Illegal

by Francisco X. Stork

  I stretched out my hand in the direction of my father when the bus started to move.

  Sometime in what seemed the middle of the night, La Treinta Y Cuatro and a male guard I’d never seen before took me out a side entrance to the detention facility and into a blue van. All the lights inside the pods were off and all the detainees were asleep. La Treinta Y Cuatro carried a paper bag. The bag was closed, but it looked heavy. I thought maybe it had the clothes I had on when I first came to the facility God only knows how long ago. The male guard carried under his arm the same blue folder that Mello had the last time I saw him. I assumed that inside were all the “official” documents Mello had shown me, including the Voluntary Departure form with my fake signature.

  It was an unmarked van with four rows of seats. La Treinta Y Cuatro led me into the second row, and she sat way back in the fourth. There were no seat belts and I wasn’t handcuffed, but I noticed that the doors of the van were locked and could be unlocked only by the driver or from outside. The inside of the van still retained the heat from being out in the sun all day, but when the guard started it, a stream of cold hit my face and I thought what a luxury that was, to have an air-conditioned ride to my death.

  I wondered if Emiliano had felt as numb as I felt just then. I knew that he had nearly died out there and that a horse saved him by standing over him until Mr. Larsson came looking and found both Emiliano and the horse. It’s funny that what I regretted the most about dying was the loss and sorrow that Mami would feel. I was so familiar with a mother’s sorrow, especially the kind of open, ongoing sorrow of the mothers of missing daughters. Would my body ever be found so that Mami could at least properly mourn?

  We were on a small paved road. No one passed us and we passed no one. Now and then a truck would go by in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you taking me? Rosaura?” I remembered her name. “Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Shut up. Don’t talk.” La Treinta Y Cuatro said, then she shouted, “Miguel, turn down the air. I’m freezing in here. And turn down the damn radio.”

  Miguel, I said to myself. Please be a good man.

  I leaned my head against the window and pretended to go to sleep. I thought about the article I would write when I was free. No, it would be a book. It would include my experiences at the detention facility and tell the story of women like Lucila. But who would believe such a book? Who would believe a story of detention officers faking documents and vans delivering women to their death? Could such things happen in the United States? The United States. This isn’t Mexico. The rule of law rules here.

  I would include Emiliano’s story, of course. How he fared in Chicago with Papá and with Papá’s new family. And what he decided to do with Hinojosa’s phone. How he fought back against evil. It would have to be a novel so I could write about Emiliano’s thoughts and feelings and decisions, but it would be a truthful novel. Truthful. As truthful as I could make it.

  I think I was halfway through the plot of my future novel when I finally heard the heavy breathing that told me La Treinta Y Cuatro was asleep. I turned my head slowly and saw the closed eyes and open mouth of La Treinta Y Cuatro. I rose slowly and moved to the first-row seat. When I looked back, I saw that there was a grapefruit in La Treinta Y Cuatro’s lap.

  “Miguel,” I whispered. “You don’t want to commit this crime. You don’t want to be a part of this evil.”

  Miguel searched in the rearview mirror. La Treinta Y Cuatro was still sleeping.

  “Get back,” he said. But he spoke softly so as not to wake up La Treinta Y Cuatro. That was a good sign, I thought.

  “Miguel, you’re in love. I can tell by the kind of music you’ve been listening to. Love songs. Romantic Mexican ballads. What is happening to me could happen to the woman you love. If it happened to me, it could happen to her. The only thing keeping evil from taking over the world are good people like you and me.”

  “Shh,” he said, worried. “Get back or it will be worse.”

  “Worse? Worse how? How can it get worse than this? Are you talking torture? Torture, Miguel? All you …”

  What I was going to say is that all he had to do was slow down a little and unlock the door. I would jump out. He could keep on going. But I couldn’t finish the sentence because something exploded against the back of my head, in the small area where my head and neck connect, to be precise. When I opened my eyes, I saw a grapefruit roll next to my feet.

  “Keep driving! Keep your eyes on the road!” La Treinta Y Cuatro shouted.

  I picked up the grapefruit and looked at it. How could something soft and pink cause so much pain? I felt a weight next to me on my seat and when I turned, La Treinta Y Cuatro was there. I offered her the grapefruit with a Did you lose this? look and then I tried to hit her with it, but she was too fast and had much more experience fighting. Her closed fist landed on my mouth and I immediately tasted blood. I felt the van swerve and I started to slide off the seat, but La Treinta Y Cuatro’s left hand gripped my throat and held me in place.

  “Don’t slow down. Keep driving!” she yelled as she used her free hand to grab my ear and pull my head forward with all her strength. Then, half standing in the seat, she swung my head back against the window. I heard the crack of glass. Or maybe it was my skull. There was a flash of white. And white was also the color of the pain that filled all of me.

  The last words I heard before the white turned to black were Miguel’s. “I have to pull over. There’s a Border Patrol cruiser behind me flashing its lights at us.”

  That could have been what he said. Or maybe that was just the sound of hope.

