by Laila Lalami
The notice in the newspaper and the posters I’d left around town nearly a month earlier had yielded a few dozen calls, but they’d all been useless, and anyway the case was essentially closed now. So when I walked into the lobby, I was more irritated than excited, convinced that this would only be a waste of my time. Mr. Aceves stood up quickly, and his hat fell from his lap. Picking it up with his left hand, he offered me his right. Next to him was a tiny woman who introduced herself as his wife. “I can translate for him,” she said.
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “We have several people here who speak Spanish.”
This came as a disappointment to the couple. I don’t think they wanted to be separated. When I invited Mr. Aceves to the interview room, he limped behind me like a man being led to the gallows.
Efraín
We sat in a small gray room, with the window shades drawn. There was a videotape recorder, which made me nervous, but the deputy who was brought in to translate, a feo with curly hair and braces on his teeth, told me that this was normal. “El protocolo,” he said, and asked if I wanted some water or coffee. I said no. I was eager to get it over with, describe what I had seen that night, and leave. So I told the story the way I remembered it. “I was riding my bicycle on the 62, heading home after work, when the chain fell off my back gear.” I was speaking to Detective Coleman, who sat across from me, but I had to wait while the deputy translated.
It was a strange way to tell a story, pausing after every sentence, waiting to hear it spoken in another language, though in a strange way this made me more conscious of its details. After a while, I was even relieved that there was a videotape, because once my words were recorded I would finally be free to forget them. That was all I wanted now. To put all this behind me. I couldn’t take Guerrero’s meddling in my life anymore, or Marisela’s silence over the past few weeks. Even though she’d stopped asking me about the accident, I knew she wanted me to talk to the police and I hated to see the disappointment in her eyes, day after day, when I said no. I wanted things to go back to the way they were before.
As soon as I reached the end of my story, the detective made me tell it again, this time interrupting me with questions that could get me to contradict myself—or at least, that’s how it seemed to me, because she spoke to me in a combative way. “Wait, were you going east or west on Highway 62?”
“East,” I said.
“How far were you from the intersection when you stopped?”
“About a hundred feet. Maybe a hundred and fifty.”
“And what happened after the car hit Mr. Guerraoui?”
“Well, the car turned left on Chemehuevi, and as it did, the man rolled off the hood and fell down on the pavement.”
“You didn’t try to help him?”
“He wasn’t moving,” I said, glancing at the translator for help. “He wasn’t moving at all. I was sure he was dead.”
“You said earlier that the accident happened at nine thirty. But how did you know the time? You’re not wearing a watch.”
“No. But I leave work at about nine and I usually get home by ten. The intersection is about halfway between my work and my apartment, so I’m guessing it happened around nine thirty, but I could be wrong.”
“And what color was the car?”
“Silver, I think.”
“Make and model?”
“I’m not sure. I only saw the car from the side as it turned on Chemehuevi. But it was a sedan with a long hood. I think it might have been a Ford.”
“Did you read about this in the newspaper, Mr. Aceves?”
“What newspaper? I didn’t read anything about this. I just saw a car like it in the parking lot of Kasa Market.”
“What about the sticker on the side window? What did it look like?”
“It was round and red, like an apple.”
“Were there any passengers in this car?”
“I didn’t see any passengers.”
“What about the driver?”
“I didn’t really see him.”
“But it was a him?”
“I think so. He was wearing a baseball cap.”
“And did he slow down?”
No, he didn’t. I had told her this the first time, but she asked me again anyway, asked me to close my eyes and return to that night, see if the driver had paused at any time, either before or after striking Guerrero. I told her once more that the driver hadn’t slowed down and hadn’t stopped. If anything, he’d sped up. That’s what had made me look up from my bicycle—the sound of the car speeding up.
“When did he speed up?”
“When?”
“Before or after hitting the victim?”
“Before.”
“Are you sure about this?”
I had heard the car speeding up, then the sound of the impact. “Yes,” I said. “He sped up before. Then after he hit the man, he took the turn and ran off again down Chemehuevi.”
Again, she asked me to start over, tell the story from the beginning. By the time I stepped out of that room, it was well past lunchtime and I was exhausted. I wasn’t even sure whether I had been of any help, because the detective refused to say. All she said was that someone from the district attorney’s office would be in touch with me when the case went to trial.
When I came out to the lobby, Marisela stood up. “How was it?”
“It’s done,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I took her hand and hurried down the stairs to the glass doors. Marisela had taken the morning off from work to be with me, but as we came out into the sunlight I worried that I had only entangled her in this mess. I had spent weeks burdened by guilt and apprehension, and I still wasn’t completely free of either. If the case went to trial, I would again have to remember the accident and talk about it in front of others, and if there was no trial, my name was somewhere in those police files now, where it could be found at the touch of a button. “What about the reward?” she asked, touching my arm.
“They said they have to check if the information I gave is correct.”
Her face fell. Maybe she expected that I would walk out of the police station with one of those huge checks, the kind people get when they win the lottery, and now it was dawning on her that it would take a few days, maybe even a few weeks, to get the money. In the meantime, they would know where to find us. We walked the length of the parking lot, past the Morongo Basin courthouse, and up the street to the bus stop.
