Santiago's Road Home

by Alexandra Diaz

  Except all of the ninety-some bodies were too big to be Alegría. Even in the low light, a second glance confirmed that not only were they all teenagers, they were also all boys.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Where’s Alegría? Where are the girls?” Santiago demanded.

  But the pimply guard gave him a severe shushing, and some of the guys turned in their sleep. Another guard, this one bald and with a big belly, walked over to them and pointed to a microscopic vacancy on the crowded floor.

  “Please, my sister. Where is she? Is she okay?” Santiago whispered.

  “All the girls sleep in a different area,” the bald guard whispered back. “For their safety.”

  Their safety? But it was his job to keep Alegría safe. “Please, just tell me she’s okay.”

  The guards ignored him and once again pointed to the floor.

  Too tired to complain further, knowing he’d get nowhere with these guys tonight, he wove his way through the sleeping bodies and plopped down at “his” spot. From tiredness or hunger, his brain turned off before he finished pulling the metallic sheet over his legs.

  The blaring alarm, after what felt like seconds later, caused Santiago to jump to his feet. Heart pounding, ears ringing, Santiago took in the teenage boys waking up—some joking with one another, some cursing at the stupid early wake-up call—and crumpled back to the floor.

  All around him were gray teenagers and gray walls. Fluorescent lights overhead and no windows. A few closed doors lined one of the walls; the one open door emitted sounds from a television. Half of the guys lined up for the bathroom. The exit, noticeable by its steel door, required a guard’s key card to open.

  The pimply guard, still on duty, came by and kicked him in the leg. Not hard enough to hurt, but still a kick. “Levántate. Get up.”

  Santiago scrambled to his feet, still clutching the metallic blanket. He wouldn’t cry.

  Little kids he understood. Adults, he knew more or less how to act around them. But this in-between bunch, his peers, presented a completely alien species. His older cousins never played with him, never wanted him around. And friends… He never stayed in one location long enough to hang out with anyone, and no one had bothered to send him to school.

  He knew enough about teenage boys, however, not to break down crying. It would take every bit of willpower not to, but he could do it. He’d have to stay strong. For Alegría.

  He draped his metallic blanket over his arm—somehow, the flimsy sheet had kept him warm in the freezing room during the night—and took a deep breath before approaching a different guard on duty.

  “Excuse me, when can I see my sister?”

  This guard, red faced with blond hair, shook his head.

  “Mi hermana,” Santiago repeated. He tapped his chest for “my.” For “sister” he held his hand at her height and then mimed pigtails against his head. “¿Dónde está?”

  The guard shrugged and said something in English that Santiago didn’t understand.

  “You’re not going to get anything out of him, bróder,” a guy with a strange accent called out. Santiago turned. A long scar ran down the side of his face, reflected for a second by the folded metallic sheet before he stuffed it into his pocket.

  “Este tipo,”—he motioned at the guard—“doesn’t know a drop of Spanish. Or at least pretends not to. You’re wasting your time talking to him.”

  Once again Santiago noticed his acento and the usage of words he hadn’t heard before. He understood them in context but had never heard the use of vos instead of tú. At least it sounded friendly.

  “Sabe usted who I can ask about my sister and when I can see her?” Santiago used the formal form for “you,” a term reserved for older people or those he wished to respect. Yes, that made him a kiss-up, but if it meant getting answers, he’d be overly polite to anyone who might help.

  Acento shook his head just as the guard had. “You won’t. Not in here. You won’t see her, and the guards won’t tell you anything about her. They say it’s to keep people safe. Personally, I think it’s to hold power. Only bullies separate you from your family.”

  The shiny blanket slipped from Santiago’s arm. He couldn’t see Alegría. His broken promise to keep her safe lay crumpled on the floor like the flimsy sheet. Still, he wouldn’t cry. “¿Tiene usted hermanos aquí también?”

