by M. E. Kerr
“Are you sure he did?”
“We know he did. He always said he would report us to la migra. You see, sweet girl, many of us are undocumented.”
Us. I let that sink in, and then I said, “But you’re not?” My heart was suddenly beating as I waited for the answer.
“I am, Anna.” Then in a singsong tone Esteban said, “Porque no tengo papeles.” If he was trying to make light of it, for my benefit, his voice cracked as he spoke, spoiling any nonchalance.
“You have no papers?”
“That is what I am sorry to tell you, Anna.”
“But you drive. How did you get a driving license?”
“Ramón knows how to get things. He is expensive, but he can get many things necessary.”
I thought of Dad saying once that Latinos who did many jobs instead of one specialty often were undocumented. I knew there were many working for him, special ones he liked and had trained, but I didn’t ask Dad about it. I didn’t think about it. Even after I met Esteban, I didn’t ask him, because why would I think he wasn’t here legally?
But now I was worried for him, afraid of what could happen to him. He must have heard that in my voice, for he quickly said, “We won’t discuss that stuff.” He had picked up “stuff” from me. He called his belongings his “stuff,” his problems “that stuff,” even sometimes romance, as in the sentence, “We don’t have the time or place for this stuff.”
“I will be at the deli until six forty-five,” he said.
“Come right after, okay?”
“I will rush to you, cariña. Before you become angry with me for not telling you I have no papers, I tell you now I am almost sure I can get a green card.”
“I’m not angry with you, E.E.”
“I prayed to Santa Cecilia for forgiveness every time I did not tell you the truth.”
“What do you mean every time? Did you tell me a lot of lies?”
“I went to school to learn English so I could disguise myself, Anna, not just to get ahead. The better you speak, the less they suspect.”
“I understand. You were trying to survive.”
“But I do want to get ahead since I meet you. Anna, if I become documented, your father will not disapprove of me, sí?”
“I think a green card would help things.”
Did Dad know Esteban was an illegal? I had no way of knowing. I didn’t tell Esteban that sometimes I believed the real thing my father found wrong with him was something Esteban couldn’t change. A green card wouldn’t stop Dad calling him Pedro, or Juan, or José. And no matter how much more Spanish I knew in time, I would always be a gringa. I would always be flour—never flower.
“I will be at the address seven on time!”
“I can’t wait.” I couldn’t. I wanted to put my arms around him and tell him everything would be okay, all the while I was thinking, Will it be? He could be caught and sent back to Colombia, couldn’t he?
“I will see you, Anna!”
SIXTEEN
SUDDENLY I KNEW why Dr. Annan’s veterinary hospital and the new Seaview Animal Shelter were both off by the airport. I could hear the dogs barking from the inside and from their runs. It made me all the more nervous, as it got to be seven-thirty, then eight, and still no Esteban.
Finally I used Kenyon’s phone to call Esteban’s cell.
I expected to hear him answer himself, or talk to his voicemail.
Instead, Gioconda said, “Do you think my brother is a fool, white whore?”
“No, I don’t, Gioconda. May I speak with him?”
“He is working, and he will not come to that address. We know what is that address.”
“It’s no secret. I told him Seaview Vet.”
“What trouble waits for Esteban at Dr. Annan’s, Flour Face?”
I hung up.
I hadn’t thought of that: Charlie Annan had been involved in the Ridge Road eviction. Had I ever told Esteban that Kenyon was staying in Charlie’s garage apartment? Had I told him that would have been where he was staying if he had taken Kenyon up on the offer?
I hadn’t thought of a lot of things, and neither had my brother. If Esteban had accepted my brother’s offer, Charlie Annan would have intervened unless Esteban sneaked in and out. Charlie hated illegals and anyone who supported them except Dad. And that was a sore point between them. Esteban could never admit he stayed at Kenyon’s apartment, another blow to what was left of his ego.
