A dead body on the two-lane that connected Wickford to Lake Holly. Hammond didn’t seem too broken up about it.
“Something you want help from our guys on?” asked Vega.
“Negative. It’s not a homicide. Just a local homeless mutt who drank himself to death.”
Vega gripped the phone tighter. “You get a description of the decedent?”
“Male. Hispanic. Approximately five-foot-three. One hundred and forty pounds. He was found lying facedown about two hundred feet from Route 170, a quarter mile from the border of Lake Holly.”
Vega’s mouth went dry. He didn’t want it to be true. And yet some part of him already knew that it was. That mutt could barely stay sober long enough to find his way to Wickford. No way was he going to make it two thousand miles to Guatemala.
“Any ID on the guy?”
“Negative. But he was well known to the uniformed patrols. They recognized the body as soon as they saw his bowed legs.”
“Zambo.” It wasn’t even a question.
“Yeah. That’s him,” said Hammond. “From what the uniforms tell me, he was a real pain in the ass. Kept our guys and Lake Holly’s guys hopping with petty nonsense for years. Nobody’s gonna be all that broken up that he’s gone.”
Vega just breathed on the line. Their only witness. The one person who might be able to exonerate Joy. Hammond was wrong when he said nobody was all that broken up that Zambo was gone.
He was.
Chapter 20
The Serrano family was scrubbed and dressed and in their best church clothes by five past nine that Thursday morning. Luna paced back and forth by the front window of their apartment, watching for Señora Gonzalez’s black Escalade at the curb. Papi packed the last of the dishes in the kitchen before slipping on his lucky red tie. For once, Mateo and Dulce weren’t fighting. They were both glued to their father’s sides—so much so that when Papi went to dry his hands from the sink, he accidentally elbowed Dulce in the eye. She wailed uncontrollably, and Papi fell all over himself to make her stop.
They were all exhausted and wound tighter than a bunch of spinning tops. None of them slept last night. The last night. La última noche. None of them referred to it like that. To say it was to make it true. They’d spent it in Papi’s bed, curled around him like newborn puppies. At one point in the night, Luna heard him get up to go to the bathroom. He didn’t turn on any lights, but she heard his choked sobs through the door. When he came back, she closed her eyes tight and pretended to be asleep. She didn’t want him to know she’d heard him. Her father was so strong. A meat slicer amputated part of his finger and he went back to work in two days. Meningitis took Mami and he became both father and mother. A fire burned out their apartment and he found a new place to live and made it home. She couldn’t believe after all this that he could be broken by a piece of paper.
Her father had called their schools to say they couldn’t come in today. Then he made them breakfast, but none of them could eat. And now they waited for the señora’s car, surrounded by the contents of their apartment packed away in cardboard cartons—all except for Mami’s pink begonia plant. It sat on top of the cartons in the terra-cotta flowerpot Luna had painted all those years ago.
Luna looked at her watch. “Señora Gonzalez is late.” Papi gave her a sharp look, though she knew he was checking his watch too.
“You must remember to call her Doña Esme now, Luna. And the señor Don Charlie. They deserve those terms of honor.”
Luna knew her father was right that she should be grateful and do as they’d asked. But it was awkward to suddenly pretend that this balding little man with the sweaty palms and his no-nonsense young wife were anything but strangers. Luna didn’t know her father’s cousins Alirio and Maria José very well, but at least they were family.
Besides, she didn’t think Doña Esme liked her very much. The woman was okay with Mateo because he was a playmate for her sons. She responded to Dulce because she was young and needed a mother figure. But Luna? Doña Esme seemed to have no idea what to do with a teenage girl in her house. Luna got the sense that taking all of them in was the señor’s idea. They were a burden she had to carry because it went against her husband’s honor not to. Doña Esme had told her more than once that she was only two years older than Luna when she got married. Did she expect Luna to take a husband at seventeen? Not that Doña Esme would even be in Luna’s life by then. Papi will be here. He has to be.
Dear God, he can’t leave us like this!
