The Book of Unknown Americans: A novel

by Cristina Henriquez

  At school, things were no better. I sat at my desk, drawing hats and mustaches on the people in my textbooks while I thought about Maribel. I wondered what she was doing, if she was as miserable as I was, what her hair looked like that day, what she was wearing. Anytime a teacher called on me, I had no idea where we were in the lesson. I’d just say “Huh?” and usually, after getting a disappointed look or even more often, a surprised one, I’d slump down in my seat and feel like crap. I went to the nurse’s office and complained that I had a stomachache or that I had a headache or that I was pretty sure I had the swine flu so I needed to go home. The nurse would take my temperature and send me back to class every time.

  Sometimes when I got home from school, one of my mom’s friends would be in our living room, sipping freshly brewed coffee out of the Café Duran mugs my mom liberated from the cabinet only for guests. Occasionally, I was greeted by the sight of Sra. Rivera, whose company my mom coveted, and anytime she was there, I would linger in the hallway outside the kitchen and eavesdrop, waiting for her to say something about Maribel. Once, my mom mentioned my name and after a pause Sra. Rivera said, “He seems to like Maribel, no?”

  “Mayor?”

  “He’s been good for her, I think. She’s different when he’s around. More like herself.”

  “Really?” My mom sounded genuinely surprised.

  “Did something happen, though?” Sra. Rivera asked. “He hasn’t come over in a while.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? Rafa grounded him. Mayor got into a scuffle at school, and Rafa flew off the handle as usual. Él es tan rabioso.”

  “It was serious?” Sra. Rivera asked. “What he did at school?”

  “No, no. It was nothing. Trust me, Mayor is a good boy.”

  Sra. Rivera didn’t say anything to that, and I wondered whether she believed my mom or whether knowing that I’d been grounded had somehow ruined her image of me.

  One day I came home from school to find Quisqueya sitting next to my mom on our couch with her legs crossed. She used to be a regular fixture in our house, but lately I hadn’t seen her as much. Her furry snow boots were by the door and her white fur hat was in the center of the coffee table like a cake.

  “How was your day?” my mom asked, after I walked in and dropped my backpack on the floor.

  “Okay.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Nope.”

  My mom said to Quisqueya, “He’s a man of few words these days.”

  “Like all men,” Quisqueya said. “Except for my sons, of course. They call every night from the university to talk to me.”

  “Tell me again, what university are they in?” my mom asked, feigning ignorance.

  “Your memory is so short, Celia. They’re at Notre Dame.”

  “Oh, right! Notre Dame. I don’t know why that never seems to stick with me.”

  Quisqueya twisted herself to look at me. “I notice you’ve been spending a lot of time with the Rivera girl,” she said.

  My mom tsked. “Not lately. Mayor is grounded.”

  Quisqueya gasped. “Grounded!”

  My mom shook her head like she was sorry she’d mentioned it. “It was nothing,” she said.

  “Well, before. He used to spend a lot of time with her before.”

  Quisqueya twisted herself to me again. “It’s a shame about her, isn’t it? But when I see you with her, the two of you seem to be having actual conversations. Like real people.”

  “You don’t know anything about her,” I said, my cheeks burning, my voice flat as a wall.

  “Not as much as you, certainly,” Quisqueya said.

  “They’re just friends,” my mom said.

  Quisqueya replied, “Of course. That’s how it starts.”

  “Mayor, go to your room and start your homework,” my mom ordered.

  “I don’t have any homework.”

  “It’s a good idea to do your homework,” Quisqueya said. “Hard work is what got my boys where they are.” She faced my mom again. “Did I tell you they’re both majoring in computer science? You should hear them talk about their assignments. All these technical terms! They love it. But I have to tell them, Please! I’m just your little mom!” She smiled. “I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Maybe that’s because there’s something wrong with your brain,” I said.

  “Mayor!” my mom snapped.

  “What did he say?” Quisqueya asked my mom.

  “I’m sorry,” my mom said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately.”

