Where We Come From Page 16

  Orly wonders if it’s okay for him to open the door or if she needs him to keep out of the way, if even now she means for him to stay in his room the whole night. The moans are right around the corner from his room. After she hangs up, she checks on her mother, then dials Beto, tells him what happened, for him to call the rest of the family and later to meet her at the hospital. When she hangs up, he has only a few seconds to scramble back under the covers before she gently opens his door, the hallway light fanning across his bed.

  “Orly,” she says and touches his cheek, “wake up, mijito.”

  He squints up from his pillow as if he just woke up.

  “My mother had an accident and needs to go to the hospital.”

  He pushes up on his elbows. “Is she dying?”

  “No, mijito, she fell and hurt her leg,” she whispers and sits on the edge of the bed. “Most people just go to the hospital to get better.”

  “And then she’s coming back?”

  “As soon as the doctors tell her. Right now you need to put on some clothes so you can come with me.” She draws back the blanket.

  “But I don’t want to go.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. It’s just to make her feel better.”

  “Still, I want to stay here.” He pulls the blanket back up to his chest.

  “I can’t leave you all by yourself.”

  “Yes, you can, I’ll be okay. My dad lets me stay alone sometimes when he goes to play golf.”

  “But with your brother?”

  “Not all the time,” he says. “You can ask him.”

  “It will be longer than a few minutes before I can come back.” She tugs again at his arm and this time he pulls back.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  There is no siren at this hour of the morning, only the ambulance lights now flashing across the paneling and their faces.

  “Orlando, mijito.”

  “I won’t leave,” he tells her. “I promise to stay inside the whole time. I won’t go anywhere. You can trust me.”

  She tries to find some proof in his words, in his expression, if he might be trying to fool her again, the way her kids used to try when she first started teaching school. But like it or not she knows she has to trust him—as she already has with so much else.

  “Not even to the backyard?”

  “No, just inside until you get back.”

  “And not open the door to anybody?”

  “I know, my dad tells me the same thing.”

  They can hear the ambulance doors opening and closing.

  “I’m going to call you as soon as I get there. And if you don’t answer me, then I’m going to have to come home to look for you. You understand me? That I will have to leave my mother there, alone, so I can come find you, make sure you are safe?”

  “I’ll be here, I promise.”

  She kisses him on the cheek and leaves when the EMTs knock.

  As soon as she closes the door, he goes back to the carpet, this time lying on his back with his head tilted toward the door. The paramedics are trying to figure out how to reach Mamá Meche with the gurney. They wear what look like black army boots but with more traction. They wheel the gurney forward but have to back up into the bathroom in order to turn the tight corner and get to her room. Her cries turn louder when they load her and then reverse their earlier steps. The wheels move forward, the wheels move backward, into the bathroom, out of the bathroom, an inch here, a centimeter there, until they suspend the wheels a couple of inches off the floor and hoist the gurney around the corner. After the second paramedic passes, the last thing Orly spots under the door is Nina’s sandals, the nicer ones with the plastic flowers over the straps, for wearing away from the house.

  19

  She calls as soon as she gets to the hospital and again closer to nine, the time he normally wakes up. He stands at the wall phone listening to her tell him her mother broke her hip when she fell. They just took her in to operate.

  “Your tío Beto wants to go by later and check on you, maybe bring you some breakfast.”

  “He doesn’t have to, I’m all right.”

  “That’s what I tell him, pero es bien terco. He doesn’t listen to people, only he knows.”

  “When’s he coming?”

  “As soon as they bring her out.”

  He asks her if there’s anything he can do around the house, like feed the dog. She takes a moment, tells him she doesn’t want him in the backyard, remember? He remembers. The dog can wait, she says and pauses again.

  “Listen to me, Orly,” she says.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answers, because he knows to say sir or ma’am when a grown-up uses that tone and might be about to say something they think is important.

  “I need you to be extra careful with your tío when he comes.”

  “Why, what’s going to happen?”

  “Nothing, but you know how he likes to ask his questions. He thinks he’s a detective. He might want to go looking in the back.”

  “What if he goes to the other house?”

  “Let him, si no he’ll think there’s something to be hiding. The boy knows not to make sounds or look out the window.”

