She fiddled nervously with the remote, and after a few seconds a picture came up on the screen. It was a formal group portrait of her family, everyone dressed up and smiling at the camera. It was her one and only slide. As it turned out, she didn’t need any others.
In the simplest language, Maria carried the audience step by step through each excruciating stage of a family’s descent into crisis—the grandmother with diabetes, the baby brother with asthma, the father laid off from his job, the repossessed car, the struggle to come up with the rent on their little apartment—till she came to the decision by her older brother to drop out of high school and join the army to help pay the family’s bills.
One of the brother’s teachers had begged him not to go, to wait at least till he graduated. He was such a promising student, she’d said. He had a real future.
His mother had burst into tears and said they’d manage somehow. Please don’t go.
But he went anyway.
He’d only been there a week when he was killed by a roadside bomb.
Yet there he still was, up on the screen, frozen in time: a stocky boy, his hair cut military-style, wearing his uniform proudly. The picture must have been taken right before he deployed.
The audience was fishing for Kleenex in pockets and purses, and sniffling, and wiping their eyes.
Maria’s brother had been awarded a medal called a Purple Heart. It hung on the wall in the family’s living room, framed under glass, so they could look at it every day and remember the sacrifice he’d made for his country, and for them.
But she wished he could have seen it, just once before he died, maybe even had his commanding officer pin it on his uniform at a ceremony, something like that. She hated that he never knew what a hero he’d been.
As Maria returned to her seat at the back of the stage, the audience jumped to their feet, and clapped, and cheered. A powerful wave of emotion was moving through the room. It was extraordinary.
The governor stood, clapping along with the audience, till everyone finally sat down. Then, for the third time, she advanced to the podium.
It was Sky’s turn now, and she didn’t know how she could possibly follow something like that. But she had to, and she had to do it right. Everything depended on it.
She was trembling with fear. Mrs. Chavez, who sat beside her, reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Thank you, Maria,” the governor said. She put her hand to her heart and sighed. “That was truly an inspiration.”
There was more applause, and the governor waited respectfully. Then she allowed a few more beats of silence before giving the final introduction.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my great pleasure to introduce to you the first-place winner of the State of New Mexico Land of Enchantment Essay Contest—Sky Brightman of Pecos!”
31
Her Best Blessing Yet
SKY LAID THE DARK BLUE folder on the podium, but she didn’t open it yet. She took a deep breath, trying to get herself under control, then leaned toward the mike and said the first thing that popped into her head.
“Wow.”
The audience laughed.
“When we…when our teacher, Mrs. Chavez, gave us this assignment, she was very specific about one thing. Well, actually, she was specific about quite a few things, but the one that comes to mind right now is when she said, and I quote, ‘You’re not going to win, so get that out of your heads right now.’”
The audience loved it. They were with her all the way.
Good, she thought, stay there, please.
“So”—she opened her folder—“I, um, chose to write about ‘What I Love About My Country.’ And to be honest, I thought my essay was kind of weird—but I guess it was better than I thought.”
She looked up, and forced her face into a smile, and they laughed again.
“Now, the reason I’m telling you all this is that I’m afraid you’ll have to use your imaginations as to how good it actually was, because I didn’t bring it here tonight.”
There was a great intake of breaths, and some not-so-quiet murmuring.
“But,” she went on quickly, “there’s something else I want to read, and I guarantee it’s a whole lot better than my essay.”
She held it up for them to see. She knew she had less than a minute to grab them before somebody got out the hook.
“Unfortunately, the person who wrote it couldn’t turn it in because it wasn’t safe for him to go to school. If he did, he’d be arrested.”
By now the gasps and the murmuring were almost drowning her out.
“And I think that if you’ll just do me this favor, just give me a few minutes, you’ll understand why I’m doing this. Please!”
The room gradually grew quiet. Sky’s heart was pounding. They were going with it. No one was stopping her.
“The author of this essay is a boy named Kareem Khalid. He’s my friend, and he hid in our house for about three months. After he left, we found his notebook. Maybe I shouldn’t have read it; but I did, and there was a lot of amazing stuff in there. He’s a really good writer.
“I knew he’d done an essay on why he loved America even though he couldn’t turn it in or anything. We talked about it. But it turns out he wrote the other one, too, the one on courage. That’s what I want to read to you tonight.”
Sky pressed the forward button on the remote presenter, and a painting came up on the screen: a middle-aged man with a crooked smile.
“All of the pictures were done by Kareem. He, well, he didn’t have anything to remember his family by, so he painted them himself.”
She cleared her throat and began to read.
What Is the Meaning of Courage?
By Kareem Khalid
Years ago, in a faraway place, there was a boy who loved rock music. He bought some tapes from a man in the street and went home and played them. But where he lived, that kind of music was illegal. A neighbor reported him to the authorities, and he was sent to prison. He was only fourteen.
