by Lulu Delacre
And there’s coffee. Papi offers lots of it—espresso, cappuccino, and, lately, what a Cuban fútbol friend of his taught him to make: cortadito. For that you cut the black espresso with a drop of milk. Now that I’m twelve, Papi puts me in charge of the coffee. I’m old enough, he says.
It’s only half past six, and out of a tall building comes a man in a classy suit and tie making a beeline for our stand. The first customer. He’s looking straight at the coffee, though. Am I ready to serve him? I panic.
“Good morning, Mr. Wallace!” My father greets him with a broad smile. “The usual?”
“Buenos días, Miguel,” the man responds in a deep voice. “Yes, please.”
“Black coffee, two sugars, Alex,” Papi says.
A simple order—I smile, relieved. The man and Papi begin to chat loudly about last night’s basketball game, and that gives me lots of time to get the coffee ready. Papi asks about his kids by name. I perk up my ears and wonder how is it that Papi knows so much about those kids. The man’s grin gets wider with each one of my father’s comments.
“So who is this lovely young lady?” the man asks, reaching for his fresh coffee.
“Ahh, this is Alex. She’s my special helper. Her first time here!” Papi says. “She’s a good student, you know. I told you she’s going to college one day, right?”
The man looks at me like he’s seeing a movie star or something.
“So this is the famous Alex!” he finally says, extending his hand to shake mine. “I’m delighted to meet you.”
The word famous makes my ears burn, so I’m quick to shake the man’s hand and look away. My gaze lands on the pink-wrapped tin next to Papi’s honor-system coffee-payment jar. I frown when I notice the handwritten sign on the tin. Alex’s College Fund, it reads. My mind races, trying to think of a way to hide the sign.
“I’ll be sure to tell everyone at the office to come to Miguel’s corner and finally meet Alex,” the man says, dropping payment for his coffee in the honor-system jar. I’m about to slide the pink tin behind some bottles when the man slips a dollar into it.
His gesture makes my eyes go wide and my jaw drop. I gasp. I long to be invisible.
The morning turns to noon, and the line for Miguel’s Burritos now curves around the corner. Papi fills warm spinach and corn tortillas with beans and rice and sauces to order, and neatly wraps the burritos in tinfoil. They do smell good. Funny how he seems to know so many of his customers, and most everyone has heard of me. The novelty of being today’s main attraction begins to wear off. One gets used to being a celebrity, you know. I simply smile and hand out hot and cold drinks. Just when I feel kind of tired of standing up and being polite, Papi pats me gently on the back.
“Take a break, Alex,” he says. “Here’s your favorite, tu favorito.” He hands me a fat burrito filled with pinto beans, melted cheese, and his special spicy guacamole. It’s sooo delicious I don’t even miss the meat. Papi is humming his tune again. I look at him and smile a little smile. I imagine Marisa in the plush chair of her dad’s fancy office and think maybe I don’t want to trade with her anymore.
“Have a great evening!” Papi waves to the last customer hours later. “¡Hasta mañana!”
By the time we drive back home, it’s already dark.
“Papi?” I ask. “When are you opening the restaurant you and Mami talk about all the time?”
“One day, Alex, one day,” he answers. “It’s true that we have some money now. But my customers love me, you know. They’d miss me if I left. I’ll think about the restaurant after I finish saving money for your college.”
“Ay, sí, about that college fund,” I say. “You know that pink tin—”
“You like it, right?” Papi asks. “It makes me think of you all day, Alex. The day you go to college will be the greatest day for the whole family!”
“But Papi, that’s like in a million years!” I whine.
“And I’ll be so proud of you!” Papi exclaims. “What were you saying about the tin?”
I’m about to ask Papi to get rid of it, but instead I lean my head on his shoulder and say, “Oh, never mind.”
The sound of someone’s sniffles broke the spell I was in. I turned around to see about a dozen people walking toward me.
