and Prop 187 passed by an even larger margin—60 percent to 40 percent. Sixty percent. That was how many Californians had no problem pulling Lupe out of school.

  At lunch, I waited for the Kids for Kids club to show up to the trailer classroom. Most were absent, though, and the few who did come, once they saw how few people there were, left and went back to the cafeteria. I sat alone in the empty trailer classroom, trying not to think this was it—the club I’d started was gone.

  The door opened and I looked over. It was Jason.

  “Where’s Lupe?” he asked. “I have to tell her something.”

  “She can’t come to school anymore, because of Prop 187, remember?” I said. And just because I was so mad and frustrated at the election results, I threw in, “Thanks to your dad.”

  “Hey! That’s not fair.”

  I crossed my arms. “Well, he voted for it!”

  “Yeah, but he’s one person!”

  “Still,” I muttered.

  Jason threw up his hands. “You know what? I came over to say that I told my mom what she did to Lupe and her mom was not cool. But I’m starting to think it doesn’t matter what I do. You guys are never going to separate me from my parents!”

  He walked out, banging the door, leaving me all alone with my soggy corn dog. I wished Lupe was there to make me feel better. But as I looked around the empty trailer classroom, it felt like the first day of school all over again, and I didn’t know a single soul.

  Lupe and my mom were standing in front of the big palm tree on the side of the pool when I got home. There weren’t a lot of immigrants for Mrs. T’s How to Navigate America class that day—most had called and canceled in the morning, saying they were too shocked and saddened by the passage of 187 to come out. So Mom was teaching Lupe by herself. The afternoon sun stretched their shadows across the pavement.

  “Your mom’s teaching me how to use shadows to measure proportions,” Lupe said. Then she bent down with her measuring tape and started measuring my shadow too. I stood up as straight as I could.

  “That’s so neat,” I said.

  “I also learned about the x axis and the y axis,” Lupe added.

  Wow. That was more than I’d learned in math that day.

  “Lupe’s a great student,” my mom said proudly.

  “And you’re a great math teacher,” my dad said, walking over. She beamed.

  Hank joined us and put his hand on Lupe’s shoulder. “Your mom’s calling for you from Mexico,” he told her.

  Lupe left, and I walked with Hank to the supplies room, grabbing us some sodas and telling him all about my fight with Jason.

  “You know his dad voted for Prop 187?” Every time I thought about it, it made my fingers stiffen. Mr. Yao voted to kick my best friend out of school. My best friend.

  “But Jason didn’t,” Hank reminded me.

  I took a sip of my soda. “Still. It just makes me so mad.”

  Hank reached for a new box of toilet paper. “I know. But you can’t give up on people. It’s one of the three keys of friendship. You gotta listen, you gotta care, and most importantly, you gotta keep trying. Jason’s not the same as his parents.”

  “I know, but …” I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking of all the dinner conversations I’d have to endure at his house if I ever went over there again. Having to talk to Mr. Yao, all the while knowing what he did. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough,” I admitted.

  Hank let out a hearty laugh as he sat down on the chair in the supplies room. “You, not strong enough? You were strong enough to buy the motel from Yao. You were strong when business fell. You were strong enough to stand up to Mr. Cooper—even I thought we should have caved that time. And when your teacher said you couldn’t write, what did you do? You went out and became a published writer!” With a twinkle in his eye, Hank added, “You’re stronger than you think, Mia Tang.”

  Well, when he put it like that.

  “I think you can handle being Jason’s friend,” Hank said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Remember what I told you that day at the park? I’m sure that through your small interactions, you’ll inspire him to be a better person than his parents.”

  Hank and his wise words had helped me so much with Mrs. Welch. You’d think I’d have known it by now. But sometimes, you just needed to hear a thing twice.

  I fidgeted in my seat while Mrs. Welch spent recess trying to teach me how to analyze literature. We had moved on from the beginner stuff to motifs and themes and characterization. She was teaching me things the other kids weren’t learning yet. It was interesting, and I appreciated the challenge, but today my mind was elsewhere.

  Mrs. Welch waved her hands at me. “Hello? Earth to Mia! Are you listening?”

  “Huh?”

  She sat down beside me. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  What was wrong was I was sitting here practically getting a private literature class from a college professor, when my best friend wasn’t even allowed to go to school. And I hadn’t been able to find Jason all day. And most of the Kids for Kids members were still not back in school.

  My eyes started tearing up, and I blinked furiously so Mrs. Welch couldn’t see.

  “Are the concepts too hard?” she went on. “Do you want me to slow down?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not it,” I said.

  “Then what is it?”

  Mrs. Welch followed my gaze over to Lupe’s empty desk. She put her book down and asked me softly, “How’s she doing?”

  I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to get Lupe in trouble, especially now.

