“But what if . . . when I’m a grown-up . . . what if I wanted to stay here?”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous.”
“I’m just asking.”
“Well, you can’t, because we’re going home. We’re illegal here, so you can’t stay anyway, even if we wanted to, which we don’t. Now hand me the wheels.”
A FEW DAYS LATER, MY MOTHER’S COUSIN CAROLINA is sitting at the kitchen table when I get home. Her baby, Julissa, is on the brown linoleum, picking at a little corner that is broken and peeling.
It makes me furious that Julissa is on the floor, eating linoleum. Who chooses who gets to be a linoleum eater and who gets to grow up on marble floors, like the ones at Chelsea’s house? Julissa is a baby and she doesn’t know that she got some life lottery ticket that won her broken brown linoleum instead of marble. She won’t know for years, long after it’s decided all kinds of important things in her life, like what kinds of school she’ll get to go to and who she’ll know.
I pick Julissa up. She smiles her four-tooth smile. I pick a little piece of linoleum off her bottom lip. For a second, I want to kick Carolina, not for losing sight of Julissa, but for bringing a baby into a brown-linoleum world at all.
“I swear she’s bigger than last week,” I say, trying to put the linoleum out of my mind.
“The way she eats! She eats everything! I make her garbanzos and she mostly mashes them all over her head, but she gets enough of them in her mouth that she’s getting to be a fat little girl!”
Julissa gurgles and coos at her mother’s voice. We all laugh.
“And you? Finishing school this year, huh?”
“Yes, I just started senior year.”
“Your abuela back home must be so proud.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that my grandmother in Argentina would even know, or care.
“When I came here from Argentina a few years after your parents, you were a baby like Julissa. And your abuela waited every week for pictures to come in the mail, I remember. Imagine now that you’re all grown up. And the first one in the family to graduate high school.” She turns to my mom. “You have a good suegra; you’re lucky. Too bad she is so far away.”
“Yes, she was always good to me after I married her son. Although I do think maybe she thinks it’s my fault that we stay here,” says my mother.
“Ah, mothers with their firstborn boys. You know!”
“Yes, she babied him a lot. She combed his hair for him until he was thirteen!” laughs my mother.
“She’d probably still be combing it if he was still back home!” They both giggle.
Carolina turns to me. “So, do you think you’ll go one day? To Argentina?”
“Well, there is the problem with the papers. I can’t leave the U.S. Or I guess I could leave, but I won’t be able to come back.” It’s okay to say this to Carolina because she’s got the same issue.
“They can’t keep up these stupid laws like this forever. They want us to work in their businesses, but they don’t want to let us stay here legally, get licenses, have normal lives? It can’t stay that way.”
“Bah, politics, forget about it,” says my mother.
“But, really, Monse,” says Carolina to me. “If papers weren’t an issue and you could come and go as you pleased, would you ever go live back home?”
“This is home.”
“That’s how it is,” she says to my mother, raising her hands in the “I don’t know” position, as if I’m not here. “The kids grow up here and they don’t know anything else. It’s natural.”
“Not everyone understands that,” says my mother quietly.
“That’s why we’ve got to save up and get Julissa home before she’s old enough to think like that. Paco talks about it all the time. But it’s so hard to save. And go back there for what? No jobs. The crime rate . . . it’s a shame what’s happening in our country.”
“There are no good answers,” says my mother, putting the maté gourd with the little chopped up green leaves and the spoonful of sugar inside in front of Carolina, then filling it up with boiling water from her thermos.
Julissa grabs a piece of my hair and tries to put it in her mouth. I make a face at her and she giggles. She is so little and oblivious. Her fate is entirely outside her own hands. Maybe Carolina and Paco will go, and maybe they will stay here without papers. Either way, Julissa will be living out the consequences of those decisions for the rest of her life.
Suddenly Jose slams into me from behind. “SpongeBob is starting! Come on!” And I’m relieved to just stare at a little yellow sponge for a while.
