Both women shot him a surprised look. Now it was their turn to seem embarrassed.
“Well then,” said the saleslady, “shall we take a look at the engagement rings?”
Without meaning to, Evan let out an audible sigh.
“Sounds good,” he said. “Let’s do that.”
* * *
Leaving the event in Mrs. King’s Buick, Alma broke the uncomfortable silence.
“I’m sorry.”
“For heaven’s sake, Alma, what do you have to be sorry for?” Mrs. King asked.
“You’ve worked so hard to help me, and I ruined it.”
“You did not ruin this. And while your speech may not have been pleasant, you were speaking from your heart. That’s always the right thing to do.”
“I can’t be the poster child, Mrs. King.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“I’m sick of it. I’m so tired of standing up there and acting all perfect, as if I need to earn the right to be here—as if my good grades and sweet demeanor make me somehow worthy!”
It felt good to get these nagging thoughts off her chest.
“Well, your good grades do in fact make you worthy of a scholarship, but as for your demeanor, I can’t say I’ve ever thought of it as sweet.”
“Well, I’m done,” Alma said. “This town’s going to have to find itself another model immigrant.”
“So, it’s decided?”
“What? That I’m leaving? I don’t have another choice. And even if I could find a way to stay…”
“And what does your Evan think?”
“My Evan?” She heard herself say. Alma closed her eyes and tried to push the image of Evan—fretting beside her in Ms. Chen’s office—out of her mind. “Oh, Mrs. King. I hope his mom doesn’t tell him! I just haven’t figured out a way to break the news, you know? He’s so determined to fix it. And he’s so damned naive.”
“Are you perhaps being a little naive, too, Alma? I mean, to think that you can make a life for yourself back in your parents’ hometown? It’s going to be hard.”
Alma’s voice rose to a shrill pitch. “Oh? And this isn’t hard?”
“Of course it is, Alma.” Mrs. King almost cooed her response.
She slowly eased her car into Alma’s driveway. Alma needed to pull it together. There was no reason to take this out on Mrs. King.
“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Alma asked. “Whit’s here.”
“I’d love to see Whit, but I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“I promise, it would not be an imposition. Abuela Lupe had nine kids, and she still cooks gargantuan amounts of food every day. I think Isa has gained fifteen pounds.”
Isa had definitely left her hunger strikes behind. Since the moment her parents left for Mexico, she had been making up for lost time. While stuffing her face, she was fond of proclaiming dramatically that, back in Mexico, they’d probably all be too poor to eat, so she might as well enjoy good food now.
“Well then, I suppose it’s my duty,” Mrs. King said, stepping out of the car.
Entering the house, they were greeted by an unusual combination of smells—burnt sugar, roasted tomatillos, and sautéed garlic, maybe? Isa and Selena were chasing each other around the couch, fighting loudly over the TV remote. In the kitchen, Abuela Lupe stood on one side of the stove, vigorously chopping onions. Their neighbor Señora Jimenez was sitting at the kitchen table with her three children, shoving their feet into an array of new shoes that were laid out across the table.
The sliding doors were thrown open to the deck, where Whit balanced in a headstand on his yoga mat. Since leaving rehab and moving into the transitional house, he had spent almost all of his free time here. Whit came out of rehab clean, centered, and with an obsessive need to practice yoga. His zeal for it was verging on evangelical, and he had Alma in his sights. The day before he somehow had convinced her, for the first time since elementary school, to plunge into a full backbend. According to Whit, this particular contortion promoted an attitude of surrender—openness to any circumstance.
He and Abuela Lupe immediately developed a strange bond over shoes of all things. Abuela Lupe was an entrepreneur. For the past dozen years, Tía Pera had been sending her clothes from the clearance racks in Gilberton, and Alma’s grandmother sold them for a profit in her little tienda in San Juan. When she came to Gilberton in December, she brought three suitcases full of leather shoes from Oaxaca—shoes that sold for practically nothing there. The first time Whit visited Alma after rehab, he saw the shoes, heard her plan, and immediately found a calculator and a pencil. He and Abuela Lupe worked profit margins together on a regular basis. According to Evan, Whit was the kind of guy who, at age nine, tracked the value of his stocks on homemade graphs posted on his bedroom wall. Alma didn’t know nine-year-olds could own stocks. She also wondered how he went from being that smart, motivated kid to becoming the seventeen-year-old addict sprawled on Evan’s lawn.
