The Same Sky: A Novel

by Amanda Eyre Ward

  “I don’t care if you’re Lyle Lovett,” said the woman. “Move along!”

  “Take me to bed, hon,” I said.

  “Whoa,” said the guard.

  “You heard me,” I said. Jake hit the gas.

  On the way home, I tried to apologize. “I’m going to try not to be such a …”

  “Meddler?” he suggested.

  “Jeez!” I said. “Such a …”

  “Instigator? Tyrant? Stone-cold fox?”

  “You know me pretty well,” I said.

  “I do.”

  “Jane’s sad, but she’s going to be okay.”

  “How about you?” said Jake.

  “It’s hard,” I said. “I still want a baby. I’m not going to lie to you, honey.”

  Jake turned onto Mildred Street. “I know,” he said. “I still want one, too.”

  “You do?” I said.

  “Of course I do,” said Jake. “But you know …” His voice trailed off. “I don’t have a great statement here,” he said finally. “I don’t have a moving conclusion.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “It hurts, to want something you can’t have.”

  “Yeah,” said Jake. He parked in front of our house, and I looked at his face, his ruddy skin. He smelled of barbecue and soap. I had always thought we’d be a family by now, but here we were, and it wasn’t nothing, what we had. It was a lot. I leaned into him, my sweet one.

  45

  Carla

  I WENT TO THE American high school for three months. The teachers were kind to me, although I did not understand most of what they said. Before school, in between classes, and after school as I waited for the bus, I was nervous—not in the harrowing way I had been scared on The Beast, but in a more aching way. I was frightened of being singled out or ridiculed. I wanted so much to be noticed, and I also wanted to disappear.

  Even in Room Sixteen, I was lonely. My mother stopped paying special attention to me. I began to feel angry at all the other children (including my new sister and Carlos), who had not been left behind in Tegu. I hated being sent to the Laundromat. I hated feeling sick all the time, and I hated the used clothes my mother brought me from Savers. I missed Humberto and wrote him endless letters in my school notebook. I would make something of myself, I decided, and then I would go back to Tegu with enough money to save us both. In the middle of the night, I prayed to God that Humberto would never know what had happened to me on the train. I prayed for God to make me a virgin again.

  One night I heard my mother and Mario arguing in English, which meant they were talking about me. My mother was saying, “No, no, it can’t be true.”

  Mario said, “Look at her, amor! Are you blind?”

  Their words escalated in intensity and everyone else in Room Sixteen pretended to be asleep. I pressed my eyes shut and prayed. In the morning, my mother took me on the bus to a medical clinic. When the test results came back, she said, “Carla, who did this to you?”

  I bowed my head in shame and told her what had happened at night on The Beast.

  She looked very sad and shook her head. “I will speak to my boss at the Texas Chicken,” she said. “You can work until the baby comes, and then I just don’t know.”

  46

  Alice

  A HUSH FELL OVER our restaurant as Marion walked in front of the crowd. Since the Chávez gymnasium had been closed down due to the discovery of asbestos beneath the floorboards, Marion had had to use any place she could find to convene school meetings. And this was an important one. Marion, wearing a yellow pantsuit with her gold jaguar pin, cleared her throat. “Hello, everyone,” she said in English and then in Spanish. “Good evening.”

  We had no sound system, so Marion had to raise her voice to be heard. The crowd had a few white members, but most Chávez parents were Latino and black. “Are you closing Johnson down?” yelled a heavyset man in the back.

  Marion raised her hand. The group fell silent. “As most of you know, I am fighting my hardest to keep Chávez Memorial open. If some of you have heard rumors about a van coming to get your student if they’re marked absent, I can confirm that those rumors are true. I’ve got a van and a GPS unit, and I have your addresses. So get your kids to school.” This announcement was met with laughter and encouraging shouts.

  She took a breath. “We have a big fight ahead of us. We have the TAKS tests coming up this spring, and I believe that we will raise our scores enough to keep this school open. Chávez has the smartest kids in town, and I also want you to know I believe we have the best-looking kids in town.” At this, Sam, who was sitting by the kitchen with Evian, yelled, “You know it!”

