“Hijita, please don’t ask me any questions right now.” She had the box under her arm, the two pills in her maroon sweater’s pocket. She was sure she’d taken them all. She swept the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. There was no doubt in her mind that Valeria would tell Lucho. One thing was clear: she couldn’t stay at Lexar Tower any longer.
But where to go? There was only one place she could go. Brooklyn was a long, cold train ride away, but there was no other place she could think of running to. She needed to go to the Sandoval sisters. “You know what?” she said to her children, in the liveliest voice she could muster. “We’re going to visit Tía Betty tonight.”
The volume on the television was on full blast. Victoria turned toward it. “Can we go after Amparo?”
“No, I need you to get ready now.”
“Is that why Tía Valeria is crying?” asked Pedro. “Because we’re leaving?”
She didn’t answer, and instead poked her head out the door once again. The hallway and living room were empty. Valeria’s bedroom door was ajar. She whispered to her children, “Go quickly to our room. Come on, let’s go.”
They hurried across the hallway toward the mess Valeria had left in their room. The closet was pillaged. The boxes and suitcases Ana had packed were now empty. Clothes, papers, and bags were scattered throughout the floor. She darted to the bed and lifted the mattress as sweaters fell off it. The canary envelope, stuffed with the papers that documented their identities and the little money they had left, lay undisturbed between the mattress and the box spring. She scooped it up and tucked it beneath her armpit.
She then headed to the closet. The sweaters, once piled on a shelf, now littered the floor, along with the black plastic bag where she’d hidden the pregnancy test. She picked it up, put the box back inside, and then the canary envelope. She grabbed Liliana from the top bunk.
She took one of Pedro’s sweaters from the floor, shook it, then tossed it to Victoria. “Here, help your brother get dressed. Get your schoolbags too. Hurry up.” She put the plastic bag on the nightstand, forgetting the sacredness of the space she’d made for her saints and dead mother, then threw an old backpack onto the bed and began stuffing it with socks, several pairs of underwear, a few sweaters, whatever could fit. She did the same with her children’s schoolbags, filling them with their uniforms.
She needed to call Lucho. At the very least, he had to know she was leaving and where she was going. She could explain the why of it later.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, before stepping out into the hallway. “Avancen.”
She could hear the muffled voices from the telenovela behind Michael’s shut door. It was the only sound in the unit. Valeria’s bedroom door was closed. Light reached out from its edges. She hurried toward the kitchen.
Her coat and the Key Food bags still hung on the chair. A puddle of water had formed beneath it. She threw on her coat, took a couple of clementines from one of the bags and stuffed them in her pockets. A magnet with the RapiCar address and phone number was on the fridge. She picked up the phone and dialed the number on it.
A man with a Puerto Rican accent picked up on the other line.
“It’s Doce’s wife,” she said, referring to Lucho by his cab number. “Can you please get a message to him?” She was taking the children to Carla’s. No, she didn’t need to speak to him now. She didn’t want him to stop her, and he’d get the message soon enough. “Tell him to call Carla’s,” she told the boricua, but she knew Lucho would nevertheless call Valeria.
She was in the middle of grabbing a few juice boxes from the fridge when the doorbell rang. She froze. She hadn’t heard the buzzer from the lobby. It was a weekday; it was dinnertime. She thought it might be a neighbor. On any other night, she might have answered the door. On this night, she couldn’t bring herself to budge from the safety of the kitchen.
When the bell rang a second time, she heard Valeria’s footsteps as she made her way to the door. She passed by the kitchen. Her hair was now tied in her usual bun. Her face had been wiped clean of the streaks of mascara. Her eyes remained red and swollen. She didn’t look at or utter a word to Ana as she passed by.
When she did, Ana snuck her head into the foyer for a second time that night. Her heart dropped as Valeria opened the door. She saw the shiny squares first, fitted on the left corner of the first officer’s chest, then the uniforms, as black as San Martincito’s scapular, before she processed who the men were at the door.
“Good evening, Ma’am,” said the shorter officer. “Someone called about a burglary?”
