Illegal

by Francisco X. Stork

  Then she closed the screen door and disappeared into her house. I put the money and Mrs. C’s note in my wallet and then went to finish painting the last window.

  The last window.

  Just when I thought everything was closed, a small window had opened.

  I was lying down on the floor with my eyes closed, when I felt her presence. Even before she said a word, I knew that La Treinta Y Cuatro was standing over me just watching. I felt her boot on my shoulder, shaking me.

  “Let’s go. You got a phone call.”

  I opened my eyes with expectation. Wes Morgan? But one look at La Treinta Y Cuatro’s smirk and I knew my hope was unfounded.

  “It’s your credible fear interview,” La Treinta Y Cuatro told me as we walked out of the isolation room—my home for I don’t know how many days and nights.

  “But …”

  “Got to follow protocol,” La Treinta Y Cuatro said with a smile.

  “But I need my lawyer.”

  La Treinta Y Cuatro stopped. “Want me to take you back?”

  I shook my head. Maybe there was a way to get help from whomever was interviewing me. We walked to the other side of the processing center, where the interview rooms were held. One of the hallways had a large window and through it I could see a line of women getting into a light blue van. I stopped. In the middle of the line was Lucila. She was wearing blue jeans and a gray polo shirt, and she was carrying a cheap-looking red backpack. All the women were carrying an identical backpack. La Treinta Y Cuatro had kept on walking but came back to where I was and looked out with me.

  “The van is headed to the airport in El Paso. From there they go to Miami and then on to wherever they came from.” There was no malice in La Treinta Y Cuatro’s voice. She was simply stating the facts.

  “Lucila’s daughter …”

  “She’s lucky. She gets to stay.”

  Just then, something made Lucila turn around, and our eyes met. I saw her smile when she saw me. The kind of smile you make when you see someone you thought was dead. I pointed my hand at my heart and then waved. Then La Treinta Y Cuatro pulled me away from the window.

  We entered a small room with a chair, a metal table, and a telephone. The door to the room had a window but when I looked around the room, I saw that there were no cameras. La Treinta Y Cuatro pushed me into a corner of the room where we could not be seen by people walking by outside. Without saying a single word, she punched me in my abdomen. I bent over with pain, gasping for air. Then she pulled me up by my hair and said, “Watch what you say! I’ll be right here listening.”

  I shook myself loose from her grip and took two steps so I was now in front of the open door. La Treinta Y Cuatro smiled when she saw what I was doing. She put her arm around my shoulders. “Oh, you okay? Poor baby. Having cramps? Let’s go sit down.” She sat me down, closed the door, and went to stand in the corner.

  I was still gasping when the telephone in front of me rang. I picked up the receiver and noticed that my hand was trembling. Sara, you are strong. You can do this. You’ve been through worse before. Think of Mami.

  “Hello.”

  “Sara Zapata?”

  “Yes. This is Sara Zapata.”

  “You speak English?”

  “Yes, I speak.”

  “You can have an interpreter.”

  “I speak English. I don’t need an interpreter.” I heard La Treinta Y Cuatro cough behind me.

  “Let’s do it in English, then. It will be easier. My name is Norma Galindez. I am the asylum officer assigned to you. You are requesting asylum from the United States, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “I work for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The USCIS. I’m with the Asylum Division of the USCIS. USCIS is a division of the Department of Homeland Security or DHS.”

  “DHS,” I repeated. Did I make a mistake in choosing to speak to this woman in English? I was already feeling lost. She was speaking fast as if she were reading from a printed card in front of her. And the punch by La Treinta Y Cuatro didn’t help my ability to comprehend. The pain in my abdomen was coming from my lower right-hand side, from where people tell you the appendix is located. I saw that the phone had a speaker function. I pressed it and put the receiver on the table. That allowed me to press down with two hands on the area where the pain was pulsating. Norma Galindez continued to speak rapidly. I shut my eyes and forced myself to listen. Behind me I could hear La Treinta Y Cuatro breathing.

  “The purpose of this interview is to determine whether the asylum seeker, that is you, has a credible fear of persecution or torture on account of his or her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion if returned to his or her home country. Currently, you are being detained by DHS and are subject to an expedited removal process. United States law allows you to apply for asylum in the United States as a defense against expedited removal. Do you wish to apply for asylum and avail yourself of this defense?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you entered the West Texas Detention Facility, you were given a number. Do you remember that number?”

  I had that number memorized. It was in my head someplace but the pain in my side and however many days I spent in isolation prevented me from remembering it.

  “Hello?”

  “I … don’t remember right now. I wasn’t expecting this call.”

  “All right. I’m going to read that number to you and you tell me if it’s right.”

  “Okay.”

  “A-974864778.”

  I remembered the two sevens and the eight at the end. “Yes. That sounds right.”

  “Perfect. Let’s get started.” I heard a click on the other end. “This conversation is for the determination of credible fear for Sara Zapata, A-974864778.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Yes?” Norma Galindez sounded annoyed.

  “I am represented by an attorney. His name is Wes Morgan … Shouldn’t he be here or on the call?”