“See what I mean?” Alma asked Mrs. King, raising her arm toward the chaos.
Mrs. King chuckled and headed into the fray. Alma rushed into the kitchen and flipped a switch on the wall to start the vent, adding a loud rattling hum to the cacophony.
Then she texted Evan. She was going to have to get this over with—Alma needed to tell him before she did.
Come for dinner. Beef in salsa verde, your favorite.
* * *
Alma threw the door open and flung herself into his arms. She held on tight and whispered in his ear, “Mrs. King’s here, and Monica just came over.”
She took his hand and yanked him toward the kitchen, where a table was strewn with plates and cups. Mrs. King, Abuela Lupe, and Isa sat gathered around Monica, who was speaking rapidly in Spanish. Whit sat by Mrs. King and translated.
“He was fishing,” Whit said.
“Fishing?” Mrs. King asked, incredulous.
Alma leaned into Evan. “Monica showed up about fifteen minutes ago to tell us the news. Her uncle was picked up by ICE for fishing without a license.”
Evan stepped back. “Fishing? Are you friggin’ kidding me?”
Mrs. King looked over at him and shook her head slowly. She didn’t greet him. She was too focused on Monica and her seething anger.
“Yeah,” Alma said. “There’s this protest over at the North Georgia Detention Center. Padre Pancho told us about it. Monica wants to go, but she needs a ride. She’s pretty mad.”
Whit stood up suddenly and pushed his seat back from the table. “Let’s do it,” he announced. “I’ll drive.”
That was a very bad idea, but Evan wasn’t sure he knew how to stop Whit.
“Whit,” Alma said, glancing at the wall clock, “your curfew.”
“Oh, Christ,” Whit replied, reaching down to grab his yoga mat from the floor. “If I’m not back at the transition house in fifteen minutes, I’m back in rehab.”
He gave Monica a big hug and rushed out of the room.
Monica stood up and clenched her jaw. “We have to quit sitting here. We can’t just let this keep happening. We have to speak up!”
“Monica’s right,” Isa said. “I was watching TV, and there were a bunch of teenagers who called themselves DREAMers on Cristina. They said we have to quit hiding. They said we should come out of the shadows and just tell people who we are, you know?”
“Yeah,” Alma said, “I know.” She looked at Mrs. King and smiled, as if they had some sort of inside joke.
“All right then. What are we waiting for?” Evan said.
“Are you sure?” Alma asked, grabbing onto his hand.
Evan smiled and squeezed her hand. “As long as I can get my beef in salsa verde to go.”
Alma’s grandmother threw together two soft tacos and handed them to Evan wrapped in a paper towel. Alma, Monica, and Isa piled into Evan’s car, and they took off toward the detention center as he munched on the tacos dripping with green salsa. When they got to the parking lot where people were gathered,
they headed toward a man standing with a bullhorn.
“We will walk in silence to the center,” he commanded. “And then we will stand in silent solidarity with our detained sisters.”
Alma whispered, “This detention center is just for women.”
“Is it a jail?” Evan asked.
“No. But it basically functions like one. You’ll see.”
They filed in line behind a man holding a sign. They walked for about twenty minutes, before arriving at a two-story building surrounded by a high fence. The building had no windows. They stood across from an empty parking lot. Then the man with the bullhorn crossed the street and stood at the gates.
“No more profits off our pain!” he called out. “Shut the North Georgia Detention Center down! Stop separating women from their children!”
Everybody just stood there for a few minutes, then walked back to their cars.
“That was kinda boring,” Isa said. “Can we go to Dairy Queen now?”