It wasn’t the eleven-hour work days, the three-hour commute to work, or the endless Sunday afternoons cooking the week’s beans that did him in. It had happened suddenly the day before, during one of his league’s soccer games. I was there cheering him on. Papi complained of chest pain, and by the time we arrived at the hospital it was demasiado tarde. Too late. Mami was in shock. And it fell on me to tell everyone at his workplace about the heart attack. But “everyone at his workplace” meant his downtown customers. So I ended up announcing Papi’s death with the hand-painted sign I spent all night making when I couldn’t sleep. Men in suits and women with briefcases, eager for their usual cup of coffee on their way to work, looked puzzled and shaken. A lone homeless man came over and shook his head. I got up and stepped back, letting the strangers get closer. A few of them hugged one another in their shared sorrow.
“Oh my God!” cried a large woman. She stopped in her tracks, took out her cell, and called someone. Minutes later a group of office workers hurried out of their dark glass building to join her. One of them bent over to place the bouquet of fresh dahlias she had just purchased at the foot of the sign.
“He was such an upbeat man,” she said. “We often chatted for the whole fifteen minutes of my coffee break.”
“He gave me warm lunch on cold days,” said the homeless man. “Always bragging about that smart daughter of his.”
“I sure hope she’ll go to college one day!” agreed a well-dressed man with a deep voice. “Miguel was saving toward that for the seventeen years I’ve been buying his burritos.”
The man didn’t notice me. It was Mr. Wallace. I blinked away my tears as I walked away from Papi’s corner. I thought of the pink tin and smiled.
It has a place of honor in my room now.
“Sí. The daughter will go to college next fall,” I whispered.
BAND-AID
No se puede tapar el cielo con la mano.
Alina sat at the picnic table in the cool shade of the banyan tree, with ten of her classmates from parochial school. She had just blown out the twelve candles atop the tres leches and strawberry cake, her laugh chiming like silver bells above the applause of her friends, when the phone rang.
“¿Aló?” Mami answered, after swallowing a mouthful of the custardy cake. By the tone in Mami’s voice, Alina knew it was Papá. Lifting a sliced strawberry as red as her manicured nails, Mami fed it to Martin, Alina’s little brother. He was busy crinkling the bright wrapping paper Alina had teased him with.
“Gracias for the cake, mi amor. The girls love it!” Mami raved. “Even the baby likes it. I can feel tiny kicks inside me!”
Papá was finishing a concrete patio on this Saturday afternoon and had told Alina he would be home before her party was over. Concrete was what everyone wanted for their patios and driveways in Homestead, Florida. Papá’s business was going so well that two years ago they had moved into a bigger house, where Alina, being the only girl, had her own room. Alina loved choosing the fabric for her window curtains. She had helped Mami sew the panels, making sure the pink-and-purple flower pattern aligned perfectly. Since her brothers, Angel and Martin, shared a room, Alina knew her baby sister would move in with her one day. She liked that idea. “I can’t wait for mi hermanita to be born!” she remembered telling Mami while they were sewing together. “I saw this cute hairdo for baby girls—all you need is pink ribbon and soap and scissors, and you glue little bows to small bunches of the baby’s hair with soap. It works, too!” Mami had raised her eyebrows and snorted. “Your sister hasn’t been born yet and you’re thinking about hairdos?” She had cradled Alina’s chin in her soft palm for a moment before returning to her sewing machine.
After a long pause in
the phone conversation, Alina saw Mami’s smile vanish. Mami ambled back into the house, sliding the patio door closed behind her. When she came out again, Alina’s best friend, Jenny, ran up to her.
“Mrs. González,” Jenny exclaimed with a little bounce. “Alina loves the matching T-shirts I gave her and the baby. Show your mom, Alina!”
Alina held up the hot pink T-shirts with glittering bird designs. When she peeked from behind them, she noticed Mami’s forced smile.
“Lindas . . . pretty,” Mami said, her voice flat, her gaze lost somewhere beyond the shirts. Alina eyed Mami’s face for a moment, but she was soon distracted by her friends’ giggles and presents.
