Illegal

by Francisco X. Stork

  “Okay.”

  “Talk soon.”

  I stayed outside that motel room thinking. It came to me that my only alternative was to fight. Sara had decided to fight evil despite the risk to her life. Yoya and the Jacqueros were out there fighting as well. Couldn’t I try to do the same? I saw a light go on in the room and went inside. Bob was already getting dressed.

  “It’s 4:00 a.m.,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes. I’m ready.”

  I was ready.

  A chaotic sea of concrete. As many cars as there are stars. The infinity of man-made things as we approached Aurora reminded me in a strange way of the nights in the desert under millions of stars and galaxies and unknown planets. It was the same feeling of being puny and lost and insignificant, but without the serenity of the desert.

  Bob picked up his cell phone and read the time just as we passed the sign announcing Aurora’s city limits. “Eleven fifty-six! We got here before noon just like I said.”

  We were off Highway 88 now, stopped at a red light. I was surprised to see open spaces, trees with the tender green of spring on their branches. Back in Oklahoma, I had seen the oil pumps pierce the red, hot earth. Here the ground was soft and brown. I opened the window and stuck my hand out. The temperature was cold, uncomfortable.

  “I’m going to drop you off at home and then head to the office,” Bob announced. “Make yourself a sandwich, take a nap, watch TV. Nancy will be home with Trevor around three. Okay?”

  The thought of seeing Nancy Gropper and Trevor made my stomach churn. I had played soccer in front of ten thousand people, been nearly killed a few times, and had not felt one single flutter of an intestinal butterfly. Now there I was, wishing Bob would not leave me alone in a strange house to meet strange people.

  “Relax,” Bob said, “Nancy doesn’t bite. Trevor, I’m not sure.”

  Bob laughed. In the nineteen hours that we had traveled together, I discovered a new humorous side to my father. Humorous as in he liked to joke and laugh at his own jokes. I turned to look out the window. It took me a few moments to discover that I was looking at a golf course. Jorge Esmeralda, Perla Rubi’s father, wanted to teach me how to play golf. Perla Rubi had told me. It was her way of telling me how much I had impressed her father when I met him. If I had stayed in Juárez, if all that had happened to Sara had not happened, I’d be playing golf with Mr. Esmeralda. Not that I liked golf. Acres and acres of land dedicated to men riding for hours in little carts, occasionally hitting a tiny ball with a stick. It all seemed like such an extravagance of space and time, a vain luxury, a waste. So much of what I saw in the United States went beyond what was needed for the sake of convenience or speed. Two highways, four lanes each, going in opposite directions when maybe one two-lane highway would have been sufficient. But then Bob would not have made it to Aurora before noon.

  “This was all wheat fields not too long ago,” Bob said. “We live on the west side, which is less populated.”

  “Where do the Mexicans live?”

  “All over,” Bob said, ignoring my bitter tone. Then, as if deciding to tell the truth, “Mostly on the east side. We turned off the highway before we crossed the Fox River, but once you cross the river, you’re on the east side.”

  The way Bob said it, I got the impression that crossing the Fox River was not a good idea. Bob slowed and pulled to the side to let an ambulance with flashing red lights go by. “Around 1970, the railroad, the big industry in the city, left, and all the workers employed by it started leaving. Latinos from Chicago moved in to take advantage of the cheaper housing. Then some of the gangs came with them. The city had a big problem. Things are much better now, but there’s still a few people who don’t like Mexicans.”

  “There’s many people in this country who don’t like us.” I pointed with my chin to the Trump sticker on the bumper of the truck in front of us.

  “That’s just politics,” Bob said as he turned the van into a smaller street. “I sell lots of air conditioners and furnaces to people who are in favor of the wall. It’s all about the person-to-person connection, you know?”