I couldn’t call Esteban at the Pantigo Deli. The only phone there was used for takeout orders, and obviously his cell was with Gioconda, probably at Casa Pentecostal, where so many were staying. He’d told me once that Gioconda did not have a job, that her job was to feed and care for everyone in the house. He said when she wasn’t doing that, she was watching Cristina. I remember I thought that maybe Cristina was a small child living with them, but Esteban said Gioconda watched El Show de Cristina Saralegui on television; Cristina was the Latina Oprah.
I’d never find Esteban that night. When Kenyon got back, he could drive me home, but that would be hours away.
Here was my chance to call Mitzi. We used to call and e-mail each other several times a day, even when school was going and we saw each other there. I’d become a fair-weather friend, for sure. I didn’t want any bad news. I didn’t want to hear Esteban trashed.
“Did you hear already?” Mitzi said the minute she heard my voice.
“About the eviction? Everyone knows.” Even though the Seaview Star was published on Wednesdays, the whole town was talking about Ridge Road.
“I don’t mean that. I mean did you hear Virgil and I are finished? He’s been avoiding me, breaking dates, that kind of thing, and finally before he went to the Casa to hear Antolin, I said, ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘and that’s the trouble,’ he said.”
“What did he mean?”
“He said he doesn’t feel anything for me anymore.”
“Has he got another girl?”
“He said there is no one else. He said he hasn’t had time to meet anyone else.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Annabel, he works the same long hours your Esteban works. How could he find someone else? Besides, we’ve had trouble, and a big fight over something you won’t believe. I don’t know if I can even tell you, it’s so weird.”
“Tell me.”
“He wanted me to take an AIDS test.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. He couldn’t tell me why. He just said everyone should take one.”
“Oh, Mitz, do you think maybe he has AIDS?”
“I don’t know what to think. And now it doesn’t matter what I think. He’s dumped me.”
“Is there any chance you could have gotten AIDS if he has it?”
“Yes. But he says he does not have it.”
I’d wondered if they were having sex, but the fact I didn’t know for sure showed how much we’d lost touch. Just last year we’d bet that by the time we were seniors, we’d be the only Vestal Virgins at school. We figured most juniors and seniors at Seaview had or were having both intercourse and outercourse. Mitzi and I agreed intercourse was okay if you were really in love with a guy, but we swore we’d never do outer-course, even though oral sex was no big deal anymore. It was to us. It was too one-sided, we’d heard, too much the big male ego trip.
“I want to be tested now,” Mitzi said, “tested for everything! But I can’t go to Dr. Oliver. I’m afraid he’d tell my mother.”
“Just go to Seaview Hospital. Women for Women will set up an appointment for you. Mitzi? I’ll go with you if you want me to. Then we can catch up with what’s going on in our lives.”
“Thanks, Annabel. I’d love to have you go with me!”
“Definitely. Say when.”
“I’ll make an appointment. I can’t talk anymore now. I’m meeting Jackie Goldman to read each other’s F. Scott Fitzgerald papers. Have you done yours yet?”
“Thanks for reminding
me. I almost forgot.”
“I’ll tell you everything when I see you.”
I’d brought Corazón Libre with me, the Mercedes Sosa CD. I wanted to hear it with Esteban, but I played it for myself again. I’d heard it five or six times. Besides the song about the forgotten children, there was “Todo Cambia,” “Everything Changes,” and “Tonada del Viejo Amor,” “Song of an Old Love.”
When Kenyon listened to her sing, he said her voice was haunting. He Googled her and found out she was in her sixties. Her voice had been compared to Billie Holiday’s and Edith Piaf’s. She was to Argentina what Joan Baez had been to America: a folk singer with her country as a cause.
It made me love Esteban even more, to know that was his first gift to me, and that Sosa was his mother’s favorite singer. I had asked him to show me photos of his family. He said they were all back in Providencia, but he would have some sent.
Then I listened to some music Kenyon had brought there, realizing it was really from Mom’s collection of old forties and fifties singers he must have transferred to CDs. Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett: the ancient sad crooners rhyming heart with part and miss you with kiss you.
