The Book of Unknown Americans: A novel (6 page)

Maribel took achievement tests and cognitive tests. She went through evaluations with both a psychologist and an educational diagnostician. They gave her written exams in Spanish to see whether she could write a sentence, whether she could write a paragraph, whether she could do certain math problems. We had a meeting where the psychologist asked if there had been any complications while I was pregnant with Maribel. She asked if Maribel had met her developmental milestones as a child. When did she start to talk? When did she start to walk? Phyllis sat next to me, translating everything. Frustrated, I replied, “She wasn’t born like this. It’s all just because of the accident. Don’t you see it in the reports?” And the psychologist said yes, yes, she saw it, but these were standard questions that she was required to ask.

And then, after everything, the district told us what we already knew: Maribel had a traumatic brain injury that was classified as mild, but it was severe enough that she was eligible for special education services. She would be transferred to Evers.

I nearly wept with joy when I heard the news. Now, I thought—finally!—we would move forward.

They sent a different bus to get her, one that was stumpy and brown. I saw her off the first day and was waiting for her when she came home that afternoon.

“How was it?” I asked.

“What?”

“How was school?”

“Fine.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“I’m tired,” she said, and I nodded, deflated because I had expected more. I had expected her to come home full of energy, gushing about the other students and her teacher and how much she had learned. I had wanted the school to act like a switch, something that would turn her on again from the second she walked through the door.

“Give it time,” Arturo told me later that night when he detected the disappointment in my voice. “You’re always so impatient. It was only the first day.”

Every afternoon Maribel brought home reports from the school that Phyllis translated into Spanish. They were formal and brief and said things like “Maribel is unresponsive and unengaged, even when she is directly addressed in Spanish.” “She is withdrawn and rarely interacts with other students, even in activities that require no verbal communication.” “Maribel has a limited attention span and often fiddles with her pencil or other desk supplies during class time.”

Day after day I read the letters, hoping for better news, trying to believe that eventually it would come.

After school, I sat with Maribel at the kitchen table and helped her with her homework. In addition to everything else, she was expected to learn English, and one day the teacher sent home an English worksheet with nine boxes, each filled with a drawing of a face making a different expression. At the top of the sheet was a story in Spanish about a young Chinese boy, Yu Li.

“Do you know who this is?” I asked Maribel.

She shook her head.

“Can you read the story?”

“Okay.”

I waited while she stared at the paper. Was she reading? I wondered. Or just looking at the words? I said, “Why don’t you read it out loud?”

She did, although haltingly. I had to help her with any word longer than four letters. It was a story about how Yu Li came to the United States from China with his parents. He went to school one day and some of the kids taunted him and some of them were kind. But Yu Li didn’t know English, so he was bewildered.

When Maribel was finished, I said, “Now you need to write down words that describe how Yu Li was feeling in the story.” Maribel looked at me. There was an eyelash on her cheek. I picked it off and held it on the tip of my finger, then blew it away. “Do you remember what happened in the story? What was one emotion Yu Li felt?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you read the story to me.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you need to read it again?”

“I already read it.”

“I know. But you said you didn’t remember anything.”

“Okay.”

“Maribel, how did Yu Li feel in the story?”

She shrugged.

“Do you remember when he went to school?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened to him at school?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were the kids nice to him?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you think that made Yu Li feel?”

“Who is Yu Li?”

I took a deep breath. It’s okay, Alma, I told myself. It’s only the beginning of the year. She’s just getting started.

When Arturo came home later and kicked off his boots, he asked what we were working on.

“I don’t know,” Maribel said.

“Math?” he guessed.

“Yes,” she said.

“We’re working on English today,” I said.

“¡Inglés!” Arturo beamed. “Once you learn English, you can teach it to me, too. Here, does this sound like something? Howdy dere, pardner.” He made a clownish face, and I knew he was trying to get Maribel to laugh, trying to extract the tiniest hint of the girl she used to be. It was something we both did. We cast lines out again and again hoping to reel something in, anything to sustain us, but she never bit.

