Omar blinked back tears. He had never meant for the boy’s life to become a mirror of his father’s death.
So you do understand me, the man said. The whole lot of you just like to play dumb.
It felt important then, to say at least one thing: You’re wrong. I didn’t do this.
The man shook his head and whistled. Well, that certainly clears things right up, don’t it, Berg?
They marched out of the room and left him cuffed to the cold table. It didn’t surprise him that it felt like hours before they returned. They knew how the waiting weakens.
But they had no knowledge of true endurance. They had never had to rebuild a life, or resuscitate a dead hope. He could tell by how they spoke, as if they knew all the answers to questions they hadn’t bothered to ask.
Here’s how it’s gonna be, they said, if that’s the story you’re gonna stick with.
There’ll be a long, public trial. Headlines everywhere: Illegal Alien Kills Drug-Dealing Teenager. Boy Found with Knife Still in His Side. They stretched their hands through the air, writing in invisible blocks.
His blood was all over you, they said. The store clerk saw you rush out of your car seconds before it happened. He’ll testify. And because you insist on pleading not guilty, the judge won’t be kind when the jury—no doubt—finds you guilty. Twenty, twenty-five years, and deportation waiting for you when you finish your sentence. Green card don’t matter if you’re a convicted felon. Might as well burn it right now. Heck, we should probably take a look at your home while we’re at it. No telling how much drugs your wife’s been stashing for ya.
Omar clutched his hands as they started shaking. The air quaked inside of him.
Don’t sound so nice, does it? they said. Only one making a mess out of this is you.
He laughed, because they thought they’d gotten him. They didn’t know the depths of his real fears. If Elda learned about Tomás dying, she would know how Omar had betrayed her wishes. How he had lied. How he had failed her in the end, because his watching over Tomás had made no difference; he had destroyed their family and their future by making her most haunting nightmare come to life.
That she would never forgive him, fine.
But Omar knew she would never forgive herself.
If only I hadn’t, that night at the stash house, she would say. If only I hadn’t condemned us all.
And if she learned about the knife, still in the boy’s body?
He begged them, Please, leave my wife out of this.
They pulled up their chairs, their notepads, and papers. Tell us what we need to know, and we might be able to make a deal. Get you a lighter sentence for your . . . cooperation.
The detective stretched out that last syllable, and Omar remembered how confused he had once been by such sounds. He had spelled them out phonetically when he was first learning the language, and to this day these words still conjured the letters s-h-u-n in bold blue type in his mind.
Before anything, he told them, no trial. No newspapers. No contacting my wife. Leave her in peace.
They said they would see what they could do, and then they looked at him as if they thought he would begin talking, but he had been in this country long enough to know nothing is real unless it is on paper.
You said a deal. I want it in black and white, he said.
It was another two hours before they returned. The detective who thought himself kind handed Omar a pen.
Omar twirled it slowly between his fingers as he read the pages over. It was such formal language for a life being stolen. His future was spelled out factually, like it’d already been lived by someone else. No lawyers, no trial. He would confess and go straight to prison and in ten years he would be banned from US soil the second he got out.
Before signing, he asked for one more thing. He had seen it in movies, and for this reason he doubted it’d be true, but he needed to try.
I’d like my one phone call, he said.
For the first time all night he checked the clock: 11:00 p.m. Late enough to wake the kids, but not Elda. Without fail she would answer on the first ring to quiet the noise. He would never be ready to hear her voice.
When she realized it was him, she sounded surprised, not worried, and this made him happy, because he wanted it to feel like any other night.
On any other night, he still would have been at work. She hadn’t had to wait for him yet. She hadn’t had to fear that what has happening had happened.
Still, the call itself was out of the ordinary. “¿Todo bien?” she asked, and he imagined the edges of her lips faltering as she tried to keep the doubt out of her smile.
“Everything’s fine. I was just calling . . .”
To hear your voice, he thought.
“I was just calling, because I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” Her voice plummeted to a place it always seemed ready to go to, like she had always feared this, or a version of it.
“I can’t come home tonight. Or ever.”
“Tell me where you are, and I’ll call a lawyer. They can’t do this. We’re residents now . . .”
“No. It’s not that. I’m leaving. On my own. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I just . . . I can’t stay. I can’t do this anymore.”
“You’ve been drinking. Did you get fired and get drunk and think this would be funny?” She didn’t believe him, because he couldn’t himself, either. He wondered how people who really did this, did this, and if they all sounded so coldhearted and clichéd.
“You just have to accept it, mi . . . you have to accept it,” he said. “Though it won’t make a difference if you don’t.”
“You’re not making any sense.” He could hear her crying now, just barely, because Elda was always embarrassed by the first few tears she shed. “Just come home. Come home and talk to me. What is this really about, mi amor? You know you can tell me anything.”