Almost a year later, on a humid Friday morning, Alina sat on a faded blue plastic chair just outside the small apartment they now lived in on the other side of the Busway. She was trying to stay cool in a sliver of shadow in the parched yard. In her lap was baby Sofi. Alina needed to feed her something, and she rose to mash a piece of the overripe banana left on the worn kitchen counter, which stayed sticky no matter how many times she, or Mami, cleaned it. She also needed to check on Martin. At six years old, he was still slow to get dressed. Mami had already left for work, and it was up to Alina to make sure her brothers got to school. After that, she had to drop Sofi at the neighbors’ before heading to her public middle school.
Things had gotten tough since Papá was no longer with them. The day after her twelfth birthday party, the life she’d always known began to fade away. While still in private school, Alina kept telling her friends that her dad was on a business trip. She added new details every time she retold the story, until it became so real to her that she almost believed it and began to act as if nothing was wrong in front of others. It helped that, at first, Mami didn’t talk about what had happened either, waiting for the impossible to occur. Just three weeks after the incident, Sofi was born, and Mami put Alina in charge of her two younger brothers.
Then Alina told Jenny that Papi had extended his business trip. When Mami started to work long hours to make ends meet, Alina told Jenny that Mami wanted to better herself and was taking a course. Each new responsibility that Mami gave Alina cemented Alina’s feeling of living temporarily in another girl’s body. It was as if the carefree, joyful Alina was simply visiting inside the girl who was burdened with responsibilities. This kind of crazy thinking brought her comfort.
In the middle of July, when Mami announced they could no longer pay the rent and they would soon have to move out of the big house, Alina froze. She didn’t know what to tell Jenny. Alina had shared everything with Jenny: her crushes, her fears, her dreams. They had been best friends since the moment they found out they shared the exact same birthday. When she tried to talk to Mami about how to handle things with Jenny, Mami was too tired to talk. So Alina gave up and decided to avoid her friend altogether. Over the next few weeks Jenny texted and called, but Alina didn’t answer. But one afternoon Jenny showed up when Alina was packing her things. It was only then that Jenny pried the truth out of her. All of it. “Alina, things can’t get any worse for you,” she had said. “You’ve hit bottom; there’s nowhere else to go but up!” Alina felt stabbed by these words, robbed of her fantasy, and ashamed. “You don’t understand; this never would have happened to you!” Alina replied, wiping the tears that had gathered in her eyes. Jenny knew the truth, and Alina didn’t want to face it. It was easier to think that none of it had happened to her, but rather to this other girl, the one who had to do so many chores at home.
Alina wiped Sofi’s hands and face after her sister had finished. She filled the sippy cup with tap water.
“Good girl, Sofi, good girl,” she said, pressing her lips to Sofi’s chubby cheek and placing her in the stroller.
“Hurry up, Martin!” Alina called. “You’ll be late for the bus!”
Angel was outside horsing around with the kid next door as he waited for Martin to come out. Boys’ shirts and socks were scattered about in the small apartment. Alina groaned, bending over to pick each item up to add to the heap already on the couch. She recognized some of the Goodwill clothes Doña Sánchez had given them, and her brow furrowed. This woman from Nicaragua had visited Alina’s family several times. She always brought food collected through her foundation. With each visit Mami rehashed the incident and its consequences. Alina would always leave the room. She had recently learned why Doña Sánchez was called la gran madre. The reason made her edgy.
Once the boys were gone, Alina drank a glass of watered-down juice, brushed Sofi’s curls, and left the apartment. The counselor had set up a meeting with her today, and Alina wondered what it was about. Months into her first year in public school, she was still trying to learn how it all worked. She blew a final kiss to Sofi, now in the arms of her neighbor, and headed to the bus stop.
At school, she didn’t greet anyone in the crowded hallway. She avoided making friends. It was painful to have a best friend and then not have one. She remembered the last time she had spoken to Jenny. Then Jenny had left message after message on Alina’s cell until Alina’s phone service was canceled. Now they were no longer neighbors and went to different schools. Still, sometimes things reminded her of Jenny. Like the hot pink T-shirts. And she missed the good times: coordinating outfits, being silly, and most of all, playing soccer with Papi. Thinking of Jenny’s ability to kick the ball far over the neighbors’ fence, to Papi’s delight, brought a smile to Alina’s lips.
