Jaime shifted. He could still make a run for it. Except his sketchbook with The Adventures of Seme and his other drawings sat on his desk in the opposite direction from the door.
“Whether you’re here legally or not is none of my business. Understand?”
He nodded. Okay, maybe he should believe her. Then why did he still have a bad feeling about this?
“But if you’d like to share what it’s like to immigrate or be an immigrant, I think it would be great for the class to learn from you.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, tank you.”
Even worse than Meesus being an undercover immigration agent or being forced to speak English in front of his class was what he’d actually have to tell them. He’d relived the horrors too many times in his head; saying them out loud to people who wouldn’t understand would be impossible. Sharing with Don Vicente and Doña Cici over breakfast was one thing. They knew the hardships, they understood the emotions, they were immigrants themselves. His classmates would never understand. They might even think he’d made things up just for the attention.
“It could just be one or two details,” Meesus tried to reassure him.
The bell rang and Meesus waved him to his seat. Jaime folded his arms across his chest with his sketchbook sandwiched in the middle. Not happening. Not at all.
Meesus introduced the day’s lesson and began the discussion of the differences between immigrants, refugees, migrants, and pioneers.
“Doesn’t matter what you call them.” Diego muttered. “They’re all here to take away our jobs.”
Freddie raised his hand as he gave Diego a look. “An immigrant is someone who moves to a new place, usually looking for a better life. Like more money or to be closer to family. A refugee is someone who has to leave their country because there’s a war or because their life is in danger or something.”
“Well said.” Meesus wrote Freddie’s explanation on the whiteboard. “An immigrant leaves because they want to, a refugee because they have to. What about migrants and pioneers?”
Jaime ignored the discussion as a new thought crossed his mind. People kept saying he and Ángela were immigrants. He thought of himself as an immigrant too. But Freddie seemed to say that immigrants left their home because they wanted to, because they hoped things would be better.
Only part of that rang true for Jaime. He wasn’t just a person settling into a new place to seek a better life. He was more than that: a refugee, a person who left his country because of danger. Coming here hadn’t been his choice, or even his parents’ choice. The choice to leave had been made for him. Had he stayed, he would have died.
A weight seemed to lift from his shoulders and was replaced with self-assurance. He raised his hand without thinking and then quickly lowered it. Except Meesus caught his movement and called on him.
“Jaime, do you have something to share?”
The whole class turned to look at him. He started to shake his head no. That he was just stretching. Except he now thought about Diego’s words that Meesus hadn’t heard, that people from other countries were just here to take away jobs. How some people thought he and others like him were all criminals. If he didn’t speak up, no one would know the truth.
“I am refugee,” he said with more pride and assurance than he thought possible when a few seconds ago he dreaded this conversation. “I leave Guatemala to live. Bad people with drugs, pandilleros—”
“Gang members,” Samuel interrupted even though he didn’t like translating for Jaime.
“Yes, gang members. They say unir with them or die.”
“They would kill you if you didn’t join their gang? They’d really do that?” Carla asked. Jaime could feel his face paling. The memory of Miguel’s murder haunted him daily. He knew his classmates wouldn’t understand, would be incapable in their safe worlds to get that in other parts of the world, bad things really did happened. But at the same time, and he hated himself for it, he liked that Carla seemed impressed with his past life.
“Yes. Gang members kill people. Kill cousin. Parents say, ‘Go to El Norte. Live with brother.’ Me and Ángela, other cousin, we go.”
“His parents must have been glad to get rid of him,” Diego said in his low voice, but Jaime heard it just fine. And understood more than he would have liked.
Freddie turned to Diego. “Don’t be mean.”
Diego shrugged and maintained the low voice. “Just telling it like it is. Parents that love you don’t send you away.”
Jaime waited for Meesus to tell Diego off, make him stay in during recess for being so rude and completely incorrect. Except she hadn’t heard him.