Behind him, an officer tapped Omar’s shoulder. He heard Elda’s voice shrink as she finally asked, “Is there someone else?”
He wished they’d had more time.
“Tell the kids I love them. That none of this is their fault. When they’re older, tell them I’m sorry. Please. I’m so sorry, Elda. I have to go now. Forgive me one day, please.”
CHAPTER 48
Come to the hospital, she texted Eduardo when he didn’t answer. Room 428. Elda was admitted last night.
It was a relief that he sent her call to voicemail. She didn’t have time to explain everything yet again as she walked back to her unit. All morning she had been translating results to Martin, Claudia, and Yessica, trying to keep things simple and matter-of-fact. The mass was growing, swelling inside Elda’s brain. “Imagine a raft being inflated inside a small room,” she’d told them. “It takes up too much space. It makes it harder for things to function the way they should.”
She had heard of it happening suddenly in the younger patients, nearly all at once—parts of the body turning weak, memories coming and going, even hallucinations—but she had hoped Elda was a rare exception. At Martin’s request, Isabel glanced at her chart as the doctor explained what he had found in the MRI. It was so devastatingly typical. The only mystery was why it’d happened in the first place.
Half an hour passed before she got a reply from Eduardo, a simple I’m here that sent her heart racing as she checked another patient’s pulse.
By the time she headed back to Elda’s room, she could feel pockets of sweat sticking to her lower back and underarms. The air in the oncology wing hit her as she entered, cooler than the rest of the hospital by several degrees. Martin stood outside Elda’s closed door, staring at the floor with his arms crossed.
“What happened?”
He shrugged and rubbed his neck with one hand. “She wanted to speak with him alone.”
“The doctor?”
“Eduardo. Do you have any idea what this
is all about?”
She shook her head. “Maybe you should ask him. I would, but you and your mom already think I ask too many questions . . .” In her mind, she had imagined this coming off more gently, reasonable, even, but as the words left her mouth they were full of the hurt she’d been trying so hard to repress.
“Jesus, Isa. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Really? Because you made it pretty clear you don’t trust me when you accused me of giving Eduardo that police report.”
“I was upset. I didn’t know what else to think.”
“So your first thought was that I went behind your back?”
“I was shocked, that’s all. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
“Have you tried asking Eduardo? Did it ever cross your mind to confront him? You act like he’s so perfect, never any trouble at all. It’s like it’s easier for you to think I’m the one to blame. Me, your wife. We’ve known each other since we were in braces, but you give a teenager we hardly know the benefit of the doubt, over me. And you know what? I’m glad your mother knows about your father. He might’ve gone to prison, but at least he’s honest. At least he trusts me, which is more than I can say about you.”
“Isa . . .” Martin placed his hand on her shoulder, but it was all control and no comfort.
“I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” She turned away from him and saw the door creep open. Eduardo stood at the threshold but hesitated to walk through. She knew just by looking at him that he had heard everything.
“I was just leaving,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Later, when Eduardo wouldn’t answer his phone, when she and Martin and Claudia had called and texted so many times that he must’ve turned it off or run down his battery, she thought of all the words she should have said to him.
“I was wrong.”
“I care about you.”
“You’re family.”
But when they finally heard from Diana that he had been pulled over, Isabel wished for only one.
Stay.
Stay.
Stay.
CHAPTER 49
APRIL 1989
The night after he left was laundry night. Elda watched as Claudita sorted the dirty clothes into piles—her father’s long white socks into one pile, his blue button-up uniform into another. She looked quizzically at her mother’s striped blouse.
“That one goes in a third pile,” Elda said. “But I’ll wash it by hand.”
She had Martin sort his and his sister’s laundry, and when they were done, they each carried a hamper down the stairs. The plastic baggie full of quarters jingled against Martin’s thigh as they descended; she had tied it to his belt buckle because he always asked to be in charge of the money.
“If there’s leftover, can we go to the vending machine and get a Coke?” he asked.
“Only if there’s enough for you and your sister.” She held the door open for them and nodded at the empty machines in the corner. “A ver, what do we have total?”
Martin scattered the coins over the washing machine, stretching his arm over the edges to keep them from rolling off. He sorted them into stacks of four, counting seven dollars and twenty-five cents.
“Each machine costs seventy-five cents,” Elda said. “And judging by how much clothes we have, we’ll need to do five loads.”
Martin did the math against his thigh with his fingers, his lips moving in small whispers as he carried the numbers. “Three seventy-five!”
“To wash. And to dry?”
“Twice that.” His shoulders drooped as he realized they wouldn’t have extra change for the vending machine. He checked and double-checked. “We’re seventy-five cents short.”
“We’ll see what we can do.” Elda opened the first machine and began placing the whites inside, plucking out pieces here and there. She did the same for the darks and mixed colors, and when she was done, she had filled four machines instead of five. “We’ll do the rest next week.”