Next I heard knocking on the downstairs door, and Esteban calling my name.
SEVENTEEN
“YOU LOOK muy bella, Anna!” He was standing in the moonlight by the garage, wearing his Canul Jr. Number Two: the yellow guayabera with the four pockets. It had the shine of a few hundred washes, but he had told me a guayabera could be worn anywhere, even to a formal dance. The writer Ernest Hemingway had worn guayaberas, he had told me proudly. He had his gold holy medal under it, and he had on cargo shorts. I loved his little butt and his long, thin legs, unusual for a short guy. He was grinning.
“I am late because I could not call you. I had to work late, and buses weren’t running. Then your line was busy for a long time. I lent my car to Dario, and so I hitched here.”
I had to laugh at myself, chiding Dad for agonizing over what to wear to Larkin’s when I’d spent a long time trying things on for a date with Esteban. We weren’t even going anywhere.
I’d gotten a good tan, mostly during lunch hours, when I’d walk down to Main Beach, swim, sun, and eat my lunch there.
I’d chosen white short shorts, a yellow tank top, and my boxing sneakers. Yellow because he had told me once that it was my color. I had on big hoop earrings, and I let my long blond hair hang.
Esteban came up and put his arms around me, smelling of something sweet.
“Are you wearing cologne, E.E.?” No men in our family ever wore it.
“I put on some the pastor had. Lavanda Puig eau de cologne. He said the women like it.”
“It’s sweet, like you, E.E.”
He had to stand on tiptoe to kiss me. He whispered, “I missed you.”
“I called you and got Gioconda.”
“She read the address here and said it was a trap.”
“Doesn’t she know I would never hurt you, that I love you?”
“Was she nasty, Anna?”
“Of course not! Gioconda? She was her old, sweet self.”
“You make fun with me.”
I could tell he was in a loving mood, and he was getting me in one too. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t you think we should go upstairs?”
“Are you sure there are no policemen sent from Dr. Annan?” He laughed and I punched his arm. And we kissed. And we kissed.
I said, “Are your toes tired?” The minute I said it, I was afraid he might be offended because I’d referred to his height, but he was so easy, so ready to smile and laugh and hold me.
He said, “Sí. My dedos del pies need rest. You know what I love, Anna?”
“What?”
“That you make no fuss because I have no papers. I thought you would maybe tell me adiós when you found that out. It has happened to my homies more than once. Nobody likes you when you have no papers.”
“Come on,” I said. “Follow me.”
We walked hand in hand to the back door of the garage. He was telling me it took him a long time to get a ride there. Dario had borrowed the Pontiac to pick up some of the homies still hiding in the woods.
Esteban’s hands were as rough as his face, and his shoulders and arms were soft. Next time I would bring my Nivea cream and massage his fingers and palms.
We climbed the outside stairs, my heart pounding, his too, I bet, and we were laughing a little at nothing, at being with each other. Besides the Lavanda Puig there was the aroma of dog from the kennels, one I liked, but I asked Esteban, “Does the dog perfume clash with your cologne?”
He giggled and said, “Un poco.”
Then I said, “What’s wrong with this door?”
“I’ll try it, Anna.”
“You won’t get in, I’m afraid.”
I had locked us out. The keys were inside.
“What have you done?” he said, and we began to laugh again, at my stupidity, at the two of us champing at the bit to be somewhere with our arms and legs around each other, standing instead on the stairs.
“Of all times to be without my car,” Esteban said. “I cannot even take us somewhere away.”
“Let’s go downstairs, sit on the bench out front, and think about this.”
“Maybe we should hitch to Main Beach,” he said.
I didn’t want to believe we were locked out, and I remembered Kenyon’s penchant for hiding keys to his room in college. He had one of those tiny black magnet boxes, and he would attach it to the sides of stairs, to the overhead on his door, anywhere and everywhere. Maybe he did the same thing here. Even though he’d given me my own key, he might have kept a secret key for himself, in case he got locked out.