Evan pulled the car onto the highway and headed toward Dairy Queen. He wasn’t sure what he had expected from his first protest, but it wasn’t this.
That’s why he was so surprised the next evening when his mom freaked out on him.
Evan fumbled with the keys and slowly opened the front door, willing his mom not to be home. He moved through the quiet house and tiptoed up the stairs.
His mother’s cheerful voice broke the dense silence. “Pumpkin? Is that you?”
He slowly descended toward the kitchen.
“Hi, Mom.”
She stood at the door to the garage, surrounded by large shopping bags.
“I picked up takeout from the club. Are you hungry?”
“Sure,” he said, nervously fingering the soft velvet box in his pocket. He had left it in the glove compartment the night before. Now he needed to figure out a way to stash it in his room. “Any of that stuff for me?”
“Yes, sweetie. I got you some shorts—you know, the cargo shorts that you like—and a new tie for Easter, and a few button-down shirts.”
“Cool, thanks. I’ll take them upstairs.” Normally, it was only a little embarrassing that his mom still did all of his shopping, but today it made him feel different. Feeling the ring in his pocket and thinking about what it meant, he felt a nostalgic sort of sadness welling up in his chest.
“What’s your hurry, sweetheart? Let’s sit down and eat before our food gets cold.”
He pulled out a stool and sat at the breakfast bar while she pulled two takeout containers from a paper bag. She handed him a Sprite from the refrigerator and then poured herself a large glass of chardonnay. Evan opened the first container to find a dainty salad.
“This must be yours,” he said.
“Yes, sweetie. I got you a steak.”
She carefully transferred their food onto china plates and placed each on a freshly ironed linen placemat. They ate in silence. Evan wondered, not for the first time, whether this arrangement was better—not having his dad around. At least, between Evan and his mother, the silence was usually companionable. But tonight, his mom seemed different, as if there were something she wanted to say.
She stood up and poured herself another glass of wine. Then she pulled a newspaper from the drawer next to the sink and paused, her back turned to him. Evan’s mom wasn’t one to read the newspaper at all, and never during dinner.
“What’s up, Mom? Is everything OK?”
When she turned to face him again, he noticed it. Her eyes were rimmed with red. His mother had been crying.
She glanced down at her abandoned salad, barely picked over. “Your father will be here tomorrow afternoon. He looks forward to seeing you.”
“I won’t be here, Mom. I’m taking Alma down to see her dad. He got moved to the federal detention center.”
She took a long sip of wine. “Oh, Evan, pumpkin. That’s not a good idea. You need to stay here and go to church with us on Sunday.”
“Mom. I’m sorry, but she needs to see him before his court date. It may be her last chance.”
“Well, isn’t there someone else to drive her there? An aunt or an uncle? This is something her family should be dealing with, honey.”
“Maybe, but I’m going to take her. We’re coming back late tomorrow night.”
Evan figured now wasn’t the time to explain how all of her family and friends were afraid to drive down there, and terrified of going into the detention center with ICE agents swarming the place. Plus, it didn’t matter. He needed to be there, too.
“I have to be back to go to the tournament anyway,” he said. “Remember? The bus leaves Sunday at one. I’ll go to church with you and Dad if that’s what you want.”
So absurd. Evan didn’t understand why they had to keep up the whole charade, but this wasn’t the time to get into it.
“That’s not my only worry,” she said.
Evan’s mom picked up the open newspaper and placed it down in front of him.
“Evan, your uncle Sexton called me today from Washington. He’s very concerned.”
She pointed to a large photo on an inside page of the Gilberton Examiner. In the photo, Evan stood next to Alma and her friend Monica on a street corner. A hippie-looking guy with dirty long hair was standing behind her with a sign that read, “No human is illegal!” Monica was looking away, and Alma wore a calm expression. Evan looked sort of lost.
“Wow,” he said, trying to break the tension. “That’s kind of a bad picture of me, huh?”
He remembered the moment, but he hadn’t noticed anyone taking photographs. No big deal.
