Hot Little Hands (31 page)

I open my eyes and look. There are tiny red bumps on my skin, three on my hand, and around seven on my arm. “I don't know,” I say. “They weren't there yesterday.”

“Do they itch?”

As soon as she asks me that, they start to itch. “Yes.” I scratch at them. “They really do.”

“I think you may have contracted bedbugs.”

“Oh my God. Please don't tell me that.”

“Which cell were you in?”

“Oh my God. Twenty-three. And seventeen and nineteen.”

“Okay. There's nothing we can really do about this here. When you go home, put all your clothes and everything you have with you in the dryer or in the freezer straight away. Take a shower, and don't scratch the bites.”

“Maybe they're just from mosquitoes?” I say, examining them.

“No, they're lined up like that,” she says. “I'm pretty sure it's bedbugs.”

“I can't believe this,” I say. “Can I please at least not have the TB test now?”

“You still have to have it. It'll just take a second.” She holds the needle just above my forearm. “And then you can go back to your cell.” Then she presses it in.

“Why you crying?” Bobbi asks me when she gets to our cell. She shows me the plaster on her arm. “Why I having this?”

“I don't know.” She sits down next to me.

“You should stay away from me, Bobbi, and my bed, and probably yours, too.”

“Why I having pregnancy test? I too old.”

“I don't know.”

“I fifty-nine. I sixty!” She gets up, goes to the door, and looks out. “Why they taking me? I go Los Angeles, I come back. I not doing nothing.”

“I didn't do anything, either,” I say. But I'm starting to doubt if that's true. Would all these people go to the trouble of putting me through all these steps and systems if I hadn't done anything wrong? Would those airport officers have questioned and fingerprinted me and interviewed me and interviewed me again and cuffed and escorted me to jail if they hadn't looked at the details of my life and seen that something wasn't right?

Would Lars write scathing songs about me if I hadn't been careless and selfish, and hurt him without even considering that I might?

Would Luke suggest that one day I tell this as a crazy story, if I didn't always view my life as something detached from me, reducing everything to a series of funny anecdotes to tell a group of tipsy couples at a Friday-night dinner or a Sunday lunch?

I know I didn't have an intention to immigrate. I always assumed that I'd take all my stuff and say goodbye and leave San Francisco permanently one day, just like all my academic friends had already done. But I never made plans to actually do that. I didn't have an intention to immigrate, I just didn't
not
have one. And maybe, in the end, it equals the same thing.

Breakfast is a brown tray separated into sections like a TV dinner. There's a slop of porridge, a piece of dried-up French toast, a sachet of table syrup, a small carton of milk, and a carton of orange drink with, the box says, up to 2 percent real juice in it. Bobbi drinks her milk and then her juice. “You can have mine, too,” I tell her.

“You don't have?” she asks me.

“I know it's a waste of taxpayer money, but I really don't want any.” I sit on the bench next to my bed and try not to scratch my bites.

“Bobbi,” I say, “at the airport, did they ask you how much money you have?”

“Yes. I showing them.”

“What did you show them?”

“I having three hundred dollar. I showing them.”

“Maybe that's why they wouldn't let you in? Because they didn't think you had enough money to cover your time here.”

“Why I need money?” she says. “I not eating much. I just taking sometimes fruit.”

“If you don't have enough money, they're probably worried you'll work or do something illegal.”

“My friend Los Angeles, she pays me food. Why it's their business? We go vacation Las Vegas. She pay everything. What I need? Nothing.”

She gets up to pee. I look the other way.

“America,” she says when she's done. “This is America. Ha!”

“Would this kind of thing happen in Poland?” I ask.

“Yes,” she concedes, “happening most place.”

Apparently the officers from the airport usually transport deportees to and from jail but, starting today, the Department of Homeland Security is outsourcing its transportation services—to the jail. The young officer with the glasses comes and gets us and takes us out to the entrance area, where the Olympics enthusiast from last night is waiting with a table covered in chains and handcuffs.