She opened the door to the counselor’s office and greeted Mrs. Park.
“Good morning, Alina,” Mrs. Park said. “Please, sit down. I wanted to tell you about a program.”
“Yes?” Alina said, tucking stray hair behind her ear.
“It’s for free and reduced meals. Your mom told me how hard things are at home.”
“What do you mean?” Alina’s body became rigid.
The counselor shifted in her chair. “Well, since your dad was deported . . . ,” she said with caution.
Alina crossed her arms. She clenched her fists. “No, he’s on a long trip. And he’s going to come back. He will!” she exclaimed.
“Alina, please—you’ll feel better if you talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Alina shouted as she stood up, rattling the chair behind her. “You don’t understand.”
As she closed the door, the memories of that birthday afternoon rushed back. They were unstoppable, like her tears.
“Ay, Diosito santo,” Mami had said after the girls left. She had sat next to Alina on the picnic-table bench amid the wrapping paper, the ribbons, the gifts. “Oh my God. Your father. He was pulled over by the police on his way home because the van’s registration was expired. They took him into custody. And then they called la migra.”
Immigration, Alina thought. A thought that completely silenced Mami’s words, giving way to the numbness that drained all the joy she had been filled with moments before. In this void grew a knot in her stomach and an ache in her heart. That was the beginning of the crazy thinking, where she imagined herself in some sort of nightmare from which she would wake up one day. But eleven months later she still hadn’t, and reality started to sink in as she walked the empty hallways back to her classroom.
Alina was in such a daze the remainder of her school day that she missed the school bus and had to walk back home the seven long blocks. At every corner she saw something that reminded her of her dad and the big void he had left. There was the hardware store where he sometimes picked up day laborers. There was the copy place where Alina and Papi printed flyers to promote his business, which she and Jenny distributed around the neighborhood. As she reached Rita’s Bakery, Alina stopped at the sight of the tres leches cake displayed in the window. The corners of her mouth dropped. And the numbness returned.
Ahead of her she saw the long shadows of the buildings and knew it was later than usual. She was going to be late to pick up Sofi. It wouldn’t be the first time, either. Maybe Mami would be late getting home an
d wouldn’t notice.
Upon approaching the apartment building, Alina crossed paths with Doña Sánchez, who waved at her from her car before turning onto the main road. She saw Mami in the distance, seated on the steps outside their apartment with Sofi on her lap, busy chatting with a short woman Alina had not seen before. Sofi wriggled down from Mami’s arms and chased after a sparrow hopping on the grass. After a few steps Sofi stumbled and fell to the ground, giggling and clapping her little hands. Alina joined Sofi and caught part of the conversation between Mami and the other woman.
“I’m giving la gran madre guardianship. I trust her,” said the woman. “Next Saturday at the ranch. There’s a notary, too. Since my husband was deported and two of my friends at work were detained by la migra, I’ve been worried sick. My kids are citizens; they have a real chance. If I’m deported they can still stay here living with my cousins with Doña Sánchez as the legal guardian.”
“Sí, sí, entiendo.” Mami nodded, her eyebrows drawn together in concern. “I understand; it’s like what happened to us. Hola, Alina,” Mami greeted her. “Please, put away the things our friend Doña Sánchez brought.” Mami leaned closer to the woman, engrossed in her story.
Alina glared at Mami, lifted her little sister up, and went inside.
In the evening after the boys and Sofi were asleep, Mami grabbed Alina by the arm. “We need to talk,” Mami said, her worn hands sorting the laundry from the Laundromat. “Next Saturday we are going to la gran madre’s barbecue. I think we need her help. But I wanted to talk to you about it first.”
Alina knew what Mami was going to say but couldn’t wrap her thoughts around it. She knew why this woman from Nicaragua was called la gran madre. Many parents with American children, who had entered illegally and feared deportation, sought her help. Doña Sánchez had become the legal guardian of more than eight hundred young American citizens. People said she did it because kind strangers had helped her when she arrived, at seventeen, seeking refuge herself. To Alina it seemed impossible to be able to take care of so many children. Alina knew how hard it was to care for only three.