The boy was there for six months. His parents brought food to the prison every day and bribed the guards to give it to him. But the guards ate it themselves, and all the boy ever got was prison food, so he grew thinner and thinner, weaker and weaker.
Still, he refused to give up hope. He wasn’t going to be like so many other prisoners, the ones who just lay on the floor, broken and depressed, hardly saying a word. He decided he needed a project, something to take his mind off his fears. So he made up stories in his head about his cell mates. He tried to imagine what their old lives had been like, and what crimes had brought them there. He memorized those stories word for word because he wasn’t allowed to have any writing materials. During the time the boy was in prison, some of those people died. But because he refused to let his jailors break his spirit, he survived.
That boy was my father, and he had courage.
Sky looked at the audience for the first time. There was absolute dead silence out there. She pressed the remote again, and the next slide came up: a head-and-shoulders painting of an older couple. The woman had short, wavy hair and large eyes. The man wore glasses, and his mustache was gray. Kareem had painted it from his imagination. He didn’t actually know what they looked like.
When the boy got well again, his parents sent him and his older brother away to school in England. They had to sell their apartment to raise the money to pay the bribes, and they knew they might never see their sons again. But they wanted them to be free. They wanted them to be safe. While the boy was at the university, his parents were killed because of their beliefs.
They were my grandparents, and they had courage.
Sky advanced to the next slide. Another couple, well dressed and handsome, the man quite a bit older than the woman. This was also done from Kareem’s imagination. He’d never seen a picture of them, either.
At the same time there was a girl growing up on the other side of the city. She loved books and was good with numbers, but she could
n’t go to school because she was a girl. So her father, who was a doctor, taught her at home.
Then there was an epidemic of cholera, and the father caught it, and he died. As soon as the girl turned thirteen, her grandparents arranged a marriage for her. The man they picked was rich, but he was old and very strict. The girl was afraid of him, and didn’t want to get married. She just sat in her room and cried and cried.
The girl’s mother didn’t know what to do. Her in-laws wouldn’t listen to her, and she didn’t have anything of her own except some jewelry, and a silk rug, and her clothes. She couldn’t even leave the house alone. Women were always supposed to have a proper male escort. But she was determined to help her daughter. So she offered to give the rug to a neighbor—an old man—if he would drive her and her daughter to the mother’s home village. She told him she was going there to visit her family, and he agreed.
The village was near the border. When they got there, the mother gave most of her jewelry to a cousin; and in exchange he escorted the girl across the border, and got her a fake passport, and bought her a ticket to London, and made sure she got on the plane.
Later, the mother was killed by the husband’s family. They said she had shamed them by what she had done.
That was my grandmother, and she had courage.
There were little gasps and hushed whispers coming from the audience now. Sky clicked the remote again.
The next slide was Sky’s favorite. It showed a girl with long, black hair and dark, dramatic eyebrows. Her dress was pink. She was very young, and very pretty. Out in the auditorium, people went “Ahhh.”
The girl had two of her mother’s rings, and she sold them for money to live on. But it wasn’t enough, so she scrubbed floors, and emptied trash in office buildings, and washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant. Later, they let her wait tables, and that’s how she met the nice couple who offered to help her. They arranged with a lawyer to get her legal residence papers, and gave her a little room in their house to sleep in. It was actually just a closet, so it didn’t have a window. It didn’t have any furniture either, just a mattress on the floor. But it was warm, and it was safe. She was glad to have it.
The family let her go to school, but in her free time she cleaned their house and looked after their children. Late at night she did her homework. But she was smart, and she worked hard. When she graduated, she won a scholarship to the University of London.
That girl was my mother, and she had courage.
Now came a wedding picture. The bride wasn’t wearing a long gown and a veil, just a pale blue dress. But she was carrying flowers, and the man had on a black suit. He wasn’t much taller than she was. They looked very happy.
The girl met the boy in chemistry class. They liked to say that they had such good chemistry they fell in love instantly. Right after graduation they got married and went to the United States, where they spent a total of nine years studying to become doctors, and doing their internships and their residencies. Only then did they find out that patients didn’t want to go to them because of their foreign name, and their accents, and especially because of the place where they were born, which was where many of the terrorists came from.
Then, during the flu pandemic, the wife got sick and died, and the husband was left with a son to raise and a terrible sadness in his heart. But he still refused to let hardship break his spirit. He spent another four years training in a new specialty—anesthesia—where patients wouldn’t have to look at him so much. Even then, the only place that would hire him was a small community hospital in New Mexico. But he was glad to have a job, and to be a citizen of a free country, where he could work in peace, and believe as he wished, and give his son a good life.
Then one day some federal agents came to the hospital where he worked and put him under arrest, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.
The audience gasped. Sky looked out at the dark sea of faces and waited. Let them think about it, remember what this man had already been through, understand exactly what it meant. Then she found her place again, and went on.
He didn’t know where the agents were taking him, or what would happen to him there. He must have been very frightened. But all he could think of was his son. And so, in secret, he asked a friend—a nurse who was standing nearby—to please take care of his boy. She agreed to do it. After that he left with dignity.
