Do Not Become Alarmed(68)

They reached a road. Noemi’s eyes felt gummy, her head confused. A pair of headlights came out of the gloom and blinded her. The other children looked like ghosts on the roadside. There was a long wait and another set of headlights went past, red taillights vanishing into the dark again. A third car stopped, and the boy with the glasses leaned over to speak into the window.

Noemi lost track again, because now she was inside the car and she was sweating. The woman driver was talking about Jesus. Maybe they were all on the way to heaven, maybe this was how you got there. In a car in the rain. Noemi fell asleep.

Then they were in a building, but she couldn’t tell what it was. She heard Isabel tell someone that they needed dry clothes. Noemi was afraid of Isabel, but only a little, because the older girl seemed more afraid than she was. They were in a bathroom and Noemi’s fingers didn’t seem to be working, so the older girl helped her undo her pants and steadied her while she sat on the toilet, and helped her change. Noemi watched, dazed, as the girl stuffed Noemi’s clothes, the clothes her grandmother had washed and folded, into the garbage in the bathroom. She stuffed something yellow in, too—the bikini from the TV. She gave Noemi strange new clothes, a blue sweatshirt and a dry pair of jeans with an elastic waist. Noemi remembered asking where the clothes came from and the girl saying something about a church. So maybe they were in a church. It didn’t look like the church at home.

Then they were in a car again.

Noemi dreamed that the white bunny grew as big as a house. She was sweating again, and then she was shivering. Someone put a jacket over her. The car was moving. She woke up enough to think that she would never see her grandmother again.

She heard the littlest girl ask, “Will she be okay?”

“Shhh,” the girl’s brother said.

That seemed to go on, the dreaming and sweating and shivering and the voices, for a long time. She thought she was in her friend Rosa’s dollhouse. In her dream, the kids from the ship were the tiny dolls, all in white shirts and red shorts.

She knew a phone number where someone would go and get her grandmother, but she couldn’t remember it. And what could her grandmother do? Travel through all these countries to find her? It wasn’t possible. And her parents couldn’t come get her. If they did, they couldn’t go back to Nueva York. So would someone put her in an orphanage? In this country? What country was she in?

She wondered if the bunny had been lost in the woods, like the pig. Maybe it was alive in the underbrush, foraging for grass and seeds, its coat dirty, its fluffy tail gone gray with dust. The wild rabbits would sniff at it with suspicion. Or an owl out night-hunting might eat it. She was the bunny, hiding in the brush, hoping that no one would find her.





48.



MARIA SAT WITH her lawyer in a small room at the police station. The police had promised they would tell her if they learned anything about her son. The lawyer had dyed black hair in a tight ponytail, thick mascara, and eyebrows drawn on. Maria felt faded by contrast.

“I’m not in contact with my son,” she said. “I took the children to my house, and told him to take them to the United States embassy. I don’t know what happened after that. I couldn’t reach his phone. We were trying to rescue the children.”

“But you didn’t know anything about the Herreras’ criminal enterprise,” the lawyer prompted.

“Right,” Maria said, chastened.

“So what were you rescuing the children from?”

Maria hesitated. “Raúl.”

“You feared he would abuse the children.”

“I think perhaps he did.” She remembered George shouting at Raúl, the girl upstairs.

The lawyer shook her head. “You don’t know that. If you’d known that, you would have taken the child to a hospital, or to the police.”

Maria hung her head. She had been so afraid, and there’d been all the other children to deal with, and so little time. Why had she gone back to the Herreras’ house? Out of habit? No, she was afraid that Raúl would discover her and the children missing, and come after them.

“You only had a fear that Raúl might abuse them,” the lawyer said.

“Yes, okay.”

“And why didn’t you go to the police?”

“Because the Herreras pay the police.”

The lawyer dropped her pen to her yellow notepad in exasperation. “But you don’t know that.”

“Everyone knows,” Maria said tiredly.

“You don’t,” the lawyer said. “Because you didn’t know the Herreras had a criminal enterprise, as you have told me. And you are not involved or complicit in that criminal enterprise. I’m just trying to help you account for your unaccountable actions.”

Maria nodded, and began again. “They are American children, so I was trying to get them to their embassy.”

“Okay,” the lawyer said, picking up her pen.

“I knew I could trust my son. Oscar is a very responsible boy.”

“Okay,” the lawyer said. “And Oscar knows the Herreras?”

“Yes. They have been my employers for many years.”

“Was your son involved in their work?”

“No!” Maria said. “Never.”

The lawyer raised a painted eyebrow. “You sure?”