At any rate, what did Diego know? Jaime’s parents did love him. His whole family loved him and Ángela so much that they were willing to send them on a dangerous journey, choosing between definitely dying and possibly dying. They did it to keep them safe, because they loved them.
“They didn’t have a choice,” Freddie insisted in a voice that Meesus definitely heard, though he had been talking to Diego.
“Exactly, they didn’t have a choice,” Meesus said. “Their lives were in danger and leaving was the only chance of survival. I definitely think that marks you as a refugee, not an immigrant. Thank you for sharing, Jaime. So what do you think is a good example of someone who is an immigrant? Samuel?”
Samuel lowered his hand and began to share his family’s immigration story—something about not finding enough work and not being able to earn what they needed to feed the family. But Jaime stopped paying attention as Diego’s words continued to gnaw at his brain. If his family had really loved him, they would have done more to keep him and Ángela safe. They knew people who hadn’t completed the journey. Marcela, Tomás’s old crush, who was kidnapped and sold as a slave. Other people from his village had left and were never heard from again. That could have been him or Ángela. Their parents knew of the dangers, which meant their parents could have sent them to their death. And what parent who loved their child would do that?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Goat milk squirted out of Jaime’s nose when Ángela exited the tiny trailer bathroom. Her eyes and lips were covered in black makeup and her cheeks had gone a pale color instead of her usual bronzed brown. She looked like muerte, and not in that intriguing, undead, vampire way.
“Why do you look like that?” Jaime asked.
“It’s for the play. It’s called stage makeup.”
“But aren’t you a nun?”
She sent a death glare at him over her blackened eyes.
“You don’t know anything,” she said. In English. And then left the trailer without breakfast.
Jaime downed the rest of the milk and grabbed a banana along with his backpack and hoodie before dashing after her.
“¿Qué te pasa?” he asked when he caught up with his cousin.
“Nothing.” Again, in English.
“¿Por qué estás de mal humor?”
“I’m not in a bad mood.” She groaned and shook her head like she couldn’t believe what she had to deal with. She walked faster up the hill even though they had plenty of time to make it to the bus.
Jaime lengthened his stride to keep up with her. Every few steps he turned to look at her, started to ask another question, and then changed his mind. Each time he looked, her blackened eyes remained focused ahead.
“Do you want the banana?” he offered her his breakfast as a peace offering.
“No, it’s too ripe.” At least this time she said it in Spanish.
“¿Y?” He waved the banana in her face, waiting for her to accept it. “You need to eat something.”
“No, what I need is for you to leave me alone. Gaaawd.” And she was back to the English, and back to walking faster than necessary.
The bus took forever to arrive, and while they waited Ángela did an award-winning performance of ignoring Jaime. Except had he not been there, he doubted she would have maintained the emo stare at the
highway. She also wouldn’t have stepped in front of him to deliberately get on the bus first. Or flicked her hair over her shoulder and strutted (yes, strutted) to the back of the bus where, instead of sitting on the seat that awful Tristan always saved for her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and plopped down on his lap.
“Hey, babe. Loving the Goth look.” Tristan draped an arm over her thigh. Jaime stopped watching. Hopefully, Abuela wasn’t watching either.
“You gotta sit on your own seat,” the driver shouted as he glared at Ángela through his rearview mirror. “I ain’t moving til you do.”
Jaime turned just enough to catch Ángela slide off Tristan’s lap, redness threatening to burst through her pale makeup. He shifted his gaze to the roof of the bus as it rolled back on the highway. Gracias, Abuela.
When he finally turned to say hi to Seh-Ahn, his friend had a note for him.
Your sister is acting really weird.
No me digas, Jaime wanted to write, but didn’t know how to translate that he was in full agreement. Instead, he copied Seh-Ahn’s words. Yes really weird.
It also would have been too hard to explain that Ángela wasn’t his sister. And that for the first time in his life he was glad she wasn’t.