  Sandy brought me this notebook so I could start working on my novel. Well, first an article for the El Paso Times. I have to write with my left hand, only a few words a day until I get better at it. Who would have thought that a grapefruit could do so much damage? The grapefruit that La Treinta Y Cuatro threw against my neck caused more injury than getting my head cracked against the window of the van. The window smash resulted only in a cut and a concussion. The grapefruit caused nerve damage. The doctors here at the hospital in Alpine cannot say when I will be able to move the fingers of my right hand.

  An immigration judge allowed my release on a bond of five thousand dollars, which my father paid. In a day or two, I will go live with Sandy. A hearing for my asylum petition is scheduled for next month.

  The article for the El Paso Times will start with my experiences in finding Linda in Juárez and then go into all that happened to Emiliano and me in the United States. The part I can’t wait to write about is the corruption that Emiliano discovered in Hinojosa’s cell phone. How agricultural work visas were used for human trafficking. Emiliano tells me that, so far, fourteen women have been freed.

  It was a couple of powerful men who wanted the phone back: a high-ranking official in the Department of Labor and his high-priced lawyer. They were protecting not only their identities but the identities of wealthy businessmen, criminals in charge of prostitution rings, lonely, sick men who wanted their own personal slave. In the end, there was a web of responsibility that ranged from intentional evil to greed to ignorance. The evil of two men rippled down to detention facility guards and even ordinary but weak law-abiding citizens, like my father. The article I write will be about all of them. It will uncover evil, blatant and subtle, deliberate and masked by good intentions. I will tell the truth.

  Sandy told me this morning that the women back at the facility thought I was a hero for getting La Treinta Y Cuatro and Mello kicked out of the facility. Only, I don’t feel like a hero. All I did was survive. The heroes are people like Mario, the guard who risked his job by calling Sandy Morgan. Then there is my own personal hero—Raúl Lopez, the Border Patrol officer who rescued me after Gustaf Larsson contacted his father. My situation is much different from that of women like my friend Lucila. How does not moving a few fingers compare with the suffering of a mother being separated from her child? I am going to
be all right. I have people fighting for me. But who does Lucila have back in El Salvador? No one.

  I just read what I wrote above, and it sounds as if I am ungrateful. It’s as if the blow from the grapefruit took away my ability to feel the joy that comes with gratitude, the simple joy of being alive. Even Mami’s voice, when I talked to her yesterday, sounded so distant. It was as if I were talking to her from the other side of life. And when Emiliano told me that he was coming to live with Mr. Larsson, that he would be near me, that the Chicago Police Department was helping him get a student visa for next year and that he’s met someone he really likes, instead of rejoicing, all I could feel was relief.

  Happiness seems like a gift that is arbitrarily given. Why me? That’s the question people ask when something terrible happens to them. Why me? But shouldn’t we ask that same question when something good happens? Why am I allowed to enjoy the bounty and the freedom of this country, and others aren’t? It seems as if the only way to be happy is by deliberately ignoring the unhappiness of so many.

  Sandy says that I have the beginning of PTSD or maybe I’m already in the throes of it. She says it wasn’t just the grapefruit but all that has happened before: the threats by Hinojosa, people machine-gunning our house, almost getting raped and killed in the desert, the loss of home and family, the constant fear that I might lose my Emiliano.

  “It will go away, and you will be Sara again,” she said.

  And I believe her. I will see light everywhere again along with the darkness that I have now experienced. I will. And I will find a way to work for that light. To add the flame of my small candle to it. But I don’t know if I will ever be the same Sara again. It is not possible to have seen the sorrow and hopelessness in the eyes of those women in that detention center and ever be the same again.

  I will stop here for now. This writing seems so poor. I don’t know what other word to use for it. So poor. But what can I do? All I can do is try to tell the truth. It is all I have. I will try again tomorrow and the day after. I will try to tell the truth.

  Because trying is all.

  Turn the page to read a sample chapter from Francisco X. Stork’s Disappeared!

  ★ “A tense thriller elevated by Stork’s nuanced writing and empathy for every character, including the villains — superb.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “You need to give up on the missing girls,” Felipe says.

  Sara isn’t sure she heard him correctly. Although Felipe’s tone is not harsh, the index finger he points at her makes his words sound like a reprimand. He’s sitting behind his desk, covered in a disordered mess of envelopes and paper. Sara looks at her editor, Juana, who stands up and closes the glass door to the office.

  “Look, Sara,” Felipe continues when Juana sits down. “You’ve done a great job with your column, but now it’s time to focus on the good stuff. This is not 2010, when twenty girls went missing every month. Juárez is prospering. Tourists are coming back to the shops, nightclubs are hopping again, Honeywell just opened a new assembly plant. We need to get on board and contribute to creating a positive image. Why don’t you write a weekly column on the new schools opening? The slums getting cleaned up?”

  Sara feels Juana’s hand on her arm. Ever since her article on Linda’s disappearance, she’s written a weekly profile of one of the hundreds of girls who have gone missing. That column has been her fight and her comfort, the fulfillment of the promise she made to Linda to never stop looking for her. It cannot be taken away. Juana has always been Sara’s close friend and staunchest advocate, and her touch gives her strength.

