The Book of Unknown Americans: A novel

by Cristina Henriquez

  “Fifteen minutes ago. Maybe twenty by now.”

  “Did she have something after school? A meeting or a club?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know, Alma.”

  “Is Mayor here?” I asked.

  Celia tensed. She pulled back her shoulders. “No,” she said. “But he’s not with her. He knows the rule.”

  “Maybe he’s heard something.”

  “Well, he was going to a movie with his friend William after school today. I can ask him when he gets home.” Celia leaned forward and stuck her head out past the door frame. “Is that snow?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “It’s snowing. When did that start?”

  I turned and saw brief glints of something, like dust lit by sunlight. I was so distracted that I hadn’t registered them.

  “Dios, qué vaina,” Celia said. “All winter long, nothing. And now this! At the end of March!”

  I was quiet, catching sight of the flakes and then losing them again, feeling myself burrow further into fear. Where was she? I didn’t want to think what I was thinking. Had that boy come for her again? Had he taken her somewhere? And what was he doing to her if he had? I felt it, then, the full weight of my terror. I felt it low and round in my belly, thin and quivering through my chest. An anguished sound escaped my lips.

  “Alma!” Celia said, startled.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You have to relax. I’m sure she’s fine. Maybe the bus is stuck in traffic.”

  I nodded, unconvinced.

  And then the two of us just stood there until finally Celia dropped her shoulders and looked at me with sympathy. “Come inside,” she said.

  “I thought you were on your way out.”

  “Come inside,” she said again, “I’ll make coffee. We’ll wait for her together.”

  Once we were in the apartment, Celia tried to call Mayor, but she only got his voice mail. “He must have turned his phone off in the movie,” she said. “He’ll check it when he comes out.”

  I sat on the couch and stared through the window at the white sky, the empty parking lot, the faded asphalt, while Celia brewed a pot of coffee. I forced myself to imagine scenarios in which Maribel was fine: She was sitting on the bus, twisting her hair between her fingers, staring out the window at the traffic on the street; she was asleep in the bus seat, oblivious to the delay; she was only a block from our apartment, pulling her backpack onto her shoulders, preparing to get off. I said to myself: You didn’t have a bad feeling before the accident, and then she wasn’t fine. Maybe because you have a bad feeling now, it means she is fine. I didn’t care that it made no sense.

  “I need to call Arturo,” I said suddenly, reaching for the phone in my coat pocket. But when I looked at it, the screen was black, out of minutes. How long had it been like that? I dropped the phone back in my pocket and asked Celia if I could use her house line instead.

  “Of course,” she said, handing me the receiver.

  “Bueno,” Arturo said when he answered. He was out, as he had been for forever it seemed, still looking for a job.

  “It’s me, Arturo. You need to come home,” I said.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “It’s Maribel.”

  “What happened?” he said again.

  “She didn’t come home from school.”

  “What do you mean? Did you call the school?”

  I was embarrassed to realize that I hadn’t, and I didn’t want to admit it to him now.

  “Come home, Arturo. Please.”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  I did call the school as soon as we hung up, but no one answered, and when I passed the phone to Celia so that she could listen to the recording that started playing, she reported that it simply gave the school hours and said that there were no after-school programs that day. I thought of calling Phyllis, too, but her number was in my dead cell phone.

  By the time Arturo arrived, not more than ten minutes later, I was pacing outside, knotted with worry, every knot pulled so tight that it had begun to fray. The snow fell lightly, like weightless kisses, although I barely noticed it. I ran to him as soon as I saw him. His face clouded and he put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Her bus didn’t come,” I said. My lips felt numb, but not because of the cold.

  “Was there an accident?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “The police?”

  “She was supposed to be home half an hour ago! Who knows what could have happened?”

  “I didn’t know if I was allowed—”

  “To call the police? Why?”

  I stared at him. I didn’t want to say.

  “Alma! Use your head! Let them deport us if they want.”

  He stormed past me, toward our apartment.

  “Arturo!” I yelled after him.

  He stopped and turned.

  “I need to tell you something.” Tears were forming in my eyes, but I had to say it. I had no choice now. What did it matter, my instinct to protect him, my misguided idea that somehow by keeping all of this from him, I could prove that I was capable, I could prove that I could take care of our daughter even though I had failed her so terribly before? If she was missing, what did any of it matter?

  “There’s a boy …”

  Arturo looked like he was annoyed that I was changing the subject. “What are you talking about?”

  “He lives in Capitol Oaks.”

  “Who?”

  “You saw him. A long time ago when we went to the gas station. He was there.”

  “Who was there?”

  “I don’t know his name. But he came here one day.”

  Arturo shook his head as if he were giving up on trying to understand me.

  “I found him with her,” I said, and pointed to the side of the building. “Over there. I think he’d been after her since the beginning. He had her against the wall.”