• • •
“Jaime, do you have a minute?” Meez Macálista called out to him in Spanish as his class finished their music lesson.
“Ooh, you’re in trouble,” Diego muttered as he knocked into him as he left the room.
Jaime rearranged the recorder in his bag, making sure he hadn’t scratched it. What was it with teachers and their ability to always want to talk when you least wanted to?
He watched the rest of his class leave to return to Meesus’s room. Carla hung back to wait for him, her head tilted curiously to the side, causing her black hair to fall over her purple glasses.
“I have to go,” he told the music teacher.
Meez glanced at the clock. “There’s still forty-five minutes before the final bell and I already told Mrs. Threadworth I wanted to talk with you. How are you doing?”
Carla tucked the strand of hair behind her ear and sent Jaime a small smile before following the rest of her class out. Jaime wished he could join her, maybe ask her a casual question on their way back to class (she liked cats, right?).
“Bien.” Jaime sighed.
“You look distracted today.”
Jaime shook his head. Now was not the time to talk about Abuela. About Ángela who continued to become more distant with every day. About Don Vicente and his inevitable deportation. About the fact that just like Miguel’s murder, he couldn’t think of anything to do to help. And above all, he didn’t want to talk about his desperation to return home, and hope Diego was wrong about his family not wanting him.
“I’m fine.”
Meez didn’t let it rest. “Have you made some friends?”
“Sort of.”
Meez gave him that look that said as a teacher she expected a better answer and wasn’t going to let him go until he complied.
Jaime let out a breath. “Freddie and Carla are nice, but I like Seh-Ahn best.”
“Who?”
“Seh-Ahn. He’s on the bus but not in my class.”
Meez still pretended she didn’t know who he was talking about. Annoyance grew inside Jaime. He knew Meez knew everyone in the school, from the littlest kindergarteners to the burly eighth graders who looked old enough to vote. She just wanted him to keep talking and he was not in the mood.
“Seh-Ahn,” he said quickly. “Blond hair and freckles. Reads a lot. Seh-Ahn.” He flopped his arms to his sides to emphasize how tired he was of her stupid game.
“Oh, you mean Sean?”
Jaime’s shoulders slumped as his annoyance grew. “He said his name was Seh-Ahn.”
“He . . . said that?”
“Well, no. He wrote it.” Like he wrote the text for The Adventures of Seme, like he and Jaime always wrote things to each other. Suddenly Jaime wondered if this boy had been playing a joke on him. Was their whole friendship just some stupid game to see how gullible he was? Jaime could see Ángela’s friend Tristan playing a trick like this, but Seh-Ahn? Who always waved and saved him a seat but never pestered him with questions when he wanted to be left alone? Jaime couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.
Jaime hid his head in his hands. No wonder Jaime never saw him in school; his cover would have been blown. But why would he do such a thing? “I hate him and I hate it here.”
“Jaime.” Meez kept a hand on his shoulder even when he tried to shake it off. “Sean is an Irish name. It’s pronounced Shawn but in this case it’s spelled S-E-A-N, which is pretty normal. Have you ever heard of the actor Sean Connery?”
“James Bond,” Jaime replied without thinking about it.
“Exactly,” Meez smiled kindly. “Your friend and the actor have the same name.”
“So why didn’t Seh-Ahn, I mean Sean, correct me?” But Jaime answered the question for himself as soon as he asked it. Because he never spoke to Sean, and Sean never spoke back. Maybe Jaime said hi and a few other words but besides that, they never talked. That was one of the things Jaime liked best about Sean. They understood each other without speaking.
“Sean is . . . ,” Meez paused as she tried to remember her Spanish. “I don’t know the word. In English it’s ‘deaf.’ ”
“ ‘Death’? Like muerte?” He clutched his schoolbag to his side. She couldn’t mean he was a killer. Then, that he was dead? What happened? Sean was alive this morning. He—
Meez waved her arms to calm Jaime down. “Oh no, different word. This one means he can’t hear. His ears don’t work.”