Those were my parents, and they had courage.
Sky clicked the remote again and there they were, her whole family. Luke, handsome and blond, towering over tiny Ana, so small and dark. Sky’s arm was draped over Mouse’s shoulder, and Mouse was patting Muddy, who looked very fat and old, and seemed to be smiling.
The agents went to the son’s school because they wanted to arrest him, too, though he was only thirteen. But the nurse got to him first, and drove him out to her house, and hid him there. This was against the law, and it put her family in danger. But the nurse, and her husband, and her children welcomed him with their whole hearts, because they believed it was the right thing to do. And they risked themselves many times for the boy’s sake, but they were glad to do it.
Those people are my friends, and they have courage.
Sky’s voice broke when she came to that part. She had to take a deep breath to get it under control. She glanced quickly out into the silent room, then brought up the last slide. It was Kareem’s self-portrait. Luke had made a frame for it, and it hung in their living room—like the medal Maria’s brother had earned—so they could look at him every day and say a blessing for him every night.
I don’t know how it will end for my father, or the nurse and her family, or for me. But these stories have taught me a lot about courage.
I know that having courage doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid. It means that even when you are, especially when you are, you keep on doing what you have to, and what is right.
Courage doesn’t have to be dramatic, like a firefighter running into a burning building to save a child. Sometimes it’s a simple thing, like admitting you were wrong, or putting your needs aside for the good of others. Sometimes when things are hard in a person’s life, it takes courage just to keep going.
I think back on the story of my family, and I know that I wouldn’t be here, safe, and protected, and free, if it weren’t for the courage of so many others. And I hope I can live up to that gift, and have courage myself, so that I can do for others what was done for me.
Sky put Kareem’s essay back in the folder and closed it.
“The boy who wrote that essay isn’t ‘safe, and protected, and free.’ Not anymore. He’s in one of those deportation centers, here in New Mexico. His father—the man who was so proud to be a citizen of a free country—he’s in there, too, along with lots and lots of other innocent people.
“In case you’re wondering, my parents got in trouble for what they did. They were charged with conspiracy for hiding Kareem at our house. And they pleaded guilty because, well, they really had committed a crime. But the judge called it an “unjust law,” an “idiotic law”—right there in court. Then she sentenced my parents to a year of community service, growing crops for the food bank, which we already do. We’ve been doing it for years.
“That judge had courage, too. She refused to punish good people for acting on their consciences. She said that would be wrong. And she said it out loud, in public.
“So I just have to ask you—everybody here in this room, and all of you who are watching us on TV—don’t you agree with her? That it’s wrong? What would happen if all of us acted like she did? If we stopped being afraid and just spoke the truth.”
In the front row, Sky’s parents, and Mouse, and Aunt Pat, and Ms. Golly were standing up now; and Sky felt a thrill run up her spine.
“It’s not easy for one person to fight a thing like this. But we could all do it together. We could—I don’t know—put signs in our yards and in shop windows. We could write letters to the president. We could have a rally on the plaza.”
Out in the audience, several more people were getting to their feet. Sky felt tears stinging her eyes. She was trembling all over.
“And Mrs. Governor…”
“Madame Governor” came a whisper from behind her. Mrs. Chavez, of course.
“Sorry,” Sky said. “Madame Governor, and all you other important people here, if you’ll help us, we can change this. We don’t have to let it happen in our state. And if we stop it here, maybe it’ll stop in other places, too.”
She heard a rustling behind her, and she turned. Mrs. Chavez was standing, and so were Maria, and Jacob, and their teachers. Then the rustling became a rumble as person after person, out there in the dark, stood up.
Sky rested her hands firmly on the podium, closed her eyes, and began gathering up everything good from within her spirit—warmth, love, kindness, strength, humor, honesty, righteousness, loyalty, courage. Behind her, the scraping of chairs said the dignitaries were standing now, too. But Sky kept her focus, letting the force of good things continue to build inside her till the heat of it burned in her chest. Then she let it go, and her blessing burst out into that beautiful room that looked like a church, and through the walls, and into the street, and across the plaza where the first buds of spring were breaking out, and on past the empty hotels, and the shops, and the few dimly lit restaurants, and through the hundreds of little neighborhoods, then on up into the hills, and out across the quiet countryside—spreading, growing, flowing endlessly across the varied landscapes of a great and beautiful country.
Her best blessing yet.
Acknowledgments
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK Tracy Reid and Kristin Taglienti for their guidance in the matter of horses; Molly Kelly, for reading yet another manuscript and giving me her usual wise advice; my husband, Peter, for listening to countless versions of this story for much too long, and killing off characters who needed to go, and giving me more wise advice; and finally, Rosemary Brosnan, my wonderful editor, who was endlessly patient, and thoughtful, and kind, and who gave me the key when I was stuck, because she’s so good at what she does.
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