  “You don’t need an attorney for this interview.”

  “But I can …” I hit the speaker button and spoke into the receiver. If I could speak softer maybe my stomach or whatever organ La Treinta Y Cuatro hit wouldn’t hurt as much. “But I can … I have a right to have an attorney with me, even … if you don’t think I need one.”

  There was a long silence at the other end. Norma Galindez was not used to detainees talking to her about their rights. When she spoke again, her tone was different, like she had finally noticed I was on the line.

  “If you want to set up another call with your attorney, it will be …”—I heard pages turning—“two months from now.”

  “Two months?”

  “That is correct. Look. This is simply to determine whether you have a credible fear of persecution. When you go before the immigration judge and make your case for asylum, your attorney will be present.”

  “But …”

  “Even if your attorney was with you now, all I would do is listen to your story. Nothing he said would have a bearing on my decision. It’s what you say that counts right now. Is the fear you have credible? Do I believe you when you tell me you are afraid to go back to Guatemala?”

  “Mexico. I’m from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.”

  “Yes. Mexico.”

  I realized then that Norma Galindez was just doing her boring job. It was good to know that she was not part of the evil people who were after me and Emiliano. I was just the next file on her desk. A file in an enormous stack. Somehow my file moved into this week’s pile instead of next week’s or the one for the week after. How that happened, I don’t know. There were women back in the pod who had arrived at the detention facility weeks before me and they had not had their interview.

  The one thing you quickly learn in detention is that you accept gratefully whatever bit of good fortune comes your way. So I decided to go ahead and talk to Norma Galindez as if talking to her might make a difference. If
it was fear she wanted to hear, I could give her that. In a way, I had La Treinta Y Cuatro to thank for bringing that fear to the surface. My voice quivered as I related to Norma Galindez my story of persecution. I started with the threatening e-mail received by El Sol and continued step by step until I got to the part where Hinojosa’s men destroyed our home with machine-gun bullets minutes after Mami, Emiliano, and I escaped thanks to Ernesto’s warning. I didn’t tell her about crossing into the United States or being attacked in the desert.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Only that … my brother, Emiliano, got me across and then he went back to Mexico.”

  I heard a short laugh behind me. The kind of laugh you make when you don’t believe someone.

  I heard a click on the other end and then the tapping of keys on a computer. When the clicking and tapping ended, Norma Galindez said, “Okay, Sara. This concludes the credible fear interview.”

  “But … what is your decision? On the credible fear?”

  There was a knock on the door. I turned to see Mello motioning for La Treinta Y Cuatro to step out. As soon as she was out and the door was closed, I said to Norma Galindez, speaking as quickly as possible, “Norma, I know that deep down you’re a good human being, so I’m going to ask you a favor, one human being to another. One woman to another.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Shh! Listen, please listen. I only have seconds here. My life is in danger in this place. I can’t explain. You need to call Wes Morgan, my attorney in Alpine. Tell him Hinojosa found me. He’ll know.”

  “What?”

  “Wes Morgan. Alpine, Texas.”

  “I don’t …”

  When the door opened again, I said, “Thank you,” and hung up.

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I took a deep breath and tried to think of something joyful. The image of Emiliano’s bicycle came to me. I called the bike Rocinante because it was ugly and falling apart like Don Quixote’s horse. I don’t know why that image came to mind just then, but I was glad it came a minute before the door to the room opened. There was no way I was going to let La Treinta Y Cuatro see my tears.

  But it was not La Treinta Y Cuatro who came into the room, it was Mello. He waited a few minutes for me to compose myself.

  “You want to talk for a minute? Have you had time to think about things?”

  “How to make isolation cells more humane?” I asked with a grin.

  I pushed the chair from the desk and tried to stand, but the pain stopped me. Mello came over and helped me up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes we do what we have to do even if we don’t like it.”

  When we got to his office, I sat in front of his desk. He went out and came back with a glass of water. I drank it. Mello waited, watching me. The pain in my stomach came in waves. Every thirty seconds, there was a sharp pain.

  “Speak to me. The sooner you speak to me, the sooner things get back to normal.”

  The word normal made me smile. Then, “I know what you want.” I gasped. “You want the cell phone that belonged to Hinojosa. My brother doesn’t have it. He went back to Mexico. I hid it in the desert. I know where it is. I can take you there.”

  Mello smiled and then went to his desk. He opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper with a printed image of a business card.

  It was my father’s. All the information needed to find him was there.

  Who did my father give his business card to? A better question would be: Who didn’t he give his business card to? Father was so proud of his position at Able Abe, he probably handed out his card to everyone he met.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter.” He reached over and pushed the phone on his desk toward me. “Call him and tell him you want to talk to your brother.”

  I shook my head.

  “We know where your father lives. We know your brother is with him. We can get the phone the easy way or the hard way. It’s up to you. The easy way is for your brother to give us what we need. Call him and tell him that someone will contact him soon. When they do, he should hand over the phone. It’s as simple as that. The hard way is for someone to take the phone away from him. The hard way involves … you already know, I’m sure, a lot of people will get hurt, not just your brother and not just you. It’s up to you.”

