Three Keys

by Kelly Yang

  “Your daughter’s a good student,” Mrs. Welch said to her, shaking my mom’s hand. “She has a lot of potential.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Did I hear that right?

  “Thank you.” My mom smiled.

  “I hear you used to be an engineer in China,” Mrs. Welch said.

  Mom blushed. “Yes. I used to make telephone systems.”

  “And now you teach math,” Mrs. Welch said, pointing to the class.

  “Only on Wednesdays,” Mom said with a small laugh. “The other days, I clean the rooms.”

  Mrs. Welch nodded, as though she knew just the feeling. “We can’t always do what we want.” She looked over at me. “But we can try to make the best of what we do.”

  “Yes, we can,” my mom agreed.

  Lupe walked in to join us, and Mrs. Welch turned to talk to her. My mom put her arm in mine and led me over to a quiet corner, while her math students worked on a worksheet she’d designed for them.

  “I’m proud of you, Mia. I know how hard it was for you at the beginning of the year. But you stuck with it.”

  Mom squeezed my arm, and my eyes crinkled. I was proud too.

  There were five messages on the machine when we got back to the desk, all from lawyers. The first four were from big law firms, and Lupe and I skipped right past those. The fifth one was from a lady named Prisha Patel.

  “I’m an immigration lawyer in Buena Park. I’d be happy to sit down with you and talk about your case. My fees are reasonable, and the first consultation is free,” she said.

  The free part got our attention. I immediately called Ms. Patel back and told her we would come and see her tomorrow, right after school.

  At our first Kids for Kids lunch meeting in the new trailer classroom Mrs. Welch got us the next day, Lupe and I passed around the petition for everyone to sign. Lupe had decorated it with tree branches that went all up and down the sides of the page like curvy ribbons. It was a petition to FREE JOSÉ.

  Bravely, Lupe stood in front of the room. As she explained her dad’s situation, tears rolled down some of the other kids’ faces. I was so proud of Lupe, for getting up there and finding the courage to finally tell the other kids what she was going through. That day, every single member of Kids for Kids signed the petition, and several took extra copies so they could collect more signatures at home.

  After the meeting, Jason handed me a little card. It was from the Orange County Kids Culinary Academy and read Jason Yao, Future Chef.

  I grinned. “Your father’s letting you go?”

  Jason nodded, beaming. “It wasn’t easy,” he said. He leaned in closer so none of the other kids could hear. “Money’s been really tight. We might even have to move houses soon.”

  I blinked in surprise. I had no idea things were that bad—but then I remembered the first day of school, when Jason said he hadn’t gone anywhere over the summer, and then later at his house when he said his dad’s businesses were down. I guess he’d been trying and trying to tell me, but I hadn’t been very good at listening.

  “How’d you talk them into it?” I asked.

  “I told them just what you said. It’s my dream and nobody can take it away.” Jason crossed his arms and put on his ain’t taking no for an answer face. I smiled. “Plus, you were right,” he added. “There was a payment plan.”

  As the bell rang, I threw my arms around Jason and gave him a hug. I was so proud of him. He looked completely taken aback by my hug, as did Lupe, who turned away as soon as I glanced over at her.

  “You have to come over to the motel to show me the new recipes you learn,” I said to Jason.

  “Sure thing!”

  As the bell rang, Lupe walked over to me. “What was that?” she asked.

  “Jason got into culinary school!”

  “Oh, good, so he’s moving schools?”

  “No,” I said, confused. “It’s an after-school thing.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  I lifted an eyebrow. What was up with those two?

  In class, all the kids were talking about the big march coming up against Prop 187 in downtown Los Angeles. The news had said that seventy thousand people were going to march! Mrs. Welch asked if any of us were planning to attend.

  I looked around the room. No hands went up.

  “Well, I do think it’s important for us all to be informed,” she said. “The state is about to make a big decision.” She paused. I noticed she wasn’t wearing her Pete Wilson button. “And there are a lot of good reasons on both sides.”

