Santiago's Road Home

by Alexandra Diaz

  “No.” Santiago wiped his sweaty hands on the back of his pants and straightened his shoulders to follow the guard. First impressions counted for everything. But what kind of impression did he want to make? What impression would offer what? No one told him anything.

  He knew everyone who came through the facility got interviewed to determine what the government would do with the individual. Sometimes when Chismoso got bored, he told stories about who had cried while being interviewed, or who had claimed to be the illegitimate child of the president. But what resulted from those tales? Chismoso hadn’t said.

  Still, Santiago could pretend to be brave.

  The room in which Castillo left him felt bright and sterile—blinding white walls and fluorescent lights that could be seen from the moon had there been any windows, which there weren’t. The effect resulted in a coldness that had nothing to do with the temperature. On the contrary, the temperature in this room was pleasant compared to the perpetual chill that penetrated their main living area.

  Two people sat at a table with files of paperwork and gestured for him to sit on the other side. The Latina spoke while the gringo man took notes.

  “We have questions to ask which you need to answer truthfully,” she said in a voice that came out both patronizing and emotionless. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “First, is Spanish the best language for you to communicate in, or do you require a different language?”

  He wanted to joke, ease the tension, say something like good food was the language he best identified with, so having a pork-and-cheese tamal present would make communication easier. But these two didn’t seem the joking type.

  “Spanish is fine,” he said.

  “What is your full name?”

  “Santiago García Reyes.”

  “When is your birthday?”

  ”I don’t know. Around Easter.”

  “What year?”

  “I’m twelve now, so whatever year that means.”

  Maybe because he was a kid, or he really looked clueless, they didn’t question either response.

  “What country do you come from?”

  “México.”

  “And what is your address in México?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “What village or town?”

  “I don’t know if it has a name. We just call it el campo.”

  The man and woman looked at each other, communicating telepathically, maybe thinking he was lying. He didn’t know what to tell them. He honestly didn’t know. La malvada lived in a huddle of buildings that didn’t have a bus stop—you just told the driver where to let you off or waved along the side of the road when you wanted the driver to pick you up. Sometimes, if you were lucky, the driver did.

  “But it’s about thirty minutes outside of Chihuahua,” Santiago added.

  That response received a slight nod from the woman, as if he’d finally said something right.

  “Why did you try to enter Los Estados Unidos illegally?”

  He paused for a second to think which response would gain the most sympathy, but he noticed the woman’s eyes narrow when he didn’t answer immediately. “Mami’s madre beat me.”

  They didn’t seem to hear what he’d said. Or they chose not to believe it.

  “Did you come here alone?” the woman continued.

  “No,” he sighed.

  “Who were the people you came with?”

  “My sisters.” He hadn’t intended to lie. With Alegría gone, he knew he’d never see them again. He might have helped them cross the border, even saved their lives, but at the end of the day, he was just some random kid they’d picked up in México. He’d been stupid to think they’d felt otherwise. At the same time, it still resonated as the most truthful thing he’d said yet. In his heart, they had been his sisters.

  “Let me remind you”—the woman leaned forward on the table and spoke slowly and extra patronizingly—“that we are U.S. government officials, and we require a truthful statement on your behalf.”

  “Yes,” Santiago agreed.

  The woman crossed her hands over her file. “We know for a fact that a mother and young daughter were traveling with you.”

  Santiago nodded. “That’s right. María Dolores Piedra Reyes, la madre, and Alegría García Piedra, la hija. My sisters.”

  The woman narrowed her eyes again, then lifted her eyebrows, the first obvious change of expression from her otherwise deadpan face. “Explain.”

  An involuntary sigh came out of Santiago. Details were key. Details would make any story believable.

  “María Eugenia was born first.” He mentioned the name of María Dolores’s married sister. “Then came María Dolores. After that, my mamá met my padre and had me.”

  So far, so true. After all, his own parents had met after María Dolores had been born; and he never actually said María Eugenia and María Dolores were born to his mamá.

  “Then Padre…” He deliberately didn’t use “my,” so still not lying. “He fell in love with María Dolores and had Alegría. So, sisters.”

  The man looked up from his notes and gave a slight nod in agreement that these things sometimes happened. Santiago remembered hearing a gossiping relative once say that stranger things happened in real life than in fiction.

  The woman accepted the statement with a blink. “Where are your parents?”

  “Padre disappeared. No one knows where he went.” His voice grew softer. “And Mami died when I was little.”

  “So, who raised you?”

  A muscle involuntarily jerked at the side of his face. He wouldn’t lie here—he didn’t know what to say instead—but that didn’t mean he would be happy about sharing this part of his life either. “I told you. My mamá’s madre, the one who hit me.”

  “Your abuela?”

  How he hated that word in the context of la malvada. Someone like her didn’t deserve to be called a grandmother. “Yes.”

  “What is her name?”

  He could refuse to answer. He never called her anything to her face, except once, and that resulted in the burn marks running down his back. If ever there was a name that didn’t suit someone it was hers. “Agracia Reyes de la Luz.”

