I was playing with the bendy straw in Silvia’s milk carton, trying to straighten it out, because when it was bent back, it reminded me of my wrist. Silvia asked for a sip. I held the carton up to her. There was a fuzzy picture of a lost kid printed on the side, under the words “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?”
It was a picture of me!
I never paid much attention to the missing children ads on milk cartons. The faces didn’t look real to me. And then there was the problem of not knowing the story behind the ad. What if the kid had run away for a good reason, like a live-in uncle who kept trying to climb into her bed, or a father who spent too much time sitting at a table with a gun and a bottle of whiskey? I had heard that sometimes they used computers to age the children in the pictures, and that idea bothered me, too. It was as if you were never allowed to get away. You’d be running all your life, or at least the years until you were 21, which is the most important part of a life, anyway.
Silvia got all excited about my being on the milk carton. “Hey, you’re famous!” she said, but that was the whole problem. Luckily, they had chosen an awful picture, the one they took on my first day at Field. The photographer had literally forced me to smile. I hadn’t wanted to. I hated being photographed. It always made me feel like a criminal. Back then, I was especially sensitive, which made me lash out. I asked the photographer why he didn’t have a real job. He said he had nothing better to do than wait all day for me to smile. So I said I had nothing better to do all day than make him lose a lot of money for being an idiot. That got him. I could tell from his ratty shirt that he needed the money. He walked over to me, put his fingers on the corners of my mouth, and pushed upwards. “Smile,” he said. “Like this.” The fact that he touched me was pretty shocking. His assistant took the picture before I had time to react. So I did have a smile in the picture—at least an ironic one—but the rest of my face was extremely pissed.
There was a description of me under the picture. Most of it was right, but they listed my eye color as “hazel,” which was a surprise because I had always thought of them as plain brown. “Hazel” had to have been my grandmother’s touch. I could just picture her talking to the HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? people over the phone and pausing for a minute when they asked what my eye color was, thinking that I might read the milk carton someday, and wanting to help with my “positive self-image,” so telling them that my eyes were “hazel,” which was a real stretch. My grandfather would be hovering around while she placed the call, playing out the telephone cord so she wouldn’t get tangled in it, because she tended to pace when she was making a difficult call, and then, when she was finally a little calmer and sitting down at the kitchen table, standing behind her and rubbing her neck with his papery hands.
I was tempted to call the 800 number on the carton and let them know I was okay, but I decided not to. Who knew what kind of wiretap they’d have on the phone? The mission now was to get Silvia to California to have her baby. I’d gotten her kicked out and almost blown up. I wasn’t about to get her deported.
Part of me didn’t mind the idea of my grandparents worrying a little, either. Frankly, I felt like I was cleaning up their mess.
By now, Silvia was yawning almost constantly. She needed to rest. I knew she wouldn’t stop on her own, so I told her I was sorry but I was still really tired. I asked if we could go to her place to rest up a bit, since we were still in town. “It’s not too far, that place,” she said. She added that we’d never get to California at this rate, but I could tell she liked the idea of stopping.
We went part of the way around the Beltway again until we hit a stretch Silvia recognized. She never did own up to the night of driving in circles, but it was such a gorgeous day, who cared? Being on the road was relaxing. I turned on the radio and tried to find something good, but after a while I left it alone. Everything I heard sounded fine.
We got off the Beltway at a new exit. The usual fast food places were being built, but no malls yet. The road was wide and very smooth. It was so new it didn’t even have lines painted on it. You could tell from the old wooden fences and the flat fields with a single enormous tree in the middle that this used to be farm country. Instead of cows by the side of the road, there were billboards with paintings of fancy houses and the words “Coming Soon!” Bright orange surveyor’s flags fluttered like poisonous butterflies in the fields. Bulldozers were busy tearing up the land. I saw a group of men pulling down a grain silo with ropes. They looked so old-fashioned, silhouetted against the sun—like pioneers, only instead of building the country, they were tearing it down. I wondered why they weren’t using machines.