“Yes, I called.” Valeria spoke in English, her voice small and delicate, but it pounded in Ana’s ear. “Do you speak Spanish? I only ask because the person who stole from me is here. She doesn’t speak any English.”
Ana scrambled back to her bedroom. Her sneakers squeaked as she ran down the hallway, its walls narrowing with her every step.
It’s over.
She shut the bedroom door behind her.
“Mami, what’s going on?” asked Victoria.
“Nada,” she said quickly.
Don’t panic, she told herself, over and over, as she searched the room for a way out, but there were only the windows and the door. She cursed herself for never finding another way out of the room. She whispered to her children, “I need you both to be very quiet, okay?” then walked to the windows. It was too dark to gauge the distance to the ground below.
There was a shuffling in the hallway. Valeria’s voice grew louder, the officers’ footsteps heavier, and before Ana could figure out how to climb out of the fourth-floor window with her two children, the cops were inside her room.
“Things have been disappearing from my room,” she heard Valeria say. “She hit me when I confronted her.” Her saccharine voice barely masked the hint of satisfaction in the words that followed. “Es ilegal.”
The blood drained from Ana’s face. The knot in her stomach once again began to twist.
“Her kids too.”
She pulled her children closer. Victoria dug her face into Ana’s abdomen. Pedro clung to her leg. Her own heart collided against the inside of her chest. The room spun silently around her as she struggled for air. Breathe, she reminded herself, but she was drowning.
She shut her eyes and grabbed at her heartbeats, hoping to stay afloat. She heard her children whimper. She thought of Lucho, alone, driving down a street somewhere in Brooklyn.
Then, as if he were rousing her from a nightmare, she heard Michael’s voice. “Holy shit!” She opened her eyes, and watched as he ran inside the bedroom. “You’re cops!” He bounced up and down, then reached out to touch one of the officer’s uniform.
“Hey, buddy,” said the man, gently setting Michael’s arm down.
The other officer kept his eyes on Ana, then moved on to the children. He tilted his head, then rested his hands on his hips. “So what do you want us to do?” he asked Valeria. “Deport them?”
Her eyes widened, as if the answer should have been obvious to the man. “Yes, of course.”
The officer cleared his throat. “Ma’am, we don’t deal with immigration matters.”
Valeria’s eyes went from the officer to Ana, then back. “What do you mean you don’t deal with immigration matters?” she stammered. “She doesn’t have any papers. Just ask her. Ask her to show you her green card. She doesn’t have one. At least arrest her. She stole my bracelet.”
The other officer glanced around the room. “Whose room is this?”
“It’s a guest room,” said Valeria.
“Have you been staying here?” he asked Ana.
Before she could answer, Valeria interjected. “They’ve been staying here. And like I said, some things were missing from my bedroom, and I found them in here—”
“So who did this?” asked the officer, pointing to the clothes scattered on the floor.
“I came in here to look for my jewelry, which she stole.”
&nbs
p; “What exactly did she steal?”
“I told you, my bracelet. A gold bracelet that I got—”
“She didn’t steal it.” It was Michael who spoke. He was circling the officers, inspecting their uniforms, but he had the entire room’s attention. The officers and his mother’s, because he was contradicting her; Ana and her children’s because it was one of the rare moments they’d ever heard him speak Spanish.
The officer bent down, and asked, “Why do you say that?”
Valeria interrupted. “Michael, amor, you’re confused.”
“No, I’m not. You gave it to Tía for New Year’s, remember? When I was hungry and I went into your room. I saw you give it to her.”
The shorter officer turned to Valeria, but didn’t bother asking her if what Michael said was true. The answer was on her face and neck, where splotches of red had burst onto her skin. He turned back to the hallway, and his partner followed close behind. “Like I said, Señora, we don’t deal with immigration matters.”
Valeria chased after them, Michael behind her. “What do you mean you don’t deal with immigration matters? You’re cops. She’s undocumented. She’s not even supposed to be here. She’s in my house, and I want her out!”
