True North

by Nicole French

  Layla places a light hand on my arm. “Stop. I’ll be fine. I’m not violating any laws here, and I’ll meet you in New York in a few days, okay? I promise.”

  I sigh. This is so damn wrong. Here I am, sending my brand-new fiancée and my unborn baby on a plane to a country where U.S. citizens aren’t supposed to go. And to top it all off, Layla doesn’t even really speak the language. They’re going to take one look at her big blue eyes and trusting face and eat her alive. Fuck.

  It goes against everything I know to be right. And yet…it’s the only thing to do.

  “Nico,” she says again, pulling me out of my misery. “Go and get Carmen, okay? Take care of your mother. I’ll be there in a few days.”

  The loudspeaker calls the number and the boarding information of her flight one last time. Layla presses a final kiss to my lips, and I pull her closer, taking a little more. I’d rather walk through fire than put her in danger. But this is how it has to be.

  “Two days,” I murmur against her lips. My hand drifts up her side to where, underneath her thin t-shirt, the words “saudade para tí ” are etched over her ribs––just like the Portuguese equivalent is on mine. Fuck. I miss her already, and she’s not even gone.

  She bites my lower lip softly. “Promise. I love you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  And then, because I can’t not do it, I pick her clear up off the floor and kiss her, the kind of kiss that I shouldn’t do in front of her father or any polite company. But it’s the kind of kiss that really lets her know everything that’s racing through me at the moment. Fear. Love. Lust. Worry. I kiss her until we’re both breathless, ignoring the whistles flying around the terminal, the glares from her dad, the fact that the flight attendants are making the last boarding call right now.

  And when I finally put her down, Layla just looks at me with those big blue eyes that see straight through me. That always have. She clasps my face and presses one last kiss on my lips.

  “I know,” she murmurs. “I know.”

  And with a touch of her forehead to mine, she turns and leaves.

  “Baby!” I call out when she’s halfway out the door, about to follow the last of the passengers toward the small plane waiting on the runway.

  She turns and looks at me.

  “Be good!” I call out.

  As the words register, Layla grins––that bright smile that shot an arrow through me the first time we met. And for the first time all day, I think that maybe things might really turn out all right. Because who could resist a smile like that?

  And then it’s just her dad and me, standing side by side as Layla’s plane taxis around the runway and eventually takes off with the woman we both love. When it finally disappears, Sergio turns to me, his face sagging with guilt. I get it. Layla isn’t someone who is ever easy to say goodbye to. And as much of an asshole as he is, I also know that deep down, Sergio loves his daughter.

  “Your flight,” he says. “It leaves…”

  “In an hour,” I tell him.

  His relief is obvious––he’s glad he won’t have to share his apartment with me for another night, and he won’t have to keep me company much longer either. Well, I feel about the same. The guy is a dick. He’s a sorry dick right about now––he realizes, on some level, that he’s pretty much lost his daughter, and to the kind of guy he never wanted her to be with in the first place. Well, fuckin’ tough. I’m done being made to feel like I’m not good enough for her.

  I wasn’t able to fly with Layla to Rio––the quickest way back to New York that I could still afford was routed through São Paulo––though how going an hour and a half in the wrong fuckin’ direction is quicker, I’ll never know. But it is what it is.

  Sergio turns, and to my surprise, holds out his hand. I pause for a second, then take it. He squeezes it tight, more tightly than I would have thought someone with such slim hands could. Skilled hands. A surgeon’s hands.

  “Thank you,” he says again. “For what you did for her.”

  I don’t say anything, just nod. I wonder if he remembers thanking me for the same thing the night before, or if he was too drunk. But I don’t say anything, because what else is there to say? He still has a nasty purple bruise on his face from where I hit him, and my right knuckles have a nice scab building from where they split on his cheekbone. And the thing is, I’m still not sorry.

  “Will we see you at the wedding?” I ask.

  He blinks, like he’s forgotten all about that. Then he closes his eyes, almost as if he’s in pain, and rubs his forehead. Probably is––whiskey makes for a hell of a hangover.