Except, apparently it was a big deal, at least to his uncle.
“Read the caption,” his mother said, icily.
Evan Prentiss Roland, nephew of U.S. Senator Sexton Prentiss, participating in a protest of federal immigration policy at the North Georgia Detention Center for Women.
He looked up at his mother. “Whatever, Mom. I bet, like, twelve people read the sixth page of the Gilberton Examiner.”
“Well, Evan, that’s not what your uncle and his chief of staff believe.”
He pointed to Monica’s image in the photograph.
“I don’t mean any disrespect, Mom, but do you see this girl?”
“Of course I do, sweetie.”
“Her name is Monica. A few days ago, Monica’s uncle was fishing down at Trout Bend Creek—fishing!—and the DNR officer asked him for his fishing license. When he said he didn’t have one, they threw him in jail and called ICE. He has three school-age kids who are citizens of this country, and he’s about to be deported for fishing. I mean, what is up with that?”
“Well, Evan, is Monica’s uncle an illegal?”
Now he was almost yelling at his mother.
“Do you know what they are saying, Mom? They’re saying that this new program is supposed to target people who ‘pose a threat to the security of our communities.’ Did you know that?”
“No, Evan, I didn’t.”
“Since when, Mom, does fishing threaten our safety?”
“Evan,” his mother said calmly, “you need to stop yelling. My point is simply that your uncle and his chief of staff are disappointed.”
He snapped.
“They’re disappointed?”
“Yes, Evan.”
“They’re disappointed. A few days ago, one of the coolest guys I know was dumped off an armored bus in some crappy Mexican border town and told, basically, never to come back. Now, I am about to take my girlfriend to see her dad, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, in a high-security federal prison, maybe for the last time in a decade, and they are disappointed?”
He was filled with such rage that he could barely see. He stood up and slammed his hands hard against the counter. A searing pain tore through his hand, still wounded from the bottle incident. He clenched his teeth and groaned.
“Evan, calm down,” his mother whispered, taking his good hand and pulling him back into the seat. “You need to begin the process of disenta
ngling yourself from this situation. She won’t be a part of your life forever, Evan. You need to let her go.”
“You don’t get it, Mom. You just don’t understand.”
“We have asked you to do it, but now we are telling you. You have no other choice. Do you understand?”
“You know what, Mom?” Evan said, pushing his chair back again. “You can tell Uncle Sexton and his chief of staff that I don’t give two shits how they feel! And, no, I do not understand.”
He spun away as her arm reached out to touch him. Shrugging her off, he stalked out of the kitchen.
“Evan,” his mother called out in a pleading voice. “Evan, please.”
He didn’t turn back. Instead he bounded up the stairs two at a time.
TWENTY-TWO
Crossroads
Maybe this was a mistake.
Alma sat in the backseat of Evan’s car and watched his hands grip the steering wheel. The flesh around his deep wound was still raw, and both hands trembled visibly.
“I can’t believe I left my license in my jeans. It will only take a minute,” he said.
“It’s no big deal, Evan,” Alma said. “It only takes four hours to get there, and as long as we’re there before one, they’ll let us visit today.”
Evan turned the car into his driveway and came to an abrupt stop.
“Just wait here, OK? I’ll be right back.”
Alma’s abuela Lupe looked puzzled in the front passenger seat. Evan stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind him.
“Olvidó su licensia,” Alma explained.
“¿Ésta es su casa?” Abuela Lupe asked, disbelief in her voice.
“Sí,” Alma said.
“¿Para tres personas?” Abuela Lupe was shaking her head slowly.
“Sí,” Alma replied. “Nada más tres personas.”
She stepped out to get some air and saw Evan’s mom heading straight toward her.
“Hello, Alma. I’m just on my way to water the impatiens. Why don’t you join me?”
Alma followed Mrs. Roland to the flowerbed that wrapped around the patio, wondering how she was surviving the change of season without Alma’s dad around to keep up the yard. Who planted the annuals for her this year?
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