GROWING UP IN WILLOW FALLS, I always saw that other people had more than I had. But for the longest time it was just a thing that was, like the sky being blue or how old teachers always seem to have mustaches. It wasn’t until the end of sophomore year that it occurred to me that I could do something about my financial situation.
One day at lunch, Patricia from geometry had come over with some formula she just couldn’t get, and I’d explained it to her on a napkin.
Patricia said, “Wow, that’s awesome. Why can’t Prune-strand explain it like that? Thanks.”
Chelsea, looking up as Patricia walked away, said, “You should charge for that.”
It started slowly. But by the start of junior year it was known I was for hire. Patricia’s little sister was one of the first ones I started tutoring. Then came her friend and that little freshman who lived on Chelsea’s block and always mumbled through her stringy brown hair. I specialized in math—the most tutorable subject—but also critiqued and edited English papers and social studies projects. I found out what a local teacher was charging for the tutoring he was doing on the side and underbid him by twenty dollars an hour. It was still more cash than I had ever seen.
Business is still strong. Of course, no seniors want tutoring—they will be getting into college with their junior year grades, so they’re looking to coast. But I have my old-time customers, plus a whole new crop of clueless, baby-faced freshmen to tutor. Sometimes I think they just like an excuse to come up and talk to a senior, saying things like, “You’re still coming to my house this afternoon, right?” But everyone knows it’s a business thing, so it doesn’t do anything bad for my reputation.
By now, I have $175 saved up. I keep every crisp and wonderful bill in the inside pocket of my journal. At this pace, I may be able to buy myself an inexpensive laptop before Christmas. I’ll buy my brother a DVD player and a bunch of seasons of SpongeBob. I’ll make sure I have enough clients so I can hook up Wi-Fi and pay for it every month and maybe even buy a prepaid cell phone.
I walk in from school and into the kitchen. My father is waiting for me at the table. It takes me a minute to figure out what he’s holding in his hands: my spiral-bound journal, open to the middle, exposing my beautiful little stash of earnings.
“What the hell is this?” he asks me, his eyes open scary-wide. I should have known that my “I Have Money” Happiness Train would screech to a halt in You Didn’t Ask Your Father Station.
“Money.” Note to self: Hide journal better.
“Don’t be smart with me. Where did you get it?”
“Tutoring.” I mean, does he want me to be stupid with him?
He snaps his head toward my mother, who is looking grayer than usual. He says to her, “And did you know about this?”
“Well, she said she wanted to help some kids and she needs a computer and—”
He snaps back toward me, a vein popping out of his forehead now. “So you’re begging your friends for money now? Don’t you have any pride?”
“I’m not begging anyone for—” His smack stops me in mid-sentence. Being hit makes me furious. The bone in my face screams out from the impact.
I stay very still, because I have long learned not to give him the satisfaction of reaction or movement. The furious feeling makes its way down my face, to the back of my neck, to my stomach. I bore a hole into the floor with m
y heat vision and channel all my energy into fantasizing about doing bad things to the hand he smacks me with.
He starts screaming. You never know what’s going to set him off, but you sure know where he’s going once he gets started. He points to my mother. “You! I blame you! She’s seventeen years old! What the hell does she need to be working for! Won’t she have enough years of misery ahead of her? Enough years to be a slave? Is that what you want for her? To be a slave, always taking orders from people?”
“Me or you?” I say.
This makes him livid, and he smacks me again, harder, then again. Good. I want to make him livid. It’s the one thing I can do.
“You think you’re so smart! You think a computer is going to make a difference for you! But who are you? You are nothing! You can’t do anything in this country. You hate Argentina so much, but Argentina is your only chance, because in this country you’re dirt, you’re nothing! Serving these losers who think they’re better than you. Do you hear me?”
The Inuit can hear him.
“You need a computer? For what? You can’t get a real job here. You can’t go to college. Stop fooling yourself! And if you ever sneak around behind my back like that again, you are going to be very sorry.”