  “That’s enough from the peanut gallery,” said Marion, adjusting her glasses. “I have called you all here tonight to talk about the Homecoming football game and dance.” The room became silent. Jake put his hand on my knee and squeezed.

  “Now, this isn’t an easy thing to say,” said Marion. “I was a teenager myself, and I know how …” Her voice broke, but she regained control and continued, “I know how very much this night means to our kids.” She took a deep inhale. “The Austin Police Department has offered me extra security at the football field. We are taking a risk—a big risk—but I trust your children,” she said. “We have to trust them. We have to believe in them. And I’ll be honest, I’m scared someone’s going to do something stupid. I’m afraid. But I choose trust over fear. The Homecoming football game will go on as scheduled this Friday night.”

  Cheers erupted, and the parents—some of whom had played for the Jaguars themselves—began to sing the Johnson Jaguars fight song. Marion bowed her head and let the applause roll over her. Jake whispered, “Wait till you see Evian’s dress!” I smiled and shook my head.

  “I’m not finished,” continued Marion. The crowd settled down, and Marion spoke. “I’m very sorry to say what I have to say next. But I haven’t been able to find a solution, I haven’t, and so I just …” She put her shoulders back, lifted her head, and spoke. “There will be no Homecoming dance after the game. The gymnasium is unfit, and we don’t have anything left in the budget for the rental of an event space, much less money for food, music.…” Her voice trailed off. “We will have the game,” she said, “and I hate to send the kids out into the street afterward, but I don’t know what else to do.” She nodded firmly, and though the crestfallen group was utterly quiet, she said no more.

  I felt the sadness around us—it was a real thing, like toxic gas. People’s shoulders fell forward, and sighs were audible. “It’s not Homecoming without a dance,” whispered one mother.

  “It’ll have to be,” said another. “It’ll just have to be.”

  People began to gather their things. I saw Evian’s mom at her side, consoling her. Out of habit, I tried to think of how I could fix things, what I could do, but it seemed there was no damn solution—this disappointment just was the way it was.

  Someone pushed open the front door, and I felt a breeze on my face. I turned to my husband, but he wasn’t sitting next to me. Scanning the room, I saw him climbing on a chair. I frowned.

  “Stop!” cried Jake “Wait! Don’t go!” The most famous man in Austin (this week) yelled at the top of his lungs, “Listen to me!” People turned toward Jake and listened.

  “I’m Jake Conroe,” he said. “This is my restaurant, mine and my wife’s. That’s her, my wife, that’s Alice.” I lifted my arm, confused.

  “We care about your school,” said Jake. He wasn’t a man who liked public speaking, so I worried a bit for him, standing up there. None of these people needed our sympathy. “We care about Marion, and also we care about kids who deserve a party. And your kids deserve a party!”

  People began to clap, and I joined them. We all waited for the nice white guy to step down. But Jake wasn’t finished.

  “We’d like to offer Conroe’s for the dance,” said Jake. “We’ll cover the food, and I’ll find a DJ. If you want it, you can have it.”

  I wasn’t the o
nly one who broke into a stunned smile. People exchanged glances, excitement gathering. “So the question, I guess,” said Jake. “The question is, do you want it?”

  “Hell, yeah, we want it!” yelled a tall, skinny man in a T-shirt that said “Austin Fest.”

  “We want it!” echoed another.

  The room erupted in cheers. Jake made his way back to me and took my hand. “I think these people want a party,” he said.

  47

  Carla

  IN MY LAST weeks of pregnancy, I was fired from the Texas Chicken for being too slow and needing too many bathroom breaks. I started taking long walks around Austin, Texas, just to get away from Room Sixteen. When the baby came, I would spend all my time in there, I knew. I would be trapped in the Ace Motel until the baby was old enough to be left in one of the day cares near the Ace Motel, and then I would go back to work lifting metal baskets in and out of boiling oil, if not at the Texas Chicken then at another restaurant. I supposed I should be thankful. I supposed this was the American dream.

