Where We Come From Page 22
If she let him make the calls, Daniel knows he would be done with the first or second question, maybe even hang up right then without the disculpe or gracias. First of all, he would recognize his father’s voice and his father would recognize his and call him Chivito, as he has since he was a little baby. He told her this the first night they dialed the numbers, but she made it sound like it could be dangerous if he were the one calling and a stranger answered, like no strangers were to be trusted in this country because any one of them could report a boy calling from this number, from this house, and then who would be the one in trouble. It was her phone after all, not his. His phone he left back in the motel and now can’t remember any more than the first four or five digits of his father’s number. And then what more was there to say? He didn’t leave it on purpose.
He listens to her talking to the latest Daniel Mendoza, her voice rising with each pointless question. Until they started calling, he never realized how common a name he and his father shared. He scans his notebook to find the next number, but when he looks back, she’s staring at him, not saying anything, the phone pressed up against her chest, her expression changed like something bad has happened. For a moment, he imagines the call is being traced back to this number and it will be only a matter of time before someone comes pounding on the door to drag both of them away.
“Busy number?” he says.
She shakes her head and her eyes begin to water. A single tear runs the length of her face but without her wiping it away. She looks at him as though it’s the first time he has been in her kitchen and she’s trying to memorize his face.
“Tu daddy.” She holds the phone out to him, her hand quivering before him. “Ándale, habla con él.”
He looks at her, then at Orly, who smiles and then motions for him to put the phone to his ear.
“¿Estás segura?” he asks.
As sure as she can be, she tells him. His full name is Daniel Mendoza Gutiérrez, like he said his father went by. De Veracruz and now in Chicago. She pauses like maybe it was a mistake, another wrong number or she misheard the person who answered, and they should move on to the next one. But then she says the man has been waiting almost a month for this call. That no one answers the cell number he has been calling. Ándale, she says again to the boy. He takes the phone and looks down at the receiver in the palm of his hand.
“¿Chivito,” he hears a voice call out to him, “eres tú?”
28
There are still details to arrange. Los arreglos. After they hang up, his father calls a man who knows a man who puts him in contact with a woman down here taking a load in the next three or four days, maybe sooner. It depends. She specializes in arranging transport for children, the boy will be taken care of. Money will need to be wired. Once it arrives, they will receive a call notifying them of when the boy will be picked up. The father can expect him two or three days later.
But all that is for tomorrow and the days to follow. Tonight, since her brother busted the padlock, Nina says there’s no point in Daniel sleeping in the other house. Even with the dead bolt that still works, it feels less safe to her. At first, she makes a bed for him on the sofa, but then Orly asks if they can sleep on the floor, the way he and Alex do when they come with their father. Like a sleepover. Daniel has never been to a sleepover, but he likes the idea of not being alone in the other house.
She spreads a pair of quilts on the floor and brings out more sheets, blankets, another pillow, and two glasses of water. Then she dims the lights and gets down on the floor to bless her godson. She thanks God for keeping these two boys safe today and for allowing them all another night together. She ends, as always, by making the sign of the cross, en el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo, Amén and giving him a kiss on his cheek.
“¿Y mi bendición?” the other boy says and clears the hair from his forehead.
She moves around to the other side of the quilts. This is the second time this evening she will touch him. Until a couple of weeks ago, she still thought of him as the mojadito out back, one who showed up like the stray cats she feeds on the back steps and who one day would disappear just as easily. The first time she asked him how he had slept last night it felt as if she crossed some line far beyond what she had when she started doing favors for her maid. She was risking her own freedom and her mother’s well-being if she wasn’t around to take care of her. What did she care how he slept? She was giving him a place to hide, food to eat. Looking back, she can’t say when this changed, when it became about more than just hiding him, when he became more than her mojadito out back.
“¿Seguro?” she asks, to make certain she heard him correctly.
He nods and closes his eyes for her to begin. She thanks Diosito for the miracle of finding his father and asks that He please bless this boy on the rest of his journey, keep him safe and in good health as he travels to Chicago, help him study and do well in school. En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo, Amén and with the same kiss on his cheek.
* * *
—
The sleepover is less like when Orly and Alex camp out on the floor or when he stays over at Carson’s, because Daniel falls asleep almost as soon as Nina leaves the room. Maybe it’s Orly’s fault for not explaining to him how sleepovers work. That you’re supposed to stay up late eating all kinds of food and playing games or watching movies, and basically trying to see how long everyone can stay awake.
There are questions Orly wanted to ask him as soon as Nina brought him back inside the house. Questions he kept to himself because his godmother might have said it was none of his business, but not now since they spoke to Daniel’s father and he’ll be leaving in a couple of days. He wants to know what it’s like to be illegal not because you’re doing something you’re not supposed to, but only because you want to be with your family and because they want to keep you safe. What it feels like to always be hiding and feeling like you can be caught at any minute, even if after the crossing part you haven’t done anything else illegal. What it feels like to know that someone is thinking day and night about how they might get you back. But as soon as Nina said good night to them, the boy lay on his back and a couple of minutes later was taking deep nasally breaths that could almost be called snores. Orly might as well have been in the other room, counting the number of spaces between the panels.
