Okay, so that was pretty much a one-way conversation for the last few years.
Maybe it’s time for me to answer.
• • •
Profesora Ortiz says that Pablo Neruda wrote his poems in green ink because it’s the color of hope. Maybe that’s what Papá needs to start writing again—a little hope. So today in class, when I’m supposed to be filling in a grammar worksheet on irregular verbs in the present subjunctive or some shit, I borrow a lime green pencil from the girl behind me and start copying down one of Federico García Lorca’s poems, “Hora de Estrellas.” There’s this part about being ripe with lost poetry, and I think maybe that’s how Papá feels.
I’m halfway done when Profesora Ortiz catches me. She lifts the page and adjusts her reading glasses while her lips move soundlessly.
“I’ve always loved that one,” she whispers, and she sets the paper back down on my desk, covering it with the grammar worksheet. She taps her finger beside the still-empty spaces waiting for answers.
I’ll finish the poem later, maybe in the hall between classes. Then, I’ll hide it for Papá to find, just like he used to do for me.
After school, I have the whole table at the biblioteca to myself. Soledad is helping Pilar with her math homework in the pile of pillows by the window. I pull my copy of the 1008 out of my bag and read it through. I still don’t get it.
“Can I help you?” The officer leans over my shoulder.
“I doubt it.”
“Suit yourself. But I do know a thing or two about that law. I could save you some time.”
I close my eyes. Fold my paper in half. I don’t want any favors from him, from one of them. But I’m not finding the real story on my own. I’m not getting it.
“Fine.”
“May I sit?” I don’t say no, so he drags a chair over and sits facing me. His tag says TORRES. His eyes say he’s used to being hated by kids like me.
He takes a deep breath, like we’re going to be here awhile. “Parts of the story everyone knows: coca, a plant that has been grown and harvested for centuries without breeding addiction and crime and drug dealers, was turned into cocaine. A couple of decades ago, it exploded onto the international drug market. A drug like that is a big problem. It ruins lives. It destroys entire countries.”
Officer Torres sighs and runs his fingers through his thinning hair. “What people don’t understand is why coca became the enemy. You see, we take so much money in aid from the U.S.—when they say jump, our government jumps, even if it’s over a cliff. They demanded drug arrests. They threatened economic sanctions and funded military action. Their president needed a win in his unwinnable war on drugs. So they pressured our government to draft la Ley del Régimen de la Coca y Sustancias Controladas—the 1008—to find and imprison people with any connection to coca—no matter that the law violated citizens’ rights protected by our constitution.”
I take notes while he’s talking, like I’m in class or something.
“But do you think we caught the real drug dealers with this law? No. We caught the peasants who grew coca to ease the pain of dust from the mines in their lungs. We caught people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or who did something stupid just once, to make a little money to pull themselves out of bitter poverty.”
And taxi drivers who just needed some gas so they could drive home to their families?
“The worst thing about the 1008 wasn’t the arrests, though. It was the sheer number of them flooding the courts. Sure, we filled the prisons, but did those people get a sentence, or a trial, or a chance to defend themselves?”
I keep writing, and he answers his own question.
“No.” He rubs his thumb against the stubble on his chin. “Not nearly enough of them. So what are we going to do about this? Blame the police? Blame the gringos? Blame our government? Okay—fine. But what good will any of that do? They’re working to amend the unconstitutional parts of the law, but the prisons are still full of people whose only crime is being too poor to afford a lawyer.”
Tell me about it.
But even if they emptied the prisons today of everyone like Papá who never did anything wrong—even if they could do that—they still couldn’t make it right. Are they going to give Papá back his dignity? What about his livelihood? Are they going to bring Mamá home? Are they going to put Pilar back together?
So, yeah, I blame the police, and the gringos, and the government. All of them.
I look for José before the prisoner count, while Papá is with Pilar, and find him in his family’s cell. They’re all sitting on the bottom bunk, listening while their father reads out loud from an open book in his hands.
When he sees me, José drops his arms from around his brothers’ shoulders and scoots off the bed. Out on the balcony, he leans against the railing and turns his face to where the sun is just barely visible above the roofline.
“Hey,” I say, and he nods. “Look, I know you don’t have any reason to help me out, but I’ve been thinking about what you said last week—about the 1008. I looked it up in the library at San Simón, but that didn’t really help. This policeman tried to explain it to me today, but nothing he has to say does me any good. I thought since you—”
José kicks away from the railing. “Hang on.” He ducks back into his cell and comes out a few minutes later holding a small piece of paper with an address printed on the faded blue lines.
“Look, don’t get mad, I’m just telling you like it is. You’ll have years while your papá is stuck in here to learn about that stupid law. But first, there’s something you should do.” He hands me the paper. “This is the address of a legal aid society that takes the cases of people who are innocent. They don’t charge for their services, and the sooner your papá’s name is on their list, the sooner he might get out of here.”
