“I know,” she told Josselyn. “Let’s. Play. Which. Nopal. Loves. Me. More.” Each word was suffocating.
Her daughter’s face brightened at the mention of their favorite game. Even the woman walking a few feet apart from her, the one who had joined their group just a few days ago, smiled. The woman’s name escaped her now, but the kindness in her eyes had become familiar.
“Me first, me first,” Josselyn said.
The child’s steps turned into skips the closer she got to the nearest cactus. It was a short, stubby-looking thing. Not like those tall, tree-like ones depicted in cartoons. The prickly green disks sprouted in clumps. She pointed at one that was asymmetrical: two half-circles stuck together like conjoined twins. One had grown taller and thinner, as if trying to stretch away from its chubby partner.
“This one loves me a little,” Josselyn said. A few more steps forward, and she waited for her mother to catch up. The rest of the group was far ahead of them, close enough to stay in their sights, but not within earshot.
“This one . . .” She bent close to a prettier one now. The shape was almost right, but its skin was cracked and beige. “. . . loves me more.”
“This one loves me not at all,” she said a few seconds later. They had come across a plant that looked like it’d been run over. It had been torn in half, and now each side was twisted in opposite directions.
Marisol smiled and told her daughter to keep looking.
Josselyn shrieked, so loud that the coyote turned and yelled back at them to keep quiet. The sun had started to rise, and the sky was between darkness and light now, not bright enough for them to see much, but not dark enough to hide their shapes against the horizon.
“This one loves me most!” Josselyn said, victory in her loud whisper. The nopal she had chosen was a perfectly shaped, perfectly undamaged heart.
CHAPTER 7
Eduardo slept. Though he said he didn’t need to, his body knew better than he did. Isabel left the door ajar and walked quietly to her bedroom, where she found Martin on the bed with his laptop. She sat next to him, and he looked up, startled to find her there.
“Thanks for taking care of him.” Martin placed his hand over hers, then covered his face with the other, stretching his cheeks and bottom eyelids. “I’m sorry you had to deal with it.”
“We’re dealing with it,” she corrected, thinking of his earlier comment about their families. His thanks was not the best substitute for an apology, but then again, he had ignored the fact that she had snapped at him not even minutes before. “It’s been a long day. Why don’t you turn that off and we’ll go to bed?”
He shook his head and turned the screen toward her. Its white light made her eyes sting, but when they adjusted she saw that he had several tabs open: mostly immigration resources, but also a pediatrician’s website, and Martin’s old high school.
“This is all papers and lawyers and”—he scoffed in disbelief—“that same, constant fear, all over again.”
She thought he was overreacting, and it made her feel like a decision had been made without her. “This isn’t permanent. Let’s just wait till we’ve spoken to the neighbor. Tomorrow.”
He took a deep breath and held it. “The neighbor’s line is dead. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Eduardo.”
“So we try the other ones,” she said, sitting up on her knees. “What about all the cousins and aunts and uncles in that phone book? I’ve seen how thick it is. You can’t tell me Sabrina’s is the only number.”
“It’s mostly addresses, or phone numbers for my mom’s side. On my dad’s, there was only the one number to Sabrina’s restaurant. They almost all worked there. If it really closed, then I don’t know where they went. I don’t get why nobody told me.”
“When’s the last time you spoke with any of them?”
He took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “The point is, he has no one else. We’re it.”
It was like she’d been caught in some twisted game of tag, and now everyone had left the field, tired of playing.
“I’m so sorry, Isa. But we can’t just turn him away.”
“I never said that.”
“Then what? I know this isn’t what we planned . . .”
She needed him to stop talking like this.
“Let’s just give it a few days. Things have a way of working out.”
When Martin said nothing—just went back to his computer—she curled onto her side and listened for a lull in his typing that never came.
It didn’t matter that Eduardo barely woke the next day. It gave them the illusion of calm, but it only lasted until late in the afternoon, when Martin and Isabel realized they had to go in to work early on Monday, and they couldn’t leave him alone.
They called Elda, never expecting she would say yes. They thought she would send Omar and his entire family to hell, but her curiosity got the best of her. “Sabrina sent him? After all this time?”
“You’d think she doesn’t believe me,” Martin said, recounting the conversation to Isabel. “Like she swears I picked up the wrong kid.”
“But she’ll watch him?”
“She and my sister will be here first thing tomorrow.”
Isabel felt her stomach wind itself into a small knot. It stayed that way all evening and into the early morning, when they all found themselves crowded together in the hallway to say hello.
“Look at you, taller than your mother now,” Elda said, brushing off the formalities. She embraced Eduardo slowly, as if worried she might scare him away. When Claudia only extended her right hand to him, Elda said, “The last time you saw Eduardo he was just a baby. Chubby, always giggling. You cried when it was time to leave.”
“I don’t even remember.” Claudia shook his hand and shot them a sarcastic, tight-lipped smile. There were some things the years hadn’t changed a bit.