  A darkness settled over Arturo’s face. “What do you mean? What was he doing?”

  “He had her shirt up.”

  “When?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “When, Alma? When did this happen?”

  “I told him to stay away from her.”

  “When?”

  “A few months ago.”

  “And you’re just telling me now?”

  “I thought I could handle it.”

  “Handle it? Alma!”

  “I went over to his house. I told him to leave her alone.”

  Arturo stared at me with such incredulity it was almost horror. As if I were someone he didn’t recognize. “Did he hurt her?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “But you said—”

  “I got here in time.”

  “But where were you? Why weren’t you with her?”

  There was nothing I could say to that. I had no defense.

  “You lied to me,” Arturo said.

  “I was trying not to worry you.”

  He sputtered, a sound that verged on laughter, and tipped his head back, gazing at the faded gray sky. The snow was falling steadily now and flakes the size of postage stamps landed on his face, on his hair.

  “I wanted to make it up to you,” I said.

  I waited, but he just kept his eyes trained on the faraway sky.

  “I was the one holding the ladder.”

  Arturo lowered his head and looked at me. “What?”

  “That day. I was the one who let her go up there. One second she was on the ladder and she was our perfect daughter, and the next second—”

  “She wasn’t perfect,” Arturo said.

  “But I knew you didn’t want her up there—you told her not to go up there—and I let her go anyway.”

  “So?”

  “So she fell, Arturo! And it was my fault.”

  “That’s what you think?”

  “That’s what you told me! I
n the hospital. Afterwards.”

  Arturo looked confused.

  “You said I was supposed to be holding the ladder. You accused me of letting it go.”

  “You think I blame you for what happened?”

  “We both know it was because of me.”

  “Well, I’m the one who told you both to come with me that day.”

  “You didn’t know what would happen.”

  “Neither did you. That’s what I’m saying!”

  “But it’s different.”

  “No, it’s not different. You say you let her go up there, but how could you have known she would fall?”

  “But I was the one holding the ladder.”

  “Did you take your hands off it? Did you move it on purpose?”

  I shook my head.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Alma.”

  “Everything changed because of me,” I said.

  He looked at me with sadness, maybe even mercy. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said again. “You have to let it go.”

  “But—”

  “Whatever I said back then … I was upset, Alma. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  I bit my lip.

  “Listen to me,” Arturo said. “It’s you. It’s you who needs to forgive yourself.”

  I couldn’t speak. Tears from a wellspring deep and dark streamed down my face.

  “Do you hear me?” Arturo asked. “Forgive yourself.”

  I nodded and felt a distant sort of release, as if something inside of me was draining away.

  “Now,” Arturo said, “we’re going to find her.”

  INSIDE THE APARTMENT, Arturo called the police. They said that the school had already notified them and that they had a patrol car out looking. They seemed surprised that no one from the school had been in touch with us. They told him, “Kids this age. You’ll see. She’ll probably walk through your front door before we even get a chance to track her down.”

  But she didn’t, and Arturo wasn’t going to wait. He collected change for the bus, put on his cowboy hat, and started toward the front door.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I’m going to find that boy.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I’m going to make him tell me where the hell our daughter is.”

  “It’s snowing outside,” I said stupidly, as if that made a difference.

  Arturo zipped his coat. “You stay here,” he said. “In case she comes home.” He opened the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Mayor

  Daylight had started to fade by the time Maribel and I got back in the car. We’d driven a few miles, headed toward home, when the snow picked up for real. It started swirling around in gusts and falling so heavily that I had to turn the windshield wipers to the highest setting, and even then I had trouble seeing the road. I couldn’t make out any of the shops and restaurants along the side of it, either. Whole clumps of snow were blowing off the trees and off roofs. Streetlights looked like giant cotton balls.

  Before we even made it to the highway, the car was skidding all over the place, the tires spinning like they weren’t touching the ground. We passed two cars that had pulled off onto the shoulder to wait it out, which seemed like a pretty good idea, so I did it, too.

  Maribel didn’t ask any questions, and I realized, after I stopped the car and actually took a second to look at her, that it was because she’d fallen asleep. Without much of anything else to do, I rested my own head against the steering wheel and watched her for a while. She was still wearing my coat and her hair was wavy from the snow. Her hands were resting palm up on her lap.

  Outside, the wind howled, and every few minutes a car crept by with its high beams on. The snow will let up soon, I told myself. At least, I hoped so. I mean, I really hoped this wasn’t the start of some blizzard that was going to bury us alive on the side of the road. I got a little freaked out at the thought of it and started wondering whether there was a flashlight in the glove compartment and how long two people could survive on a handful of Starbursts. But then I told myself to relax. We were, like, a few hundred feet from the nearest house. It wasn’t exactly the tundra.