  It was fall. Most days I wore large T-shirts from Savers with a pair of elastic-waist shorts and sneakers. I was sweaty all the time. I understood I could never go back to Humberto—that beautiful, imaginary life was a mirage. I tried to accept my fate.

  The baby turned somersaults inside me. It didn’t know it was destined to grow up in Room Sixteen. Maybe the baby would have a better future than me, as we were allegedly in the land of limitless possibility. But when I was out of sight of anyone who knew me, I cried, my grip on any sort of faith weak.

  My family treated me like the burden I had become. Carlos was embarrassed to be seen with me, and Marisol steered clear and did not return my stuffed elephant. My mother said that the baby could sleep next to me in my Dora the Explorer sleeping bag. She took me to parenting classes, where I knelt next to other girls and women and learned how to swaddle a plastic baby, how to burp it and change its diapers.

  I didn’t want the baby. But when I told my mother once, she said, “How dare you say that! This is God’s plan for you, and you will make the best of it.”

  So I walked. As invisible as if I were magic, I passed houses, restaurants, and schools. I spoke to no one, but I felt every person’s pain. The man waiting for a bus was disappointed. The girls playing jump rope were hungry. The woman in a brand-new minivan stared at her Internet phone while her children hollered from the backseat, hoping she would notice them. The dog tied up outside a fancy coffee shop looked at me, and I felt its misery as if I were the one yoked to a utility pole.

  One night I smelled something wonderful. I was near downtown, east of Interstate 35. This was a part of town that was interesting to me—some blocks looked expensive and were filled with white college students who had funny hairstyles and beautiful clothes, and then right down the road would be a cantina with ficheras as covered in makeup as the ones I had seen in Ixtapec. Italian scooters were parked next to trucks with Mexican license plates. Although I felt like there was nothing new to see sometimes, in this part of Austin I was sometimes surprised.

  It was nighttime. My back was not hurting as much as usual. I bought an agua fresca from a street vendor and approached the building that smelled so delicious. It was a barbecue restaurant. Inside, I could see people dancing.

  I drew closer, holding my breath. I could hear music from a DJ table in the corner. At the doorway to the restaurant, older people stood in throngs, laughing and sipping from plastic cups.

  I was still in the dark. No one could see me. At times like this, I felt that I barely existed, my visions simply a fever dream. Only the thumps of my baby’s feet could bring me back to myself. On this occasion, my baby was motionless, and must have been asleep.

  A girl stepped outside the barbecue restaurant. She was a few years older than me, her dress the bright pink of a hibiscus in bloom. She wore a plastic tiara and a sash that spelled out “Chávez Memorial Homecoming Queen.” In her hand was one long-stemmed rose.

  I wanted the girl’s hair. I wanted the lipstick that matched her dress, I wanted the dress. I wanted her slim ankles and her silver shoes and her big metal earrings. She thought she was alone, and she held the rose to her face, inhaling, looking heavenward. She was thanking God, I knew.

  I began to cry. My own hair was dirty and fastened with a rubber band. My shoes were hideous, my T-shirt enormous. I had come so far on the strength of my will, but there was no way I could be Homecoming queen unless I gave up my baby. There was no way my baby would be Homecoming queen if she grew up in the Ace Motel with a mother who did not want her.

  I knew how it felt to understand you had ruined your mother’s life.

  I thought of my grandmother and grandfather, who had raised their baby in a small shack on the outskirts of Tegu. My grandmother had scarcely been apart from my mother for an hour before my mother left for America. This was how it should be: a mother and child, enough food, time for kindness. A mother’s lilting song as you fell asleep on the pallet, her hands scooping you up if you fell walking to the market, an orange shared at the table during a lazy afternoon, each bite the taste of sunshine. A mother who looked at you as if you were her happiness. This was what I wished for my baby—this was what I wished for myself.

  I wanted my baby to have a mother who was well-rested enough to love, who could feel joy in motherhood and not just a weary, relentless obligation. My heart was sick with the wanting. And I could not give my baby this life, no matter how many hours I wiped toilets or fried potatoes at the Texas Chicken.

