Hot Little Hands

by Abigail Ulman

  The interview goes on, with Coots’s lips moving as I talk, his typing ceasing when I’m only halfway into each of my answers. I’m waiting for him to realize that I’m not hiding anything, and let me go catch my flight, but it’s hard to convince someone of your innocence when you don’t know exactly what their suspicions are. At one point, Miller comes in and puts a stack of papers on the desk. The first page has a photo of me on it, and even upside down I can see it’s a printout from the UC Berkeley website. Featuring the Amy Winehouse–style eye makeup everyone was trying and failing to pull off in 2006.

  “There’s more information online,” Miller says, “but I’m sure she’ll be happy to tell you all about it.” He goes and stands in the doorway behind me. Coots leafs through the pages.

  “Why didn’t you mention any of this?”

  “I did. Earlier, at the counter. That’s why I initially came to the US. To get a PhD in cinema studies.”

  Coots types something into the computer. I’m feeling relieved, like the pages will legitimize me in his eyes, so I am completely blindsided when he tells me the interview is over and I will not be going on to San Francisco, that I will be on this evening’s flight back to Istanbul, or I will be going to jail.

  “But I have a visa.”

  “We just canceled your visa.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have an intent to immigrate.”

  “What?” I turn and look at Miller. His face is a blank, inscrutable wall, like the faces of all the officers here. I turn back. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re trying to make the United States your permanent home.”

  “But I’m not. My family’s in London. I’m about to apply for postdocs in Britain and Germany. I have evidence of that in my inbox. Can I show you?”

  “No,” he says. “It won’t make a difference. You’re going back to Istanbul tonight.”

  My vision grows dark and furry around the edges. I feel like I’m about to throw up, which surprises me. I haven’t thrown up from anything but alcohol since I was fourteen. I keep expecting to wake up and find that I’m still on the airplane, up over the Atlantic, my head on a stranger’s shoulder, dreaming this whole thing up.

  “You can’t just send me back to Istanbul.” My voice is getting higher now. “I don’t know anyone there. I was traveling with a friend, but she’s gone back to London.”

  “Well, you can buy a ticket to somewhere else from there, or you can visit the US embassy in Turkey and see if they’ll issue you another visa. But I doubt they’ll do that.”

  “I just got off an eleven-hour flight. You can’t put me on another eleven-hour flight back to a city where I don’t know anyone.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

  “Can I please speak to the branch manager?”

  “This isn’t a bank, ma’am,” says Coots.

  “Ha!” Miller says behind me.

  “Can I please speak to the manager of the—Secondary Questioning Room?”

  —

  “She’s leaving,” I hear Morris say outside the door. She comes in and stands over me. Morris is dressed like all the officers here: a short-sleeved navy shirt with a HOMELAND SECURITY patch on the sleeve, navy pants, a belt that holds a baton, a torch, and a gun in a holster. A nametag that reads: MORRIS. She has the stoniest facial expression of them all.

  “What?” she says.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s ‘going on.’ We’re not letting you in.” She keeps looking at where my top is slipping down off my shoulder, and I keep pulling it back up.

  “But I haven’t broken any laws.”

  “We looked at the dates of your visits, and it’s clear that you’ve been coming in and out of the US for a while now, even after your school program was over.”

  “But is that illegal if I was issued a visa and adhered to the rules of that visa?”

  “I don’t have time for these mind games,” she says.

  “I’m not trying to play games. I have things in San Francisco. I have a storage unit. I have furniture I need to sell.”

  “You shouldn’t have purchased furniture in a country you apparently don’t intend to immigrate to.”

  “My computer’s in San Francisco.”

  “Have someone send it to you.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “I’m a law-abiding citizen. I mean, not of here, but of the world. I’m a law-abiding world citizen and I’ve never even been warned about this.”

  “Well, lucky for us we caught you this time. When’s that flight to Istanbul?” she asks Coots.

  “Ninety minutes,” he says.

  “I can’t go back to Istanbul,” I say. “I feel like you think I’m some kind of wayward vagabond, but I don’t just show up in cities unprepared and alone.”

  “The flight to Istanbul’s free, because the airline’s obligated to take you back when you’re not permitted entry. You can purchase a ticket to England for tonight instead, but it can’t stop anywhere in the US on the way. I’m guessing it’ll be around three thousand dollars at this point.”

  “I can’t afford that.” I start to cry.

  She turns to Coots. “Print her up.”

  —

  Gallagher wants pretzels. Ellis has peanut butter pretzels, but Gallagher doesn’t want that kind. The Albanian thinks Skolski should come watch the fight with him tonight, but Skolski thinks it will be too late after he gets home and cleans up. Also, Skolski doesn’t really want to watch the fight. Ellis is meeting his wife for a late dinner. They’re getting a babysitter. Ellis really likes his babysitter. She’s sixteen and really great; the kids love her and she’s helping Ellis plan a surprise birthday party for his wife. Miller’s seen a photograph of the babysitter and his guess is that Ellis’s wife doesn’t like the babysitter as much as Ellis does. Ellis stares solemnly at his computer screen while Miller and Skolski laugh.

