The Book of Unknown Americans: A novel (8 page)

I felt the punch of relief, swift and firm to my gut. She was okay. Maybe it should have bothered me more, the thought of Maribel out here alone with Mayor. But as boys went, Mayor struck me as the harmless sort. Besides, I was so overcome with gratitude in that moment that there wasn’t room for much else. She was okay. I didn’t even have the heart to ask whether she was sure because I didn’t want to give her the chance to take it back. She had said she was okay and that was all I wanted.

The Riveras started going to the same Mass as us, and afterwards my mom usually invited them over for lunch at our house. They protested the first time—“No, no, it’s too much, we don’t want to impose”—but my mom, who was always eager to make new friends in this country, wore them down eventually, and the three of them got off the bus with us and walked straight to our apartment, laying their coats over the back of the couch, getting comfortable on the chairs my mom pulled in from the kitchen and arranged around the living room.

My mom made sure everyone had drinks and then she got busy, week after week, making her special party food—ham sandwiches on white bread with the crusts trimmed off. She cut them into triangles and speared them with plastic toothpicks, then carried them out on a ceramic platter that she passed around to everyone along with square white napkins that we used to catch the crumbs.

My dad, on the other hand, didn’t let the presence of the Riveras interfere with his usual routine. He turned on the television, cracked open a can of beer, and put his socked feet up on the coffee table. He watched soccer if it was on, which inevitably led to him talking about Enrique and bragging about the latest goal my brother had scored against Georgetown or the assist he’d had in the big game against Virginia, which was Maryland’s main rival, and how almost every week Enrique’s name was in
the paper under the sports stats that were listed for every high school and college within a hundred-mile radius of us. “Mayor plays soccer, too,” he said. “But I haven’t seen his name in the paper yet.” He didn’t say it to be mean. It was the truth, even though not for the reason he thought, and he looked at me with pity. “But he’s getting better. Aren’t you?” he asked. And I struggled to nod through the rush of guilt I felt about lying to him and the humiliation I felt about sucking so bad.

When soccer wasn’t on, my dad turned to football. One week during an Eagles game when Sr. Rivera cheered Donovan McNabb on, my dad rode him, saying, “Arturo, it’s no use. I’ve been watching this game since I got to this country, and yes, the Eagles are a bird, but let me tell you, they no can fly.” He said the last part in English, to be funny, and even though I’m not sure Sr. Rivera understood him, he was nice enough to laugh.

In the beginning I ate the crustless sandwiches and opened a can of Coke, then excused myself to my bedroom to do homework or to listen to my iPod. My mom would track me down sometimes and give a disapproving look and try to convince me that it would be nice if I came out and talked to Maribel because she and I were basically the same age and because she was new here so she would probably appreciate me talking to her. “Don’t you think that would be nice?” my mom asked. But I didn’t think so. I mean, maybe it would have been nice for Maribel, but otherwise what was the point? Looking at her, sure. I could have looked at her all day. But actually having conversations with her? That was a different story.

Then one week I was walking home from my bus stop in the rain when, from behind, someone said, “Where you going?”

I turned around and saw Garrett Miller grinning at me, his skateboard under his arm.

“Home,” I said.

“Back to Mexico?”

“I’m not from Mexico.”

“My dad says all you people are from Mexico.”

When I didn’t respond, Garrett said, “What are you looking at?”

Garrett didn’t have a single friend that I knew of. His older brother had gone to Iraq with the air force and had come back in a body bag. The rumor at school was that Garrett’s mom had a breakdown after that. She just couldn’t handle it, so she’d split and hadn’t been back since. Supposedly Garrett’s dad started drinking so much that he lost his job. They must have been living off benefits from the military or something. Or maybe they were on welfare by now. I didn’t know.

I started walking away. I could hear Garrett trailing me, the shuffle of his sneakers on the pavement, the drag of his jeans. What was I supposed to do? Was he going to follow me all the way up to my door? What did he want? And then I heard another sound—the low rumble of an engine. I looked back and saw a bus, Maribel’s bus, turning off the road. It drove past Garrett and me and pulled up in front of the building. I watched as Maribel got off, walking down the steps like a deer carefully picking its way down the side of a mountain. At the sight of her, I forgot about Garrett for a second. She might have been one of the Evers kids, but she was still the prettiest girl I had ever seen in real life.