“Señora, we have to deal with real crimes,” he said. “Actual burglaries, robberies. You have an immigration problem, you call immigration. You don’t call us.”
Ana rushed to the door, shutting it behind them. She collapsed onto the floor, sitting against the door, making sure it stayed closed. Her heart was still audible. Moments later, the front door slammed, and its ding once again rang through unit 4D. She heard Valeria in the hallway, racing to her bedroom. “Get out!” she yelled as she stormed by.
The room grew still, and as Ana’s heart steadied, she wept. Her children tiptoed to her. Victoria sat down beside her. Pedro crawled onto her lap. “Ya pasó, Mami,” he whispered as he held her face between his hands and smiled. “Ya pasó.”
Victoria interlaced her fingers with that of her mother’s. She kissed her hand. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, with such certainty that it was enough to shake the fear out of Ana.
She kissed them both and stood. “Come on,” she said. “We’re leaving.” She dressed them quickly and finished filling up the backpack and a carry-on suitcase. She grabbed the plastic bag on the altar. She placed her mother’s prayer card in the inside of her coat pocket. She asked the Virgin for protection. Don’t abandon me, she prayed, as she put her saints inside the plastic bag.
Snow hit the glass doors that opened to the balcony like bullets. She covered their bodies from head to toe, ready for whatever the winter night might throw at them. The children carried their bloated backpacks; hers was heavy on her shoulders. She pulled the carry-on suitcase onto the fourth-floor corridor. None of them looked back as they rushed toward the elevators.
“Hold the door open,” she told Victoria when they reached the lobby. The snow crashed into the glass doors that made up Lexar Tower’s main entrance. Her sneakers squeaked as she hurried to it. Her stomach was still in a knot as they exited the doors. The snow had piled on along the path that led to the sidewalk. Her coat was still unzipped. She reached into the pocket of her maroon sweater, and tossed the pills into the snow. She was still grabbing at her heartbeats as they made it out the last few steps and into the cutting January night.
16
CARLA’S APARTMENT WAS ANA’S ONLY REFUGE. SHE HAULED THE carry-on suitcase up the subway stairs to the 7 train and, after two transfers and what seemed like an eternal ride, made her way with the children through Queens and into Brooklyn. She struggled with every step, unable to shake the fear the frigid night had congealed to her bones.
The threat of deportation had always been present, but never quite so close. They were always surrounded by others who’d fled home. That was the appeal of New York; they were merely four of millions. It was only over the summer, when the slew of raids at the meat-packing plants robbed Lucho of the job at his, that the threat of deportation inched its way to the forefront of her mind. It was always a possibility, one that tried to reach her but never could wrap its fingers around her. The fear of it didn’t feel real until tonight.
None of that fear had spread to Pedro. He was captivated by the evening train ride under the pelleting snow. For most of the ride, he stared out of the subway car window, mimicking the conductor’s words at every station, watching the snow ricochet off the glass.
But it had spread to Victoria, and as the last train headed to Carla’s sat at the station, she asked her mother why it was that they had to leave their Tía Valeria’s.
“We were always going to leave,” Ana explained. “We just left a little early, that’s all.”
“But why did the police come?” she whispered. “Why was she yelling at you?”
“She was upset about something,” said Ana. “It’s not important. And the police just came to visit.”
“No, Mami,” she said, her eyes widening. She came closer, as if she was about to reveal a secret. “They take people away. Michael told me. All kinds of people, not just bad ones. People that aren’t supposed to be here.”
Ana wondered how long her daughter had known. She couldn’t conceal the truth from her forever, yet it didn’t seem quite right to admit that this was the reality in which they lived. “Sometimes they do,” she conceded.
“Are we supposed to be here?” she asked.
Ana looked into her daughter’s owl-like eyes. “We’re supposed to be together,” she replied. “Right? They didn’t take us, did they?” Victoria shook her head no, pushing aside a lock of hair that fell around her eyes. The peach baubles that looped around the ends of her two braids had slid down to their tips, unable to keep them from becoming undone. Ana tucked the lock of hair underneath Victoria’s hat. “And they won’t,” she assured her. “They’ll never take me from you and Pedro. You understand?”