She thought this would make Martin happy, but he only glanced at the stack of discarded clothes she had set aside. It was all Omar’s.
“When’s Dad coming home?”
“Soon. It depends on his boss.” She reopened the machine and pulled out a pair of her own jeans and a large T-shirt she often wore to bed. Into the other pile they went. “How much change do we have now?” she said as Martin turned back to the stack of coins. “Four loads. Times seventy-five cents. Times two.”
She gathered four quarters while Martin busied himself doing the math. When he got the answer right, she gave them each fifty cents. “Don’t take too long.” She doubted they heard as they ran off.
The sounds of water running and clothes tumbling filled the room, the air thick and warm. She stacked her empty hampers, placing the one full of Omar’s clothes on top as she picked up the tub of detergent. Everything felt heavier than usual.
Halfway out the door, Elda slammed the hamper onto the floor. She searched through his dirty clothes for her jeans and pajamas, then tossed them back into the washing machine. The kids would be asleep by the time she would have to switch the loads into the dryer. They always were.
Nothing has to change, she thought. Nothing really had.
Omar hadn’t even bothered to come back for his toothbrush or a clean set of clothes. His things still took up half the space in their closet, and his watch lay face down on his nightstand. Everything was in its place, except for him. She resented this most of all—that he could leave her and leave so much of himself behind.
He’ll be back, she thought, when it’d only been a day or two. But then the calls started coming, and she felt her convictions waver under the weight of her own lies.
“He didn’t tell you?” Elda told Omar’s boss. “Something didn’t agree with him, and he’s been vomiting for days.”
To Elda’s small relief, he didn’t fire him. She thought of how Omar would thank her for this when he came back. In these daydreams, she would lash out at him, but he always said something that made things right.
She wanted to believe that there existed a combination of words powerful enough to undo this. It was the only way she functioned at all. She dropped the kids off at school, like she normally did. She studied, and took her GED exam, and passed, and when she got her diploma, Yessica came over for dinner with a cake that said “Congratulations!”
When she called her mother to share the news, Elda made up a story about Omar cutting his finger as he sliced the cake. “Thank God it didn’t go too deep,” she said. “And the kids think it’s hilarious he used their Flintstones Band-Aids.” She laughed, but when she lied about him now, he bled. By the time Elda had to pick up Omar’s last paycheck, his sickness had gotten worse, and his only hope was a liver transplant. By the end of the month, when she had no choice but to move into Omar’s parents’ apartment upstairs, Elda told the kids that she and their father had parted ways.
“And he’s not coming back?” Martin said.
“No, my love.”
He pushed her away and called her a liar. For weeks, despite his father’s obvious absence, Martin was convinced Elda was wrong. Even minutes before curtain for the school play, Martin told his mother that Omar would be back. He went onstage and searched the crowd for Omar’s face. The silence stretched into anticipation. People cleared their throats as Elda pushed back tears, praying that he would get through this. The realization seemed to hit the auditorium all at once, in one unbearable second: her poor boy had forgotten his lines.
Martin ran off the stage as a new wave of students replaced him, thunderous in their song.
“He’s not coming back,” Elda said, though not even Yessica, sitting next to her, heard. That night, she allowed herself to take up both sides of the bed. She cried into Omar’s pillow, then threw it across the room in a quiet fit of desperation. By dawn, she decided to mourn his disappearance as if he were dead. It would be easier this way. His absence would no longer be a question she had
to answer.
CHAPTER 50
Sometimes when Elda woke, she would hear them talking about her as if she were already gone. Perhaps it was that her eyes took so long to open.
Perhaps it was that sleep already felt like another place.
On the first day, she asked, how long was I asleep? They said fifteen hours, but for her it felt like nothing. It had not been like sleep at all. Not a long stretch of darkness that she later remembered, not time accelerated by dreams or nightmares. It was a blink; it was so unreal. A lonely emptiness, a void that barely existed between a life and a death. She couldn’t place herself there, in between.
She felt better later. More complete. She wanted nothing but for them to be together, even if they didn’t speak. Come, sit, stay, she told them. But they didn’t want her to feel crowded.
She imagined them tiny, tucked under her arms beneath the white sheets, like Claudita and Martin used to do when there were storms, or when the neighbors got too violent. They had been so afraid then, and they were children again, afraid now.
Everything will be all right, she said, but they had stopped believing her words years ago. It’d been the price of growing up. Now it was the price of growing old. They no longer thought she was lying; they looked at her like she believed the wrong truth.
As proof, she held up her hands to show Claudia and Martin her red fingernails. They were vibrant and fresh, like she felt.
When I get home I think I’ll paint them orange, she said.
Claudia offered to go back to the house for the nail polish. Yessica told her to stay; she would bring the entire collection for her.
Don’t, Elda said. It’s not necessary.
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