He reaches into my journal pocket, takes the $175, and slips it in his pocket.
“No little smart-ass is going to keep her own money while she’s living under my roof!” He throws my journal at me, and the things I kept in the little pocket in the middle flutter to the floor: a pressed flower I picked on a walk with Chelsea and a folded copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, which blew my mind the first time I read it so I made a photocopy of it at the library.
I know my money is going toward rent or some other household expense. I’ll never see it again. But I make two vows. One, I’m going to steal my money back out of his pocket from his tip money one dollar at a time if I have to.
And two, I am going to find a better hiding spot for the money I make from now on. I will sabotage and I will carry out stealth actions. When you don’t have armies, you go to guerrilla warfare.
CHAPTER SIX
I am in a supernova fury when my mother walks into my room. I feel the overwhelming urge to throw something at her. In this moment, I hate her more than I hate him. Something about letting all of this happen, and then walking in here wrapped in a cloud of her own powerlessness as her excuse.
“How’s your face?”
I just stare past her, at a spot on the wall where I wrote “Stupid” in pencil about six months ago, which no one seems to have discovered.
“Monse, you just have to learn how to keep quiet.”
This finally makes me look at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You disrespect him. He just wants to get respect somewhere.”
I point to my face, where he smacked me. “So this is okay?”
“No, of course it’s not okay. I’m just trying to help you avoid that.”
“So it’s my fault?”
“It’s not your fault.”
“But I should keep quiet.”
“It’s just . . . you remember how he used to be?”
“He was always a jerk.” Something feels vaguely off about this statement, like the things you say when you’re trying to win an argument. For some ridiculous reason, I feel my eyes well up with tears.
She looks behind her nervously and lowers her voice as if someone’s coming. “Remember how it was always him and you against me? And I was the wet blanket? And you with your long talks and playing Frisbee on Sundays and watching movies late into the night, always laughing together? Remember? Speaking English so I couldn’t understand?”
“Oh, because I was an idiot when I was, like, four years old makes it okay that he hits me.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s hard for him, too. You should see that.”
“I don’t need to see anything. I need to get the hell away from him is what I need.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m saying that.”
“Put yourself in his position. He came here a young man with a big dream. And look at where he is now.”
“I don’t care where he is now. Arrested is where he should be now, for hitting me. I wish you’d just leave me alone,” I tell her.
And to my surprise, she does. She walks out of my room like she’s a hundred years old. I fight the urge to throw a pair of balled-up socks at the back of her head.
I get on my bike and go to the library. I have nothing to do, no paper to type or anything due for school. I google “immigration laws” and “immigration amnesty” like I have so many times before. As usual, there is nothing. Nothing good, anyway.
SUBURBANITES SURE DO LOVE THEIR AMBIGENDROUS NAMES. The next day, I go tutor Mackenzie, who is a girl, and Cody, who is a boy. Mackenzie is Patricia’s little sister. She can barely add but is some kind of lacrosse star who really needs to pass freshman math. Cody lives two doors down and heard about me from Mackenzie, whom he seems to be crushing on desperately.
In the middle of Mack’s session, Cody walks in, trailed by the maid who let him in.
“Oh, are you guys still working? I thought you were coming over my house at four-thirty,” Cody says. This is the third week he’s done this.
“No, we said five o’clock, remember?” I point out, annoyed.
“It’s okay,” says Mackenzie. “We were just about done anyway.”
We weren’t, but the lesson is now officially over. Cody says something inane and Mack giggles and doodles spirals on the edges of her notebook. I still have to explain simplifying algebraic equations to her, but I’ve lost her. If she messes up on her math test, her parents might start to think that tutoring is not paying off and call in the big guns. Stupid Cody.
“Focus, Mack. Let’s just get through the simplification process before we stop.”
Mackenzie rolls her eyes. “I mean, seriously, am I ever going to need this in real life?”
“Mackenzie, passing math is real life. C’mon, look here. Can you simplify this problem further?”