  The Homecoming queen was illuminated like a saint, shining in her hibiscus dress. I watched her from the shadows, gazing at this girl in her most private, most perfect moment. My vision blurred, and I fell to my knees. I saw it then—I understood God’s plan for me. I turned my own face up, and, with the Homecoming queen, I gave thanks.

  48

  Alice

  I WAS FROZEN IN the Conroe’s BBQ restroom. I could hear the thumping beat of an unfamiliar song, and the shrieks of teenage girls. I counted the rolls of toilet paper again: twenty-seven. I checked the liquid soap dispenser: full. From the cabinet underneath the sink I brought out the Windex and sprayed, then carefully polished the mirror.

  The police had been circling the block all night. As the Chávez students danced and preened, made out and bumped hips and dirty-danced in full view of the hapless chaperones, the rest of us waited for some nut job to pull out a gun. Even Jake, in his Goodwill tuxedo with the ruffled shirt and neon cummerbund, even he looked jumpy, but maybe he was just worn out from assembling three hundred Sweet Stacy sandwiches.

  The punch could be spiked, some kid could OD, Sam might dump Evian and ruin what was quite possibly the best night of her life. I stood in the john, trying to think of something else I could sanitize.

  I reapplied my creamy lipstick. I gazed at the wrist bouquet that matched Jake’s. I brushed my hair and sprayed it with the can of Aqua Net. I thought I should sweep, but the broom was all the way in the kitchen. Someone knocked on the door.

  There I was, Alice Conroe. In a strapless dress, wiping. There was my hand, the skin loose around my knuckles. There was my mastectomy scar, barely visible when I reached to clean the upper corners of the frame.

  I looked like an adult who knew things. This is it, I told myself, not sure what I was getting at. I understood I needed to return to the restaurant, where Beau was indulging his fantasies of being a DJ, if just for the night.

  It occurred to me that so much of what I did—the cleaning, the futzing, the worrying about everyone I loved—was born of my childhood belief that if I kept in motion, I would not have to miss my mother. So much of what we all did, to be fair, was a valiant attempt to distract ourselves from the fact that we were going to die, and none of us knew when or how or what the fuck we should do with ourselves in the meantime.

  I took a breath. I had to just show up and feel everything—to risk the possibility that despite Marion’s heroic efforts Chávez Memorial would
shut down in the spring (it would), to endure the painful hope that Jake might let us keep our adoption file open a few months longer (he would), to swallow the reality that Jane might get cancer and there was nothing I could do about it (she would not). I had to stand by and watch as Evian ruined her own damn evening by spurning Sam and going home with a small-time drug dealer. I had to hold my husband, let myself burn for him, even though he could die or leave me or we could just lose our love as time went by.

  I had to go out there into the Chávez Memorial High School Homecoming dance simply because I could: I was alive on this earth and my mother was not.

  I had to leave the bathroom.

  Another knock came. I put my hand on the knob and turned.

  49

  Carla

  THIS ESSAY HAS gone on for a long time, I am aware. We have a guidance counselor at our school, Mrs. Halpern. She means well, but when she tells us we must follow the instructions to the letter, I do not believe her. I want you to know me, Admissions Officer. I want you to understand what I have done so that I can attend the University of Texas, so that I can walk along the paths I see in your shiny catalog and join the group of students sitting in a circle of sunlight outside your library. If you admit me to your university and I find a way to make it from the desk where I am sitting to that circle of sunlight outside your library, the American dream will lie before me.

  I can only imagine what sort of essays you will be reading. I have been told that American students will travel to my country to gain life experience and empathy. Maybe they will write about the little girls they see picking through trash at the dump in Tegucigalpa, handling discarded food to see if it is just a bit rotten, still edible. It is possible that an American in a tour bus saw me give putrid fruit to my brother, trying to save him from a hunger so unrelenting that he was forced to escape it with yellow glue. I don’t know. I can’t go back, in any case. I cannot board an airplane without documents.