After the bus bounced back onto the road, Maribel just stood in the middle of the parking lot in the drizzling rain. She didn’t move.

“Hey,” Garrett called.

Maribel turned.

“You remember me? I saw you a few weeks ago at the gas station.”

Maribel stared at him.

“What’s your name?” Garrett asked.

When she didn’t answer, he said, “What’s the matter? You don’t speak English? ¿No inglés?”

She shook her head.

I watched as Garrett took a step back and surveyed Maribel from head to toe, nodding in appreciation. She didn’t squirm, didn’t shift, just stood there letting herself be ogled.

“Take off your sunglasses so I can see your eyes,” Garrett said, but instead of waiting for her to do it, he pulled her sunglasses off her face himself. When Maribel reached for them, Garrett held them up in the air where she couldn’t get them. Reflexively, Maribel put her hand over her eyes.

“What?” Garrett said. “Something wrong with your eyes?”

He pried her hand away and held on to it.

I cringed.

He snaked his head closer to study her face and then pulled back, looking confused. “Something wrong with you?” he said, dropping her hand like he’d just been burned. Then he whistled as if he’d put it together. “That’s why you were on that bus, isn’t it? You’re some kind of retard. How do you say ‘retard’ in Spanish? Hey!” Garrett said, waving his arm in front of her blank face. “I’m talking to you. Can’t you hear?”

I took a step, then stopped. What did I think I was going to do?

Garrett twirled her sunglasses around. “You need these back?”

When Maribel reached for them, Garrett tossed the sunglasses up in a high arc over her head and let them land on the
wet pavement. Maribel bent down to get them, and Garrett crowded up behind her, settling his hands on her hips, drawing her against him.

“Hey!” I yelled.

Garrett whipped his head around like he’d forgotten that I was there.

“Leave her alone,” I said.

“Fuck you.”

“She hasn’t done anything to you.”

Garrett narrowed his eyes to slits and sauntered toward me, nudging his skateboard along with the toe of his shoe. My heart was thudding so hard it felt like it was taking up my whole chest, but at least I’d gotten him away from Maribel. Over his shoulder, I saw her stand and put her sunglasses back on, pushing them up the bridge of her nose with her finger.

“What are you? Her fucking fairy godmother?” Garrett said. He was right in front of me now, a head taller and at least thirty pounds heavier. I should’ve just stayed out of it, I thought. Why, why, why didn’t I just stay out of it?

“No,” I managed to say.

“You wanna be a hero?”

I shook my head.

“Because I was just talking to her,” Garrett said. “That’s all.”

But that wasn’t all, and both of us knew it. “I saw you,” I said.

Garrett grabbed the collar of my shirt and twisted it into his fist, pulling me close. “Saw what, shitface?”

I didn’t dare look in his eyes.

“Couldn’t hear you,” Garrett said, squeezing my collar until it felt like a noose around my neck.

“Nothing,” I managed to get out.

It was probably only a matter of seconds, but it felt like a full minute passed, maybe more, before Garrett finally let me go, sending me stumbling back onto my ass.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Fucking none of your business.”

He kicked a spray of pebbles in my direction, then turned around and looked at Maribel, who was still standing basically in the same place she’d been the whole time. “I’m not done with you,” he called to her.

He picked up his skateboard and started walking out toward the road, through the gravel.

I brushed myself off and walked over to Maribel. “Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Don’t pay attention to him,” I said. “He’s a jerk.”

And then we were just standing there, and the rain was still drizzling like static, and I didn’t know what to do next.

“Are you going home now?” I finally asked after a traffic jam of silence.

“I’m waiting for my mom.”

I looked up and down the length of the building, but besides Maribel and me, no one was around. “Where is she?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Your mom.”

“She meets me at the bus.”

“Do you think she’s in your apartment?”

Maribel shook her head. “I’m meeting her here.”

What was I supposed to do? I didn’t really want to stand out in the rain with her for who knew how long. Maybe Micho or Benny would walk out and one of them could keep her company. After another minute, though, it was still just her and me, so I
said, “Well, let’s wait on the fire escape at least. It’s covered, so we can get out of the rain.”

