Where We Come From Read online

  “So I can call you, Chivito, and you can call me whenever you want,” he said, using his nickname for him since he was a little baby. His grandfather used to raise goats and so Chivito was the name he had given to his father when he was little and the one that his father gave to him when he was born, although by then they had stopped raising goats and moved closer to the city. “And then we find a way for you to come live with me.”

  For the next few weeks Daniel kept the phone turned off and tucked inside his backpack so he wouldn’t be tempted to check his messages. When his sister and mother were away from the house, he would lock himself in the bathroom and check to see if his father had called, which was never the case, and afterward he would plug his phone into the wall outlet next to his bed so it stayed charged for the next time he checked. A month had passed when he finally dared to call his father. It was a Sunday afternoon, a day his father would be home from the hospital where he cleaned; he had told his mother he was going to play soccer in the field near the house with his best friend, Alfonso, who he also hadn’t told about the cell phone. Instead he went to the park, where no one he knew would see him pull it out of his backpack. It rang once and then immediately beeped and went to voice mail, but he wasn’t sure what to say and hung up. He called again the next Sunday with the same result and wondered if his father had programmed the wrong number on his phone. The next time it rang ten times before someone picked up.

  “Chivito?”

  “The phone works,” he said, because until that moment he wasn’t convinced his father would answer. There were voices in the background, people shouting from different directions as if he had caught him in the emergency room of the hospital.

  “Something happened, Chivito?” his father said in that same whispery voice he had used in the yard. “Your mami and your little sister are all right?”

  “No, nothing, I just wanted to say hi, to ask if it was almost time for me to go,” he whispered back.

  “Look, right now is not good to talk. They don’t like us to use the phone at work.”

  “You’re at the hospital?”

  “This is another one, in a kitchen, but only for the ends of the week.” He told him to hold on. For a moment the voices sounded far away, but he could hear someone yelling in English and his father straining to find the words to respond.

  “Better for me to call you, Chivito,” he said after he came back, his voice even lower now. “Soon.”

  He couldn’t tell his father the truth, that he didn’t really want to go to Chicago to live with him, not alone anyway. He had said yes only because he thought being there would make his father also want to bring his little sister and his mother, then they would have to talk again and maybe not at first but eventually they would be happy again. That was his plan, one he kept even more hidden than the phone.

  * * *

  —

  When the time finally came to leave and go be with his father it was sudden, without warning, after not talking about it for months. Things had gotten worse in Veracruz. A few weeks earlier the government uncovered another mass grave, this one with seventeen bodies. A cousin of his father had been on a street corner when a black SUV pulled up and three armed men got out and started firing at another vehicle, in the process killing the cousin and two street vendors. His father said these were the bad guys, the ones moving the drugs. He said there was no more time to wait for his mother to change her mind. He didn’t have to tell him this was a secret, but he did anyway, just to make sure Daniel didn’t let it slip in front of her or his sister before he left for the bus station. Román, his father’s best friend, who he’d crossed with the first time and who had since moved back, would go on the bus with him all the way to Matamoros and arrange for the same people to cross Daniel to the other side. You call me when you make it across, understand? His father said it like getting to that side was all there was to it, like if he could just get across the river his father would be waiting there for him.

  He did call his father, but it was a short conversation because the bald one snatched the phone from him. The price had gone up, he told his father. He needed to send more money and fast, si no, we don’t let him go. His father had to pay extra like the others. One woman and her grandfather had to call their family in Florida to get more money. So did the young woman who was traveling with them, but her money never arrived and then the bad ones said she would have to work to pay the extra money. The work came after they got to the motel and she had to go into one room, while the rest of them sat on the floor in the next room, through the wall hearing her cry, then plead, then the sound of the bed hitting against the wall, and then her crying and pleading all over again. Like this for two hours, for three hours, until she ran from the room to the parking lot with just a sheet to cover herself and next thing they knew the police were pounding on the door and when it opened he was running and running in the dark without knowing where to or for how long or even slowing down long enough to care, which was good because it helped him get away from the one chasing after him, but later he realized he’d left the backpack and phone on the floor in the motel room. It took most of the next day to find the railroad tracks they had crossed and another two nights before he could find the car wash and then the house of la señora.

  He drifts off, wondering how much longer he’ll be here, safe and fed but away from his family, from his mother and little sister, from his father somewhere in Chicago. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to have been caught in the motel room, to have stayed on the floor like they were yelling for them all to do. Maybe being sent back home would’ve been better than being stuck and not arriving at either place.