  “Her dad’s trial is in two weeks, isn’t it?”

  I looked up in surprise. “How’d you know?”

  “Lupe told me when I came by the motel. She asked me to write her a letter of support for the hearing,” she said.

  I sat up. She did? My mind flashed back to the two of them chatting in the parking lot while my mom was teaching. So that’s what Lupe was talking to her about.

  Mrs. Welch walked over to her desk and picked up a sealed envelope and handed it to me. I gazed down at it, so surprised and impressed that Lupe found the courage to ask, and Mrs. Welch found the kindness to say yes
.

  “Tell Lupe we miss her. And she can come back anytime.”

  “But Prop 187—”

  “The courts have stopped it for now. No one is going to report her,” Mrs. Welch promised. She paused and added, “And even if the courts weren’t blocking it … I still wouldn’t report her. You have my word.”

  As I took the letter from Mrs. Welch, I thought about how different she was from the first day of class. I would never have believed then that Prop 187 would actually pass—or that Mrs. Welch would offer her word not to follow it. I guess Wilson convinced a lot of people, but there were a couple of people I unconvinced myself.

  Lupe was overjoyed when I gave her Mrs. Welch’s letter and message that she could come back to school.

  “But I’m going to miss your mom’s lessons,” Lupe said as we got all our documents and petitions ready to take to Ms. Patel that weekend. We were meeting her at her office one final time before the trial. “She sure is a good math teacher.” Her eyes flashed. “She should be a real math teacher!”

  “But then who’s going to clean the rooms?” I reminded Lupe. “I don’t think we have enough money to hire an additional cleaning person.”

  My eyes slid over to the pile of uncleaned rooms’ keys sitting on the front desk, and next to them, the technical certification books my dad had borrowed from the library. He hadn’t had time to open any of them. They’d just been gathering dust.

  Just then, we heard a scream from Mrs. Q’s room. Lupe and I rushed out the back and found her pointing at her television.

  “A twelve-year-old boy was just pronounced dead in Anaheim, California,” the newscaster announced. “His name was Julio, and his parents, who are illegal immigrants, said he got sick earlier this week, but they delayed getting him medical treatment because they feared Proposition 187 would require the hospital to deport them.”

  “Oh my God.…” I said. Lupe sank down on the floor.

  “Early autopsy results indicate that the boy had an infection. By the time the fire department arrived, it was too late. He wasn’t breathing and his heart stopped,” the reporter continued. “His parents said they were afraid of the consequences of going to the hospital.”

  Lupe rocked her body back and forth. Mrs. Q tried to scoop her up, but this time, Lupe wiggled away. “I want my parents. I want my parents,” she said over and over again.

  Lupe was trying to dial her mom when Jason came into the front office. I looked up from the newspaper article talking about how the tragedy had hit Anaheim deep and many local residents were stopping by Julio’s apartment building and laying down flowers.

  “I saw the news,” he said. “I couldn’t just sit at home and do nothing, so I made this.” He presented a plate of toasted quesadillas, the cheese perfectly grilled and glistening under the fluorescent front desk lights. “Will you go with me, Lupe, to give them to Julio’s mother?”

  He picked up one of the quesadillas and offered it to her. “They’re mushroom with teriyaki.”

  Lupe gazed at the food and slowly put down the phone.

  “That’s nice of you,” she said.

  As she went to go grab her jacket, I apologized to Jason.

  “I’m not my father, you know,” he said.

  I nodded as our eyes locked. He’d been trying to tell me all year. More importantly, he’d been trying to show me.

  “I know.”

  Mrs. T and Mrs. Q’s class next Wednesday was standing room only as immigrants of all different ethnicities and backgrounds flocked to our motel, many of them sick and afraid to go to the hospital.

  As my mom gathered up the little ones and got them started on some math games, Lupe and I went from person to person, explaining to them what Ms. Patel told us. Though Prop 187 passed, there was a court injunction, meaning it couldn’t be enforced until the courts said it was legal. A process that could take years.

  “In the meantime, it’s safe to go to school and the hospital,” Lupe emphasized.

  I repeated the same thing in Chinese for the Chinese aunties and uncles.

  But the aunties and uncles looked warily at us, like they didn’t trust our words. They trusted what they saw: A child had died.

  “What do we do?” Lupe asked me.

  I went and got my dad. When he saw the sick immigrants, he immediately opened up five more rooms so they’d be more comfortable. Then he started calling his friends—all the ones who had been doctors in China, plus Mrs. Morales, the nurse from Mexico, and other Latino immigrants we knew who used to work in the medical profession back home. They came over, and with their help, we set up a clinic right there at the Calivista.

  As Lupe and I brought in the patients and helped translate, my dad asked his friends, who had recently passed the required licensing exams in California, what it was like to work at a hospital or a lab instead of at a restaurant or a motel.