Maybe it’s better they didn’t watch any movies. Daniel likes zombies and Orly hasn’t seen anything scary since sneaking into the movie his brother was watching, before seeing his mom in the other theater. He remembers having a bad dream that night after they came back from the movies. The dream had little to do with anything he’d seen in those few minutes while squatting in the dark. Instead he was inside his house in bed and outside were four men wearing fencing uniforms, all in white, including the mask, but carrying long white rifles, which seemed weird since he’d thought they’d be carrying long pointy swords. Anyway, for some reason his bedroom was now downstairs, closest to the sunroom and the back door, and the men were looking in his windows and he had to lie perfectly still under the covers, not even breathing, so they wouldn’t see him. Then suddenly he escaped out the back door and dove into the pool, but he couldn’t come back up to the surface for air or he’d be shot by the fencing guys, who were now scanning the water for any movement. From underwater he could see their cloudy images circling the pool. But then he realized he wasn’t at home but in the pool at the townhouse, which his mom had never taken him to but he somehow knew this was it, knew how the lounge chairs were arranged, where the Coke machine was in the cabana, where they hung the orange-and-white life preserver on the black iron fence, all this from beneath the water. He woke up gasping, and only then realized he was sweating and somehow had gotten tangled up in his flannel blanket and comforter.
He was trembling and wanted to yell for his mom to come up, but he knew Alex would hear him acr
oss the hall. He walked downstairs to his parents’ bedroom. Normally he would’ve just opened the door, but that was before the family meeting and the news his mom was moving out. Now he wasn’t sure if he should knock gently or call out until she got up to open the door. He didn’t want to startle her. He tried tapping on the door and calling her, and when there was no answer, for a second he wondered if he was still dreaming, a dream within a dream, and he had come downstairs but had landed in a different house. Then, on the end table down the hall, he spotted the framed photo of the four of them sitting in a patch of bluebonnets. It was the same photo they’d used on their Christmas card four years ago. The photographer had selected the location for their annual family photo and now they were all smiling for the camera, doing their best to ignore the hovering bees and the fact that instead of sitting in some idyllic meadow they were alongside the frontage road as an endless stream of cars and trucks zoomed toward the coast for the weekend, any one of which seemed like it could veer off the highway and put a sudden end to their family outing.
The door creaked when he opened it, but it still wasn’t as loud as the sound machine on her nightstand. He was about to come around to her side of the bed when he saw she was turned the other way and was holding his dad from behind. It was the same way she held Orly when she rushed upstairs to his bedroom because he’d had a bad dream and she would wrap her arms around him until he stopped sobbing and fell asleep. He was surprised to see his dad in the bed. Most of the coverlet and bedsheet had bunched up near his ankles. For a moment Orly wanted to believe they were back together and she wasn’t leaving after all, but then he remembered what he’d seen earlier that day in the movie theater and was pretty sure that wasn’t happening. His dad must have arrived home late from his trip, sometime after Orly and Alex had gone to bed. At first, after his mom announced she would be moving out, Alex had seen their dad sleeping on the living room couch, his feet propped on the armrest because he didn’t completely fit on the cushions. Then a few nights later their dad went back to sleeping in the bedroom with their mom, but they wouldn’t go to bed at the same time at night and he always came out before she did.
Orly stayed looking at his parents for a few minutes, the way his mom fit so perfectly around his dad, his arm cradling hers over his chest, her knee gently spooning the back of his, their feet snuggled somewhere beneath the coverlet, and it seemed like the most natural place in the world for the two of them to be. He thought it was something he should remember, an image he wasn’t ever going to see again.
* * *
—
Over on the next quilt, Daniel is mumbling in his sleep. It sounds like it could be English, it sounds like it could be Spanish, it sounds like it could be something in between, a secret language he’s inventing in his sleep and will forget before he wakes up.
Orly wonders if he’s dreaming of seeing his father in Chicago or his mother in Veracruz. Where Daniel would choose for them to live if it was his decision and not theirs. If later he’ll dream of his time here, hiding in the pink house or hanging out in the backyard and going to get raspas.
Then Orly realizes how he still knows so little about the boy next to him. Like opening an album or looking at a framed photo, these images make us want to believe we know everything there is to know about a person, a stranger or even someone in our family, our mother or father, but of course we never do.
29
The phone rings late the following day, just before dinner. The woman calling says the boy’s father gave her this number to call with the arrangements. She says the boy needs to be ready to leave tomorrow early in the evening.
