The Book of Unknown Americans: A novel (24 page)

“Do you think we did the right thing?” I whispered to Arturo one night when I couldn’t sleep. I shoved him awake and said it again.

“What?” he asked.

“About Mayor and Maribel? Do you think we did the right thing?”

“It’s the middle of the night, Alma,” Arturo said.

I glanced to where Maribel lay, curled up in the sleeping bag, her hair spread like a veil over her face, then I turned back to Arturo. “It seems like it’s only made things worse.”

Arturo rubbed his eyes. “We’ve talked about this already. You heard what Quisqueya said.”

“We don’t even know if she was telling the truth.”

“Mayor admitted to his parents that they were in the car together. You’re the one who was so upset about that part of it. ‘He knows he’s not supposed to be outside with her,’ you kept saying. As if that was the worst of it. Being outside together?”

“You don’t know what it’s like out there,” I said quietly. “You don’t know the sorts of people who are out there.”

“What people?”

I looked at his disheveled hair, his heavy eyes fighting the dragging tide of sleep. I said, “Never mind. Let’s go back to sleep.”

“We did the right thing,” Arturo said. “She doesn’t know what’s best. Especially not now.”

“What does that mean?”

“A year ago it would have been different.”

“A year ago you would have let her be with Mayor like that?”

“A year ago we weren’t here. She wouldn’t have known Mayor. But if there had been a Mayor in México, then maybe.”

I stared at him, piercing holes through the dark. “Why don’t you just say what you mean?” I asked.

He was quiet.

“Say it, Arturo.”

“Say what?”

“Say whether you’re upset about Mayor and her because she’s your daughter or because she’s your brain-damaged daughter.”

“I never used that word.”

“Say it,” I insisted.

Arturo propped himself up on his elbow and hissed, “You don’t think I have a right to treat her differently now than I would have before the accident? You don’t think we have the
responsibility
to do that? She’s not the same person, Alma. There’s not some piece of her just sitting there, waiting for us to find it again. No matter how much schooling or medical care she gets, we can’t just put her back together.”

I felt something collapse inside of me. “She’s getting better,” I said.

Arturo peered past my shoulder at Maribel. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation now.”

“She was getting better before all of this happened,” I said.

“But even if she gets better from now until eternity, she won’t be the same person anymore.”

“But the doctors said—”

“The doctors said her brain can heal, but they warned us she would never be the same again.”

“They didn’t say that.”

“They did, Alma. You just didn’t want to hear that part.”

“She’s getting better,” I said, as if by repeating it enough, I could somehow make it part of the public record, an indisputable fact.

“But don’t you understand?” Arturo said. “We don’t get her again.”

Across the room, Maribel stirred. I smoothed my hand over the rippled sheet, tears burning in my eyes. Arturo had dropped
his head back against the mattress, but I could see that his eyes were open and that he was staring at the ceiling. The weight of finality—so heavy that it felt like a physical thing—hung in the air between us. I didn’t want to accept that in order to move forward, I had to walk through it. It was so much easier just to believe there was another path that I could take around it and that at the end of that path would be the destination I wanted. It was easier to want to end up at a lie, instead of at the truth, which was just as Arturo said: We wouldn’t get her again. Not ever.

In March, my dad landed a job as a newspaper carrier for the
News Journal.
He’d gone in because he’d heard that they needed workers on the floor of the press and after burning through all the restaurants in town, he was getting desperate, even if it meant applying for jobs he was totally unqualified for. He got turned down from the floor job pretty quick, apparently. “They asked me three questions. Then the woman who was interviewing me started shaking her head, saying, ‘No, I’m sorry. This won’t work. We need someone with experience.’ Experience!” my dad cried, telling my mom and me the story. “I told her, ‘All I know how to do is make breakfast.’ ”

My mom frowned. “That’s not true. You know how to do other things.” Then she added, “But only a few.”