  “Please, you don’t have to keep using usted with me. I’m only eighteen, not that old.” Acento grinned a smile of white, even teeth to lighten the mood but then turned serious again. “No, I don’t have any siblings, but I’ve been here a long time. Long enough to know how things work. You won’t see your sister again until you get out.”

  Though he didn’t say it, the looming if you get out seemed implied.

  So this was jail. No one told him this would happen if he came to el otro lado, but no one told him much of anything.

  “And parents?” Santiago asked.

  Acento pressed his lips together and averted his eyes. “This is a youth facility, and we’re divided by age and gender—no grown-ups live here. I don’t know of any kid who’s been given visitation rights to see anyone. Maybe the girls’ side is different.”

  Again, the words he didn’t say held more meaning: He didn’t think the girls had different rules. Which meant if María Dolores was alive and left the hospital, she’d be taken someplace else, and Alegría might never see her again. If anything happened to Alegría…

  Except he would never know.

  “I feel sick.” Santiago rubbed his head. What if Alegría were sick too? They were probably feeling the similar effects of heat exhaustion.

  Acento placed a cool hand on Santiago’s sunburned forehead and stared at him with intense green eyes. “You have a fever. And you look hungry. Did you get any food when you arrived?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Stupid, inhumane, privileged scumbags,” Acento muttered. “At least breakfast is in a half hour. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.” He nodded toward the metallic sheet Santiago had dropped. “You don’t have to, but I suggest you fold your blanket and keep it in your pocket. That way you’re not stuck with a torn one come bedtime—they’re not replaced regularly. Pocket your toothbrush as well and anything else you want to keep safe, or someone will steal it.”

  Santiago nodded his thanks and understanding, though he didn’t know what else he would want to secure. The pocketknife and lighter had been taken away from him, and the backpack had been lost somewhere in the desert.

  “Is this why they give us these things instead of real blankets?” Santiago forced himself to make small talk as he folded it. “Because they don’t take up much space?”

  Acento grinned. “That’s the most realistic reason I’ve heard yet. Some guys have the theory that they can be used as communication devices—they haven’t succeeded yet. They’re really for vermin and disease control. Real blankets are always infested with so many people coming in and out.”

  That made sense. Santiago’s Tía Roberta had had him boil his cousins’ clothes after their lice epidemic. “So we’re stuck with aluminum foil.”

  “And why the temperature is kept really low.”

  They joined the other boys lining up for the bathroom.

  “So, do you have a name?” The words Acento said were almost exactly as María Dolores had said them when he first met her all that time ago, except Acento again used vos instead of tú.

  “Yeah, it’s Santi.” He’d never asked anyone to call him that before, but it reminded him of Alegría, keeping her close by. “How about you?”

  “In here they call me Guanaco.”

  Ah, that explained the strange accent; he came from El Salvador. “But isn’t that an offensive term?”

  “Ey,” the Salvadoran admitted. “The guy who started calling me that certainly meant to insult me. But it’s only insulting if I let it be. So instead, I’m owning it. I’m proud of who I am.”

  “I’ve never been proud of who I am.” T
he words came out of Santiago’s mouth before he could stop them.

  Guanaco turned and looked hard at Santiago. “Then maybe you should change that. Be someone worth being proud of.”

  María Dolores had told him something like that too.

  “Even in here?” Santiago gestured to the four gray walls that separated them from their families, as if they were no better than criminals.

  Guanaco moved forward a few paces in the bathroom line, his green eyes fixed on Santiago. “Especially in here.”

  The bathroom they entered had five urinals, five stalls, five sinks, and five showers along with one guard sitting in a chair near the sinks.

  “Is there always someone in here?” Santiago whispered into Guanaco’s ear.

  The older guy gave him a slow nod. “Always. Even if you come in at night, one of the night guards follows you in. A few months ago, some guys beat up another kid in one of the showers. The guards tried restricting bathroom usage, but then people kept peeing wherever they felt like it. So now we have a monitor.”