As soon as we sat on the metal fire escape landing, Maribel slid her backpack off and pulled out a green notebook. She snapped the cap off a pen and started writing, hunched over the paper.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“My notebook.”

“You’re doing homework now?”

“I’m writing.”

“About what?”

She shrugged. “The doctors told me to write.”

“Like, stories?”

She didn’t answer.

“I just finished the new Percy Jackson book,
The Titan’s Curse.
Have you heard of it?”

Again, nothing. I couldn’t even tell if she was listening to me, but for some reason now I wanted her to. I wanted her to pay attention to me.

“I write sometimes,” I went on. “Like, I might write, ‘Note to self: Do not touch a habanero pepper, even if your best friend dares you to.’ ”

Unexpectedly, she smiled. “Habaneros are hot,” she said. It was the kind of smile that could wreck a person.

“No kidding,” I said. “I learned the hard way.”

I couldn’t see her eyes because of her sunglasses, but I had the feeling she was staring straight at me.

Then I heard a voice calling her name. Screaming it in panic.

“My mom,” she said. She dropped her notebook in her bag and the two of us grabbed our things and walked out to see Sra. Rivera darting across the parking lot like a wild animal.

“Mari!” she said when she laid eyes on us. Her hair was falling
out of its ponytail and her face was flushed. She ran to Maribel and put her hands on Maribel’s cheeks, turning her head from side to side, examining her.

“She’s okay,” I said. “I saw her when she got off the bus. I was just talking to her for a little while.” I figured there was no reason to tell her about Garrett. I had taken care of it, hadn’t I? And she would only freak out if she knew. That’s how parents were.

“Maribel?” Sra. Rivera said, looking for confirmation of my story. “You’re okay?”

Maribel nodded, and even though Sra. Rivera looked skeptical, she took Maribel by the wrist, leading her up to their apartment while I stood there in the spitting rain and watched them go.

After that, something between Maribel and me changed. I felt this weird protectiveness over her, so on Sundays after church, instead of hiding away in my room like I used to, I made it a point to sit next to her on our brown couch, attempting to have quiet conversations with her and telling stupid jokes in an effort to make her smile again like I had that one time.

One Sunday, while our parents debated the meaning of Father Finnegan’s homily that morning, the doorbell rang. When my mom got up to answer it, Quisqueya was standing at the door with a coffee cake in her hands. Ever since the Riveras had moved in, my mom hadn’t shown as much interest in Quisqueya as she used to, preferring instead to spend her time with Sra. Rivera. I didn’t blame her. I’d never understood why my mom hung out with Quisqueya at all, except that my mom craved friends—any friends—as a way to keep her from feeling lonely here.

“Oh,” Quisqueya said, peeking inside, “I didn’t know you had company.”

“Did you tell me you were coming over?” my mom asked.

“No, but … Well, there was a time when I didn’t have to make plans to see you.”

“I didn’t know if I’d forgotten.”

“I see.”

“Do you want to come in?”

Quisqueya peered into our living room. Sra. Rivera waved.

“No,” Quisqueya said.

“Maybe tomorrow morning?” my mom offered. “I’ll be here if you want to stop by.”

Quisqueya shrank a little and twisted her lips. “Maybe,” she said.

My mom was still standing with one hand on the doorknob. When neither Quisqueya nor my mom said anything else, my dad yelled, “Have a good day, Quisqueya!”

“Yes. Well,” she said and walked away. I watched her pass by our front window on her way back to her apartment.

My mom closed the door and said to my dad, “You’re so bad.”

My dad said, “You’re lucky I didn’t ask her to leave the coffee cake!”

The conversation turned to politics after that, which was all anybody had been talking about lately. The elections had happened a few weeks earlier and everybody we knew had been pulling for Barack Obama. Since she’d become a citizen, my mom had voted in every election—local and federal. She never missed a single one. She would come home and say, “Well, I did my duty. May the best man win.” This year, she’d been the first in line at her polling place. She’d worn her American flag sweater, and I’d seen her praying before she walked out the
door that morning. “A little extra insurance can’t hurt,” she’d explained, crossing herself. “En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo. Amén.” When she came home she said, “Well, I did my duty. May Obama win, because if it’s McCain, I will shoot myself.” And then she glued herself to the television all day long to watch the returns.