  * * *

  —

  After hanging up, Orly goes to the restroom to pee and splash water on his face. Last night, once the ambulance lights faded and his room turned dark again, it took him close to half an hour to fall back asleep. He was glad Nina hadn’t made him go with her to the hospital and wait around with all the other sick people and their families. But now he wonders what it would’ve been like if Mamá Meche had died, if he was there to see it. It’s a weird thing to think about and he feels a little ashamed of himself, guilty as if even thinking about it might make her die and it’ll be all his fault. He can’t help himself. He thinks being there might have helped him imagine what it was like when they rushed his mother to the hospital that morning, if he hadn’t been at camp but was still at home when it happened and she fainted in the garage, just before the movers arrived, surrounded by all the boxes she’d packed to move to her new place. If the EMT let him ride in back, holding her hand, all the way to the hospital. If he was there when she took her final breath. If it was like in the movies when the person’s eyelids drop as if they’re only falling asleep. Did her eyes stay open in that creepy way where a doctor or nurse has to come around and shut them? Or maybe, if she’d heard his voice, she would’ve opened her eyes one last time, searching for his.

  * * *

  —

  Beto has barely pulled his work van into the driveway when the dog starts with her barking. He parks halfway under the carport, walks to the middle of the backyard, and gazes at the other house, like maybe if he stays looking long enough he’ll be able to see through the walls. See what he suspects his sister is trying to hide from him, make him look dumb for not knowing what’s happening right under his nose, in his own mother’s backyard. Meanwhile the dog is barking and snarling, tugging against the chain as though she has suddenly rediscovered her purpose in life.

  “That animal has what they call behavioral problems,” Beto says as Orly unlatches the screen door. “Lots and lots of aggression. My sister, she thinks it’s good for protection, but you ask me it’s too much. They need to take him to get fixed. You know, chop them off.” He makes his thick fingers into a pair of scissors.

  “I think it’s a girl dog.”

  “Even worse.”

  He shakes the boy’s hand and sets down a paper bag, the bottom half stained through with grease from his chorizo taco. Orly brings out the paper plates his godmother has started using so he isn’t always washing dishes at the kitchen window.

  “My sister says she wanted to bring you with her to the hospital, but that you wanted to stay.”

  Orly nods, but wonders if his tío is tryi
ng to trick him into saying something.

  “I told her she shouldn’t be taking chances, leaving an eleven-year-old all alone in the house. Sometimes she doesn’t use her head.”

  “Actually, I’m twelve. I had a birthday in May.”

  “Okay then, twelve,” his tío says and hands him a taco. “Happy birthday.”

  “Sometimes my dad leaves me.”

  “But that’s a different neighborhood, where you and your family live.”

  He takes a sip from his can of Dr Pepper, wonders how much he can trust Eduardo’s boy to be straight with him.

  “So did she tell you not to be going outside, you know, allá atrás in the backyard?”

  He says no, shakes his head, and unwraps the aluminum foil from his taco.

  “My sister said you like it with beans.”

  He nods, but then lifts the edge of the tortilla.

  “What?”

  “Just checking to see if they put anything extra,” he says, the steam billowing from the refried beans. “I prefer it without cheese.”

  Beto looks at him without saying anything, just stares.

  “What?”

  “You tell me what,” his tío says and puts down his taco, the sides of it flopping over the edges of the plate. “ ‘I prefer’? What the hell way is that to talk? My sister told me you’re like your daddy, the both of you like to hang out in libraries, pero híjole. ‘I prefer.’ ”

  “I just don’t like it with cheese.”

  “That’s better,” Beto says and uses the paper napkin to wipe the orange grease from his fingers. “And anyways, here nobody puts cheese on their beans. That’s for other people, allá en Houston and Austin, those places. Here it’s puro frijol.”

  Orly takes a bite of his taco, careful to not let the beans seep out the other end.

  “So is Mamá Meche going to be okay?”

  “Ojalá que sí,” he says and nods. “She’s strong, but when they get that old you never know from one morning to the next. Before they took her to operate I reached down and told her in her ear that I loved her. And right then, with her eyes half closed y toda dormida, she says to me she wants to go home. In case something happens, you know, to be here in her house when she dies. In her mind she thinks it’s the same house she moved to sixty years ago.” He sips his Dr Pepper. “This used to be a different neighborhood back when your daddy was your age, before he moved away. Kids playing in the street, getting into trouble out by the canal. All the families watched out for each other.”

  “It’s quiet most of the time.”

  “Quiet because most of them moved away. Now people are coming and going, but people who have no business here. That’s why there’s so many Border Patrols driving around.” Beto looks straight at Orly, waiting for a reaction. “You seen any of them?”

  “Seen who?”

  “The illegal ones.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah, like around the neighborhood or in the back.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “Like people,” he says. “Most are men, but also some women and children. But they’re hard to see because they’re always hiding.”

  “If they’re hiding, how do you see them?”

  “Because they don’t want to hide forever, not like las cucarachas. These ones want to go somewhere else.”

  Orly feels safe nodding to this.

  “Sometimes they’re on the news,” he thinks to say, “if they find a bunch of them working somewhere.”

  “Now you’re talking about up in Houston, that’s different. The ones I’m saying just crossed over and want to go someplace like that.”