Then, suddenly, the wide road ended, narrowing into its old, patched, humble self. Up ahead, there was still farmland, but you could tell it was doomed. Silvia pulled into the parking lot of a brand new hotel. Its sign wasn’t even installed yet. It lay on the ground under a blue tarp. When the tarp caught the breeze, I made out the words “Alamo Inn.” Americans were always telling everyone to remember the Alamo. I hoped Silvia wasn’t too sensitive about the name. After all, it referred to a huge defeat for her people—at least I thought it did.
There were flowers in wooden planters in the parking lot. The woodwork was all freshly painted. There was an ornamental pond with a few underfed carp cowering in the shadow of lilies. “Wait here,” Silvia said. Then she waddled off, following an extension cord up a set of exterior stairs to the balcony along the second floor. She climbed slowly, leaning heavily on the rail every few steps to catch her breath. I felt like warning her about wet paint. At one point, she turned back to me and waved, which let me see her in profile. She was so huge!
After a few minutes, Silvia waved me upstairs, where she introduced me to her friend, a maid named Rosaria. Rosaria said to call her “Rosie.” Rosie was a mousy little thing with a pock-marked chin and a lipful of hair. She used her master key to let us into one of the rooms. “It’s yours till six,” she said. Silvia kissed Rosie’s greasy cheeks and whispered something in her ear that made her blush.
We sat in soft upholstered chairs while Rosaria gave the room a quick once-over with her vacuum and made the bed. It’s hard to imagine a feeling more luxurious than watching someone make up a bed for you with nice starchy sheets. It was like being an aristocrat.
I asked Silvia if we should tip Rosaria. She said, “Come on!” as if I had just insulted her, which I guess I had. In my defense, I wouldn’t expect one of my friends, whose job it was to clean rooms every day, to clean one just for me, especially if she was going to have to do it again in a few hours. I told Silvia she had a nice friend in Rosaria. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell she agreed.
As soon as Rosaria left, Silvia and I flopped on the bed and turned on the TV. The hotel had cable. There wasn’t much on, but we didn’t care. We had a remote. Flipping through the channels was like reading a fat Chinese menu, the kind that’s as thick as a magazine. A lot of the dishes may sound downright disgusting, but the main point is the possibility of ordering them.
I like hotel rooms nice and cold, so I turned down the temperature. Silvia complained, but I wrapped her up in a blanket and she was fine.
There was a phone in the bathroom, right next to the toilet. “Check it out!” I said. Silvia nodded. “It’s a luxurious place,” she said. I liked the way Silvia pronounced “luxurious.” I made her say it again. I unwrapped one of the plastic cups on the sink and filled it up with tap water, which wasn’t half bad. I brushed my knuckles against one of the towels while I drank. “The towels are nice and soft,” I said approvingly, as if I was considering buying them.
A few minutes later, lying on the slightly scratchy bedcover, knowing that I could peel it back and slip between the cool sheets with Silvia, and her all excited because we were on our way to California— it was as close to happy as I had been in a long time. “Hey—why don’t you give Roberto a call?” I said.
“No telephoning,” Silvia said. “Rosaria said, ‘No.’”
> “Just one call?” I said. “You know you want to.”
“Of course I want to,” she said, “but I’m not.” The thought of calling Roberto seemed to make Silvia sad, so I offered to run her a bath. She said no thanks, because it was too hard to get in and out of the tub, but she told me to go ahead. She said she thought I could really use one.
Looking in the bathroom mirror, I had to agree with her. I ran a steaming bath. There were lots of little bottles of complimentary hotel goo. I poured it all in. The water got bubbly and smelled like almonds, and changed color to bright blue, like the Caribbean. I tested it with my big toe, and when I was sure I hadn’t created an acid bath that would eat off my flesh, I lowered the rest of me under that exotic water, even my head. That was a mistake, because my cheeks still felt sunburned, and hot water was the last thing they needed. Once I got over that, it was just me and the nice almondy bubbles.