  “Yes,” he says in the end. “Of course. Yes, I will be there.”

  “Good,” I say. I couldn’t care less if he came, but I know Layla will. It’s important to have your dad there when you get married. I get that.

  He nods, then turns to go.

  “Take care, Dr. Barros,” I call after him, sending a quick wave. I figure I can give him that. He’s not Dr. Barros in my head anymore, but I can pay him the small respect he asked for in the beginning. It’s the least I can do for taking away his daughter.

  He pauses, frowns a little, then surprises me.

  “Sergio,” he replies. “The next time you see me––my name is Sergio.”

  And then he’s gone.

  ~

  From there, I take three of the longest fuckin’ flights of my life. The hour and a half to São Paulo feels like four, and the eight and a half to Miami feel like twenty. By the time I stumble off the last three-hour flight into the arrivals gate at JFK, I’ve been traveling for close to twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours, and I have no fuckin’ clue what happened to Layla after she left. There isn’t much in the way of cell phone service in Cuba, and what little they have sure as shit doesn’t service American cell phones.

  For now, there’s nothing on my voicemail. Not a hey, I’m good. Don’t fuckin’ worry. Nothing.

  I dial Maggie’s number as soon as I’m off the plane, but it goes straight to voicemail. Next up is Gabe, who picks up right away.

  “Coño!” he shouts so loud I have to hold the phone away from my ear. “There you fuckin’ are. We’ve been waiting for hours for you to land.”

  I yank my duffel and garment bag over my shoulder as I truck out to the curbside, looking for the shuttles into town. It’s more expensive, but there’s no way I’m taking the train back into the city. I need to be able to communicate with everyone and get up to speed.

  “My flight was delayed in Miami,” I tell him. “But I’m here now. What’s good?”

  Gabe gives me the low-down on Ma’s situation. “She’s being held in a detainment facility upstate,” he says. “In Albany.”

  “Albany? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? With all the illegals in New York, immigration doesn’t have a holding center in the city?”

  I hand a porter the fare and let him take my bags, then board a bus headed for Manhattan.

  Gabe’s laughing in my ear. “Real estate, mano,” he says. “That’s what Ileana said. Too expensive.”

  I’m glad he’s laughing because I’m fuckin’ not. Not while my mother is locked in a fuckin’ detainment center hours away in Albany, close to the other facility where I wasted two years of my life. I shiver. I remember what it was like to be carted up there in some shitty van. I’d never left the city before. And suddenly I was in the middle of nowhere, staring at vacant lots of snow, tiny towns full of trailers and bare-branched trees. It was the perfect place to send criminals. A place where they could abandon you. Forget you.

  I imagine my mother, who hasn’t left New York since she first arrived in the mid sixties, when she was maybe ten, at most. She’s a woman who barely speaks English, who’s lived her life behind the thick curtain of the Puerto Rican community in New York for fear of exactly what is happening to her right now. I imagine her fear. And fuck, it makes me want to hit something. Because for the first time, I can’t get to her. I can’t protect her.


  I never should have gone to Brazil.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Gabe’s saying, breaking me out of my thoughts. “Ileana’s up there now. She says the deportation officer set a bond, and—”

  “A bond?” I ask. “They can do that? I thought if you were caught, that was it.”

  “Claro, they can,” Gabe replies. “And they do. She can’t go anywhere, though. Her hearing is set three days from now downtown. She has to appear before a judge, I guess, just like any other charge.”

  “So they had to cart her all the way up to Albany just to assign her a court date back in New York? That makes no fuckin’ sense.” I shake my head.

  Gabe chuckles again. “That’s the government, right? That’s why they shipped you upstate too instead of Spofford, am I right?”

  I snort. A few more people get onto the bus, and eventually the porter swings on and shuts the door behind him, calling out the stops in Manhattan coming up.

  “So where are you?” I ask as the van starts moving. “Give me the address, and I’ll meet you there. We can go get Ma together.”