  Whoa. I glanced over at Lupe—her eyebrows were up too. I bounced in my seat, feeling a flicker of hope. Maybe this thing wasn’t going to pass after all!

  A smile played at my lips as Hank drove us over to Ms. Patel’s office after school. I thought about what Mrs. Welch had said. I liked to think that I had something to do with it, though more likely she was just saying it to seem “balanced.” Still, it was nice.

  Lupe and Mrs. T sat beside me in the car. As Hank pulled into a strip mall, I furrowed my eyebrows. The lawyer’s office was in a strip mall?

  It took a while to find it, but we finally did, way in the back, nestled between a deli and a Foot Locker. Hank pushed open the rusty door. Inside were a desk, a couple of foldable chairs, a photocopier, and a plant hanging from the ceiling that looked like it hadn’t been watered in weeks. Man. It sure wasn’t Mr. Delaney’s fancy firm downtown.

  The woman behind the desk swirled in her chair to face us. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Uh … yeah … we’re looking for Ms. Patel?” I said.

  “That’s me, Prisha Patel, sole practitioner,” she announced. She got up and shook our hands. Ms. Patel was an Indian woman with silvery black hair, a warm smile, and glasses. She pointed to the plastic chairs in front of her desk. They looked like the chairs we had out by the pool. There were only two, so Lupe and Hank sat while Mrs. T and I stood.

  Lupe got straight to it. “My parents and I are illegal aliens—” she said.

  Ms. Patel held up a hand. “I’m going to stop you right there.”

  Oh, no, I thought. Here we go with the retainer again.

  But that’s not what she was getting at. “Actions are illegal, not people,” she corrected.

  “Excuse me?” Lupe asked.

  “Actions are illegal, not people,” Ms. Patel repeated. “And please don’t call yourself an alien. Do you have green ears and a finger that can light up?” She got up again, smiling, and pretended to examine Lupe’s ears.

  “No,” Lupe said, letting out a chuckle.

  “Good. Then you’re not an alien,” Ms. Patel said.

  Lupe glanced at me. I could tell she was thinking the same thing—I like this Ms. Patel!

  The lawyer pulled out a legal pad and sat back down at her desk. “Let’s get down to business. When did your father cross over?” she asked.

  As Lupe gave her the dates and the details of how exactly her parents emigrated, I thought about our own journey to the United States.

  My dad was a geneticist in China. A geneticist is a scientist who knows a lot about genes (not to be confused with jeans, which my dad knows nothing about). His friend in America wanted him to come work for him. He was starting a new biotech company, and he needed his help. My dad said he wasn’t sure. His English wasn’t great. But his friend insisted that good English wasn’t necessary, only good skills. So my dad came and the company helped him with his immigration paperwork, putting him on the fast track to getting a green card.

  But then the company went under. My dad’s friend fled back to China.

  My dad suddenly had no job, no money, poor English, and no one to turn to. He thought about going back to China, but he’d already quit his job, and he wasn’t sure if he could get it back, even if he went begging to his boss. And he didn’t want to go begging, couldn’t stand the thought of his colleagues making fun of him for “not making it in America.”

  So we stayed. Yes, we had the gree
n card. But we couldn’t eat a green card for dinner. When the last of our savings dried up, my mom and dad started applying for manual labor jobs, and that’s how we ended up at the Calivista.

  I used to think it was pretty rotten luck, but now, listening to Lupe describe how she and her parents had walked for days in the desert; how it got so cold they’d had to huddle together, skin to skin; how her father caught the rain with his hands and fed it to her—I felt grateful for my family’s luck. Lupe’s parents walked until the rubber soles of their shoes were completely rubbed off, until the blisters on their feet sprouted flowers. Still, they kept walking, their achy legs and empty stomachs fueled only by hope—the hope of better opportunity and safer streets for their daughter.

  My parents and I flew here on a plane. There were no blisters. And I’d still had a scared flutter in my heart, not knowing what tomorrow would bring. Whether I was going to like my new home. Whether it was going to like me back. Even now, I could feel the flutter sometimes, like that day I’d found the awful poster at our pool.