  What would it be like to do business with people who don’t like you as a human being? Could I pretend to be friendly with people who resent my presence in their country, for the sake of the dollars? I was going to ask Bob how his “person-to-person connection” was with people who did not want Mexicans coming into the U.S. but decided that my brain could not take anything serious at the moment. Instead, the mention of the wall made me think of the place on the Rio Grande where Sara and I had crossed into the United States. After we crossed the shallow Rio Grande, we climbed a rocky ledge and stood for a moment to look at the scattered adobe houses that made up the town of Boquillas. There was a dirt road that crossed through the center of the town and ended at the edge of the river. That’s where I last saw Brother Patricio. He was waving good-bye, or a blessing, or both.

  “To tell you the truth,” Bob continued, “one of the reasons Able Abe has done so well is because of the connections I have made with the Latino community. One of the first things I did when I started working with Abe was join the Aurora Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. I just started going to every event they had and soon I was getting orders from restaurant owners, insurance companies, schools. All business consists of personal connections.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I thought of the kids back home who made piñatas so I could sell them downtown. They were my friends and we made money together. It pained me to admit that Bob and I had things in common.

  “We’re almost there.”

  The houses that lined the street all had the same basic design. Two-story houses with a garage, a driveway, front yard and backyard. There was space between the houses, not like in my neighborhood back home, where I could stick my hand out the kitchen window and get a warm tortilla from Mrs. Lozano next door. The major difference between the houses here, besides their size and good condition, was their subdued colors, as if people were afraid to call attention to themselves. The way Bob had described his success at Able Abe’s, I had imagined something flashy, along the lines of Perla Rubi’s house. But Bob’s neighborhood was still impressive, especially if you compared it to the place where Mami, Sara, and I lived.

  Bob pulled into the driveway of a pale blue house. It was a two-story house like all the other ones on the street, only there was something cleaner, more streamlined about the house.

  “Aluminum siding,” Bob said when he saw the questioning look on my face. “The paint on wood houses peels and flakes during the winters here. But not aluminum. I got out the pressure washer the Saturday before I left for Texas and gave the house a nice cleaning. Looks like new, doesn’t it?”

  I had to admit that the house looked better kept than all the other ones on the block and there was a flash of pride inside me for my Mexican father. Then it crossed my mind that under different circumstances, I might have been able to make some money by cleaning houses with Bob’s pressure washer. But I hadn’t come to Chicago to make money.

  Bob stood in front of his house, one hand on his broad hip and the other pointing at the windows. “Those are state-of-the-art storm windows, the best you can buy. They lowered our heating bill this winter by six hundred dollars. I used to go to a house and install a new gas or oil furnace. But I’d see old drafty windows. So I saw an opportunity. This is a good example of what I was telling you about connections. I know this guy who owns a hardware store. His name is Pepe Romero. So we connected, you know? I get a commission from Pepe every time I get a house to install storm windows, and that’s how it goes.” Bob walked to the front door, dug keys out of his pocket, and opened the door. “By the way, don’t tell Abe about the commission I get from the storm windows. That’s a little private side deal I got going.”

  I couldn’t help smiling when Bob winked. Bob was a more polished, refined, efficient version of the Roberto Zapata I used to know. His old talents and skills had found a place to shine.
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br />   Bob took me to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pointed to the compartment where the ham and cheese were stored. The loaf of bread was on the top shelf of the refrigerator as well. In Mexico we can buy fresh bread every day at the corner bakery, I said to myself.

  “We keep the sodas out here in the garage.” Bob opened and closed a door at the end of the kitchen. “Come, I’ll show you your room.”

  Bob rushed down the wooden stairs. “There’s a guest bedroom upstairs that you can also use, but Nancy and I thought you’d be more comfortable down here.”

  I did not anticipate the sadness that came over me as I walked down the steps to the basement. I should have been glad for the privacy, but all I could feel was … unwanted. There were three rooms, including a small bathroom with a shower. The large room had a brown leather sofa facing a flat-screen TV on the wall. Wires dangled down messily from the TV to the cable box on the floor. There was a card table where someone—Trevor, I assumed—was working on a Lego spaceship. Next to it was a box filled with the remaining pieces.