The night sky was filled with stars and an enormous moon.
“The beach?” Esteban said. We were always there. It was okay because he brought along his boom box and we danced on the boardwalk. He was teaching me the neotango. But there were always kids from school chilling there, and I didn’t like them talking about me. One look at Esteban and me, and they knew we were in love. I imagined them whispering behind their hands. There were a few other girls dating Latinos, but the ones from my class were dating Latinos from school, not ones who were just here to work. I’d been telling myself that once Dad got past his thing against Esteban, I wouldn’t care who saw us or what anyone said. But it wasn’t that easy, particularly now that I knew he was undocumented. There was a different feeling about the workers. I was always the good girl, admiring the ones who were rebels but never tempted to go Goth or run with the cutters or the loose gooses.
“Let me go back up there and take one last look, E.E. I have an idea he might have hidden a key.”
“Look, Anna.” He pointed up at the moon. “La luna nueva. Do you know it brings luck?”
“I hope so! I’ll be right back,” I said. “Don’t go away.”
I had this giddy, high feeling that seemed to be there whenever Esteban was. I remember Mom saying she had a chemistry with Dad, that if that wasn’t there nothing could make it appear: not money, not looks, not occupation; it was just this thing you had with only one person. It happened right away, she said, bang! Kenyon was taking French at Seaview High then. He said the French called it coup de foudre. A thunderbolt, a gunshot: That was what it was first time I laid eyes on E.E.: Bang!
I didn’t hear anyone drive up, but from the top of the stairs, outside Kenyon’s door, I heard a man shouting down in the yard, and soon after the sounds of fighting.
I went down the stairs as fast as I could and collided at the bottom with Dr. Annan.
He was out of breath, holding his hand over his chin as he reached inside the garage and turned on the overhead light.
Esteban was nowhere in sight.
“Someone was just trying to break in. Did you hear anything?” he asked me.
“I was taking a look at Kenyon’s apartment when I heard some
thing that sounded like a fight.”
“I got a punch thrown at me. I saw this kid when I drove up, Latino kid hanging around here. I called out, ‘What the hell do you want here?’ I even left my car lights on while I tried to get him, but he got me first.”
“I didn’t see anyone,” I said. It was then that I noticed he had the Santa Cecilia medal in his hand, the gold chain broken.
Dr. Annan said, “I’m glad for your sake I had to come by. Who knows what that spic wanted around here?”
“Are you sure he was a Latino?”
“Could have been one of them from Ridge Road, getting even. Little guy. Big fist.”
Charlie Annan had on jeans and a black T-shirt that read WE CARE FOR YOUR CRITTERS. He was a tall, good-looking man, a redhead with blue eyes and freckles, boyish looking, but I knew he was about ten years younger than my father. While he opened his car door and turned off the lights, he kept rubbing his chin where Esteban must have hit him.
“Good thing there was this emergency, Annabel,” Charlie said.
“What emergency, Doctor?”
“Dalí was run over in front of Larkin’s. They called me, and I told them to meet me here.” I saw him shove Esteban’s medal into his jeans.
“Well, they’ve arrived,” I said, watching Dad’s truck turn in.
I was surprised that Esteban had been able to reach Charlie Annan’s chin, and glad he got away.
EIGHTEEN
THE ONE PLACE I knew I could find Esteban was at the Accabonac School sports field, Wednesday nights at six thirty. That was the same time the library gave computer lessons. E.E. said as much as he wanted to learn how to do all that, he couldn’t give up soccer. He said it was the only time he really felt like himself.
By the time I got there, the soccer game was in progress, but Esteban’s face lit up when he saw me. He had someone on the sidelines take his place.
He hugged me hard. Gioconda’s old red Toyota was nowhere in sight, so I knew he felt loving and safe doing it. I saw the softness in his brown eyes.