“Well blimey, mate,” he says in a fake British accent. “If it isn't the Spice Girls.” He looks from Bobbi to me, waiting for a response.

“Yep,” I say. “Here we are.”

It turns out the guy with the glasses is a new employee, and the Olympics guy is training him. He instructs him on how to fasten the big leather belt around my waist, while another guy leans in the doorway of an empty cell and watches.

“We going this airport?” Bobbi asks.

“Will we be taken through the airport in handcuffs?” I ask them.

“That's up to Homeland Security,” Olympics says. “They won't be taking our cuffs, though. This equipment's expensive.”

The rookie tightens the cuffs around my wrists, and then Olympics instructs him to put the leg shackles on me.

“We going this airport?” Bobbi asks again.

“They don't know,” I tell her.

“No. With this?”

“She just told you she didn't know,” says the guy in the doorway.

The officers glance at him and look away, but I can't help grinning. He's young—eighteen, nineteen years old. A black kid in red shorts and a green Eagles T-shirt, with a layer of teenage baby fat he hasn't lost yet. “Do you work here?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I'm just waiting to go upstairs.”

“Is that, like, the guys section?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you in for?” Rookie asks him.

“I didn't show up in court,” the guy says.

“Failure to appear?” Rookie stands up. “So, what, you're here for the weekend?”

“Yeah. Three days.”

“It'll be okay,” Rookie says. “You'll just be here for a few days and then you can go home.”

The guy doesn't say anything.

“Next time, show up to court, okay?”

“Yeah.”

It's probably before nine in the morning, but the air outside is already muggy as we shuffle across the car park. The whole place is surrounded by barbed-wire fences. It looks like we're in a pretty desolate area, at the end of a dead-end street in a half-rural, half-industrial part of town.

The van is exactly like the one from last night, except this time Bobbi and I get put into the front section together, she strapped against one wall, me against the other. Rookie steps out and slides the door shut. A minute later there's the whiny clicking sound of the engine turning over, but the van doesn't start up. It goes quiet for a second, and then there's the same clicking sound, followed by silence. I look through the little window and see Olympics in the driver's seat, turning the key. He tries a few more times and gives up. He and Rookie get out of the van.

We sit and wait. It gets stuffy really fast.

“Is hot,” Bobbi says.

“I know.”

“Hey, Galvarez, you got cables in your car?” Olympics calls to someone I can't see. “No way am I calling Triple A. Get your ass over here.”

An officer pulls up in an SUV. He and Olympics attach jump leads between his car and the van. The SUV guy doesn't want anyone else touching his engine, but he also doesn't seem to know how to jump-start a car. “It's red to your positive and my negative,” he says.

“I don't know about that,” says Olympics.

“It goes on both positives,” Rookie says. “It's definitely red to both positives.”

“Is too hot,” Bobbi says.

She's starting to ask about the airport again when I wriggle my hands and realize something amazing. “Guess what?” I say. “I can get out of my handcuffs.” She watches as I wriggle my right hand and squeeze it through. I do the same with the left one. It's really tight but it comes out. “Oh my God,” I say. “This is crazy.”

I look around the van, wondering what I can do with my hands. I could untie the leather belt but then my ankles would still be shackled, and, anyway, there's no door handle on the inside of the van and, anyway, I wouldn't try to escape. I'm not about to tap on the window or draw attention to the fact that my hands are free. So I just sit around and play with my hair for a bit. I chew on a fingernail, but it tastes like hand sanitizer. I'm trying to show Bobbi a shadow puppet of a reindeer on the door when the door slides open and Olympics sticks his head in.

“This won't take—”

I put my hands in my lap.

“What are you doing?” He pushes the door all the way open. “Are your hands free?”

“Yes.”

“How did that happen?”

“I can get them out of my cuffs.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Sorry, I'll put them back in now.”