  “And your mother’s name?”

  “Sofinda Reyes de la Luz.”

  “And your father’s?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do you not know your father’s name?”

  “Mami never talked about him. He left before I knew him.”

  A weighted silence fell over the room. Oh no, now he’d done it. He’d said too much. He forced his face to remain blank, but he’d messed up, and the woman noticed.

  “You said your father fell in love with your sister, María Dolores. How is it you never knew him?”

  “I was living with relatives at that time.” He continued not lying. It wasn’t his responsibility to correct the woman over whose father it had been, or anything else she misunderstood. “Mami had died, and her madre hated me, so she’d send me off to different relatives. I didn’t know about Alegría until recently, and that’s the truth.”

  Again the pair exchanged questioning looks. Santiago waited in his chair patiently while they came to a nonverbal conclusion.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell us?” the woman asked as if she half expected him to confess to being a mass murderer and drug lord.

  Santiago straightened up in the chair and licked his lips. If there was any chance… “Where are my sisters? Do they know I’m still here? Are they coming back for me? How can I get in contact with them?”

  “I’m sorry, that information is restricted.”

  “But they’re my family!” he screamed. So much for making a favorable impression. “The only family I care about.”

  The woman’s mouth twitched as if she was about to tell him off for being rude. Instead, she turned her attention to the files in front of her and made a show of straightening them
. “We’re going to look into all of this information for verification.”

  “Go ahead.” He slumped back on the chair. For the first time since Alegría’s departure, Santiago felt relief. With her gone, they couldn’t prove or disprove his story. His truth.

  The man finished scribbling his notes and passed the notebook across to Santiago. “Please read this information and sign below to confirm that everything it says is accurate.”

  This time Santiago paled. He shifted on his hard chair and avoided making eye contact.

  “I can’t. I’m still learning how to read.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Santiago lost count of how many weeks had passed. Had it been seven or eight Sundays of boxed eggs?

  Then one day they were given the biggest feast of their lives with turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, and some weird gelled red thing no one but a few brave souls tried. Santiago loved the tang and asked Consuelo to pile extra of the red on his potatoes when they were allowed to get seconds. According to Chismoso (who’d been at the center the longest and had been present at the feast last year), it was some kind of holiday when locals welcomed immigrants by giving them lots to eat.

  Yet as Santiago ate the “pai” de calabaza (what kind of a person came up with a dessert made from pumpkin?), he couldn’t help but think that maybe they were being fattened up for slaughter.

  His gut proved correct when the day after the huge feast, a bus parked outside the facility. A large white bus with no letters or design, large enough to hold half the boys in their area. Three boys from the little-kid section, the first Santiago had seen of the others held at the center, were loaded onto the bus, which let out gray clouds of exhaust as if it were digesting the children it had just eaten. Santiago watched this phenomenon with his fingers laced through the chain-link fence that enclosed the outside area.

  “That’s my brother!” Manzano, the boy who tried to take an apple out of the dining hall, called out. “Where are they taking him?”

  The rest of the boys all dashed toward the fence, except for Chismoso, who stood back, looking self-important. “That’s the bus to send people back.”

  Everyone began to talk at once.

  “What? To México?”

  “No, al Polo Norte, idiota.”

  “But I’m not Mexican!”

  “You think the girls will come out next?”

  Boys pressed against Santiago in attempt to see over his tall head. The wire from the fence dug into his hands, but he didn’t push back.

  “How often does it come?”

  “Sometimes every month, sometimes not for three months,” Chismoso said, still standing away from the mob by the fence. “Basically whenever you gachos have filled up the facility. Did you know it costs more than seven hundred dollars per person per day to keep us here?”

  “¡Mentira!”

  “And they can’t afford to give us beds and real food?”

  “My dad earns less than that in a month, and he still provides for the whole family.”

  Chismoso gave a noncommittal response.

  “You’ve been here the longest. Aren’t you afraid you’re going to be on the bus, Chismoso?”

  “Nope.”

  “¡Entren ahora!” Herrera yelled for them to get inside, cutting their outdoor time short before the legendary girls emerged. It took a few minutes before the guys behind Santiago stopped shoving and allowed him to follow. He could still feel the fence digging into his hands. As horrible as staying here would be, it didn’t compare with returning back there.

  From a clipboard Herrera called out names. Manzano’s name came first, except they used his real name, evident by his moving out of the shoulder-to-shoulder line they had had to form. Then Pinocchio and the man-child with the tattoos who’d arrived the same day as Santiago. Three more got called, then ten.

  Santiago hung his head low as he waited to be summoned.

  “And García.”

  So this was it. He would have to face his fate. As soon as he could get his feet to move.

  Until one of the other boys called out, “Which one?”

  Herrera scowled, clearly wanting to say all of the Garcías should get the heck out of there. Instead, he resigned himself to disappointment and rechecked the list. “Guillermo García.”