  “Trevor’s an extremely bright little boy,” Bob said. “Nancy and I worry about him. He spends too much time inside his head. It’ll be good for him to have a … friend.”

  My first impulse was to remind Bob that I was not there to be either babysitter or friend to his new son, but I was too overwhelmed by a dark emotion I had never felt before.

  “And this is your room,” Bob said, trying to dissipate the tension created by my silence. There was a washing machine, a dryer, a small tool bench, and a table with clothes neatly folded. Next to it was the hot water heater and a furnace connected with iron pipes to the ceiling. There was a stationary bicycle and a rowing machine and behind these was a single bed with one of those goose-feathers quilts that Sara and I had once thought of buying for Mami but couldn’t because they were so expensive. The only light in the room came from a small window on top of the dryer.

  “We can move the exercise equipment out of here if it seems too crowded.”

  “No, it’s okay.” If the anger I was beginning to feel continued to grow, the equipment would come in handy.

  “It’s cozy in here.” Bob pointed at the furnace. “The heat will keep you warm and it is the coolest room in the house in the summer. I can bring you a fan if it gets too hot.”

  I made my way past the exercise equipment to the bed, sat on it, and immediately felt the exhaustion in my limbs. All I wanted now was to be alone. “It’s okay. Thank you.”

  “I’ll let you rest now.”

  “Okay.”

  Bob was still standing by the doorway. Was he waiting for a more enthusiastic response from me? “I’m all right. I’ll be fine.” It was all the enthusiasm I could muster.

  “This is your home now, Emiliano. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Bob waited a few moments before leaving. I heard his feet climbing up the stairs, heard the front door close. I did not hear the van start. I stretched out on the soft quilt and listened for other sounds but there were none. I always liked silence. I enjoyed the desert hikes primarily because of the quiet. But the silence I heard now was different. It was the silence of being forgotten.

  I closed my eyes and repeated: This is your home now, Emiliano. Home. Home. Home. As if repeating a word could make it true.

  There was so much empty time. My job as garbage collector consisted of going around the facility, collecting garbage three times a day: early morning, midday, and at 6:00 p.m. If I went slowly, which I liked to do, each round could take as much as an hour. That still left an awful lot of hours in the day, considering that we got up at 6:00 a.m. and the lights were turned off at 10:00 p.m. As much as I tried to keep busy helping the women with their forms or doing jigsaw puzzles, time ticked on painfully slow. I never realized the passage of time could hurt so much, but it did. Time was the big topic of conversation. How many weeks before the credible fear interview? Four weeks for a decision after that. A month or two after that before the hearing with the judge. And even those dates were uncertain. None of us had any idea when our next hearing date was or when some decision would be made on our petition. In my rounds as garbage collector, I had seen official documents in the garbage I picked up from the containers in the administration rooms. For all we knew, our asylum petitions would meet the same fate.

  We got to go outside for two hours every day. One hour at 11:00 a.m. and one hour at 4:00 p.m. Often, there were dust storms so strong that outside time was canceled. Outside was a concrete slab about the size of a basketball court. The only shade was from the wall of the building where we came out. Lucila taught me to stand near the door around 10:50 and 3:50 so we could rush out and get a spot in the shade.

  We were sitting against the wall with our eyes closed during the afternoon’s outside time when Lucila suddenly said, “La Treinta Y Cuatro was right. You are special. You are smart. You went to high school. You were a reporter. You have your very own lawyer. You have a place to go in the United States if they let you out. You have a real chance at getting asylum. Your story is different. Most of us here have the same old story. Gangs were after us back home. Bad men wanted us to pleasure them or work for them. Those animals didn’t care about my baby. If I wanted to feed my baby, I had to do what the men wanted.”

  “But all of that is true.”

  “It is true of all poor women in all poor countries of the world. Can the United States take us all in?”