I hold the scrap of paper in both of my hands. Such a small thing to bear so much weight. “José—” I swallow, and try again. “I don’t deserve—”
“It’s okay.”
I tuck the paper into my shirt pocket and press my hand over it, over my heart.
“This place can bring out the worst in people. If that was the worst you’ve got, you’re going to be okay,” José says.
He sounds so sure.
October 29
When we leave school on Friday, Soledad doesn’t go with me to get Pilar.
“There’s something I have to do,” she says. She won’t meet my eyes. “I’ll see you.” She walks away, and I’m alone on the sidewalk, watching the spot where she disappeared around the corner.
I pick up Pilar, tuck her backpack into my own, and pretend I don’t notice the disappointment on her face when she sees it’s just me. I take her hand, and we walk across town to the address José gave me for legal aid.
I try to focus on this—a chance for us after all this time. A lawyer for Papá.
I’m used to anger. And frustration. And disappointment. But hope? I don’t know how to walk around with hope infecting everything I touch and see and breathe.
Inside the legal aid office, two women sit behind cluttered wooden desks, clattering away on plastic keyboards, the light from their computer screens casting a purple glow on their skin. The chairs at the entrance are full of people waiting their turn.
None of us make eye contact. It’s like, maybe if that woman with the baby drooling all over everything gets a lawyer to hear her case, then Papá won’t. What kind of cojudo wants to cut in line ahead of a baby?
Me. I do.
• • •
The hours creep by. I watch the clock hands tick in lazy circles against a wall the years have stained an ugly beige.
Two o’clock. Cobwebs stretch from the fake brass rim of the clock to the ceiling.
Three thirty. Frustration simmers under my skin.
Five o’clock. We have to be ba
ck at the prison by six, or we’ll be locked out for the night. Papá will never forgive me if I don’t get Pilar back in time.
Besides, we haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I stand and pull Pilar up with me. One of the women calls out to us, without taking her eyes off her computer screen, “Write your name here.” She passes me a clipboard and a pencil. “We’ll bump your name to the top of the list when you return on Monday.”
I press too hard, and the pencil lead snaps. Still without looking, the woman pulls another pencil out of her hair and hands it to me. I write our names and push through the swinging door.
October 30
It’s Saturday, and Pilar is reading a story to Papá in our cell, the two of them hiding in the shadows from the heat. I can’t just sit in the same little room all day. Not when I just want the weekend to be over already so I can get back to legal aid. Not when I finally have something to look forward to.
I walk along the balcony, my hand dragging on the railing, my steps slowing as I approach the door to Soledad’s cell. Maybe she’s sick of being shut in all day too.
The door is open, so I peer inside.
“Hello?”
A man sits on the bottom bunk. His head tilts a little at the sound of my voice, but he doesn’t answer.
“Is Soledad here?” I ask, even though I can see she’s not. Besides, if she were here, the door would be closed, and locked.
The man—it must be her father—just sits there. His eyes are vacant, his mouth hanging open a little, the fingers on his right hand twitching. I back away.
No wonder she spends every second she can away from this place.
I spend the rest of the day in the law library, reading everything I can get my hands on: proposed amendments to the 1008, articles on prison overcrowding and revolts against living conditions.
When I get back to the prison later that afternoon, I drag my backpack out onto the balcony. It’s better than being stuck in the cell, but even out here, I’m constantly reminded of the way the prison walls cut off the edges of the sky, like even the air, and the clouds, and the horizon are off-limits for us.
I should be studying for my math test on Monday, but my thoughts just keep sliding back to what Officer Torres said. I pull out the notes I took at the library and read them again. I’m not sure why I even bother—what could I possibly do to change any of this?
I’m about to shove everything back into my backpack when something catches my eye in the courtyard below. Red Tito is down there, looking up at the balcony. But he’s not watching me. His eyes are on the open door to Soledad’s cell.
October 31
On Sunday, while Pilar and Papá are down in the courtyard for Mass, I tuck my copy of García Lorca’s poem under Papá’s pillow.
We’ll spend today scrubbing everything in our cell for Todos Santos tomorrow, to make a welcoming space for the dead. Maybe he’ll find it then, and maybe he’ll write me back.
• • •
For lunch, Papá heats a pot of rice and sliced yellow potatoes dusted with ají amarillo on the hot plate. He taps the spoon against the edge of the pot and sets out three bowls.
What if he’d stayed on the Altiplano? What if he had followed his father into the mines? Maybe he’d be free. Maybe he wouldn’t be walking around with a cracked-open heart in his chest all day long.
I’d take ruined lungs over a busted heart any day.
The García Lorca poem is taped to the wall beside a pair of thin-veined butterfly wings. He doesn’t say a word about it, though, so neither do I. Instead, we talk about the wood shop, about Pilar’s new friend Mariela at school, and the experiment we did in science class last week.