  “I said maybe you don’t understand any of it because there’s something wrong with your brain.”

  Quisqueya blanched.

  “Ya, Mayor! To your room!” my mom said, leaping up from the couch and pointing. When I didn’t move, she growled, “Now.”

  IT WAS ALL just bullshit. Quisqueya and Garrett and my dad and every other person on earth could say what they wanted, but Maribel and I were meant for each other. I knew it.

  So the next day, instead of going straight home after school, when I got to our building, I walked to her apartment. My legs were shaking for fear that my mom, or worse, my dad, would catch me, so as soon as Sra. Rivera cracked open the door, peering over the tarnished gold chain latch, I said, “Can I come in?”

  “Are you supposed to be here?” she asked.

  “Is Maribel around?”

  “Aren’t you grounded, Mayor?”

  “I was grounded, yeah. But I’m not anymore.”

  I could see the hesitation on her face.

  “My dad called it off,” I added, and finally she let me in. I found Maribel in the bedroom, standing by the window. She was wearing the red scarf I’d given her at Christmas and it was everything I could do not to walk over and kiss her right on the spot.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She turned around and gave me a puzzled look.

  “I wanted to see you,” I said.

  Maribel stared at me, blinking with her long eyelashes. “You got a car,” she said at last.

  “You heard about that? Yeah. It’s not, like, a nice car or anything. And it’s not mine, you know. It’s my dad’s.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Out in the parking lot. My dad hasn’t driven it since we brought it home.”

  “So the car is sad.”

  “It’s sad?”

  “It’s lonely.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Should we visit it?”

  “The car?” Then I realized what she was trying to do. See, she was smart. She was way smarter than anyone gave her credit for. I smiled. “I mean, sure, if you want to.”

  We told her mom we were going over to my apartment, and I promised, as I always did, that I wouldn’t leave Maribel’s side the whole thirty-step journey from her unit to mine.

  “Don’t say anything,” I told Maribel as we squeezed in the door to my apartment. As quietly as I could, I lifted my dad’s car keys from the windowsill, clutching them in my fist so they didn’t jingle. Then I slipped back out and motioned for Maribel to follow me. The two of us were outside again before my mom even knew the difference.

  I opened the car door and let Maribel climb in, then hurried around to the driver’s side and got in beside her. The car was freezing inside and it smelled coppery and wet, like snow. I saw that someone—my mom, I assumed—had hung a rosary over the stem of the rearview mirror.

  Maribel skimmed her hand across the bumpy, faded leather on the dash.

  “My dad always wanted a car,” I said. “Since he was a kid. But he had a donkey instead.”

  “A donkey?”

  “He named it Carro.”

  Maribel laughed.

  “Yeah, I know. A donkey named Car. How dumb.”

  “Your dad is funny.”

  “Not really,” I said. I slid my hands around the steering wheel. When my foot accidentally rubbed the brake, the sole of my sneaker squeaked against the ridges of the pedal.

  “
Do you know how to drive?” Maribel asked.

  “Pretty much,” I said. “I took driver’s ed last marking period, so I have my permit, but I haven’t done the exam for my actual license yet. My friend William did it, though, and he passed it no problem, so it can’t be that hard. The only thing I’m worried about is parallel parking, but I probably won’t ever have to parallel park unless I go to Philly or D.C. or something. I don’t know. The driver’s ed teacher, Mr. Baker, always made us drive by his house so he could feed his dog. Every year on mischief night, his house gets egged and he complains to the principal about it, but it’s like, duh, if you didn’t take kids to your house all the time, no one would know where you lived and it wouldn’t happen. He’s kind of stupid.”

  “You talked for a long time.”

  “I did?”

  “It was like hours.”

  “No way. Not even close.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  “What? You don’t mind me?” I wanted to see what she’d say, but she just blushed.

  “I like this car,” she said. “It’s very cool.”

  She grazed her fingertips across the center console, her nails scraping the hard plastic. I watched the delicate round bone at her wrist twist back and forth and felt blood pounding in my ears.