  “We never get any privacy?”

  “Nowhere’s private here. You’re always being watched.”

  Guanaco entered a free stall. The urinal closest to the guard became available, but Santiago waved the next boy over to use it. Normally he wouldn’t think twice that someone could be watching him, but the fact that the bathroom needed a guard to be safe made him feel vulnerable and uneasy.

  When a stall became free, he entered and leaned his head against the wall behind the toilet. Two fat tears rolled down his cheeks. He couldn’t do this. This staying here, not knowing anything. Never before did he want information so badly. What could he do to learn something about Alegría? To get them both out? From what he could tell, nothing.

  He dabbed his eyes with toilet paper, careful not to rub them or they’d turn red and indicate to the world he’d been crying. He did his business and then washed his hands with soap before splashing cold water on his face. To anyone watching, it’d look like he used that method to wake up.

  Guanaco waited for him outside the bathroom with two freshly showered friends, making no comment about the length of time Santiago had spent in the bathroom.

  “This is Pinocchio.” Guanaco introduced him to a boy with a large, beaklike nose and then gestured to the other, who wore thick glasses. “And Mosca.”

  “Do you have any family outside?” Pinocchio asked as they got in line for breakfast.

  “Sí,” Santiago lied without thinking about it.

  “Lucky,” Guanaco said. “It’s people like me who have no one that they don’t know what to do with.”

  His words circled in Santiago’s brain. He didn’t really have family outside of the facility. Not with María Dolores dead or heading for a detention center herself; he’d never met her sister, María Eugenia, and didn’t know where she lived. Maybe last night they hadn’t kept him waiting so long as punishment. Maybe they already didn’t know what to do with him. Just like living with la malvada: he was the parasite no one could get rid of.

  “So they’ll send you back?” Santiago asked.

  Guanaco shrugged. “I hope not, but I’ve been here for over five months, and I’ve just turned eighteen. They won’t keep me much longer. I don’t know if they’ll send me to an adult facility or not. My parents were murdered in El Salvador; I got attacked and held for ransom in México before escaping.” He pointed to the scar down his otherwise handsome face. “I came to the border seeking asylum. Supposedly that’s one of the correct ways of entering the country, instead of overstaying your visit or sneaking in. They don’t like it when you do that.”

  Sneaking in. Just as he and María Dolores had done. The possibility of doing it the “correct way” hadn’t even crossed his mind, not that he understood what classified as “correct.” Guanaco said he’d followed the rules and still ended up in this center. In that case, how could anyone know what was right? No one, not la migra or anyone else working in their government seemed to know the rules anyway.

  “I hope they grant you asylum,” Santiago said.

  “Thanks, bróder.” Guanaco patted him on the back. “I wish you luck too.”

  A guard in the front and another bringing up the rear escorted them out of the main area and into the locked hallway Santiago had been through last night. Single file, half a meter apart, arms behind their backs, absolutely no touching. When one of the boys said he wasn’t hungry, the guards forced him to join the line anyway. Santiago frantically sought a glimpse of the girls in the maze of corridors but saw no one. They arrived in the cafeteria, which, according to Mosca, “served medio mundo” before the teenage boys finally got to eat.

  Breakfast consisted of milk with dry cereal and fruit. Santiago started filling up one bowl of something colorful, but both Pinocchio and Mosca loaded two bowls with cereal. His stomach rumbled, but he remembered how his body had rejected food yesterday.

  “How many meals do we get in here?” he asked.

  “Three. There’s usually not enough, so grab what you can.” Mosca spoke in a Guatemalan accent.

  “And when there is enough, it’s because no one else wants it,” Pinocchio added in his Mexican accent. “Just don’t try to sneak food out of the cafeteria. We get searched before leaving to prevent that.”

  Twelve boys stood in line behind Santiago. There should still be enough for them if he took both the colorful cereal and the healthier-looking brown one.

  “Grab two oranges as well.” Guanaco motioned to the fruit.