Mack plays it off like she’s going to try, but Cody is throwing little bits of rolled-up paper at her head. I look up and try to keep my patience. In the kitchen, which I can see from the family room because Mack and Patricia’s house is what they call “open concept,” Mackenzie’s parents’ housekeeper is slowly shining a granite countertop that is already so spotless it’s blinding. It blows my mind that she is actually wearing a maid uniform. Did Mackenzie’s parents buy it or does the maid wear it for kicks, being all retro about it?
Mackenzie sees me looking over at the kitchen and mistakes the look for interest in food.
“Yeah, I’m hungry, too,” she says. “Marta, we need a snack.”
Marta looks up and blinks a little, clearly confused.
“Hell-o. Anybody there?” She waves her hand in a slow and exaggerated way. “Marta, snack-o?” Mackenzie rolls her eyes. “Ugh. This one is new. Margarita, who I loved, just moved back to Guatemala, who knows why. Why would anybody go back there? This one’s English is nonexistent.”
“Please bring-o el snack-o.” Mackenzie’s having fun with this now, miming. My guts twist a little and I’m suddenly not hungry at all.
“No, it’s okay, Mackenzie, we’re fine. I should get over to Cody’s.”
“No, it’s not okay that she won’t get me a snack when I need one.”
Marta is coming over, misunderstanding what Mackenzie is saying.
Not wanting to see this go any further, I blurt out, “Ella dice que si nos puede traer algo de comer.”
“Ah, sí, algo de comer. Como guste,” she says. As you wish. She turns toward the pantry full of bags and boxes of every imaginable processed food on the planet.
“M.T., you’ve really been paying attention in Spanish class, huh? I should get my parents to pay you to come over every day after school and translate for the maid.”
All of a sud
den my eyeballs are pounding. “Okay, so, look, I’m going to Cody’s now, but you should work on problems eight through twenty-two. And watch nineteen, it’s got that twist we were talking about before. Remember.” I’m slamming books and getting my stuff ready.
Marta puts down a bowl of popcorn and a plate full of Fruit Roll-Ups on the table in front of us.
She turns to me and says, “Gracias, mi hijita, pero es que yo no hablo mucho inglés todavía. Y tú de dónde eres?” Where am I from, she wants to know. I don’t look like her kind to her. To her I look like Mackenzie and Cody’s kind. But that’s not what I am either.
I ignore her, my face burning. I know I’m being rude, but suddenly I have to get out of here. I heave my four-ton backpack on my back. “Cody, we’ve got to go.”
Mackenzie slips me an envelope. On the upper left-hand corner it says, “Phillips, O’Connor and Jones, P.C., Attorneys at Law,” with an address on Park Avenue in the city. Jones is her mom. Her dad owns some kind of business. I’ve never actually seen either of them. I take the cash out of the envelope on the way out, crumple the envelope up, and throw it in their recycling bin.
MACKENZIE’S AND CODY’S MONEY FEELS HEAVY IN MY POCKET. I don’t want to go home. My dad is working a dinner shift, which means he won’t be home until after 11:00. I told my mom I’d be at Chelsea’s until 6:00, which is now, but I don’t have any way to call her and let her know I’ll be late since our phone got cut off a week ago for nonpayment.
After Mackenzie’s and Cody’s spotless granite caverns, the thought of being in my apartment makes me almost vibrate with energy I can’t keep inside.
I pound on my bike pedals, past lawns and hills, water fountains, columns, the freaking Coliseum, Japanese sculptures, a picture-perfect wooden fort. It’s too early for most of them to be home from the city, where they all work, the owners of these homes. Their enormous homes all sit empty, except for the Martas polishing them, waiting for the owners’ return.
I pedal harder.
Finally, a right turn and a left and I’m on the strip, on the Ann Taylor side. I prop my bike up against a streetlight made to look like an old-time gaslight. I don’t have a lock since I usually only bike to people’s houses.
The Secret Side of Empty Page 4