  Do you know any way of getting in touch with m and d? I text my sister. They still hiking? It’s urgent.

  “Give me that phone.” Gallagher walks out from behind the counter and comes toward me.

  “I’m trying to tell someone what’s happening.”

  “I told you to put it away.” He grabs my phone with one hand and I hold on to it with two.

  “Can I just send one text?”

  “No.” He yanks the phone from my hands and walks back to the counter. He puts it on a stack of paperwork, and it buzzes immediately. He ignores it.

  Around half an hour later, when my flight to San Francisco is probably taking off, I’m sitting at the back of the room, trying not to cry, when a pair of legs in jeans appears in front of me. It’s a tall woman, probably in her late fifties. She leans down and puts her face close to mine. I expect her to ask if I’m okay, but instead she says, “You staying here?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t really know what’s going on.”

  “They not letting me go. Why?” She has stringy brown hair and huge blue eyes. “I going Los Angeles, see my friend. I going home Poland April. Now I coming July. Why they not letting me go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ma’am,” Coots calls to me. “I need you to come over here now. Leave your suitcase where it is.”

  —

  Along half the length of the long table, Coots has laid out a transcript of our interview, around ten pages in all. “Initial all these at the bottom and sign the final page,” he says. “Then you’re getting on that flight.”

  “For San Francisco?” I ask.

  “For Istanbul.”

  “Istanbul, California?” I ask hopefully.

  “Don’t play games with me,” he says. “Your charm won’t help you here.”

  I look at the first page.

  Q. Do you speak English well enough to understand me?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Do you understand what I’ve said to you?

  A. Yes.

  I r
ead through the whole page and scrawl my name at the bottom.

  “Initial it, don’t sign your full name,” Coots says. “You need to hurry up.”

  I try to read through the next page fast, but there are inaccuracies on it. He’s misrecorded the number of years I was at Berkeley, and there’s no mention of the sponsored teaching job I had at CCA last autumn.

  “There are mistakes on here,” I say.

  “Ma’am,” Coots tells me, “just sign.”

  “She needs to get through those fast,” Morris warns from behind me.

  “I can’t sign something that’s wrong. I don’t know what this will be used for. Don’t I get, like, a court-appointed lawyer?”

  “No,” Coots says. “You only get that inside the country.”

  “Where am I right now?”

  “You’re in the transit zone.”

  “Do I have the right to remain silent in the transit zone?”

  “You can be quiet all you want, but you have to sign the interview.”

  I look over every page and see more omissions and mistakes. The last two questions he’s recorded are:

  Q. You may communicate with the consular officer of the country of your nationality. Do you wish to make the telephone call?

  A. No.

  Q. Being that you have been in CBP custody for more than three hours’ time you are afforded a notification call placed to whomever you wish, on your behalf. Is there anyone you would like me to call for you?

  A. No.

  “Are you done?” Coots asks.

  “There are questions on here I wasn’t asked. About contacting people.” He’s still Milli Vanilli’ing everything I’m saying. “It says I answered, but I didn’t.”

  “I was trying to get through the interview as fast as possible, to get you on that plane.”

  “These forms have factual errors on them. I’m not trying to be difficult, but I can’t sign something I didn’t say.”

  “Fine.” He steps in front of me and gathers up the pages. “Why don’t we do the whole interview again?”

  “We don’t need to redo the whole thing. But I’d like to correct the mistakes, and speak to my consulate.”

  “Let’s do the whole interview over again,” he says. “Why not? You’ve missed that flight to Istanbul. We have all night.”

  —

  “This is Officer Morris from the Department of Homeland Security at the Philadelphia International Airport,” Morris says. “Morris,” she repeats. “We don’t give out first names.

  “The consulate’s closed,” she says, handing me the phone. “I got transferred to someone in England.”

  “Hello?” I say as she leaves the room.

  “Hi there,” says a weary male voice. It’s probably around eleven P.M. in the UK.

  “Hi, hello, thank goodness. I’m a British citizen. I’m in transit on my way to California, but I’m being denied entry to the States, even though I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  I swear I hear him take a sip of what is probably a cup of tea before he says, “Yeah, unfortunately we don’t interfere with the visa decisions of other countries. It’s not in our jurisdiction.”

  “They’re going to put me in jail. Can you at least help me convince them that I’ve done nothing wrong?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Would you be able to call someone I know in London and tell them what’s happening?”

  “I can’t place any calls on your behalf.”

  “Can you send an email or a text message or anything?”

  “I’m sorry, there’s really nothing I can do.”

  “Well, can you maybe pretend to be David Cameron and call the airport and tell them to let me go? They won’t know the difference.”

  “It would be a crime for me to impersonate the prime minister.”

  “How about Prince Charles, then?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. You’ll have to do whatever they say.”

  —

  What’s going on?! There’s a text message from my sister when Morris hands back my phone. I called mum and dad but they’re in the lake district out of range.