  * * *

  —

  The cop who’d chased him was also named Daniel, though of course the irony was lost to both of them as the boy bolted through the parking lot, down a caliche road, then over a ditch half filled with last week’s rain before slipping under a barbed-wire fence into an empty field. There was also the irony of the thirty-one-year-old Daniel with a two-pack-a-day smoking habit trying to catch thirteen-year-old Daniel who when he played soccer preferred to take the midfield position where he could chase and pivot and accelerate all afternoon in the sun. Then there was the irony of Officer Daniel Aldridge, the son of a Salvadoran immigrant named Eva, chasing another immigrant. His mother had crossed the river on an inner tube thirty-two years ago and within a few days found work as a maid, cleaning houses. A year later she married one of her employers, Charlie Aldridge, a former Texas State Trooper only recently widowed. Not that any of this would’ve meant squat to the older Daniel, who was losing ground trying to catch his tocayo, as he might have referred to the boy if he had known they shared the same name and if they had met under different circumstances. His mother having once been an illegal wasn’t something that he gave much thought to, first because she was naturalized ten years ago, and second because she was just his mom, not Salvadoran, not American, not Salvadoran-American, just his mom. Besides, he had a job to do, even though, in truth, this wasn’t actually his job, chasing illegals in the middle of the night. That was for Border Patrol, that was for ICE, not the Brownsville PD. He and another patrolman just happened to show up for what the dispatcher had described as a domestic dispute and now he looked like a dumbass trying to catch some kid who was only getting farther away. Which was something he reminded himself of as the younger Daniel, who to the older Daniel would remain nameless, just one more illegal, seemed to find another gear and blew open the distance between his past and whatever future might be out there waiting for him.

  23

  Orly spends the next morning inside reading and watching TV. Nina is back at the hospital but says in a couple of days, when they move her mother to the rehab center, he needs to come with her to visit Mamá Meche. She’s been asking for him. Before Nina left, she made him promise again not to go into the backyard, and so when he does go outside with his pho
ne he makes sure to stay on the back steps, which technically isn’t the yard, though he knows she probably won’t see it that way.

  He has an e-mail from his father saying Kayla joined him in L.A. yesterday (earlier, on Facebook—where he finds out more about his dad than his dad actually tells him—Orly saw some pics of his dad and Kayla at a sushi bar in Venice Beach), but a few days from now they’ll be back in Houston. He heard from Nina what happened to Mamá Meche and that Orly has been good about staying at the house and not wandering off on any more adventures. Assuming everything stays on schedule, which it has been so far, his father should be there for him in five days, Monday at the latest. When he gets there, if Orly wants, maybe they can go to the beach or fishing or both, some guy time. Alex e-mails that he heard about Orly’s sick escape to Matamoros, says their dad never thought Orly had it in him to do something like that. Orly getting into trouble at the bridge is the only thing that got their dad off his case about being caught with his phone. This is the first chance he’s had to use the campground computer (ten-minute limit!) to check his messages. Anyway, thanks for giving Eduardo something else to be mad about. Alex didn’t think he had it in him either. Then Carson texts to say his stepmom figured out how to get them bumped up to first class. She and his dad were in the row ahead of him and this hot Asian stewardess kept serving him champagne—

  [Seriously, dude, like she was trying to get me in the mile-high club.]

  He sends a selfie of her squatting in the aisle next to him. They landed in Munich a few days ago and spent one afternoon knocking around a Nazi museum. Tomorrow they’re taking the bullet train to Paris and having dinner at the Eiffel Tower.

  [Au revoir, bitch.]

  Other than clicking out his replies and the swoosh that follows when he hits Send, there’s not much else happening in the backyard. The sun plays hide-and-seek behind billowy clouds. The parrots cross the river, unfurling their sovereign green flag east to west before dipping beyond the roof of the pink house. La Bronca stands up long enough to shake the dirt from her coat, turn her enormous head this way, and flop down in the cool dirt on her other side. The dust is still settling around her when the most mulish of the clouds begins to part and the sun opens up to the valley below.

  Orly peels off the silicone case and rubs the back of his phone on his shorts until the silver gleams. It takes a while to figure out just the right angle, but soon enough he has the sunlight bouncing off his phone and across the backyard, toward the front door. The glare shines off the Apple logo and if he squints long enough, he can almost see the light sparkling off the padlock. He has to move to the left edge of the steps, dropping one leg into the grass to steady himself, so he can aim the tiny ray of light at the window that faces the blue house. Here it reflects across the aluminum foil, flickering off each tiny crevice of the silver surface. Then he waves his other hand in front of the phone and the beam sputters across the foil. A minute later, the clouds drift back and the beam is lost. And now he’s just some kid sitting on the back steps twirling his phone for no particular reason. The early afternoon is humid in that way that makes him want to go lie down. He stands up to go back inside, but right then the clouds shift again and there’s nothing but sunshine bearing down. Not only that, but across the yard the surface of the aluminum begins rippling until a few seconds later a rectangular window, about half the size of his iPhone, swings open. The opening is turned sideways and when he flashes the light in that direction the little porthole shuts. Then when he kills the light, the window opens. The problem is, he can’t see anything more than a nose or maybe an eyeball. If it’s an eyeball it makes sense why Daniel would close the tiny door anytime Orly flashes the beam of light in that direction. Seeing his nose in the opening, pressed up against the glass, would be way funnier, though. Orly holds on to the back doorframe and angles himself off the top step, but now he sees even less of the opening. He promised Nina not to step into the yard, but he’s pretty sure what she meant was for him not to go to the other house, which he isn’t planning to—he just wants to step a few feet into the yard to get a better angle and then he’ll come right back to where he was. Three or four steps, five at the very most. Just to see Daniel’s nose or eyeball, whatever it is he keeps putting in the tiny aluminum window. How’s that going to hurt anything? But he barely takes his first step onto the grass when the dog comes back to life and starts barking her head off, and a second later he hears Nina’s car pulling into the driveway.