Arturo said, “Did you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Did that sound like English?”

“No.”

“What?” he said, acting shocked.

“It sounded good to me,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said.

I wanted him to come to me, to take my hands and kiss my fingers, to run his thumb over my lips, but those weren’t the sorts of things we did anymore.

He peeled off his socks and unbuttoned his shirt.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” I said. “I made tacos de bistec.”

He leaned his boots against the wall. “Okay.”

I waited for more—I was desperate for more—but he only pushed his boot back with his toe when it started to slip and walked down the hall to shower.

DURING THE DAY
, I kept myself busy by cleaning and watching television. I had found a Spanish-language channel that, if I angled the antenna just right, I could see through the static. I cooked lunch for myself—pork and beans, or chicken basted in onions and orange juice, or on days when I was feeling lazy, soup from a can—and sat at the table alone eating it. I got up afterwards and cleaned again. Once, I used the prepaid cell phone we had bought in a market in Pátzcuaro and called my parents, even though the phone was supposed to be reserved for emergencies only. We had called them just after we arrived to tell them we got here safely, but we hadn’t spoken again since. My mother shrieked when she heard my voice and I laughed at hearing my father in the background dashing to my mother in alarm, asking what was wrong. They wanted to know how we were doing, what it was like here, how Maribel was adjusting. I imagined the two of them crowded around the receiver in their small kitchen, the kitchen I had grown up eating in with its half-moon window over the sink and the clay rooster my mother kept on the counter next to her bean pot and a jelly jar filled with flowers. How far away it seemed. My mother brought me up to date on the latest gossip from town—Reyna Ortega finally had her baby and they’d been invited to the bautismo, a new assistant chef had started at Mistongo, two hogs had gotten loose from the Cotima
farm—but hearing it all only made me feel more disconnected from Pátzcuaro, oddly disappointed to hear that life was going on even without us there.

In the two weeks since we’d been in the apartment, many of the neighbors—mostly the women—had stopped by to introduce themselves. Quisqueya Solís arrived with a platter of coconut cookies in her arms—besitos de coco, she told me—and when I invited her in, she walked through the apartment slowly, letting her gaze sweep over our few pieces of furniture, and then refused to sit when I offered a chair, explaining as she patted her fiery red hair that she had errands to run. Nelia Zafón knocked on the door and clasped one of my hands between hers, apologizing for taking so long to stop by and assuring me that everyone was happy to have us here. Ynez Mercado stood in the doorway and told me if there was anything we needed not to hesitate to ask. I explained that we had acquired some things along the way, but when she heard that Arturo, Maribel, and I were sharing one mattress, she insisted on bringing over an old sleeping bag she and her husband had. “It’s from José’s navy days,” she said. “It kept him safe, and it will keep whoever sleeps in it safe, too.” I smiled and said, “Thank you. That sounds perfect for Maribel.”

When no one came, I went out, determined to explore and acclimate myself to the town. A few times I went to the Laundromat—despite Celia’s warning, it was still the nearest one—and sat with my hands in my lap while the load ran, watching the clothes spin in the portholed dryers lined up along the back wall. People walked in and out—a brown-skinned man chewing a toothpick, a motorcyclist wearing a leather vest, a woman with two children—their baskets hoisted up against their stomachs, their clothes spilling over the sides like seaweed. I
yearned for them to talk to me, especially anyone who looked as though they might speak Spanish. I readied myself to say hola if anyone so much as glanced my way, but day after day people walked by without acknowledging me in the least.

I walked to Gigante some afternoons and pulled mangoes and chiles from wooden crates, holding them to my nose, inhaling the scents of home. In the back, I stared at the fish and the lobsters in their giant glass tank and when the man behind the meat counter asked in Spanish if there was something he could get me—everything was recién matada, fresh, he assured me—I told him no. “Too expensive,” I said, smiling sheepishly. “We have a sale,” he said. “It’s only for beautiful women,” and I laughed in spite of myself.