By contrast Elda was a daily revelation. For the first time, Isabel was seeing her as a person and not just as her friend’s and husband’s mom. She had a quick, urgent energy about her, never spending more than a second or two on any decision. Nearly sixty, she wore a variation on the same ensemble every day (black, flowy pants and a gray blouse with a matching cardigan) and spent her weekdays at the movies with friends or teaching free financial literacy classes at the library. Since she had retired from the school district, the only invitations Elda ever turned down were from men interested in more than friendship. “Love’s too complicated,” she once told Isabel. “It’s a young people’s game.”
Elda had arrived with a reusable bag full of puzzles, snacks, and books that she emptied out on the living-room table. “For later. But first, tell me.” She led Eduardo to the couch. “How’s Sabrina?”
Isabel noticed she didn’t mention any of Omar’s five brothers.
“I don’t know,” Eduardo said. “Have you heard from her lately?”
They all shook their heads, and Martin offered to call again this afternoon. Elda stared at the boy sitting across from her, searching his face—for what, Isabel couldn’t guess. It made her feel like she was a little girl again, an outsider trying to feel her way into the family.
They left him with Claudia and Elda in the living room while they resumed their morning routine, getting their breakfasts and lunches ready in a hurry. Through the partition in the kitchen, Martin told Eduardo about the new high school. The student population had outgrown its campus, so the older grades were moving into a new location this year while the intermediate and middle schoolers took over the original buildings.
“The new campus is beautiful, you’ll see.”
Everyone looked confused, unsure what to do with this information.
He turned back to his coffee tumbler. “The problem is, with the campuses so far apart, cars back up for blocks with parents picking up their kids. Soon it’ll be traffic all day. Did you notice when we picked up Eduardo, Isa? They broke ground for more condos across from the H-E-B.”
S
he had been too distracted, replaying Eduardo’s voice messages, to notice anything at all, and she was surprised to hear Martin bring it up now.
“Who dropped you off?” Elda asked, with the gentle authority only an educator could carry in her voice.
“Some guy. One of the kids I crossed with, he had a friend who picked him up.”
Elda stretched her lips into a delicate smile. “And before that? Did anyone bring you over?”
“You mean, like a coyote?” He shook his head. “Mom said we didn’t have that kind of money, but it’d be fine because Omar knew the way. Or at least he did, before we got separated.”
“Omar?” Claudia said. The way she said his name made it sound like an accusation.
Isabel shut off the faucet and left her dishes in the sink, noticing that Martin, too, had grown quiet. All this time and Omar never once mentioned him. She imagined him smiling that mischievous grin that always seemed to know more than she did.
Elda crossed her legs, sinking further into the couch. “When was that? The last time you saw him.”
“I don’t really . . . I dunno. A while ago. We got separated. I tried looking for him. I got off the train and went back.”
“It’s okay,” Isabel said. She had moved close to him, but stopped short of placing her hand on his shoulder. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”
Elda cleared her throat and excused herself, mumbling something about the restroom while Claudia followed. But the hallways concealed nothing. They heard Claudia ask Elda if she was all right, and they didn’t bother to keep their voices down as they began arguing in English.
“I’ll be fine. I just wasn’t expecting this, that’s all.”
“You don’t have to do this, Mom. You don’t owe him anything.”
“We can’t just leave him alone.”
“Why not?” A voice, a different version of it, caught everyone by surprise. “I can take care of myself,” Eduardo said. He spoke louder in English, as if compensating for keeping it to himself for so long.
“I didn’t realize . . . when did you learn to speak English?” Martin said.
“Omar taught me. After I started school he said it’d be good for me.” His accent was thick, but there was no hesitation in it.
“He was with you all this time?” Claudia said.
“Just since I was little.” He shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “Not all my life. But most of it.”
Elda marched back into the room, her face bright red as she packed up the books she had brought. “Of course. That makes sense. I assume he taught you to read, too?”
He nodded. Isabel and Martin exchanged quiet looks of panic; they were already running late, and there was no way either of them would get the day off so last-minute.
“Good,” Elda said, gathering her purse. “We’ll go to the library and get you some books in English. And you two? What are you still doing here? You’ll be late for work. Go.”
Isabel had left in a daze that clung to her all morning. At the hospital she could think of little else but Elda, Omar, and Eduardo. They were like a light she kept dimming as she sprinted across the ER—focusing on paperwork, making sure she didn’t write Bed A when she meant Bed B—then switching back on in moments between the chaos. By noon she was on her second medication error report of the day when a coworker suggested she take an early lunch break. Isabel made her way to the cafeteria and dialed Elda’s cell.
“How’s it going?” She tried to keep her voice down.
“Oh, we’re just out and about. I thought we’d get a burger or something.”
Right away she knew something was wrong. Elda was never the type to speak ambiguously.
“And how’s that going?”
“Great. We’re just . . . we’ll probably be another couple of hours or so.” A tiny, exasperated breath escaped her, a moment’s hesitation.
“Elda, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“I just . . . Isabel, I don’t know where he is. We went to the library. We dropped Claudia off at work and went for burgers. One minute I get up to grab our food, and the next he’s gone.”