  Gabe just laughs, and in the background, I swear I can hear the sound of my sisters cackling.

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen, bro,” he says plainly. “We’re on a bus to Albany. Me, Maggie, Selena, and even Allie.”

  “What?!” I practically explode out of my seat.

  “Shhh. You’re going to wake up Allie, man. She’s asleep. It’s just a little road trip,” Gabe says, way the fuck more playfully than he should, considering. “Go home. Get some sleep. We’ll be back tonight, and Ma will be with us. Don’t worry, mano. We got this.”

  ~

  It’s almost dark by the time I finally get back to the apartment on Chrystie Street. My mind is still working a million miles a minute, but all of the thoughts are sloshing together, lost in a haze of jet lag and worry. Gabe and my sisters will stay the night in Albany––there’s no way they’ll be able to get up there soon enough to get Ma out tonight. Which means I’m stuck here like a buster, playing the waiting game for everyone else to fix shit.

  It’s not a role I’m used to.

  I trudge up the five flights of stairs and unlock the door, breathing in the familiar scents of home as I do. They’re stale, since the apartment has been shut up for a week, but still there: leftover coffee, a little bit of Lysol, linens and towels, and the vanilla-scented candles Layla likes. It’s barely been a week, but I’m glad to be back. I don’t know why it surprises me still that this place feels so much like home. But not now, I realize. Not without her in it.

  “There you are.”

  “Jesusfuckin’Christ!” I practically jump out of my skin at the sound of a low, female voice coming from the couch on the far side of the living room.

  The voice laughs lightly as I turn around, and then Cheryl Barros stands up and smooths out the front of her pants.

  “What the…”

  I stare, dumbfounded, until she’s standing in front of me: Layla’s mother.

  “You look tired,” she says. “It’s a terrible flight, isn’t it? I always hated going there, just for that reason alone. Did you go to the farm too?”

  Wordlessly, I shake my head. What the fuck is happening?

  Cheryl shrugs. “You didn’t miss much. I’ts awful. Two hours of winding roads up a river, and the place is absolutely swarming with mosquitos. Layla liked it when we visited, of course, but I could never sleep well in a house without screens on the windows.”

  My mouth works, but still, no words come out. I don’t even know what she’s doing here. How she got in here. But…of course.

  This apartment is in Cheryl’s name. It’s her lease. Of course she has a key. Of course she can get in. Of fucking course.

  “I came to help,” she says. “But also because my husband had some very interesting things to tell me after the two of you caught your flights.” She walks around the couch, takes a seat at the dining table, drums her fingernails on the lacquered wood, and looks expectantly at me.

  “I think,” she says, “you’d better come sit down. And tell me exactly where my daughter and grandchild are at the moment. And how it is you came to have a key to her apartment in the first place.”

  ~

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Layla

  The city hall building is old, white, and the stucco gleams under the bright Caribbean sun. Unlike many of the buildings I passed while riding in the back of the 1950s taxi here, it’s relatively well maintained, with its Spanish-style architecture that lords over the palm tree-laden square. It’s not the picture that we’re often painted of Cuba in the U.S.––a dilapidated country full of old cars and inadequate systems. There is certainly some of that; I’ve seen more vintage cars here than I ever thought existed in the world. But this building stands tall and bright. There’s nothing dilapidated about it. If anything, it’s pretty intimidating.

  Not for the first time, I shake my head, wishing Nico were here. It feels wrong, somehow, that I’m seeing the country where his mother was born before him. Of course, I’m barely seeing it, I’m so tired. It took me three flights to get here––Vitória to Rio to Santo Domingo to, finally, Santiago at about 10 a.m. I left my bag at the small casa, one of the common local accommodations that are kind of like bed and breakfasts run out of people’s houses, where the Brazilian travel agent booked me. Then I went straight to the registry after receiving directions from the house owner. I’ve been traveling for almost twenty-four hours straight, and I’m exhausted. But my flight to Montreal is tomorrow, and then it’s home. I just need this piece of paper. And the office here in Santiago, where Nico’s mother was born, is open.