  I took a quick look out the windows and in the rearview mirror to see if anyone was watching. Earlier, I thought I’d heard a door shut, but when I looked now, the coast was clear. I didn’t know how much time I would have before either her mom or my mom came storming out, looking for us. I was getting all heated up even though it was cold as hell in that car. I unzipped my coat.

  “Mayor?” Maribel said.

  “Yeah?” I held my breath.

  “I feel like you’re the only person who … sees … me.”

  “Maybe everyone else just needs glasses,” I said, attempting a joke, but it fell flat, and I squeezed my hands around the steering wheel until my skin pulled so tight I thought it would flare off at my knuckles.

  I turned to her. Ever since the first time, kissing her again was all I’d wanted to do. Be chill, I told myself. It’s nothing. It’s just—

  I closed my eyes and leaned across the console until my mouth found hers. I put one hand on her shoulder, on her rubbery coat, gripping the fabric in my fist. Her nose brushed my cheek, and the wool from her scarf tickled my chin. After a few seconds, I slid my tongue into her mouth, shocked by the feel of her seashell teeth and then by the wetness of her tongue as it touched mine. I moved my hand to her neck, her skin hot and soft, and holding her like that, my heart raced. Forget it: my heart was doing laps and hurdles and high jumps and I swear the fucking pole vault. My pants got tight. I could sense it, but I didn’t care. We just kept kissing, my hand under her scarf. And then my pants were damp and warm. I pulled back. I threw my hands over my crotch and angled my body away from her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  And, man, if that wasn’t the truth.

  Nelia Zafón

  I am Boricua loud and proud, born and raised in Puerto Rico until I told my mami in 1964, the year I turned seventeen, that I wanted to live in New York City and dance on Broadway. My mami put up one hell of a fight. You are only seventeen! You don’t have any money! ¡Estás más perdido que un juey bizco! All of that. But I had a dream that I was going to be the next Rita Moreno. I was going to be a star. I told my mami, You can look for me in the movies! And I left.

  I didn’t know a soul when I got to New York. I slept on the floor of Grand Central Terminal for the first three nights, watching everyone’s feet walk past, men in loafers, women in patent leather heels. Click click click. Everyone with somewhere to go except for me. I had gotten to my destination and now what? A dream isn’t the same thing as a plan. I started feeling like I wanted to return home, but the way I left—all that youthful righteousness and conviction that I threw at my mami como un tornado—I would have been embarrassed to go back so soon. My mami would have said, “You see, nena! You’re just a little girl after all.” No. I had planted a stake and now I had something to prove, to my mami and to myself, to everyone from my neighborhood. I had to prove that I could make it.

  I got lucky, though. In the train station, I met a girl, this chica de compañia named Josie, who had gotten kicked out of her parents’ house for smoking dope. She had a friend, a guy in Queens, who was going over for the war and she was going to stay in his apartment until he got back. I’ll never forget, she said, “I have to water his plants for him so they don’t die.” Later, when he didn’t come home, when they couldn’t even find enough pieces of his body to put together to send back, she cried so much and for so long that I knew: She was in love with him. She had been waiting for him, every day pouring cupfuls of water into the pots that held his plants, turning them in the sunlight, taking care of them because she thought it was a way of taking care of him.

  I lived in that apartment for one year. I had gotten a job as a waitress, but Josie never charged me rent. Her friend’s parents were paying for the apartment, she said. It was covered. Instead I put all my money toward dance classes and acting classes that I took in the mornings at a little studio in Elmhurst. For food, I ate leftovers off diners’ plates at the restaurant. I scraped whatever people didn’t eat into cardboard take-out containers and saved it for later. Hash browns, toast crusts, noodles, creamed corn, todo eso. The boss didn’t really care.

  I went to auditions when I heard about them. I remember there was an open call for Man of La Mancha at a small theater in Greenwich Village. I tried out for the role of the housekeeper. When I got there, a man was lining up all the girls. I remember I asked him whether it was okay that I wasn’t Spanish. Because of course it was a Spanish play. He said, “What are you?” I told him, “Puertorriquena,” and he said, “What’s the difference?”