  He glances over his shoulder, toward the back door and the other house.

  “My sister, she feels sorry for them. She thinks people should help them out, be nice to them. But I tell her, if the law finds out they’re not going to like it, her doing favors.” He reaches into one of the front pouches of his cargo shorts and takes a business card out of his bulging wallet. With his ballpoint pen he circles the cell phone number at the bottom of the card, Ro-Ru Pest Control. He named the company after the first letters of his boys’ names, Roberto and Rudy. Something for them to be proud of later when they’re a little older.

  “You let your tío know if you see anybody who looks out of place, like they don’t belong, eh?”

  Before leaving, Beto tells him to lock the door, “just in case.” After locking up, Orly walks to the side window and later to the kitchen window, following his tío as he wanders into the carport, peeks inside the trash can for any evidence that his sister or the boy may be lying to him, then drifts into the backyard and toward the far end of the pink house. He squats to glance under the house for a second, then stands and checks the shiny aluminum covering the inside of the windows, searching for a slit or gap along the edges that’ll give him a glimpse of anyone inside the house, but all he finds is his shimmery reflection staring back at him in the foil. He does this around every window he can reach and that the barking dog can’t.

  * * *

  —

  An hour passes. Then there’s another knock at the back door.

  20

  This is only the second time Orly has seen the boy and the first time outside of the kitchen. The boy raises his hand to wave and then looks around the corner of the house, to the street, and back over his shoulder at the pink house. The overcast sky makes it seem closer to the end of the day but still far from the time of night when the boy would normally cross the yard for dinner. He’s wearing the same green shorts from the first night but a different soccer shirt, this one blue and stained with dirt across the chest and a white collar that stands out against his brown skin. The boy lingers in the same spot where Orly’s tío Beto was earlier, one foot on the first step, the other in the dirt. But this time Orly leaves the latch on the screen door.

  “La señora,” the boy says.

  Orly looks at him without reacting, not a smile, not a mean or scared face, even if part of him is afraid and wants to tell the boy to go away, the way he imagines Nina or his tío would want him to, though each for different reasons. Orly’s Spanish is good enough to explain why his godmother hasn’t come back and why both of them are still alone, even if the other boy is already alone most of the time. But if he answers him, how many more questions will the boy have? What happens if he can’t explain the rest? What if he doesn’t say anything but “Más tarde” and maybe points to his watch or where his watch would be if he wore one, and lets the boy figure it out from there? Nina’s the one who told the boy he could stay. She’s the one hiding him, he’s the one who isn’t even supposed to be talking to the boy. Because the truth is, none of this has anything to do with him and in another week it’ll have even less. It’s the difference between answering the boy’s question, letting him know he understands what he’s saying, or not answering and making the problem go away, back across the yard to the little pink house and eventually to wherever he came from or might be headed.

  “La señora,” the boy says, struggling to pull forth the words. “Where she is?”

  The way Orly sees it, his options are (a) shrug like he doesn’t know; (b) tell the boy what he knows and close the door; or (c) tell him what he knows and then go answer the phone that just started ringing.

  * * *

  —

  Nina says her mother made it through the surgery okay but now needs to rest. She’s calling him from Mamá Meche’s room. The doctor wants to keep her in the hospital two or three days before transferring her to a rehab center.

  Nina asks if he made himself something to eat for lunch. Did he remember to take his medicines and vitamins? There’s the chicken salad she made on Sunday and plenty of bread. He can find more bread in the freezer but it’s the white kind, not the wheat bread his father says he should eat. He tells her he
’s still full from the taco he had earlier. She asks if any of the family has called. But no, the phone hasn’t rung since the last time she called. She gives Orly the number to the hospital and her mother’s room for when they call. She asks how long her brother stayed in the backyard. All this but without her ever mentioning the other boy. And so neither does he.

  * * *

  —

  “Un poquito más tiempo,” Orly tells him and holds his thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart to show him it won’t be much longer. They’re sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen table now. “Mamá Meche está mejor.”

  The boy says he came because earlier a man was walking around the other house, trying to look in the windows. It was the same man who wanted to spray the little house and la señora told him no. He’s worried the man might be from the authorities. Maybe he should leave, go away before more come. He can leave as soon as it gets dark, go hide somewhere else.

  Orly tells him the man might be back but not because he’s with the authorities. “Hermano,” he says, “de la señora.”

  But he doesn’t know how to explain why the brother of la señora wants to know if somebody is in the little house. Why it matters to him. Why he kept trying to look in the windows. Why a sister would be afraid of her brother reporting her.

  “¿Por qué?” Orly asks and points in the general direction of the pink house, which is the closest he can get to saying, “No offense, but why are you still here, hiding, behind my godmother’s house three weeks later? What’s up with that?”