It was a cloudy day, but the heat was scorching. We sat together under the awning, sweating and waiting. Marisela took my hand and squeezed it. “Everything’s going to work out,” she said. She was trying to give me hope and, for once, I let myself believe her. Twenty-five thousand dollars was a lot of money, more than we’d ever had before. It was enough to start over in a new place, where the police wouldn’t know where we lived. The highway stretched for miles ahead of us, leading out of the desert toward the ocean. All we had to do was take it.
Nora
I was helping Marty hang a Memorial Day banner on the front window of the restaurant when Detective Coleman called to tell me she had a witness, a motel worker who’d been riding his bicycle on the highway the night of April 28. He mentioned a red sticker on the rear side of Baker’s window, a detail that had not been made public, and told her that the driver had sped up as he approached the intersection and again after the impact, which suggested that he was conscious he had hit someone, and should not have left the scene. This testimony was the first solid piece of evidence, she said, to show that the driver had been willfully reckless.
The word solid nearly took my breath away. My father’s dead body, my mother’s claims about Baker, the handwritten note about parking spaces—none of these had been solid enough. If it weren’t for this witness, the case would have dissolved like ether. My eyes welled with tears
, and I had to move away from the ladder and sit down on the curb to catch my breath. Now that I’d started crying, it happened all the time, even when I tried to resist it. Wiping my cheeks with the palm of my hand, I asked, “So now you have proof that Baker killed my dad?”
“Proof that he knew he’d hit the victim.”
“But not that it was murder?”
“A murder charge requires a much higher standard of proof. I think the D.A. is looking at vehicular manslaughter.”
“He doesn’t believe the witness?”
“I don’t know what he believes, I couldn’t say. But it’s worth remembering that there’s no streetlight at that intersection and that Mr. Baker is seventy-eight years old. Some people shouldn’t be driving at that age.”
I was quiet for a while, trying to process everything the detective had told me. A blue van came into the parking lot, trailing thick exhaust, and the driver sat with the engine running as he fiddled with something in the backseat. Behind me, the diner’s door jingled and a woman came out, carrying leftovers in a Styrofoam container.
“Listen,” Coleman said. “I understand your frustration, I do. But vehicular manslaughter is a very serious charge and we might not have gotten this far if it weren’t for the reward you put up. You’ve done what you could.”
The sun had risen above the palo verde tree on the side of the restaurant, and the light was on my face. For the past five weeks, each day had begun with the same two realizations, agonizing and immutable: my father was dead and his killer was free. But now, for the first time, I could allow myself to imagine a day when Baker would have to answer, at least in part, for what he did. “Will he go to jail?”
“Probably. But that really depends on the jury.”
And, I thought, on the stories that the defense and prosecution told in court. “Can I at least meet this witness?” I asked. “I want to thank him for coming forward.”
“I wouldn’t advise it. I think it might be better to wait until after the trial.”
“What about the reward?”
“If you sign the check, we’ll make sure he gets it.”
“All right,” I said. “Thank you for everything, Detective.”
I stood up and dusted myself off. Marty walked past me, carrying the stepladder, glancing one more time at the banner that said HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY in red, white, and blue. Underneath the greeting, in block letters, came the plea, or perhaps the admonishment, to remember those who had made the ultimate sacrifice. Soon, newspapers would run their annual celebrations of American soldiers, and politicians would take turns pandering to them. Meanwhile, the civilians who died in American wars would receive only silence. National memory was built from such erasures.
But private memory was nothing but a struggle against erasure. I wanted to make sure that my father wasn’t forgotten. At the Pantry, I had kept everything exactly as it had been before he died. Already I was settling into a routine. In the mornings, I opened the restaurant and did whatever needed to be done—handled the cash register, restocked the bathrooms with paper towels, called the electric store for replacement bulbs for the kitchen. Usually, I ate lunch standing at the counter. In the afternoon, I went back to the cabin and took a nap, which was often interrupted by the sound of the turtledove teaching its chicks how to fly. Then I would make coffee and finally sit at the piano. In other words, I had been trying to hold on to the past at all cost. My mother knew better; she didn’t try to fight her feelings of pain or fear, but accepted them as she might accept unwelcome visitors, knowing that someday, even if it was very far in the future, they would leave. It was a strength she derived from her deep faith, and in that moment I envied her for it. All I had were uncertainties.
Jeremy
Afterward Nora went to the bathroom. Without meaning to, I found myself listening, wondering if she had gone in there to cry. But in a moment, I heard the toilet flush, water running from the tap, and she was back in my bedroom, wearing one of my T-shirts. She stood looking at my bookshelves, tilting her head sideways so she could read the spines. Asimov. Bradbury. Butler. Clarke. Dick. During a severe bout of insomnia some months earlier I’d alphabetized all my books, music, and movies, and organized them by genre while I was at it. At the height of my sleeplessness, I could tear through three novels a week. Now I watched her run her finger over my Terry Gilliam DVDs, examine the papier-mâché lighthouse I’d made in grade school and never thrown away, no matter how often I’d moved. Then she pulled out a photo box from the shelf beside the bed. “Leave that,” I said, raising myself on one elbow. “It’s getting late.”