  * * *

  —

  Maybe because she feels a little guilty for being away the last two days, maybe it was all she had available, or maybe it was just time, but tonight Nina makes fideo. Orly helps by setting the table and serving their drinks, water from the dispenser for him, a Fresca in the can for her. She takes the fideo from Simmer to Off.

  “But with one more plate, mijito,” she says.

  “For Tío Beto?”

  “For Daniel. I was thinking about what you said, about him eating allá solito. For the time my mother is away from the house it won’t matter if he comes to eat with us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “For now, yes.” And before he can ask more questions, she’s on the other side of the screen door, headed across the backyard.

  A few minutes later she returns with Daniel, a new checkered button-down tucked into his shorts, his hair damp and combed to one side, but still barefoot.

  She serves Orly first, then their guest, then herself, and sits closest to the stove in case she needs to get up. She asks Daniel if he would like to say the prayer and they bow their heads. He gives thanks for this food they have before them, for her kindness and a safe place to stay, and for the new friends he has made.

  “Daniel had never eaten fideo before he came here,” she says. “Like you.”

  “My mom tried to make it once from a cookbook,” says Orly, “but it didn’t turn out right and my dad had to bring food home from Carrabba’s.”

  “And what is Carrabba’s?” she says.

  “It’s a restaurant close to my dad’s office.” Then he turns to Daniel and says, “Restaurante italiano.”

  “Daniel wants to learn how to speak in English.”

  Daniel nods to this.

  “Carrabba’s is like when we go to Pizza Hut?” she says.

  “Sort of, but fancier.”

  “Carrabba’s,” Daniel says. “Italian foods.”

  Orly gives him a thumbs-up.

  Nina asks Daniel if he has ever tried pizza and he smiles, looks at her like she asked if he’s ever tried something called water.

  “Muchísimas veces.” He raises his hand and flicks it back like too many times to even count. “El pepperoni, el chorizo, el queso.”

  Maybe she will bring it for them one of these nights for dinner, which gets a thumbs-up from both boys. So does saying they can play on Orly’s computer while she cleans the kitchen. Later she will sit with Daniel to make the phone calls.

  Orly brings his iPad to the kitchen table and scoots his chair next to Daniel’s. Orly shows him the hedge maze he started designing this afternoon on Minecraft. Most of it is built, but he needs to add more 3-D blocks to his straight lines and right angles and dead ends, enough to make the hedges so high that no one would ever find their way out of the dizzying labyrinth. He asks Daniel if he wants to add the next layer.

  “It’s easy,” he tells him. “Fácil.”

  Orly shows him how and then hands the iPad to him. Daniel uses his index finger to guide the crosshairs to the exact place on the screen where he needs to tap so he can set the next block of leaves, then find the next spot and tap again, one block of leaves after another, following the pattern that Orly already laid out.

  After they finish the hedge maze, Orly asks Daniel what else he wants to do, but Daniel doesn’t know what to say because he isn’t sure what else you can do with an iPad and Orly
isn’t altogether sure how to explain it to him. So instead of explaining, he types into the search bar and a few seconds later clicks on the Google images that show them the port of Veracruz, the beach, the harbor, and the plaza in front of the cathedral. On the last day of class, Mr. Domínguez used the projector to share these and other images of waterfalls and mountains and said Veracruz was historically significant because it was where Cortés and his men first landed before conquering the Aztecs, which eventually led to Spain colonizing Mexico. He said he’d have a lot more to tell them next year when he had them again in seventh grade. If he could, Orly would repeat everything Mr. Domínguez had said to the class that morning, but instead he says the only thing there really is to say: “Veracruz.”

  Daniel nods slowly, not agreeing exactly and not disagreeing, but only asks, “¿Me permite?” And then in the search bar he taps out “Coatzacoalcos,” a word Orly’s never seen and at first doesn’t think is even a word and is pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to pronounce if he had to. But here are the images of another city. Here no one is on the beach, there are no resort hotels along the shore, the river that leads to the sea is dark brown and as still as glass, the suspension bridge reflected off its muddy surface, and the streets are narrower and clogged with red-and-white taxis and people on motorcycles and delivery trucks passing through a commercial district with people selling fruit and vegetables and newspapers and brooms and plastic shoes along the median of a long street. Orly shows Daniel how to get the street view and move forward. Here some of the homes are yellow, others orange, others lime green, some blue, a few pink, medium-sized and bigger, driveways, no driveways, all with security gates, and then later many more homes with no color to them, the tiny yards fenced in with upright sheets of corrugated metal. Then Daniel gets them back out of street view and clicks on other images of the city. Here they also find photos of two men who have been shot in the street and of workers in white hazmat suits carrying a body from a mass grave. The federales wear the same gear they wore in Matamoros, but here there are also photos of men in regular clothes wearing balaclavas and holding AK-47s who are not part of the federal police or military.