  Ms. Patel took notes as Lupe spoke, stopping at times to ask for locations, dates, and other details.

  “And where’s Mom?” she asked.

  Lupe’s voice wobbled as she told the lawyer she didn’t know. She was supposed to cross back in the middle of October, and now it was a less than a week before Halloween.

  I reached into my backpack and pulled out one of my flyers with Lupe’s mom’s picture on it. “We’ve been handing these out,” I told her.

  “Good,” she said, taking the flyer from me and putting it on her desk. “If you manage to get in contact with her, tell her to stay put in Mexico, at least until your dad’s trial is over.”

  “So you think there’s hope?” Hank asked her. “You can get Lupe’s dad out?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Ms. Patel replied.

  Lupe took a deep breath. “And what about … your fee?” she asked.

  “We’ll work something out,” Ms. Patel said casually.

  I shook my head. I’d been around the block long enough to know that we’ll work it out meant we could be taken for a ride.

  “We need to decide on it before you start,” I told her. “We have some tip money from the summer saved up.” I glanced at Lupe, who nodded eagerly. “Almost a hundred dollars!”

  Ms. Patel chuckled and shook her head. “You know what? I’m going do this one pro bono. I’m the daughter of immigrants, so I know how it feels.”

  I looked over at Hank. He had a huge smile on his face.

  “What’s pro bono?” I asked.

  “Pro bono is when you take on a case for free,” Ms. Patel said. “Lawyers do that sometimes, if they find something worth fighting for. I’m sure you guys have let guests stay at the motel for free before?”

  “Oh, have we ever!” I smiled.

  Ms. Patel turned to Lupe. “Well, I think reuniting you with your parents is well worth fighting for,” she said with a nod. “Don’t you think?”

  Lupe’s chin quivered as she nodded back. As Hank shook Ms. Patel’s hand and Mrs. T told her how grateful we were, I asked her if there was anything we could do to help.

  Ms. Patel thought for a minute.

  “I’d start talking to your neighbors, rallying up support. The more community support we have, the stronger our case will be.”

  Lupe and I grinned and proudly pulled out our petition to show her, with all the Kids for Kids signatures on it.

  “Smart girls!” Ms. Patel said. “This is an excellent start. If you can get some more signatures, and perhaps even get some politicians or the media on our side, even better!”

  We walked out of that tiny office armed with hope, determination, and the unbelievable luck that we’d found someone who believed in José’s case as much as we did. It felt so good to know that the spirit of helping others lived not just in our sign, but in people’s hearts too.

  As soon as we got back to the Calivista, Lupe went into our room, put her head down, and sobbed. It was like she was finally letting out all the tears she’d been desperately hanging on to. My mom said to leave her alone for a minute and brought me to the kitchen to help make some hot cocoa. When it was ready, we carried it back to Lupe.

  “Is it your mom?” I asked her. “Are you missing her?”

  Lupe sat up and took a sip of the cocoa. “I always thought …” she said, wiping her tears. “That because my parents did something illegal, that we were illegal, just like the bombs and the drugs. That we were bad. Today was the first time I heard someone official tell me I wasn’t bad.”

  “Oh, Lupe,” my mom said, sitting down next to her on the bed. She looked into Lupe’s eyes. “Do you know how amazing you are? How smart and talented and incredibly gifted?” She took Lupe’s hands into hers and interlaced her long fingers with hers. “These hands are the hands of an artist and a mathematician.”

  “And a writer,” I added.

  Lupe managed a small smile.

  “And a motel owner,” I continued. “And a translator!”

  My dad walked into the room and chimed in, “Someone who makes the best guac and chips!”

  Lupe giggled.

  “Protector of immigrants!” I threw in. We were on a roll!

  “People checker-iner!”

  “Explainer of what’s what!”

  My mother hugged her. “A girl who bravely crossed into the unknown when she was a baby,” she said.

  “And the bestest best friend I am proud to have,” I finished with a hug.