Playfully, she lifted the box out of my reach.
“All right,” I said after a minute. “Sit here, though.” I patted the space next to me.
The photos were not in any particular order; I’d tossed them there after pooling together several rolls of photographs. She picked up the first one, a picture of me at Camp Taqaddum, and suddenly I was looking at myself through her eyes. An invader. An occupier. An imperialist. Labels I would have easily applied to myself if I were arguing with my father or with other vets, whether in person or in the online discussion forums I logged into late at night when I couldn’t sleep, but that I had a hard time accepting from civilians, people far removed from the fog of war. She picked up the pictures one by one, and I saw myself waiting in the noontime heat again with ninety pounds of gear on me. Riding in a Humvee, my chinstrap so tight it was giving me a rash. Leaning against the barracks wall, my eyes bluer than ever in my sunburned face. Standing at a checkpoint with my weapon in my hands. “What does it say?” she asked, pointing to the big sign hanging from a light pole behind me.
“I don’t know. That was an Iraqi sign, it wasn’t one of ours. You don’t read Arabic?”
“I never studied it, but I speak it just fine.”
I offered up my palm. “Eedik, min fadlik.”
“Listen to you! They taught you that in training?”
She gave me her hand and I made a show of kissing it. Then I whispered in her ear, “Keefik, ya sukkar?”
“They definitely didn’t teach you that in training,” she said with a chuckle.
“Our terp was kind of a player. He was always trying to sweet-talk a Sudanese woman who worked in the laundry facility.”
“Terp?”
“Interpreter.”
“Were there any women in your platoon?”
“No, but there were in others.”
“Arabs?”
“One guy from Florida. Haydar. He’s still in Iraq. He’s an NCO now. Noncommissioned officer.” I put my arm around her waist and she leaned against me, the heft of her almost like an armor itself.
“How old were you here?” It was a photo taken at chow, during our first tour. Fierro and I had big smiles on our faces and blueberry jam smeared across our teeth. Trying to be funny. We looked like idiots.
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen. My God.” She stared at the photo for a long moment, then moved to another, where I stood with others in our unit, our M4s hanging from our shoulders. “What was it like, carrying that around?”
“You get used to it. You get used to anything, I guess. When they took it away after my deployment, it felt like they had taken away one of my arms. It took a while to learn how to walk around without it.”
In the neighbor’s yard, the dog barked. It was a German shepherd, a friendly pup that I’d played with before, but it still got nervous when it heard a noise, even if it was only the call of a bird or the roar of a car down the street. She picked up another photo, where we all stood around Sergeant Fletcher, squinting in the sunlight.
Enough of this, I thought. I closed the box, tossed it on the nightstand, and switched off the light. Then I turned to face the wall. In the dark I felt her tracing the scar on my back; it started on my flank and snaked up toward my shoulder, like a tree be
nding sideways against the wind. She ran her hand over the line of black dots that still opened from time to time, spitting out shrapnel. I knew this moment would come. I knew she would start asking questions about the war; all the women I’d been with did. I would give them the broadest outline of a story about my time in Iraq, and their eyes would widen with horror and they’d want to kiss me and make me feel better. It wasn’t hard, it worked every time. There was something false about it, though. Even when I managed to hold on to them for more than a couple of months, the look in their eyes that said I was a hero would drive me away. But Nora didn’t look at me with that kind of wonder. Long before I’d gone to war, war had come to her—a brick thrown in her father’s window, a slur written on her locker. I wouldn’t be able to satisfy her with the answers I’d given the others, and even if I could, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. With her, I was less inclined to speak of the war in two voices, the wistful one I used with my buddies and the weary one I reserved for my dates. With her, everything felt mixed-up.
Outside, the dog barked again, though no unusual sound had interrupted the silence. The barking startled the crickets, but after a minute they started singing, and then an owl joined their song. I got up to close the window and adjusted and readjusted the blackout curtains until I got them just right. All the while, I avoided her gaze. “I think I’m gonna take a bath,” I said. “That damn dog won’t let me sleep.”
I stepped into the bathroom and sat in the tub as it filled with water, nudging the lever handle toward the hottest setting with my foot. Being asked about the war meant having to remember it, and to remember the war was to relive it. It was one thing when the memories were involuntary, like that time I walked into a gas station in Riverside and caught a whiff of perfume on the clerk that took me so immediately to a crowded market square in Anbar that I nearly doubled over from the sensation, but to recall memories willfully was another thing entirely. The door creaked open and Nora stepped inside the bathroom and knelt by the side of the tub. She ran her finger on my tattoo, the scar on my side, the scratches she herself had left during our lovemaking. My body bore signs that I knew she wanted to decipher and piece together into a story, but it would always be an incomplete story. To tell her the whole of it was to risk her judgment, and I already judged myself every day. “Are you coming to bed?” she asked.