  Sara speaks as calmly as she can. “You’re right that there aren’t as many girls disappearing as a few years ago, or even a year ago,” she says. “But there are still so many girls who go missing, like Susana Navarro last week. And what about the dozens still unaccounted for? Where are they? Maybe some of them are still alive. The fact that we’re still getting threats is proof that our articles hit a nerve. We’re the only ones keeping the pressure on the government. They’d give up if it wasn’t for us.”

  Felipe rubs the back of his head. Sara knows he always has trouble responding to logical arguments. “Bad news doesn’t sell anymore. The newspaper is finally beginning to do well. We went from daily to almost dead to weekly and now we’re biweekly. I don’t want to take a step backwards here. No one wants to buy ads next to pictures of missing girls.”

  “But that’s been true for a while now,” Sara says. “Has there been a specific threat?”

  Felipe and Juana look at each other. Then he sighs and pushes a single sheet of paper across his desk. It’s a printout of an e-mail.

  If you publish anything of Linda Fuentes we will kill your reporter and her family.

  Sara reads the e-mail once, then again, pausing on the words kill, reporter, family.

  “It was sent to me around six this morning. I forwarded it to you,” Felipe says to Juana. Then, fixing his eyes on Sara: “Are you doing anything with Linda Fuentes? Research, interviews, calling people?”

  “No,” Sara says. She’s received threats before, but this is the first time her family has been mentioned. The thought of anyone coming after Emiliano or her mother makes her shudder. But alongside fear, something like hope blooms in her chest. If someone needs to threaten her about Linda, does that mean she’s still alive? She places the sheet of paper on the desk. “I mean, Linda was … is my best friend. I’m still close to her family. They live in my neighborhood, and I go with Mrs. Fuentes to the State Police headquarters every couple of weeks. But I’m not doing anything about Linda that’s related to my job.”

  “Well, someone thinks you’re investigating or writing about her.” Felipe leans back in his chair and touches the pocket of his shirt, searching for the cigarettes he gave up smoking a month before. “There’s something weird about this threat. It’s like they know it’s you who’s been writing the column.”

  “There hasn’t been a byline on the column since Sara’s article on Linda,” Juana says. “No one knows it’s her.”

  “You think those people can keep a secret?” Felipe points with his hand to the room full of cubicles outside his glass wall. “And what is this about family? Since when do families of reporters get threatened? No more articles on missing girls. That’s it.”

  “Someone has to keep the memory of these girls alive,” Sara blurts out louder than she intends. She takes a deep breath and looks into Felipe’s eyes. “If we don’t care about them, then who will?”

  “Sara,” Juana says softly, “I’m with Felipe on this one. We lost two reporters during the cartel wars. They were both young and enthusiastic like you.” She takes a deep breath. “If our articles were doing any good, maybe it would be worth the risk. But has a single girl turned up since we’ve published these profiles?”

  “No,” Sara says. “But if nothing else, the families know their daughters and sisters are not forgotten. That makes a difference.”

  “I don’t want to be responsible for another dead reporter,” Felipe says with finality. “No more articles on the Desaparecidas. There’s more to life than just evil and pain, no? Think of something happy for a change. I want a proposal for a positive story on my desk by the end of the day.” To Juana he says, “You better clear your day tomorrow so we can finish that damn budget. That’s all. Let’s get to work.”

  Sara stands and walks out of the office. She needs to do something before she speaks—or worse, shouts—the words on the tip of her tongue. She heads for the stairs that connect El Sol’s IT room to the main floor. They are dark and cool, as expected.

  She sits on one of the steps and grabs her head. Is it true that all she can see is the suffering and injustice that need fixing? She remembers her first column about Linda, the most personal article she’s ever written. It was a miracle that Juana convinced Felipe to allow one of his reporters to write about something that affected them. In the days that followed the publication of the article, El Sol rec
eived dozens of letters from families of missing girls. The article provided hope and comfort to many, and the positive response convinced Juana and Felipe that a regular column on the Desaparecidas was worthwhile. The column has been Sara’s way of keeping Linda alive in her heart—and Felipe just killed it.

  Think of something happy for a change. There’s more to life than just evil and pain, no?

  She gets up and stands by the steel door that leads back to the newsroom. After a few seconds, she takes a deep breath and opens it.

  Think of something happy for a change.

  Yes, she can do that. Of course she can do that. Can’t she? She thinks of Mami, getting on with life after Papá left her, making delicious cakes for a bakery. Or her brother, Emiliano, falling in love for the first time, and how he squirmed and blushed when Sara finally got him to tell her the name of the girl he’s smitten with. Just thinking about Emiliano makes Sara happy. He was going down a bad path after Papá left, and now look at him, helping other at-risk kids with his folk art business. Thank God for Brother Patricio and the Jiparis.

  The Jiparis, Sara thinks. They’re like the Boy Scouts, holding long hikes out in the desert that save boys from delinquency. That’s a feel-good story if there ever was one. She goes back to her desk and types out a brief proposal; then she attaches it to an e-mail and sends it to Felipe. A message from Juana appears on her screen.

  Let’s talk. Can you come over now?

  In her office, Juana gestures for Sara to close the door. Sara sits down in one of the yellow plastic chairs in front of the desk.