  Lupe hugged me back, laughing and crying at the same time. “You guys,” she said, putting a hand over her heart.

  My mom kissed the top of Lupe’s head as she walked out of the room. “Get your homework done before dinner, girls,” she said to us. “I’m going to cook Lupe’s favorite—sweet and sour chicken!”

  My belly rumbled in eager anticipation. We had gone straight from school to Ms. Patel’s office, and I was famished. As my mom left to go make dinner, I turned to Lupe, and because she was still looking a little sad, I suggested something crazy. When I whispered it to her, Lupe grinned.

  After dinner, we waited until my parents were both asleep before sneaking out of my room. I crept over to the front desk to grab the master key while Lupe tiptoed out the back. With the master key, we opened up one of the empty guest rooms and went inside. I giggled, flipping on the TV to one of the music channels José had added for us. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell was playing. I turned the volume way up and jumped onto the bed.

  “Ain’t no mountain high enough!” I sang, using the remote control as my mic.

  Lupe ran into the bathroom, returned with the hair dryer, which she used as her mic, and jumped onto the other bed.

  “Ain’t no valley low enough!” she sang into the hair dryer.

  “Ain’t no river wide enough,” we sang together. “To keep me from getting to you!”

  That night, we sang our hearts out, jumping on top of the beds. Lupe smiled and wiped her eyes as she sang. It was the most fun we’d both had in months.

  After the meeting with Ms. Patel, we doubled down on Operation Save José, turning the front desk into an assembly line. Hank and Fred looked up the addresses of politicians, while Lupe and I wrote letters, Mrs. Q and Mrs. T stuffed envelopes, and Billy Bob licked stamps.

  At school on Friday, Lupe continued writing letters during recess while I sat in my special lesson with Mrs. Welch. The recess tutorials were going well, especially now that we’d moved on from grammar to figurative language. Today, Mrs. Welch was going over personification and metaphors.

  “I liked this one you wrote,” Mrs. Welch said, picking up my latest essay from her desk. “My parents may be on side streets now, but one day, they’ll be on the main road.”

  “It’s just something they say in Chinese.” I blushed, slightly embarrassed I had written that down.

  “Well, it’s a good metaphor,” Mrs. Welch said. “And I lik
ed this: Some of the immigrants who come to the motel on Wednesdays, they have it even harder than us. Some of them haven’t yet found the side streets. They are just forging their way through thick brush, with only the stars to guide them,” Mrs. Welch read. She reached up to touch her cheek. Was she crying?

  As she handed me back my paper, I looked up to see the grade, expecting another C. But this time, it was an A−.

  “The minus is for some minor grammatical mistakes,” she said. “Otherwise it would have been an A.”

  An A− from Mrs. Welch! Wow! That was like an A+ + from a normal teacher! A smile stretched across my face as I clutched my paper proudly. Lupe was thrilled for me and we ran all the way home, our arms swinging wildly, excited to get back to Operation Save José!

  By noon on Saturday, stacks of letters lay on the front desk, ready to go out. There was a pile for congressmen, congresswomen, and US senators; a pile for the state assembly and state senate; and a third pile to mayors and county supervisors.

  Dear Senator,

  José Garcia, age 38, is currently being held in San Diego County Jail awaiting deportation proceedings. Please do not let Immigration deport Mr. Garcia. He is a husband, father, skilled and hardworking Californian. He has an 11-year-old daughter. Deporting him will separate him from his family. He has good moral character and no criminal record. He has been in this country for more than eight years and has worked in the fields in the Central Valley picking grapes, as a pizza deliveryman, and as a cable repairman in a motel in Anaheim, California. Mr. Garcia is an honest and hardworking immigrant who has contributed greatly to the California economy.

  We urge you, kind senator, from the bottom of our hearts, to please grant José Garcia an adjustment of status so that he can be reunited with his family. His trial is in four weeks. Please contact us at the number below if you have any questions. Thank you.

  Sincerely,

  Californians Against José Garcia Deportation