And sometimes I went to the small church we had found, St. Thomas More Oratory, with its water-stained drop ceiling and its folding chairs in place of pews, and sat alone in the empty sanctuary, reciting the same prayers over and over, imploring God to listen. I know I’m not very important, I told Him. I know You have other things to worry about. But please forgive me for all that I’ve done. Please give me the strength to fix it. Please let her get better. And please let Arturo forgive me, too. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

ONE AFTERNOON
I made chicharrones and carried them over to Celia’s apartment.

She clapped her hands together in delight when she saw me and motioned for me to come inside.

“These are for you,” I said, holding out a foil-covered plate.

She lifted a corner of the foil and sniffed. “Sabroso,” she said.

I loved how full her home felt, embroidered pillows on the
couches, a curio stacked with milk glass bowls and recuerdos and folded tablecloths, red votives along the windowsills, spidery potted plants, woven rugs, unframed posters of Panamá beaches on the walls, a box of rinsed beer bottles on the floor, a small radio on top of the refrigerator, a plastic bag filled with garlic hanging from a doorknob, a collection of spices clustered on a platter on the counter. The great accumulation of things almost hid the cracks in the walls and the stains on the floor and the scratches that clouded the windows.

“Mi casa es tu casa,” Celia joked as I looked around. “Isn’t that what the Americans say?”

She poured cold, crackling Coca-Colas for both of us, and we sat on the couch, sipping them and taking small bites of the chicharrones. She looked just as she had the first time I met her: impeccably pulled together, with a face full of makeup, fuchsia lips, chestnut-brown chin-length hair curled at the ends and tucked neatly behind her ears, small gold earrings. So unlike most of my friends at home, who used nothing but soap on their faces and aloe on their hands and who kept their hair pulled into ponytails, like mine, or simply combed after it had been washed and left to air-dry.

Celia told me about the provisions we would need for winter—heavy coats and a stack of comforters and something called long underwear that made me laugh when she tried to describe it—and about a place called the Community House where they offered immigrant services if we needed them. She gossiped about people in the building, telling me that Nelia Zafón was in a relationship with a gringo half her age and that, when they first came here, Celia’s husband, Rafael, thought José Mercado was gay. Celia said, “He and Ynez have been married for more
than thirty years!” She laughed. She told me that Micho Alvarez, who she claimed always wore his camera around his neck, had a sensitive side, despite the fact that he might look big and burly, and that Benny Quinto, who was close friends with Micho, had studied to be a priest years ago. She said that Quisqueya dyed her hair, which was hardly news—I had assumed as much when I met her. “It’s the most unnatural shade of red,” Celia said. “Rafael says it looks like she dumped a pot of tomato sauce on her head.” She chortled. “Quisqueya is a busybody, but it’s only because she’s so insecure. She doesn’t know how to connect with people. Don’t let her put you off.”

Celia began telling me about when she and Rafael and her boys had come here from Panamá, fifteen years ago, after the invasion.

“So your son, he was born there?” I asked.

“I have two boys,” she said. “Both of them were born there. Enrique, my oldest, is away at college on a soccer scholarship. And there’s Mayor, who you met. He’s nothing at all like his brother. Rafa thinks we might have taken the wrong baby home from the hospital.” She forced a smile. “Just a joke, of course.”

She stood and lifted a framed picture from the end table. “This is from last summer before Enrique went back to school,” she said, handing it to me. “Micho took it for us.”

In the photo were two boys: Mayor, whom I recognized from the store, small for his age with dark, buzzed hair and sparkling eyes, and Enrique, who stood next to his brother with his arms crossed, the faint shadow of a mustache above his lip.

“What about you?” Celia asked. “Do you have other children besides your daughter?”

“Only her,” I said, glancing at my hands around the glass. The
perspiration from the ice had left a ring of water on the thigh of my pants.

“And she’s going …” Celia trailed off, as though she didn’t want to say it out loud.