Luna’s stomach was tied in knots by the time Doña Esme drove up. She felt like she had to use the bathroom again, but there was no time. Papi wasn’t driving to the courthouse. If the worst happened today, he couldn’t drive back. Another adult had to be there to sign the guardianship papers and take custody. Otherwise Luna, Mateo, and Dulce would end up in foster care and could be separated.
They hustled out the door and put on their most hopeful faces for the drive to Broad Plains. None of them spoke in the car. The señor couldn’t get out of work today, so it was just Doña Esme and them. Her father’s lawyer, Mr. Katz, was supposed to meet them at the courthouse.
There was a lot of slow-moving traffic on the roads. Luna could tell her father was getting nervous that he’d be late and make the judge angry. Papi scanned the rearview mirror, looking for opportunities to change lanes and speed up the journey, but he knew he couldn’t tell Doña Esme how to drive, so he just sat holding it in until they were off the highway. They passed the lawyer’s building they visited last Sunday, and Luna saw and smelled the warm, cheesy pizza parlor where Papi had bought those slices. It seemed like an image already frozen in her memory. Luna would grow up. Papi would grow old. And they’d have only that day at the pizza parlor to hang onto. She could feel the tears coming on and she sucked them back. But she wasn’t the only one holding everything in. As soon as Doña Esme parked the car in the courthouse garage, Mateo got out and vomited on the cement.
“Eeew, gross!” squealed Dulce.
Mateo started to cry. “I’m sorry, Papi! I’m sorry!”
Papi rubbed his back and murmured in Spanish: “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” Doña Esme handed Luna a bottle of water and some tissues, and she helped her father clean her brother up. Fortunately, he’d vomited on the cement, not in the car or on his clothes. They were able to make him look presentable and wash most of the mess away from the cars.
“Are you okay now, Mijo?” asked Papi. Mateo nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak, but at least the color was returning to his face. Luna checked her watch. Papi’s court date was for ten a.m. It was almost ten-thirty. She wondered if Mateo’s throwing up had already sealed her father’s fate.
They took an elevator to the lobby and walked outside and across a big cement plaza with a fountain and some statues and flags in the center. The fresh air seemed to do Mateo good. It was a bright sunny day and not too cold. People hustled past with shopping bags from Macy’s and Nordstrom’s. A teenager on a skateboard rolled along the sidewalk, the rap music from his earphones loud enough for all of them to hear.
They followed Doña Esme and their father into another office building, where they lined up to walk through a metal detector. From there, they took an elevator to the fifth floor, where they got off and looked for Papi’s lawyer, Mr. Katz. He was nowhere to be found. Luna wondered if he’d grown tired of waiting for them and had left already. Or perhaps they were in the wrong place?
This didn’t feel like a courthouse at all. Luna pictured polished brass and white marble with high ceilings and gleaming wooden benches where black-robed judges looked down from on high. The corridor they walked along had low ceilings and dingy white walls that were covered in scuff marks. The air smelled of sweat and coffee. There were people everywhere—black, brown, Asian—leaning up against grimy windows, sitting on hard wooden benches scattered along the wall. Some were talking on cell phones. Others were holding crying babies. Still others were sitting silently with thei
r eyes closed and heads bent as if in prayer. There were even a few young children sitting with women who didn’t look like their mothers. The children looked scared and anxious, and the women were checking their cell phones like the children weren’t even there. Luna had thought they were the only ones going through this nightmare. But she saw now that they were just one family of many, not all of them even Spanish.
Papi excused himself to see if he could find Mr. Katz. Luna waited with Dulce, Mateo, and Doña Esme and watched the crowd swirling around them. She noticed that the other people waiting had no one who looked like a lawyer with them. Some of them were pregnant women. Some were families with young children.
“Are all these people Mr. Katz’s clients too?” Luna asked Doña Esme.
“I should hope not!” Doña Esme sounded irritated by the question.
“It’s just that”—Luna tried to explain herself—“I don’t see any lawyers.”
“You think everyone can afford a lawyer to help them through a deportation proceeding? Chica, you are naïve.”