  I didn’t know what to say. A few moments before, I had told Lucila about how I stayed up all night feeling guilty for thinking that I deserved asylum more than the other women in the center.

  “We all believe that we are special,” Lucila said, putting her hand on top of mine. “Even me. When I was traveling with two hundred other people from El Salvador, I felt that me and my Iliana would be one of the few allowed to stay. It is only human to feel that we are better than the rest of the group. There’s no need to feel bad about something that is so human.”

  “Maybe it’s only human to feel that, as you say, but we don’t have to believe it is the truth.”

  “Now you are thinking too much.”

  I remembered suddenly the way Lucila slurped her spaghetti noodles. The memory made me grab her hand and give it a loving squeeze. “You are special! You’re pretty smart, wise even, you know that?”

  “I was the best student in the third grade and then I had to sell candies on the streets to help Mami. I think I could have been an airline pilot if I had stayed in school.”

  We laughed and then abruptly stopped. In front of us was a pair of black shoes and khaki pants. My heart stopped when I looked up and saw La Treinta Y Cuatro staring down at me.

  “The assistant field office director wants to see you,” she said. Her tone was as friendly as I had ever heard from La Treinta Y Cuatro.

  “Why?” I said, not getting up.

  Lucila poked me in the leg, warning me not to make trouble.

  “Protocol,” La Treinta Y Cuatro answered. “Your lawyer filed a complaint this morning because he wasn’t allowed to see you yesterday, and Director Mello is following up on the complaint.”

  I stood and looked at Lucila as if to say Wish me luck. La Treinta Y Cuatro led the way to the front of the detention center, where Assistant Field Office Director Mello had his office. All the other guards at the detention center made the detainees walk in front of them. La Treinta Y Cuatro walked a few steps ahead as if to let me know that I was a nothing, no one she needed to worry about for one second.

  On the way to the office, I thought of Sandy’s advice to me: Don’t be afraid of anger. Anger can be helpful. Not that I necessarily planned to express anger in front of Director Mello. But anger kept in check could help me to not be intimidated and to not be scared like I was at that moment.

  La Treinta Y Cuatro opened the glass door to Director Mello’s office and motioned me to go in. I expected her to close the door and leave me alone with Director Mello, but she came in after me and
closed the door. Then she pushed me gently onto a white plastic chair and sat down on the chair beside me. Director Mello’s face was hidden behind a brown file. He put the file down and left it open on his desk. Then he picked up a single piece of paper and read out loud: “A-974864778.” It was the Alien Registration Number that I was given when I entered the detention center.

  Assistant Field Office Director Mello reported to the field office director in El Paso, but it was clear to all that he alone ran the Fort Stockton Detention Center. He was the kind of middle-aged man who had been an athlete as a young man and was still trying to look slim and fit but not all that successfully. Although he was an ICE officer, he did not wear any kind of uniform. His short-sleeve white shirt and dark blue tie made him look more like a shoe store manager. The only other time I had spoken to him was when he informed Wes Morgan and me that my bond request was denied.

  “Is that your number?”

  “Yes. 778,” I said. The last three numbers were all that we needed to memorize.

  “You were a reporter in Juárez.”

  I wasn’t sure whether that was a statement or a question, but the way he said it could only mean that he thought having a reporter in his detention center was a problem.

  I hesitated answering. How did Mello know that? Wes Morgan had told me that the initial application for asylum was a simple form that did not require any detail. All of that was to come in a more extensive application that we planned to submit to an immigration judge.

  “Were you a reporter in Juárez?” he asked this time.

  “Yes,” I said. Whatever fear I felt inside, I was determined not to let them see it.

  “Are you writing an article about the detention center?”

  I stared at him with a big mysterious grin on my face. I was stalling while I decided how to answer. A couple of times I had thought about writing an article about the women I met at the detention center. I wouldn’t have been much of a reporter if the thought had not crossed my mind a few times. But behind Mello’s question I saw a flicker of fear and I decided to use that to my advantage.