“Well, this lady’s eyes lit up. ‘Breakfast?’ she said. ‘Are you a morning person?’ Who can tell me what that phrase means? At the diner, customers used to come in all the time and say, ‘I’m not a morning person.’ Usually right before or right after they ordered coffee. But what? The world is divided into morning people and afternoon people and night people?”

“What did you tell her, Rafa?”

“I told the lady, ‘Well, I get up in the morning.’ ”

My mom laughed.

“So the lady asked if I could handle getting up very early. When I said sure, she asked if I had my own car. ‘Brand-new,’ I
told her. She asked did I have a license and insurance. When I told her yes, she said, ‘Then I have a job for you.’ ”

My mom beamed. “This is so exciting. You’re a newspaper man now.”

“It turns out that thing will finally be good for something other than coupons,” my dad said.

“Will you deliver
our
newspapers?” my mom asked.

“If you’re on my route, yes.”

“I want to be on your route,” she said, winking at him.

My dad, who looked astonished at first, smiled. He was proud, I think, to know that he’d turned things around, that he’d saved our fortunes, and that he had tugged my mom back over to his side.

The turn of events had put my dad in a good enough mood that he ended my grounding, which would have been great except that I still wasn’t allowed to see Maribel, and that was the only thing I really wanted to do. Her parents had started going to a different Mass, so I didn’t even see her at church anymore. I missed her. Everything about her. But what could I do?

Then, as I was sitting in social studies one Friday afternoon, it started snowing. I thought I was imagining it at first. All winter long, I’d been waiting for it to snow—not for me, but for Maribel, because I knew she wanted to see it—but now that it was March, I had given up on thinking that it would happen. Through the window, I saw a few flakes, all spread out, drifting down as soft as dust.

I tapped Jaime DeJulio, who sat in front of me. He shrugged me off like a bug had just landed on his shoulder.

“Julio,” I whispered.

He turned around. “I told you not to call me that, Minor.”

This was his ongoing taunt. Mayor/Minor. Hilarious. It’s why I’d started referring to him as Julio, even though I knew it was lame revenge.

I pointed to the window. He looked, but he must not have seen it. “What’s your problem?” he asked.

“Snow,” I mouthed.

He looked again and grinned. “Hell, yeah.”

At the front of the class, Mr. Perry droned on about Amerigo Vespucci and Vasco da Gama and the Great Age of Discovery while I stared out the window. After a while, the snow picked up, falling heavier and steadier.

There were ten minutes left in the period when I raised my hand.

“Mayor?” Mr. Perry called. “Do you have a question?”

“Can I use the bathroom?” I asked.

He shook his head. “You know the policy.”

“I can’t wait. I
really
need to go.”

Mr. Perry frowned. I could see I was getting to him.

“Like, bad,” I added.

Annoyed, Mr. Perry pointed to the hall pass propped up in the chalk tray along the blackboard.

I was off before he even had a chance to get back to the lesson.

I FOUND WILLIAM
in study hall and convinced him to drive me home.

“I thought we were going to a movie today after school,” he said.

“Change of plans,” I told him.

I didn’t elaborate, and I think the whole way to the apartment William assumed that the two of us were off on some big
adventure together, but when we pulled into the parking lot of my building, I told him I needed him to teach me how to drive stick shift. He looked confused.

“I’m taking my dad’s car,” I said, pointing to where it was parked.

“Why? I can drive us wherever we’re going.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” I said.

He stared at me for a second, the dawning of understanding on his face, and then said, “Yeah.”

William was awesome, though. After I ran inside and stole the car keys from the windowsill again, the two of us got in my dad’s car and took it down to the abandoned auto body shop on the corner, away from where anyone might see us, so that William could give me a crash course in how to drive stick. He walked me through the basics—putting the car in reverse, how to brake, how to shift through the gears—and we drove in circles around the parking lot until finally William said, “I think you’re good.”

“Really?”

“Good enough, I guess.”

“What if I stall?” I asked.

“No problem. Just start the car again and give the finger to any dickheads honking at you from behind.”

“So that’s it? I’m doing this?”

“That’s it, young Jedi. Go forth and prosper.”