  The heaviest part of the storm passed eventually, but I have no idea when. I fell asleep, too, waking myself up when my head rolled onto the horn, which let out a long honk that cut through the night air. At the sound of it, Maribel startled.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “We’re in the car,” I said. My breath tasted sour, and I turned my head so she wouldn’t catch a whiff of it.

  “But where are we?”

  “We were on our way home, but the snow was crazy, so I pulled over. And then I guess I fell asleep.”

  “It’s not snowing now,” she said.

  I looked out the window. It was completely dark and everything outside was calm, like the snow had formed a cocoon over the world. Maribel pulled her hair off her face, and I saw an indentation along her cheek where she’d been resting it against the seat belt.

  I put the key in the ignition. The car grumbled but didn’t start. I tried again. Nothing. I felt myself start to panic a little, but on the third try, the car came to life. I turned the heat on and held my hand in front of the vent until, after a minute, warm air pulsed through.

  “Are you cold?” I asked.

  “No,” Maribel said.

  The clock on the dashboard said 1:14 a.m. Shit. We were in for it. Really, really in for it.

  I was about to put the car in gear so we could nose back onto the road when Maribel said, “He pushed me against the wall.”

  “What?”

  “He told me he had something to show me.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “He took my coat off and pushed me against the wall.”

  And then somehow I got it. A prickle shot up the back of my neck. She was talking about Garrett Miller. “What did he do to you?” I asked.

  “He started taking my shirt off.”

  “What did he do?” I asked again, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  She turned and gazed out the passenger side window, her arms clutched around her.

  “Maribel?”

  “My mom came,” she said.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “My mom came,” she said again.

  And then we just sat there. I didn’t know why she was telling me now, after all this time. When she turned back to me, she picked up my hand and ran her thumb against my open palm. I closed my fingers and squeezed, pretending like somehow if I squeezed hard enough, I could hold on to her forever.

  MY DAD WAS OUTSIDE smoking a cigarette when Maribel and I pulled into the parking lot of the building. It was the dead of night, and the headlights lit him up in the dark. I got so nervous when I saw him that I stalled a few feet before the space. My dad threw his cigarette into the snow and strode over, yanking open the driver’s-side door.

  “Get out,” he said.

  I did. Maribel had fallen asleep again on the drive home and she was curled into the passenger’s-side seat.

  “Give me the keys,” my dad said.

  I handed them over. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye.

  “Now get in the backseat,” he ordered.

  I didn’t have the guts to ask why, but I thought I should probably just do whatever he asked, so I climbed in the back while my dad got into the driver’s seat and tore out of the lot.

  It was a quiet drive. Not a single other car was on the road. My dad was flying—long grooves of slush that ribbed the pavement sprayed up onto the car—and the whole time I was shaking in the backseat like there was an earthquake under my skin. I had no idea where he was taking us, not to mention what might be open in the middle of the night, so I figured maybe he just wanted to drive around for a while until he collected himself. Maybe there was a lecture coming, and he was composing it in his head. Maybe he wanted to get Maribel and me away from
the apartment so that none of our neighbors would hear what he was about to unleash on us. Maybe Maribel’s parents and my parents had decided between them that my father would be the one who would reprimand us when we finally came home. But after ten minutes in the car, when we pulled up to Christiana Hospital, I had a sinking feeling that I’d gotten it all wrong.

  “Wake her up,” my dad said after he parked. “We’re going inside.”

  I tapped Maribel on the shoulder. “We need to get out of the car,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You fell asleep again. We’re back in Newark. My dad drove us to the hospital and now he wants us to get out of the car.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Yeah. I have no idea what’s going on. But he wants us to go inside with him.”

  I thought, Maybe he’s going to take us to see patients who were barely hanging on after car accidents as a way to teach Maribel and me a lesson about what could have happened to us.

  My dad lit another cigarette as he cut across the dark, snowy parking lot to the entrance at the emergency room. Maribel and I followed. The doors slid open when we reached them, and my dad stubbed out his cigarette in a standing ashtray before we walked inside.

  The second I saw my mom sitting in the waiting room, I knew it was bad. My dad walked straight over and put his hand on her shoulder. She jerked her head up, frightened. “Nothing yet,” she said.

  My dad nodded toward Maribel and me. “They just got back.”

  “One good thing,” my mom said.

  But she didn’t get up like I thought she would.

  “They’re okay,” my dad said.

  It was only then that my mom looked at me. She curled her lips in between her teeth and blinked fast. Her nostrils flared, and I thought she was going to cry, but she just nodded and turned away again.

  My dad sat down next to her and balanced his elbows on his knees, tenting his fingers and staring through them to the white floor, to the radiators along the baseboards, to what? I had no idea.

  A fat woman with a Phillies baseball cap and a plastic bag on her lap sat in a chair against the wall. A tattooed man in jeans and a jean jacket—his legs outstretched, his ankles crossed—was sleeping a few seats down.

  “What’s going on?” Maribel asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I said.