  I played out in my mind all the hurt that could fall on Emiliano, on me, on my father and his family. And he gave me the time to sit there and think about how we were doomed. Finally, I nodded to Mello and took the phone. I didn’t need to look at the sheet of paper that Mello held in front of me. I had my father’s number memorized from all the times we called him from Mexico.

  “Sara, are you all right?” my father said, surprised to hear from me.

  “Yes. But I can’t talk to you right now. I need to talk to Emiliano.”

  “He’ll be home at two. In fifteen minutes. I’ll give you Nancy’s number.”

  I wrote down Nancy’s phone number on a piece of paper that Mello handed me.

  “Everything is good. I had my credible fear interview. Things look good. Bye.”

  Mello came and sat in the chair next to me.

  “You’re doing the right thing, Sara.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not doing the right thing. I’m doing the only thing left for me to do. But it is not right.”

  Nancy Gropper’s white Camry was parked in the driveway when I got home after finishing with Mrs. C. I remembered that it was Saturday and Trevor didn’t go to school. Did watching Trevor include Saturday afternoons? I hoped not. I wanted to lock myself in my room and think about the phone call from Yoya’s colleague. Now that Yoya was out of the picture, I needed a new plan of action.

  If Nancy Gropper was home, she was probably working on her laptop in the kitchen, so I decided to go in the front door, where I had a clear, unobserved descent to the basement. Unfortunately, the front door was locked, and I’d forgotten my key.

  The kitchen door was locked as well. I could see Nancy Gropper in her usual spot at the cluttered kitchen table. She was tearing papers and throwing them into a paper bag by her side. There was no way around knocking and there was no way around not facing Nancy Gropper. I considered tapping on one of the four small basement windows and getting Trevor to come up and open the door for me. But that was ridiculous. What was I afraid of?

  I rapped on the kitchen window. Once. Twice. Louder the third time. Nancy jerked her head, startled, and then frowned when she saw me. Then she got up with monumental effort and headed for the front door.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No problem,” she said, smiling. I was about to walk past her when she said, “If you have a moment, I would like to talk to you.”

  My heart immediately sank. Whatever was to come would not be pleasant.

  “Sure,” I said. Reluctantly, I followed Nancy to the kitchen. She was wearing a flowery dress and instead of her usual purple slippers, she had on pink shoes with a small, flat heel. I almost died in the desert, I told myself. A reminder that was supposed to make Nancy Gropper and what she was about to say less annoying. Nancy sat in the chair she had been using. I climbed onto one of the island stools.

  “Why don’t you sit there”—Nancy pointed at a chair—“that way I don’t have to crane my neck looking up at you.”

  I pulled out the chair and sat. I rested my hands on the table to give her the impression that I was relaxed. Whatever she threw at me, I was ready. What was the worst she could say? You can’t stay here anymore. You have to go back to Mexico. That wouldn’t be so bad, except I had still to accomplish what I had set out to do.

  “A couple of things. First, Mrs. Costelo called a few minutes ago to ask if you could come by on Monday. She said she wanted you to paint the tool shed.”

  “Okay.”

  “She said she meant to ask you when you were there but forgot.”

  “All right.”

  It was a simple message. Why was N
ancy speaking and acting as if its delivery was causing her some kind of torture?

  “So …” Nancy hesitated. She never hesitated. She always charged forward with whatever was in her mind. “Mrs. Costelo appears to like you.”

  “She likes the work I do.” And there was no “appearing” about that.

  “And you plan to keep on working for her?”

  I nodded. I had finished painting Mrs. C’s house, but I didn’t want to tell Nancy that. I needed an excuse to be out of the house in case I came up with a new plan for the phone.

  “I see.” Nancy stuck the plastic straw from the plastic water bottle between her lips and sucked on it. There was a gurgling, slurping sound that would have been funny if it had been made by anyone other than Nancy Gropper. She put the bottle down and fixed her eyes on me. “You realize that Mrs. Costelo has the onset of dementia.”

  Nancy Gropper liked that word. Onset. She had used it before. What did it mean? Dementia I understood, but onset? In any case, Mrs. C’s brain was working fine. I knew that for a fact.

  “You don’t know what dementia is?”

  “I know dementia. I don’t know that word, onset.” Stay calm. Don’t let her get to you.

  “Ahh! I suspected you didn’t. It means that the dementia is starting. It is there already, and it is getting worse.”

  So what? Why was she telling me this? What did that have to do with anything?

  “She thinks she remembers things that never happened.”

  I could see Nancy’s discomfort underneath her arrogance. But discomfort about what?

  “Did she mention anything about my father?”

  Ah! Nancy was worried about her father’s reputation. “Only that she knew him.”

  Nancy’s pupils widened. She was definitely scared about me knowing something. Just then, her laptop announced an incoming e-mail. “Anything specific?” Nancy asked, glancing at her laptop’s screen.

  “Not really.”

  We looked at each other for a few moments without blinking. Then she pushed the laptop away and said, “Like I said. She’s demented and whatever she said should not be believed.”