I don’t tell Papá that I may have finally found a way to get him a lawyer, that I think we might get out of here someday soon. That maybe we can even move back into our old home, where we can eat like a family around a table and sleep without breathing air damp with pent-up frustration. That we might be able to hike together up to the hills surrounding the city and take in the whole sky, from horizon to horizon, with no walls and no wire and no guards with guns cutting off our view.
It’s like the sting of fresh garlic in my mouth, this taste of hope. I swallow it down and swallow it down, but it keeps rising back up.
November 1
Monday morning, when Soledad falls into step beside Pilar and me, relief is like a bucket of water dumped over my head and washing over my skin. I try to play it off like I didn’t notice she was gone, like I didn’t care.
But she knows—I can tell. The air between us is different. Charged, somehow. And it’s no good pretending otherwise.
Profesora Ortiz talks about rhythm and repetition in poetry and then she sits behind her desk like ten minutes of instruction is supposed to turn us into geniuses. I was thinking I’d write about soccer—that’s got rhythm. But the scary thing about writing poems is sometimes things come out on the page that you’d never admit to even thinking.
If I were Pablo Neruda
(that horny bastard)
I would go on and on about your black hair
your golden skin,
your ruby red lips
(though they’re more like the earth, really,
like the dirt when it’s been splashed by water—
that rusty brown
of wet earth).
But when I think of you,
what a poem about you
should be,
I see the wild thing inside of you
the fur
the claws
the fangs.
Do I have to make peace with the animal
before I can see the girl?
How could I ever even think
of kissing those wet earth lips
(which I really want to do)
((really))
when they hide fangs
underneath?
There’s no way I’ll ever show Soledad. I’ll probably never even turn it in to Profesora Ortiz. Way too embarrassing. I don’t even know why I wrote it.
After school gets out, we head straight to legal aid. Soledad comes with us this time, though she stops short of the stucco high-rise, sits on a concrete planter out front, and leans back against the trunk of a young palm tree. She looks calm enough, but even though her head is tipped back, she doesn’t close her eyes, not fully. She keeps them open, in slits, so she can see trouble coming before it gets to her.
“Come in with us,” I offer.
“That’s okay.”
“Did you already go through all this for your father?”
“My father wasn’t innocent.”
“Oh.” I yank the door open, but turn back before I walk through. “It’s safer inside. You could—”
“Francisco, I survived out here alone for years before you came along. I can take care of myself for a few hours.”
I can’t seem to get it right, not with her. If I could just say what I actually mean—that I want her there by my side—things might go better for me. But I can’t say those kinds of things.
Not the vulnerable things.
Not the truth.
• • •
Inside, we only have to wait for one person to finish before the woman with the pencils stuck into her hair calls my name.
Pilar drops into the empty chair and I scoot mine up to the desk. I tell the woman about Papá, how he hasn’t been sentenced yet and still has no trial date. I tell her how he was just a taxi driver, and not involved at all with cocaine.
She peers over her glasses at us. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. He is one hundred percent innocent.”
“Yes, well, we like to be certain. Our resources are extremely limited.” She pushes her reading glasses up her nose. “Take these forms
and have your father fill them out. Drop them off later this week, and we’ll begin processing them.”
She hands me the papers, and I try to quit grinning like an idiot, but it’s just—I almost can’t believe this is finally happening for us.
The woman purses her lips like something sour has worked its way into her mouth. “You children need to realize that this is not a quick process. We will file a protest right away. It is best to file quickly after incarceration, and to show a series of inquiries and appeals. It causes the judge to look more favorably on the case when it finally comes before him.”
“And we came in soon enough—it’s not too late for Papá?”
She puts up a hand. “No, no, you’re fine.” But then she sighs, and I see it’s coming now. The sour-tasting thing. “But the waiting list for one of our team of lawyers to try your father’s case is three years out.”
My head goes fuzzy. A ringing sound bounces back and forth between my ears. “But I turn eighteen in December. I’ll have to leave the prison then. You want us to leave our father alone in there for three years?”
The woman ducks my eyes, but she keeps talking. She must give this same speech twenty times a day.
“The reality is, even if your father’s case is heard by a judge three years from now, and if the judge rules favorably, the law mandates that every innocent verdict is followed by an appeal, and it will most likely be several more years before he is released. I am sorry. If we had more lawyers, we could do better, but they make no money from these cases. They have to earn a living too.”
My fingers clench and the paper crumples. “So what do we do until then? No job I can get will pay enough to keep us off the street.” I’m shouting now; I can’t help it. “What do you expect us to do?”
“I can’t help you with that, and there are others in line I must see to now. Speak with your father. Have him fill out the forms. Develop a plan as a family. And don’t lose hope that your father will one day be free. It doesn’t happen nearly as quickly or as often as it should, but it does happen.”
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