The next day, to prepare him for the trip, Nina washes his clothes and uses the money from El Kobe to buy things Daniel might need on his trip. The Cricket cell phone is only temporary, and when he gets to Chicago if his father wants he can give him money to buy another one. She also hands him half a dozen snack bars to carry in case he gets hungry and a small amount of money to put in his sock, sealed in a plastic baggie, in case he should need it for something unexpected. From his left shoe, she removes the insole and to the bottom of it tapes a strip of laminated paper with two phone numbers, hers and his father’s, and then sticks the insole back in the shoe. Anything bad happens, he needs to call one of them, and if nothing happens, he still needs to call her to let her know he located his father. And make the call as soon as he arrives, don’t keep her waiting to hear from him.
Orly gives him his backpack, since he always gets a new one for the school year anyway. He also gives Daniel his e-mail address and says they should stay in touch, partly because he wants to stay in touch and partly because he knows that’s what people say when there’s more than a good chance they’ll never see each other again.
Suddenly a car is pulling into the driveway. Another young one driving, same as the first time, this one wearing a track suit like she just came from exercising. Nina opens the gate and the young woman begins to walk toward the back before Nina tells her to come to the front door. No one lives behind the house anymore.
Inside, the driver squats down and asks the first boy she sees if he’s Daniel and if he’s wanting to go to Chicago and if he’s ready. Then she looks over at Orly, but he just smiles at her. This one’s mine, Nina tells her.
Now it’s time for the good-byes. Orly reaches out to give him a fist bump, like he did the last time he saw Carson or when Alex left for camp. But Daniel shakes his head and leans in to hug him. It isn’t a pretend hug, either, the kind most of his friends gave him at his mom’s funeral because they felt sorry for him but also didn’t want to get too close. At first Orly isn’t sure what to do with his arms and hands. When Nina or some other grown-up hugs him, he usually only leans in and holds still, like he’s getting measured or they’re taking his temperature, but here Daniel isn’t moving away and is waiting for him to hug back, like this means something he understands and Orly will understand too if he stops thinking about what was, what might have been, what could be, and instead sees what is. Orly remembers when Daniel first knocked on the back door and the way he wanted to close the door on him, pretend he couldn’t understand what he was saying, and thinks how different his summer would’ve been if he hadn’t cracked open the screen door. His dad will be here in three days to take him home to Houston, and he feels like a lot has happened since he got here—finding another boy in his godmother’s kitchen, running away to Matamoros for an afternoon, crawling under a pink house, sneaking through a trapdoor, crisscrossing through the canal to get raspas—and yet most of it he can’t tell anyone and needs to keep between them. And so he hugs Daniel back just as tightly and in ways maybe tighter, because he has more he’s holding on to.
Nina wonders why they didn’t take care of this part before Daniel’s ride came. If she embraces him she might not be able to let go, not without losing control of herself. She wanted to cry as soon as she saw the car in the driveway and now has no choice but to wipe away her tears as he comes to give her a hug. Daniel holds her hand and tells her Thank you, which he’s done many times since the phone call to his father. She wants to say it was nothing but doesn’t, because right now it feels like something more than nothing.
Of all the mistakes she’s made in her life, she thinks this might be the biggest. Sending him with a complete stranger, to hide in another house, in a truck or van or trailer, air-conditioned or not, however they take them, passing them on like merchandise ordered from a distant location. Without knowing if these are people she can trust, if they will feed him when he is hungry, hold him when he gets scared, protect him from anyone who might try to hurt him or take advantage of him. She hasn’t turned on the news since the arrangements were made—she can’t stand to watch any more stories about the Border Patrol uncovering another house with thirty or forty people hiding like scared and beaten animals, another story about even more people dying in the back of a trailer with no air-conditioning. Never i
n a thousand years could she imagine doing anything like this, sending this young boy off to all the dangers awaiting him in this merciless world. Never, never, never, never, not if God willed it. But then there is so much she can’t imagine. Having to leave her child because there isn’t enough to feed him, promising to bring him soon and knowing that soon won’t be soon enough, and then learning he is in danger if she sends for him but in more danger if she doesn’t. A lose-lose situation, no matter what she chooses for her child.
Now they’re walking out to the car and the boys start laughing between themselves in the driveway, some joke held over from their adventure to buy raspas.
“Bueno, ándale,” the young woman says and holds open the back door. “I have more to pick up.”
“How many?” Nina asks.
“Tonight, only two more, a little brother and sister, eight and nine.”
“So young.”
“But only with other children, that way they’re safer. The parents have to pay more up front, but this way they send them less worried.”
From the glove box, she pulls out a small notepad and scribbles down a name and number, then tears the sheet off and hands it to Nina.
“If later you need more help,” she says.
“He was the last one.”
The young woman looks at her a moment and nods.
“Maybe later it’s different. People have different reasons for changing their minds.”
Once they’re inside the car, the woman tells Daniel how to lower the passenger window. Then one last time he waves to Orly and Nina, who stands in the driveway making the sign of the cross as the car pulls away.