  I didn’t get that role or any role after that. Not a single one. For years I tried. After the news of Josie’s friend, I had left the apartment in Queens because it didn’t feel right for me to stay there. Josie refused to leave. She took over the lease. She kept watering the plants. Maybe it was denial, but maybe it was her only way of holding on to someone she had loved. Maybe we should all be so passionate.

  Once I was on my own again, I found a place in the cellar under a corner grocery store. Really a cellar. It had damp stone walls and one window no bigger than a squinted eye. I danced all day and took trains and buses all over the city to auditions, and at night I carried around trays of food and flirted with the men for bigger tips. On my walk home sometimes, and as I stepped back down into that cellar apartment, my eyes heavy from exhaustion, I would think, Is this what it is? This country? My life? Is this all?

  But even when I thought that, I was always aware of some other part of me saying, there is more. And you will find it.

  Oh, I didn’t find it, though. I worked like crazy. I practiced dancing until my feet bled and my knees felt like water balloons. I rubbed Vicks into my cracked heels and took so many hot baths I lost count. I went to a voice coach and sang until my throat was raw. I killed myself, but it never happened for me. The world already had its Rita Moreno, I guess, and there was only room for one Boricua at a time. That’s how it works. Americans can handle one person from anywhere. They had Desi Arnaz from Cuba. And Tin Tan from México. And Rita Moreno from Puerto Rico. But as soon as there are too many of us, they throw up their hands. No, no, no! We were only just curious. We are not actually interested in you people.

  But I’m a fighter. You get me against the ropes and I will swing so hard—bam! So I thought, well, if I’m not going to find it, then there’s only one other option: I will create it.

  I researched and found out that taxes for new businesses were lowest in Delaware, so I saved money for a while—I stopped taking classes and signed up for extra shifts at the restaurant—and said good-bye to New York. I came to Wilmington to try to start a theater company of my own. I
got a job as a waitress again, only at nights, at a bar this time, and during the day I worked on getting the theater going. It was a different time then. The society was different. Free love, fellowship, turn on, tune in, drop out. There were communities of artists, people who didn’t want to work for the big corporations, people who were willing to help a girl like me, and many times they worked for free. I met a guy who helped me build sets and put up some lights. I did all the painting myself. I got a whole truck full of wooden pews from a church that was being renovated. I lined them up for the people I dreamed would one day come to watch my shows. The Parish Theater, I called it, because of those pews.

  In 1971, we had our first production, a play called The Brown Bag Affair. It was very racy, provocative, a lot of nudity, but the story was powerful, and even though for the first few weeks only a few people showed up to see it, word started to spread. First, we had an audience of ten people, but eventually it grew to twenty, everyone sitting shoulder to shoulder in those long pews. Every few months, we did a new show, and two years after we opened our doors, we were getting regular crowds for every one. The theater wasn’t making much money, but we were bringing in enough to keep the plays on. That by itself was some kind of miracle.

  Now, twenty years later, I still run the Parish Theater. We do just one production a week. I act in them sometimes, but the real pleasure for me now is giving roles to other actors, watching them perform, especially the young ones. I was like them once. I can relate. And now I think, Okay, this is what it is. My life. This country. It took me so long to get started, and I never became a big star, but now I feel proud when I go back to Puerto Rico to visit my old neighborhood in Caguas because in a certain way, I did make it, after all.

  A few months ago I met a man who came to the theater. He’s younger than me, a gringo, an attorney, so young and handsome. ¡Cielos! We have almost nothing in common, but somehow we’re a good fit with each other. He makes me laugh. How can I explain it? He has a spirit. I’m fifty-three years old with wrinkles on my hands. I’ve never been married in my life, and now this. You never know what life will bring. Dios sabe lo que hace. But that’s what makes it so exciting, no? That’s what keeps me going. The possibility.