Victoria pressed her lips together. “But what if they do?” she asked. “Like they tried with Papi?”
Ana wrapped her arms around her daughter. She wasn’t going to cry in front of her children, not again. “I promise you,” she said, “We’ll find a way back to each other. No matter what happens. I’ll find a way back.”
She touched Valeria’s forehead with her own. Victoria then rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Sing me your song,” she whispered. Ana knew which song her daughter wanted to hear, even though she hadn’t sung it in more than a year. She held her closer, and as Pedro hummed along, she sang quietly of the chicks that cry when they are hungry and cold, and the mother who searches for corn and wheat, who brings them food and gives them shelter under her wings.
When she finished, she asked them not to mention the police when they got to Carla’s. “I don’t want you to scare the Lazartes,” she said. The two nodded, then Ana tugged on Victoria’s loose braid. “I’ll fix these when we get there.”
By the time they reached Brooklyn, the snow had slowed to a dance in the air. The clouds were low. She was back on familiar ground. It was the first neighborhood she and her family had lived in, before Carla told her they needed to find their own way. She rarely visited Carla since she left, returning only a handful of times in the years that followed. Nothing had changed. The bodega near the train station where she used to pick up coffee in the mornings was still open. The plastic chair beside its front door, where a Dominican man in his seventies sat in the mornings with his coffee, was still there. The boarded-up red building that once, she was told, was a bank, loomed like a mountain over the string of mostly shut stores and four-story walk-ups in the blocks ahead. Garbage bags lined the edges of the sidewalks, already punctured by burrowing vermin. It was all so familiar, and that familiarity drained her. She was back where she started. She allowed herself that moment, letting her body dip briefly into what felt like despair, then shook it off. She couldn’t linger in sadness. She didn’t have that luxury. “Vamos,” she said to her children, as she haul
ed the suitcase beneath the fallen sky.
A fresh layer of snow coated the stoop in front of Carla’s building. She hoisted the suitcase up the stairs as Pedro and Victoria shouted for Betty, then Hugo, Yrma, Jorge, and then Betty again. Ana knocked on the first-floor window before Carla finally came out to open the front door.
Once inside, they forgot the hello kisses and buenas noches, and immediately took off their wet coats and boots, piling them by the door. The late-night visit had reenergized the three Lazarte children, who were already in their pajamas. Victoria and Pedro scurried to the couch, blowing into their hands while Ana rubbed life back into their cold, wet feet. Carla disappeared into her bedroom, the last room in her wormy apartment, and returned with blankets and oversized socks that smelled like mothballs. Ana pulled the bauble elastics from Victoria’s braids and shook the wetness out of her daughter’s hair. Betty offered cups of warm milk, which the children finished quickly so that Yrma Lazarte could show them the musical keyboard she’d gotten for Christmas.
“Victoria, your braids!” Ana shouted, as her daughter ran behind Yrma into the bedroom she shared with Betty. She put the elastic bands in her pocket and realized her own body hadn’t lost its shiver. She undressed in the bathroom, her fingers sore and tender from the cold and from gripping the suitcase. She threw on the oversized sweatshirt and pajama pants Carla had given her, but her jaw still trembled. She took several breaths and patted water on her cheeks to stay alert, stay calm. She was safe now, she told herself. They were safe. Yet as she looked at her own reflection in the mirror, she wondered when she’d ever stop running.
Her chest continued to thrum as she stepped into Carla’s airless kitchen. Pots with mouths crusted in red and brown stains languished on the stove. Dishes bathed in the sink under a film of cloudy water. Boxes of cereal leaned against each other on the counter, their torn flaps inhaling the pungent air. A hint of onion and tomato seeped through the lid of the trash can, carried by the steam that whistled through the radiator. Even the refrigerator, at least a decade old, rattled every few minutes to protest the heat.
The Affairs of the Falcóns Page 20