Doña Esme nodded to a fidgety Spanish-looking boy of about five years of age sitting with a white woman. The boy’s sneaker shoelaces were undone. His shirt was inside out. The tag was poking out beneath his chin. He must have dressed himself. “Even little children like that boy must go before the judge without anyone to speak for them,” she said. “That’s the harsh truth of the world. Every day at the border, there are hundreds of children just like him crossing alone. You have no idea. Your Papi has sheltered you from it.”
“But when people in the U.S. are charged with a crime,” said Luna, “they’re entitled to legal representation.” Her words sounded condescending as they left her mouth. Luna wanted Doña Esme to know she wasn’t stupid. But she was stupid enough, she supposed, to want to prove otherwise.
Doña Esme pulled out a mirrored compact and reapplied her bright pink lipstick. “This is immigration court, chica. Not criminal court. The law provides nothing. Most people with a prior deportation order like your father just get swept off the street and deported back to their home countries without any hearing at all.”
She pressed her colored lips together and studied her reflection. When she was satisfied, she slipped the compact back into her bag. Her cool indifference made her words that much more chilling. Luna was angry, not just at what was happening to them but at the fact that no one else seemed to care.
“That’s so unfair,” said Luna.
Doña Esme shrugged. “That’s life, chica. These four months you’ve had with your father while lawyers worked on his case? They were a gift—an expensive gift.”
So Doña Esme thought she was haughty and ungrateful. Luna wondered if she could ever set things right between them.
Her father reappeared now with Mr. Katz in tow. The lawyer was dressed in a crisp gray suit and maroon tie. He didn’t look angry at their lateness.
Papi took a deep breath, as if trying to gather all the parts of himself. He addressed them in stilted English.
“Mr. Katz says always immigration court has delay. So we did not miss.” Mr. Katz smiled confidently at Luna and her siblings. He could afford to be confident. He was going home tonight. Still, as Doña Esme said, they were lucky to have him at all.
Mr. Katz pushed up the sleeve of his gray suit jacket and checked the time. “Our case is next, so the wait shouldn’t be long now.”
Papi gestured to the benches. “Luna—you and Dulce and Mateo will stay out here with Doña Esme. I will be in there.”
Luna peeked into the room behind her father. There were some chairs and tables facing a raised wooden desk with flags on either side. The lighting had a sickly yellow tint. There were no windows or polished brass or white marble.
A white woman with frizzy gray hair and glasses on a chain around her neck sat behind the desk. She looked less like a judge and more like Luna’s high school librarian, like she was going to fine her dad for overdue books. A young black woman with long beaded braids sat at a keyboard on one side of the desk. A Spanish-looking court officer with a shaved head leaned over the black woman’s shoulder, muttering something. Luna could tell they liked each other by the way the woman kept trying not to smile.
At a table facing the judge, a blond woman in a dark blue suit opened her briefcase and thumbed through some papers. Across the aisle was another table with two empty seats. Luna guessed the woman in the blue suit was the prosecutor who wanted to deport her father back to Mexico and the two seats across the aisle were for her father and Mr. Katz to tell the judge why he should stay. The judge slipped on her glasses, perhaps to read something about Papi’s case. Then Luna noticed that she wasn’t looking at paperwork—she was texting on her cell phone. Luna wondered if at the end of the day, she’d even be able to recall her father’s name.
Mr. Katz patted her father on the shoulder. “Let’s take care of business, Manuel, shall we?”
Papi gave Luna, Dulce, and Mateo a quick nervous glance. “Will I”—he ran his thumb and forefinger down his mustache—“will I get to see my children after?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Katz.
“Ahh—either way?”
“Yes.”
Papi forced a smile and gave them a quick thumbs-up before disappearing with Mr. Katz through the courtroom doors. They closed behind him, and Luna and her siblings were left in a hallway with too few benches and too many people.
Esme staked out a corner of a bench, crossed her legs, and whipped out her cell phone to check her messages. She didn’t say a word to any of them, not even to Dulce. Luna wasn’t sure what she expected, but this wasn’t it. Dulce reached for Luna’s hand. Her grip was tight. Mateo stood close by her other side. Luna could feel their fear. She understood for the first time the responsibility that had been placed on her shoulders. Dulce and Mateo were all that could be left of her immediate family when this was over. Whatever else happened, she had to take care of them.