“He hears nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“And he can’t talk?”
“He makes sounds sometimes and laughs, but it’s hard to learn words when you can’t hear. He talks with his hands and has a special hearing teacher who helps him learn to communicate like that.”
It all made sense now. Jaime could see Sean in his mind making gestures with his hands and had never given them a second thought. Most of his family used their hands in addition to verbal communication. The more passionate the topic, the bigger the gestures. He never thought Sean’s signs were actual words.
He planted himself on a chair in front of Meez’s desk, strewn with instrument parts and sheet music. “Show me.”
“I only know very basic signs and how to spell my name.” Meez glanced at the clock. Jaime followed her gaze. Music class had finished ten minutes ago and now there were only thirty-five minutes left until the final bell. Meesus might wonder where he was. Or she might be glad that for once she didn’t have to overexplain things.
“Por fa, Meez,” Jaime pleaded. She bit her lip and Jaime could almost see her mind debating the situation—she had work to do and Meesus would get upset that she was keeping him so long. On the other hand, poor Jaime, all alone from a different country and unable to speak the grueling English language, finally made a friend. Jaime noticed her weakening and went on. “On Fridays after música, Meesus lets us have a free period to read or start homework as long as we’re quiet. I’m not missing anything.”
“Bueno, I do think learning different ways to communicate is a good thing.” She sighed before motioning him to the other side of her desk to view her computer. “Let’s look it up on YouTube.”
Meez accidentally loaded a British Sign Language video instead, and after a few seconds of her saying, “That’s not what I learned,” she figured out her mistake. Apparently, different countries had different signs for the same letters. Weird. Even among deaf communities, someone from one country wouldn’t be able to understand someone from a different country. It didn’t seem right, but at the same time, who should decide that their country’s signs were the “correct” signs? The same as with spoken languages, one wasn’t better than another.
They watched the American Sign Language alphabet video three times before Jaime reme
mbered all the letters. He had to think before each one but after that third time, he could spell his name using his hand. And A-N-G-E-L-A and T-O-M-A-S. Because it was a basic American Sign Language video it didn’t show how to add accent marks to letters, but a lot of people didn’t write Spanish names with accents, so maybe it didn’t really matter.
Then they watched the video that showed them how to say basic signs like “hi” (simple, just a wave), “my name is” (placing a hand on your chest for “my” then tapping the pointer and middle fingers of each hand against each other to create an X while palms faced your chest for the word “name”), “thank you” (tapping your chin with fingertips and then extending the palm out), and a few others.
“Jaime, you have to go.” Meez stopped the video and closed the browser. “The bell will ring in a minute.”
He couldn’t miss the bus, but for the first time ever, he didn’t want to leave school. Not with so much left to learn.
“Can we do this again? On Monday?”
Meez laughed. “I’m the music teacher, I have my own classes to teach. But I’ll ask Mrs. Threadworth and Mr. Mike, Sean’s teacher, and maybe they can arrange something.”
“Cool,” he said in English just as the bell rang. He tapped his chin with his fingertips before bringing his palm out in front of him in thanks. Meez waved “bye” in return.
He wove his way as quickly as he could through the herd of kids and bulging backpacks to his class. Meesus stood on the toes of her leather granny shoes cleaning the whiteboard when Jaime returned to the classroom.
“Jaime, where have you been? Is everything alright?” she asked.
“I’m perfect,” he said in English as he gathered his hoodie and lunch bag before holding out his hand the way she liked. “Bye, Meesus.”
She blinked behind her glasses before shaking his hand. “Good-bye, Jaime.”
Then he dashed out of the room like Vida after a rabbit. The driver of bus thirty-six gave him a “you’re late” look and closed the door behind him. Jaime dropped onto the seat next to Sean as he caught his breath. He shoved his stuff under the seat in front and turned to his friend, who held his head at an angle as if to ask what happened.
The Crossroads Page 11