  It takes a while to find the correct room inside the city hall, while I skirt past several men and two women in green uniforms, all with guns holstered to their waists. It’s not uncommon to see a military presence in Brazil, and there were some in the airport in Santo Domingo too. But here in Cuba, the military seems stronger, or at least more ubiquitous. I was warned before coming not to take pictures of them or talk to anyone about politics. The last thing I want is to be accused of spying or insurgency.

  I know I’ve got the right door when I walk into a room containing a single clerk at a desk in front of a back room filled with filing cabinets. Filing cabinets mean one thing: records. It reminds me of a library at school––austere, poorly lit, and badly ventilated. A few people are slumped in the chairs scattered around the perimeter of the waiting room; others lean against the wall, while others are just sitting on the floor, looking half-asleep. I take my place at the end of the line and wait. And wait. And…wait.

  When it’s finally my turn, the clerk is abrupt.

  “How can I help you?” she asks in Spanish that is so clipped around the consonants, I can barely understand her. But her meaning is clear enough.

  “Necesito un certificato del navidad,” I state in my awkward Spanish. I’m not as bad as I was a year ago, but I know my pronunciation is poor. “Para mi madre.”

  The clerk frowns. I’m guessing she gets this request a lot. I’ve already been informed by multiple people at the casa that getting records here is difficult, particularly since technically people are not allowed to take them out of the country. The process, therefore, usually requires extra money to grease the wheels. Luckily, I have a stack of that.

  I take out a set of bills in the approved Cuban tourist currency, and lay them on the counter for her.

  “For the fee,” I say, though she hasn’t mentioned anything of the sort.

  The clerk examines the stack, like she’s trying to evaluate what I’m doing. Everything about her expression is suspicious, and again, I’m desperately wishing that Nico were here with me. He knows how to read people so much better than me. He’d take one look at this woman, wink and make some crazy joke in Spanish that would put her at ease, and ten minutes later he’d probably have flirted ten birth certificates out of her instead of just the one I need.<
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  The clerk reaches out slowly and taps a finger on the bills. Then she pushes it back to me and whips out a faded form before rattling something in Spanish that I’m guessing means roughly “fill this out, you idiot American.”

  I take the paper and pen and tuck the bills back in my bag. I’ll try again in a minute. This has to work. It has to.

  An hour later, I wait through the line again to hand her the paper. Again, I set the stack of bills on the counter while she goes over the paper. But this time, her response is almost immediate. She stamps a clear red mark across the top of the paper: Negado. Denied.

  “What? No! Please, I’ve come all this way!” I pull out another wad of cash from my purse and slap it on the counter. What else can I do? “Please! Por favor. I’ll pay extra, I will. Pagaré…mucho,” I translate poorly, lacking the vocabulary I need to make my point.

  But she knows what I mean. She just doesn’t want to do it. For whatever reason, the clerk shakes her head and starts waving the money away, almost like she doesn’t want to look at it.

  “Por favor,” I try again, this time more calmly. “It’s not for me. It’s for my fiancé’s mother––la madre de mi novio. She needs the certificate so she can live legally in New York. She’s been there since she was a girl, and now she’s in custody with immigration. If I don’t bring back the document tomorrow, they’ll deport her. Please!”

  The woman looks me over, her sharp eye slanted with doubt. “She is in America?” she asks in clear, obvious English.

  I swallow with relief, and a little bit of irritation. She let me go through all of that terrible Spanish when she speaks perfectly good English? “Yes. Yes, she is.”

  Again, her sharp gaze drops down over me, lingering on the watch that encircles my wrist, then travels back up to look me in the eye. “Then maybe it’s time for her to come home.”

  My entire being droops as I turn from the desk. I failed. I have six people waiting for me to return to New York with the document that will keep their family intact, and I have no idea what to do next. This was the end of the line, and there are no other choices, other than Carmen begging clemency from the court system. The money I have didn’t work. What the hell am I going to do?