Even my wrist stopped bothering me after a while, which meant that I could focus on other things, like the sound of the bathroom fan, which had turned on automatically when I switched on the light. It made a high drone like a bumblebee, which I liked at first, because I could close my eyes and imagine I was floating near a patch of honeysuckle. But the buzzing never changed pitch, which was completely unlike a real bumblebee, so I eventually called out and asked Silvia to come turn it off.
She grumbled about having to get up, but she reached in and flipped the switch anyway. The buzzing and the light went out at the same time, which gave me a feeling of freefall. It was as if I had been tied to a dock before, and Silvia had just cut me loose. I began to imagine I was drifting in the middle of a huge river somewhere in the tropics, a place known for its almond plantations. I could hear the distant sound of the workers’ televisions, which flickered in the jungle night and scared off curious tree leopards. The Amazon sun had been cooking the river all day. The fish had been driven down to the bottom, where it was cooler, and that left the bubbly surface all to me.
I imagined I was a girl floating down that river on a raft, and then something better occurred to me. I was the raft, and Silvia was the girl. The river was salty here because we were very close to the sea. The saltiness of the water made Silvia happy because it meant that we were almost in California, which everyone else thought was land, but which she and I knew was really a secret ocean.
It was hard to know whether I was asleep or awake in that wonderful dark tub. Silvia finally called out to see if I was okay, and I said, “Oh my God.” I said, “Silvia, I’m totally fine.”
Chapter Thirteen
Silvia and I were snuggling in bed when Rosie came to get us up. She breezed right in, swept the curtains aside, and said, “It’s cold in here!” She studied the thermostat for a moment, shaking her head. I thought she was going to be mad about all the electricity we had used, but when she saw Silvia and me curled up under the covers, she smiled, which made her look completely unlike a mouse. She said we had to go pretty soon.
Silvia thanked her about a million times. So did I. Before we left, Rosie gave us two bath towels and a bunch of miniature soaps and shampoos. She even offered us a Gideon Bible. Silvia said she already had a bible, but that I could probably use one. I let that suggestion die.
Silvia gave Rosie an awkward sideways hug, which was the best she could do on account of the belly, and then we went out to the Dodge and got back on the Beltway. There was heavy traffic because it was rush hour again, but I didn’t mind. My skin was still tingling from the long bath and the nap in that cool, cool room. The sun was red and low, and the air felt good, even out there in all that traffic. We had the windows rolled down. Everybody was trapped in their cars. Silvia and I laughed at the impatience of the commuters, who were peeling in and out of lanes and shaking their fists at each other, even though the traffic was barely moving.
We finally got around to the exit for the interstate heading west, which was where we should have gotten off the Beltway the night before. Silvia headed for the ramp. She was concentrating on getting over, so she didn’t notice that a State Trooper had pulled in behind us. I didn’t tell Silvia about it. Some things are better to know after the fact, when knowing can’t make you nervous. We weren’t speeding— we couldn’t have, if we wanted to, on account of the traffic—and, as far as I could tell, we weren’t doing anything else wrong, either. Silvia was a fine driver, even if she didn’t have a driver’s license.
Then the trooper turned on his siren. I made Silvia pull over to the right, onto the shoulder, the way my grandmother always did when she heard a siren. I was hoping he’d just speed up and pass us, but he slowed down, too.
Silvia wanted to make a run for it. “He knows! He knows!” she said.
“Knows what?” I asked.
“About me. About you. The car. The house. Everything.”
I tried to get her to calm down. You can’t outrun a State Trooper, and besides, we hadn’t done anything illegal, either one of us—at least not having to do with Silvia’s driving. If you didn’t count the no license thing.
We parked on the shoulder. The trooper pulled his cruiser to a stop about twenty feet behind us, jutting it out at an angle, almost into traffic. It took him forever to get out of his car. He talked on the radio for a long time, wrote some things down, and then waited, tapping on the steering wheel with his pen. Then he talked on the radio some more. Finally, he swung his door open. Everything he did was exceedingly slow, even the way he put on his hat after he got out of the car. The Beltway drivers were slowing down and rubbernecking. The trooper seemed to like that. He treated the shoulder of the highway like his stage. His incredibly slow official walk gave me plenty of time to study the goofy hat perched so high on his buzz cut. I wondered how he kept it clean in such a dusty job. That’s the kind of trivial thing I tend to focus on before lying. It helps free up the rest of my mind to work on the lie itself.