  There’s also a dick pic from an Oakland number I don’t recognize with a message saying You back yet?

  “I have no idea who that’s from,” I tell Morris when she sees the screen, but then I realize that probably makes me look worse than if I did know.

  I’m not allowed to reply or send any messages or call anyone from my phone. I have to read a domestic number out to Morris, and she’ll dial it from the phone on the desk, and let me speak.

  I try to think of someone to call, someone decisive and levelheaded; someone with some knowledge of the legal system or the immigration system, or someone who might know someone who knows about those things. But I don’t know anybody like that. So I just call the person I always call when I’m having a freak-out.

  “Luke.”

  “Hey, brat.”

  “I’m having a freak-out.”

  “Why you calling from a blocked number?”

  “I need to talk to you,” I say. “Are you sitting down?”

  “No, I’m at the sample roaster. Lydia’s competing in the barista competition, and I want her to use this El Salvador I just got in. So I’m standing up. Well, I’m kind of leaning, against the roaster.”

  “Okay, that’s good enough. Listen.” I tell him the details of what’s been going on, but he can’t understand what I’m saying, so I stop crying long enough to tell him again.

  “Oh my God,” he says. “I’ve never heard of this. What’s an ‘intention to immigrate’? Is that a thing?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like a pre-crime. I seriously feel like I’m in Minority Report right now.”

  “What can I do? Would it help to call nine-one-one? Just to see if this is even legal?”

  “I don’t think so. I think these people are more powerful than the police.”

  “Should I call Gabe and ask him to drive down and bail you out? He lives on the East Coast now, in Ithaca.”

  “I don’t think this is a bail situation. Can you do me a favor, though, and look up flights to London from Philadelphia, leaving tonight?”

  “Of course,” he says. “It’s Claire,” he tells someone else. “Calvin says hi. He says to remind you he has your projector and a bunch of your Criterions.”

  “Okay, tell him to just keep that stuff for now.”

  “She’s crying but she says hold on to it.”

  “Luke! Don’t tell him that! I don’t want him to know that. I don’t want anyone to know.”

  He looks up flights on his phone and finds a British Airways one, leaving in an hour. It costs three thousand, three hundred dollars.

  “Do you have that?” Luke asks.

  “I have it. But it’s all I have.”

  “Well, I hate to say it, but if the flight back to Istanbul’s free, maybe you should just take it. That way you can go to the embassy there and work this out.”

  “The thing is,” I say, “I don’t think I can handle a night in jail. I’m freaking out from being detained at the airport. I think I’ll completely lose my shit if I get put in jail.”

  “Come on,” he says, “you’re tougher than that.”

  “I’m really not.”

  “You’ve gotten through stuff before.”

  “Not on my own.”

  “You moved to a new country by yourself.”

  “I got so stressed out, I gave myself mono.”

  “Oh, yeah. You bounced back from the mono, though.”

  “I gave it to you and you got over it before I did.”

  “Oh, right. Huh. Well, you survived your relationship with me.”

  “That’s true. That’s definitely the most trapped I’ve ever felt.”

  “See?” he says. “You got this. One day it’ll just be a crazy story you’ll tell of something funny that happened.”

  “But
it’s not funny.”

  “Time’s up,” Morris says from the doorway.

  “Who’s that?” Luke asks.

  “It’s Officer Morris from the TSA.”

  “I hate the TSA,” Luke says.

  “I work for the Department of Homeland Security,” Morris says.

  “I hate them, too,” he says. “I’m so ashamed of my country right now.”

  “Don’t say that. They’re probably recording this.”

  “Let’s go,” says Morris.

  “What should I do?” Luke asks. “Should I call Jacob?”

  “No. We’re not together anymore.”

  “What about James and Amanda? Brook? Rafael?”

  “No. Please don’t say a word to anyone.”

  “Can I at least tell Lydia?”

  “Of course, but no one else. I don’t want anyone to know this is happening. I just don’t want people to think of me like this.”

  —

  The walk through the airport is slow because I have cuffs around my ankles as well as my wrists. And because they took the shoelaces out of my plimsolls so I sort of have to slide my feet along the floor. They took my hair elastic, my necklaces, and my earrings, and they made me pull the drawstring out of my hoodie before I put it on. They took the Klonopin I had in case I couldn’t sleep on the plane, and said they’d give it back to me later. They took my suitcase and carry-on bag, and locked them inside an office.

  The airport is completely deserted. The line dividers are still up in the customs area, but there are no people waiting, or officers waiting to stamp them through. The baggage carousels are stationary, the arrivals screens are blank, and the PA system is silent. The liquor and perfumes are all locked up inside the duty-free shops. It would all be eerily serene, except that the Polish woman is also here, also being escorted in cuffs, and she is screaming. “Why? Why you take me? I am not Al Qaeda! I am not terrorist!”

  “Looks like it’s ladies’ night tonight,” Skolski says.

  “Uh-huh,” says Gallagher. “Looks like it.”

  “I am not terrorist! I am not bandit!”

  “Jesus Christ,” Gallagher mutters, “shut up.”