  Santiago breathed. He’d escaped deportation. This time.

  CHAPTER 30

  Not long after, two men and two women came to talk to the boys. Chismoso, with his uncanny connections, knew ahead of time and tried to get his fellow residents excited.

  “Think about it, gorgeous women visiting us,” the gossiper boasted. The result was that at least half the guys showered before their arrival.

  Santiago supposed they were okay-looking, for old people. Certainly not the supermodels Chismoso had promised. Not that it made any difference to Santiago. He showered every morning, because he could, and because it occupied time.

  “Hi, everyone.” One of the men addressed them in flawless but curt Spanish. “We are volunteers from the Ley Unido nonprofit organization.”

  A new boy with pale skin and military-cut blond hair (the only blond currently there) raised his hand and spoke in English. “I no speak Spanish.”

  The older woman of the two asked him a question in English to which he replied, “Russia.”

  The same woman turned to the teens watching her and said in Spanish, “Who here understands Spanish?”

  Everyone but five others raised their hands, the most non-Spanish speakers Santiago had encountered since his arrival. In true fashion, Chismoso explained those five’s life stories with a pointed finger. “He’s from Syria, those two are Brazilian, and the other two only speak indigenous languages.”

  The woman waved aside the other five to join her and the Russian boy where she could talk to them privately, but how and in what language?

  The man who had started the introduction continued his address to the Spanish speakers. “We’re mostly retired lawyers working as volunteers to make you aware of the options available to you as immigrants and refugees.”

  “My family doesn’t have any money,” said Llorón, a new, whiny boy. Most of the boys murmured in agreement.

  The speaker nodded. “The services we offer here at the center are completely free. For instance, we can help you get reunited with your family or put in group housing, where you can live more freely outside of the center until your immigration status is decided. We can also advise you on the programs you’re most likely to qualify for and help you fill out paperwork.”

  Santiago shifted uneasily from his spot on the floor. All this for free?

  “What do you guys get out of this? How do we know you’re not screwing us over?” Llorón now crossed his arms over his chest. Santiago noticed that even Chismoso didn’t voice his usual smart-mouth responses.

  The other man stepped forward, this one with old-age spots on his face and looking more physically frail than the speaker, but with sharp eyes. “We do this because we’ve been in your situation. We’ve been separated from our families; we’ve risked our lives to leave our homes. We have been you.”

  Silence filled the room. Whatever these people said, their clothes, their education, their mannerisms spoke differently.

  “We’ll be here all next week, available to talk with each of you individually,” the first man continued.

  Santiago slumped forward, hugging his knees inside his sweatshirt. Weeks had passed since his intake interview and nothing had happened. Other kids had come and gone in that time. He’d been forgotten, again, but so what? Sure the facility was lonely, cold, depressing, boring, uncomfortable, and—in his mind—completely pointless, considering all the resources they spent in housing him here instead of letting him take care of himself in the outside world.

  Like he’d always done.

  But, truthfully, he was fed and clothed with a roof over his head. He got to go to school. With Alegría gone, learning to read and write now offere
d a way to pass the endless time. He knew what to expect. In here no one hurt him. No one made him feel loved only to abandon him later.

  Other than with Consuelo and Señor Dante, he talked to no one, and no one noticed him. Honestly, not the worst life he’d lived.

  * * *

  The volunteer lawyers each carried large briefcases when they returned on Monday. A new pregnant woman joined them; young and looking hugely out of place, she smiled.

  “Con permiso, I got to pee.” And she dashed off without waiting for permission or even acknowledgment.

  Santiago watched from his reading and sleeping spot in the corner as two frightened teenage boys burst out of the bathroom at the sight of a woman rushing into their private space. But not even the strictest guard dared tell a pregnant woman where she couldn’t pee.

  A piece of toilet paper was stuck to her shoe when she exited, making a few of the boys snicker. Santiago marked the page with his finger and walked up to her.

  “Hold still,” he said while pointing to the toilet paper behind her. He stepped on the trailing end and brushed it toward the wall with his flip-flop.

  “You’re my savior.” She beamed at him.

  He gave her a stiff nod and returned to his spot in the corner.

  “Wait.” She grabbed his arm, which immediately caused him to cower, a defense mechanism he’d developed long ago at la malvada’s house. She let go quickly, maybe remembering the “no touching” rule, and rested her hands on her stomach. He didn’t move but avoided eye contact. “Why don’t you meet with me, and we can go over your case?”

  “There’s nothing to go over,” he said.

  “I disagree. Something can always be done, but you won’t know until you try.”

  He didn’t want to say yes, didn’t want to agree. But his eyes finally met hers, hopeful and kind, and his mouth relented. “Fine.”

  The room they entered was accessed from the main living room and might have once been a supply closet, just large enough for a small table and two chairs. It was stuffy from lack of ventilation but as a result, warmer than the regular area. She removed a couple of layers of clothes, and his perpetual goose bumps retreated into his arms.