As she sped from the hospital to the burger stand, Isabel’s mind raced. He had been kidnapped. Arrested by ICE. He had decided to run away. He had gotten distracted, wandered off, and couldn’t find his way home. He had been killed, and soon all they could hope to find was a body. There would be canines and neighbors volunteering to search and Isabel would not even have a picture of Eduardo to guide them.
She arrived just as Martin did, and they decided to split up, reasoning that he couldn’t have gotten far on foot. Isabel would check nearby stores while he checked the professional offices across the street. Elda would circulate the neighboring homes in her car.
“It’s going to be okay,” Martin told her.
“We’re wasting time just talking about it.”
“My God. And we can’t even call the cops,” he said, clutching her hand as they said goodbye.
For the next hour and forty-five minutes, Isabel wandered the aisles at Marshalls, then checked every tent and sleeping bag on display at the sporting goods store. She charged through the automatic doors at Michaels and came up with nothing but the smell of potpourri stuck in the back of her throat. By late afternoon, she could think of only one other place there was hope.
Isabel drove home without telling anyone. She pulled into their empty garage, pushing back tears that turned her words into whimpers. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” she said to herself, to Eduardo, to Omar if he was listening.
The house carried a heavy solitude, and as she made her way to the back-door patio, she got the sense that it no longer belonged to just her and Martin. Her breath caught at the sight of Eduardo’s hunched-up silhouette against a lonely patch of grass in the backyard. He was hugging his knees, his head down in his crossed arms.
“Hey!” She rushed to his side and shook his shoulder, but he only looked at her with an expression she had seen many times on Claudia—like Isabel had gone slightly crazy and he couldn’t understand why. “Are you okay?”
He scooted a few inches to his left, and she sat next to him. “I thought you and Elda had gone to lunch.”
He nodded. “Is she back yet?”
“How long have you been waiting here?” She couldn’t believe he didn’t realize what he had put them through.
“Ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Why didn’t you both come back together?”
He pulled a couple of blades of grass from the ground and picked at them until they were confetti in his palms. “Because the police came,” he said matter-of-factly.
“And? Did they do something to you?”
Again with that look. “No. But why would I wait around until they did?”
She studied his face, trying to make sense of what she could be missing. “Back home,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “do you always leave when the police arrive?”
“Pretty much. You don’t want to be around when trouble’s starting.”
“That’s true. But what if you’re with friends or family, and you get separated? How do you find each other?”
“Everyone knows you go home.”
CHAPTER 8
MARCH 1981
Remember this, he thought. Not the air that dries your insides, or the breaths that steal your life. Remember the timidity of the sun’s rays, how they’re barely kissing her face. How her beauty defies nature and her spirit is stronger than this desert.
How she will be the one who survives.
The young man stretched his back, standing taller the more he repeated these words to himself. They had become his prayer.
“What do you think he’ll do to the ones who can’t pay once we arrive?” His wife’s voice, soft but unshaken, was a welcome interruption to his thoughts.
“Why do you ask? We’ll be fine. We have everything we need.”
She sighed and smiled. “Ay, vida.” It stunned him that even now,
when the world felt like it had abandoned them, she could still talk as if this moment were small enough for just the two of them. “I wasn’t thinking of us,” she said.
“You shouldn’t worry about things we can’t control.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close for a quick peck on the forehead. It was a clumsy motion; they were still walking and their bodies collided gently like muffled wind chimes.
“And if I can’t help it?” Her neck strained over his shoulder in the direction of the woman and her young child trailing behind. “She’s so alone. And the girl reminds me of your sister. ¿No te parece?”
He shook his head. Ever since they had joined this group, he had been trying to convince himself it was just his imagination. Just the trickery of longing and sadness. His little sister looked nothing like the girl, but there was something in her energy, in how she sprinted and skipped and rested, then started up again, recharged.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe that’s Sabrina in a few years,” he said, knowing he wouldn’t be around to see it. When they had said goodbye, he had promised to send for her when she was older. She had only cried and wrapped her arms around his leg, and though it had been days now since he had left, those first steps out the door still weighed on him.
“At least they have each other,” he said, worrying that his words sounded selfish, not full of hope as he’d intended. “Like we do.” But it was hard to pull hope from such thin air.
So many hours had passed and nothing had changed. Not the piercing foliage all around them, nor the plumes of dirt their feet kicked up as they moved. Not the sky, which still burned with the same fervor it had in the early morning. It was as if the earth were rotating beneath their feet, erasing any progress.
If not for his wife squeezing his hand every half hour or so, telling him, “Soon, mi amor. Soon,” he would no longer have any sense of time. They could walk for the rest of their days, die among the barren rocks of the desert, and never know how old they had turned, how much life they had sacrificed for this new beginning. He had always thought crossing the border would be hardest, but now he suspected it was this, the in-between, the stretches of miles for the forgotten, where they could become lost but never mourned, or found but tossed back, turned away as if they had never arrived.
Everyone Knows You Go Home Page 6