  “It feels …” His friends’ chests swelled. “Like we’ve arrived.”

  My dad nodded as his friends turned their attention back to the patients. They didn’t see him dabbing his eye, but I did. I realized then, there were some things my parents gave up that they could never get back, even though we were making more money. Like the ability to do what they truly wanted.

  At school, even though Lupe had come back right after Mrs. Welch told her she could, some kids were still absent, like Rosa and Jorge. Still, we carried on with the lunch meeting of Kids for Kids. Our top club priority was making a final push to get more signatures for José’s petition! Lupe’s dad’s trial was less than a week away!

  All week, we’d been making last-minute phone calls. We now had 872 signatures and five politicians who were publicly throwing their support behind José. We were so proud of what we’d achieved. It was a tremendous effort, more than we ever thought we’d be able to accomplish. But was it enough?

  The night before the hearing, my stomach was in a bundle, wound tighter than the sheets in the washing machine.

  “If I have to go back to Mexico, will you visit me?” Lupe asked as we both lay awake in bed.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I assured her.

  Lupe sat up. “Mia! I have to be prepared!”

  I turned onto my stomach. “No, you don’t,” I insisted. Why did she have to prepare for things that didn’t need preparing for?

  But Lupe was an over-planner. “If my dad gets deported, both my parents will be back in Mexico. I’ll have to go back; I can’t stay here by myself.”

  “You wouldn’t stay here by yourself,” I muttered to the sheets. “You have me, remember?”

  Lupe reached out from the rollaway bed with her hand. “I can’t be separated from my parents, Mia,” she said. “I just can’t.” Her voice wobbled slightly, and I clung to her fingers. Of course she couldn’t, just like I couldn’t be separated from mine. No matter how hard things got for my family, it was always better when we were together.

  “You’re not going to get separated from your parents,” I promised. “Everything is going to work out. You’ll see.”

  As Lupe drifted to sleep, I looked out the window at the soft crescent moon and the bright stars blinking in the velvet night. It used to comfort me that they were the same stars my cousin Shen was looking at back in China. Tonight, I wondered if Lupe’s mom was looking up at them too, praying and hoping she’d see her daughter soon.

  I hoped tomorrow would bring good news for their family. I hoped it would bring change and kindness and decency. Most of all, I hoped, as I glanced over at Lupe sleeping soundly, that I wouldn’t lose my first and only best friend in the world.

  We took three cars to the hearing—I went with Lupe in Hank’s car, Fred and Billy Bob took another, and Mrs. T and Mrs. Q went with my parents in their car. Hank tried to make small talk as he drove, but Lupe and I were too nervous to keep up our part of the conversation. My nerves were like ice cubes, jiggling around inside me.

  We slowed as we got closer, and I saw dozens of people standing on the courthou
se steps carrying signs. Except they weren’t the same signs people had been carrying outside the jail. These said No Illegals! and Go back to where you came from!

  Lupe’s knees began to shake.

  “Ignore them,” Hank said as he parked.

  I gazed at the tall courthouse bumping its head into the clouds. I hoped the thick cement walls would shield the people inside from the loud chanting of the protestors outside.

  Hank got out of the car and straightened his suit pants. We were all wearing our nicest clothes. Lupe had on a new blue skirt and red shirt, and I was wearing a new white dress. My mom had gone and picked them out for us at Mervyn’s. We looked like we were going to a party, not a deportation hearing, but Ms. Patel had said it was important we looked good.

  Hank took Lupe’s hand and led her up the steps to the courthouse. As we walked, I could hear people chanting, “GO HOME! We don’t want you here!” Louder and louder they chanted.

  Hank leaned over and whispered, “Keep walking. Do not look at them.” I reached over and grabbed Lupe’s other freezing hand, and together we made our way into the courthouse. My eyes slid down to the legs of the protestors.

  Once inside, a security guard asked us to put our things through a metal detector. He was a white guy, a bit older than Hank, with thinning hair and sad gray eyes. As he scanned Hank’s wallet and my backpack, he kept looking at Lupe. I wanted to yell, “Can’t you see she’s going through a hard time?” But as he scanned her bag and handed it back to her, he whispered, “Good luck today.”

  Lupe smiled at him, gripping her backpack tightly. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Lupe! Mia!” Ms. Patel called. “C’mon. The hearing’s about to start!”

  The courtroom was filled with people. Some turned and glared at us, while others smiled. Lupe took a seat in the front row reserved for us, right behind where her dad and Ms. Patel were sitting. I sat down next to her. José wasn’t there yet—they were bringing him over from the county jail. I opened my backpack and gave Ms. Patel our petition—at final count, we’d gotten all the way up to 927 signatures!