“No, don't,” he says. “Wait here.” He goes and gets Rookie, and brings him over. “With the smaller ladies, you have to cuff them like this,” he tells him, grabbing both my hands in one of his. “One wrist on top of the other, one cuff around both.”

Once they get the engine going, the air-conditioning comes on. As we leave the car park and get out on the road, I peer through the front window and try to make out the street names through the windscreen. I see one called Prison Farm Road, another called Visitation Street. I decide that even if I am allowed back into the States one day, I will never come back to Philadelphia. I probably won't even eat the cream cheese. I won't watch the Tom Hanks movie, or the Katharine Hepburn one, and I won't listen to the Fresh Prince theme song, even though I love it. And I will never, ever call this place Philly. That's too cute a name for a place like this.

Because it's the first day of the new system, the officers don't know where to go. When we get to the airport, they drive around, stopping at different side entrances. Olympics makes some calls on his phone. Eventually they get to the right place, and Rookie comes in to unstrap us and let us out. I step down onto the pavement and see Miller, Skolski, and Gallagher standing there.

“Looks like someone made it through the night,” Skolski says.

“Sorry about the delay,” Olympics tells them. “We got a map but it's not too clear.”

Bobbi climbs out of the van and stands beside me.

“So you're transporting both ways now?” Miller asks.

“Yes, sir. Here's my card,” says Olympics, passing one over.

“I didn't hear about this.”

“Yes, sir,” says Olympics. “We'll be doing your transportation services from now on, so you can just go ahead and call that number when you require us.”

Miller looks at the card, then hands it back to Olympics. “Okay,” he says, “let's get them inside.”

“Why is she cuffed like that?” Gallagher asks as Rookie unlocks my hands.

“She slipped out of her cuffs earlier,” Olympics tells him.

“Are you serious?” asks Skolski.

“I put the two of them in back of the van. Next thing I know, she's waving her hands around like a little Houdini.”

“Unbelievable.” Miller and Skolski start to laugh. When I look up at Gallagher, though, he's not smiling at all; his jaw is clenched and he's glaring at me like I just ruined his day before it started.

“I assume you'll be recording this as a UO?” he asks.

“I hadn't thought about it,” Olympics says. “Really, no harm was done so—”

“I'll make a note of it on our end,” Gallagher tells him.

Finally, Bobbi has her answer: The Homeland Security officers lead us through the airport unshackled—down a series of corridors and into the elevator, where she and I stand together, listening to the officers talk.

“I never heard about this,” Miller says.

“Morris briefed us last week,” says Skolski. “It costs less if they do it.”

“You think he's getting kickback?” Gallagher asks. “Seemed pretty damn eager for the work.”

“You been over there?” Skolski asks. “I'd want a reason to get out, too.”

“Skolski,” Bobbi says. “I knowing this name.” The officers look over at her. She points at Skolski's name tag. “Is Polish name. Are many Skolskis Poland.”

“Oh, yeah?” Skolski says. The other officers don't say anything. They purse their lips and stare at the door till we reach the right floor and it opens.

It's quiet in the Secondary Questioning Room this morning. Flights haven't started arriving, and most of the officers aren't here yet. Gallagher tells us to go sit against the far wall, on the other side of the long table. He hands us each a Styrofoam cup. “You can get water from the bathroom,” he says, “but hang on to those cups. You're not getting another one.”

There are three chairs against the wall and for some reason, Bobbi sits in the middle one, directly beside mine.

“The flight to Istanbul leaves at eight ten tonight,” Gallagher says. “The Warsaw flight's at nine thirty.”

“So do we just sit here all day until our flights board?” I ask.

“Yep. Unless you don't like those seats, and then you can sit in a cell out back.”

“…Okay.”

“Would you prefer to sit in a locked cell?”

“No, I'd prefer to sit here.”

“All right, then.” He goes and sits behind the counter and shakes his head at his computer.