I pretended to sneeze. While my mouth was covered, I told Silvia to let me do the talking.
The trooper stood by Silvia’s door and tapped the roof of the Dodge. He looked out at the traffic for a moment, as if he wanted to see how full the theater was before starting his big monologue. Then he leaned over in an extremely condescending way and said, “Evening, ladies.” Silvia’s belly looked gigantic reflected in the curve of his mirrored sunglasses.
“What seems to be the problem, Officer?” I asked innocently. I had heard my grandmother say that once. I planned to do everything I thought she would do—within limits. My grandmother had a knack for dealing with authority figures which I definitely lacked.
The trooper didn’t acknowledge me. He asked Silvia for her driver’s license and the car’s registration. Silvia looked very alarmed, which fit in to my plan perfectly. “Officer,” I said. “I’m afraid she can’t understand you.” He gave me an annoyed look. So did Silvia. I took her hand in mine, as if I was about to say something very important, and blurted out some very nasal gibberish. “Muh-na-na pontish seen, poodada,” I said. Of course it was complete nonsense. Silvia looked almost as surprised as the trooper.
Then I turned to him and said, “We hope there isn’t a problem. We’ve got some pressing business at the consulate.”
The trooper clicked his front teeth together, not unlike those chattering joke teeth, but quieter and slower. He said, “The consulate. Uh huh.”
“Did we do something wrong, Officer?” I said.
The trooper looked away again at the traffic. “Routine stop, Ma’am. I’d like to see some registration and a driver’s license.” I pretended to translate for Silvia. She didn’t know what to do, so she just listened with an expression of disbelief on her face. I turned to the trooper. He was clicking his teeth again. “I’d like to introduce you to the wife of the Portuguese consul,” I said, indicating Silvia. “She’s having contractions. We’re on our way to the consulate, to pick up her husband—the consul—and then go to the hospital.”
Of course, if the trooper knew any real Portuguese, th
e whole plan was sunk, but I figured he had less of a chance of knowing Portuguese than Spanish, which is why I chose it. The trooper didn’t say anything. I wished I could tell what was going on behind those mirrored glasses. It was like dealing with an insect.
Silvia started to play along. She squeezed her belly and moaned a little. Then she tried out some of her own gibberish, which sounded much more authentic because of her Spanish accent. The trooper waited for my translation. Silvia went on and on. When she finally finished, I said, “The consul’s wife appreciates the fine job you troopers are doing. She says that the consul is very supportive of local law enforcement. She also says that if we don’t go right now, she’s going to have the baby right here in the front seat.” I leaned across her to confide in the trooper. “I think you should know,” I whispered, “that having a baby in a car is like the biggest humiliation imaginable among the ruling classes. In Portugal.”
The trooper was silent. I couldn’t see his eyes, but he seemed to be scoping out Silvia’s cheap dress and the front seat full of trash from the Mini-Mart. Suddenly he excused himself. He said he wanted to check something out.
It was a very bad sign. On the way back to his cruiser, he paid special attention to our license plate. Then it occurred to me: I hadn’t considered diplomatic tags!
The lie was unraveling. I said, “Quick, the fizzy water.” Silvia handed me the bottle. I used my teeth on the cap, since my wrist was useless. As soon as I got the top off, I started dumping water in Silvia’s lap.
“Hey! It’s cold! Stop that,” she said.
“Let it soak in,” I said. “I’m serious. Trust me.” I reached over, elbowed the horn, and started waving. I was watching the trooper in the side view mirror. He had stopped next to his cruiser. His legs were bowed, as if he had just climbed down off a horse. He twisted his body, which pulled his jacket away from his gun. I hoped that exposing his gun was just a habit and nothing that he had thought through. I kept honking and waving, thinking: Come on, cowboy. Over here.
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