“You’re mixing up your references.”

William opened the car door and climbed out. He poked his head back in before he closed it. “This is about her, isn’t it?” he asked.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to admit it, and William knew anyway.

“Well,” he said, “it was nice having you back for a little while at least.”

EVERS WAS OUT
near Delaware Park, a line of bare trees at its back, a baseball field off to one side. It was two o’clock, and the snow was falling a little harder by the time I got there. I flipped up the hood of my jacket before I got out of the car. I’d never been to Evers before, but at my school, a security guard roamed the hallways and the grounds all day, so I assumed there would be one here, too, and I was praying to God not to run into him. I cut across the grass to the side of the building. No one else was around. The only sound was the swish of cars whizzing by on the wet street out front.

I crept from one classroom to the next, my adrenaline surging, and peeked through the windows, looking for her. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I’d never skipped out on school before. The snow fell into my eyes, and I kept stopping to blink it away. Classroom after classroom and no sign of her. In the rooms where the kids looked younger, I moved along right away. In rooms where they might have been our age I lingered, even if I didn’t see her, just in case she was in the bathroom or something and would appear in the doorway at any minute.

And then, in the eighth or ninth classroom I checked, I saw her. She was sitting in the front row with her chin in her hand. She looked gorgeous, even from that distance, even separated by a pane of glass and a span of air. I curled my fingers over the ledge of bricks jutting out beneath the window, the rough surface burning my fingertips.

As soon as her teacher, who was winding through the row of desks, walked to the corner farthest from me, I tapped the
backs of my fingernails against the glass. An aide seated by the chalkboard narrowed her eyes and craned her head toward the windows. I ducked. I stared at my hands against the cold brick and breathed quickly. I tried to flatten myself against the building in case the aide had gotten up and walked toward the noise. It wasn’t like I could make myself invisible, though. Should I run? Go back to the car? I didn’t know what to do, but in all the time I’d been thinking about it, nothing had happened, either. If the aide had seen me, she’d be shouting out the window by now. I waited another minute before standing again, and this time, when I did, Maribel was staring right at me. Like she was waiting for me. She blinked a few times, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. I pointed at the sky, at the snow. I pumped my arms overhead in triumph. She smiled and covered her mouth with her hand. She looked to her teacher, pretending for a few seconds that she was paying attention. When she looked at me again, I motioned for her to come outside. She shook her head. I held my hands together as if in prayer. Come on, Maribel, I was thinking. Come on. She blinked fast. Then I saw her get up and say something to the aide, who handed her a small wooden paddle. A hall pass. Yes! I hightailed it back to the parking lot.

I pulled my dad’s car up to the entrance. I didn’t want to turn it off because I’d only have to go through the process of starting it up again, and I didn’t know how to idle it without stalling, so I decided to drive in circles around the bus lane and back up to the entrance until Maribel came out. I didn’t see her at first, but then she walked out from around the side of the building—maybe she’d had to use that door so no one would notice her—smiling like I had never seen her smile before, holding her hands up to feel the flakes land on her palms. I slowed
down as much as I could and leaned over to roll down the passenger window. I had this idea that if I went slow enough, she would jump in and I wouldn’t have to stop. Like we were in some kind of slow-motion action movie. I was going to yell out and explain it all to her, but while I was coordinating the pedals and the steering and my tilting body at the same time, I stalled the car. Maribel acted like she didn’t even notice. She just walked over and climbed in.

“It’s snowing,” I said, like it wasn’t obvious.

“It’s snowing,” Maribel repeated in wonder. She wiped her hands on her pants.

This was the thing about Maribel: No matter how many times I proved it, she didn’t think I was an idiot. She just took me. She took me in. Such a simple fucking thing.

“Where’s your coat?” I asked. “And your sunglasses?”

She pointed toward the school.

“Well, are you cold?”

“No,” she said. Then she leaned forward and looked out the windshield, twisting her neck to gaze up at the sky.

“I thought we could go somewhere,” I said.

“Where?”