All the things that used to matter—classes, grades, the summer science program, the talent show—Luna couldn’t imagine caring about any of that ever again. They were in a war here, her family and she, even if no one else could see the bullets whizzing by or feel their terror as they curled themselves tightly and searched out every crevice for protection. Her friends were on the other side of an uncrossable divide, consumed as they were with dates and gossip and midterms. Everything seemed petty and insignificant—everything except for her father, brother, and sister. Luna felt a sense of great purpose and great despair at the same time. She wanted to be up to this challenge. She feared she was not.
Luna put her arms around Mateo and Dulce and inched them all toward the windows. Doña Esme didn’t look up. Luna pointed out the hot dog vendors in the street. Mateo, who loved cars, tried to guess the models of each one that drove by. They played I-spy with the people below. It kept them busy. It did nothing to ease the churning she felt inside or the great weight that pressed on her chest.
She expected the case to take at least an hour. This was her father’s life they were talking about. Their lives. But it was over in twenty minutes. Mr. Katz came to the door. He searched for their faces in the crowd, but when he located them, he didn’t meet Luna’s gaze. And she knew. She thought she was prepared for this moment, but it hit her like a shot to the jaw.
“Papi can go now?” Dulce asked Mr. Katz hopefully. Her little hand squeezed Luna’s so tight, Luna’s fingers were starting to lose circulation.
“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Katz. “They’re allowing you five minutes in the courtroom to say good-bye.”
Dulce began to wail. The noise came from so deep inside of her, she sounded like a flock of seagulls rather than a seven-year-old girl. Mateo, who was normally so stoic, sat on the floor and began rocking himself back and forth. Mr. Katz looked scared and shaken. He searched for Doña Esme, who was behind them now.
“I did everything I could do!” he shouted. He was angry, though Luna didn’t know whom he was angry with.<
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“I’m sure you did,” Doña Esme said calmly. “And Manuel is most grateful. Do I need to go inside and sign the paperwork?”
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll be in touch.” And then, just like that, he left. Without even a good-bye.
Doña Esme managed to get Mateo off the floor and stop Dulce from crying long enough to lead them inside. Papi was standing by the table where he’d been sitting before with Mr. Katz. The Spanish officer was next to him. The blond lady in the dark blue suit had already gone. Luna knew her father would be handcuffed as soon as they left, but for the moment, Papi had no restraints. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down along his windpipe. His eyes were red and watery. He held out his arms. Dulce and Mateo ran into them. Both of them were crying, and Luna tried very hard not to join in.
Papi stroked their hair. “This is not for always,” he told them in Spanish. His voice broke on siempre—always—as if the word were too difficult to even think about. “This is just for a little while. Mr. Katz told me that he and Don Charlie will fight this. If Mr. Schulman gets elected, they will find a way to bring me back. In the meantime, we will talk to each other every day, yes? On the phone. Through Skype. And you can visit. See your uncles, your grandmother. Won’t that be nice?”
Papi didn’t look at Luna when he said this last part. Maybe Dulce and Mateo could visit their father if they came up with the money for plane fare. But Luna couldn’t. Her immigration status was in limbo. If she left the United States, she wouldn’t be allowed to return. I want to leave, she thought. I want to be with Papi. I don’t care where I am so long as we’re together. But Luna knew this wasn’t what her father wanted. She had to stay, if only to give Dulce and Mateo the lives they deserved.
Papi reached across Mateo and Dulce and pulled Luna close. She drank in the warmth of his touch in the hope that it would make her feel less alone. He brushed back her hair and whispered in her ear in Spanish: “You must be strong, Mija,” he said more forcefully than Luna would’ve expected. “If you let this stop you from getting a good education and making a good life here, everything Mami and I sacrificed will have been for nothing. Nothing! Do you understand?”
A Blossom of Bright Light Page 17