  Santiago’s hand had already been reaching for one. “Two?”

  Guanaco picked off the smallest bit of the orange peel to show him the white interior. “Yeah, and eat this white bit too. It’ll boost your immune system. You need all the vitamins you can get. This isn’t a place to get sick. Two of the little kids have been taken to the hospital. They tried to hide it from us, but we all saw the ambulance arrive.”

  Santiago followed them to the long, sticky tables with benches attached at either side. The other boys talked while he ate his first meal in a long time. He only managed part of the colorful bowl of cereal before he started feeling nauseous. Maybe sugary cereal hadn’t been the best choice for his first meal, no matter how pretty and tasty. He couldn’t even look at the brown cereal now congealed into mush. His eyes shut as he brought an orange to his nose to ease his stomach.

  Guanaco placed a hand on his shoulder. “It happens to everyone, but you’ll get used to it. On Sundays we get eggs from a box and sausages that have sent many a good man straight to the toilets.”

  Mosca groaned in agreement.

  Santiago opened one eye while keeping the orange against his nose. “How can eggs come from a box?”

  “No clue, bróder, but trust me—they do.” Guanaco grimaced.

  Santiago lowered the orange and opened both eyes. He waited a few seconds to make sure he could talk. “Why are you telling me all this? Why are you helping me? You don’t know me.”

  “Maybe not you exactly, but I know what you’re going through.” The sad look returned to his green eyes. “I’ve been separated from someone I care about too. Not a sister, but a girlfriend. While crossing México. I don’t know where she is, if she’s even alive. But at least I know she hasn’t come through this facility.”

  “How do you know that?” So there was a way to get information about the girls.

  Guanaco and his two friends stood up to return their food trays. “It’s a feeling I have in my heart. I just know.”

  Santiago stayed seated with his food a bit longer—the guard said they had two minutes left. A middle-aged woman wearing an apron and a hairnet came out to collect the trays. She kept her head down, and as a result, everyone ignored her. A plan began to form in his mind. Santiago took two more bites of his cereal and brought his tray to her cart.

  “Thank you for the food,” he whispered, knowing they’d get into trouble for talking.

  Her head jerked up in surprise. Then she w
hispered back, “De nada.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Santiago lay staring at the industrial gray ceiling with his metallic blanket over his body and his arms tucked behind his head for a pillow. The concrete floor pressed hard and cold against his back. The lights overhead dimmed but were still bright enough to illuminate the sleeping figures around him. Pinocchio and Mosca whispered on the other side of Guanaco. Some boys curled up in the fetal position, clutching tight to the collar of their sweatshirts while trying to hide the fact that they were crying. Others shifted every few seconds, the rustle of their metallic blankets giving away their desperation to find that one spot that was slightly less uncomfortable than the others.

  The lack of a bed didn’t bother him—that was how he’d slept most nights of his life. Sometimes with a ratty blanket, sometimes not even that. Even the lights weren’t what kept him awake. He could sleep through anything, and had: shouting, bangs, fires. No, the physical discomforts were hardly noticeable compared to the thoughts running through his mind. Too drained to join the undercover fetal weepers, he just stared straight up at the lights.

  Guanaco, he noticed, lay perfectly still next to him. Too still to be asleep. The four of them had secured a corner, prime real estate compared to camping out in the middle of the room. The secret, Guanaco had explained, was to get there first. Despite what they called this place, a temporary immigration holding facility or whatever, Santiago felt sentenced to jail.

  And he’d allowed Alegría to be sentenced here too. No wonder he couldn’t sleep.

  He shifted to his side with a loud rustle, almost hugging the wall with an arm horizontal against the concrete. He remembered that last day in the desert (was that only yesterday?) with Alegría’s weight against his back. Even in his tired and dehydrated state, just feeling her presence had brought comfort. With some imagination, he could feel her warmth and pulse as if she were next to him now, just on the other side of the wall.