The Book of Unknown Americans(12)

My name is Benny Quinto. I came from Nicaragua, baby. The Land of Lakes and Volcanoes. Been here eight years almost to the day.

Back in Nicaragua I was studying to be in the priesthood. I thought I heard God calling my name from up in the clouds somewhere, man, and I thought he was telling me I was the chosen one. This deep, booming voice. I wasn’t even high. Drugs hadn’t come into my life yet. But I think I must have been hallucinating or something, because I’ve had conversations with God since then and He’s like, Nope, don’t know what you’re talking about, Benny. Never said all that about you being the one. Sorry to disappoint.

A few buddies of mine left Nicaragua to come make some real bones over here. Wasn’t no money for pinoleros like us back home. Politically, you know, it wasn’t so bad anymore. Somoza was long gone, the contras were nothing but a memory. But leaving the poverty of Nicaragua to go to the richest country in the world didn’t take much convincing.

I left when I was twenty. Told a dude I would pay him two thousand dollars to bring me over, three hundred up front. Took me a while to scrape it together. Three hundred dollars! In Nicaragua you could live off that for a while. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I stole some of it from the church. Stuffed the offering envelopes up under my shirt one week when I was supposed to be doing my Eucharistic Minister duties and walked out with it. I was gonna do what I had to. I’m like that. Get something in my head and it’s like some kind of block. No way to get around it. I just have to bulldoze through.

I got shunted into this house in Arizona until I could pay the rest of the money. I mean, they told us we were in Arizona. It was me and twelve other guys. But we coulda been in Russia for all we knew. We coulda still been in México, which is where we had to come up through to get over. It’s like a funnel. Woulda been nice if Nicaragua bordered with the U.S. but it doesn’t, so up through México I went.

That house in Arizona, that place was intense. I didn’t see the sun for, like, weeks, and Arizona is one of those places that might as well be on the sun, that’s how sunny it is, so it’s nuts that we never saw it. The blinds were shut and there were heavy bedspreads over all the windows. And me and those guys, we were like cockroaches, crawling over each other at all hours of the day. There was no room to move. Just sit tight, keep the faith. I don’t even know why we had to pay so much money. I mean, it wasn’t no Ritz-Carlton. Wasn’t even no Ritz cracker box. But that’s the thing. It’s just extortion. Top to bottom.

I wanted to get the hell out of there, so I called an uncle I used to be close with—I mean he used to come to my birthday parties when I was a kid and he would take me to the beach sometimes and let me play in the water while he smoked and hit on girls—but he didn’t have the funds. I didn’t even bother to ask my mom and pop. Those two never had nothing. You know how the gringos say it? No dee-nair-oh moo-chah-choh. If that weren’t the truth, I never would have left Nicaragua to begin with.

One of the guys in the house started dealing for the smugglers. He earned out his fee in two weeks. I didn’t know how else I was gonna get out of there, so I signed up, too. Figured I’d burn through it, you know, just get it done, until I had enough to leave, and then I’d be on to bigger and better things. Problem is, you get a taste for that kind of money and it’s hard to go back to anything else.

I was out on the streets in Phoenix. We had certain places we always hit up. White kids who wanted to score. Came with their parents’ money rolled up in their fists, acting all sly as they handed it over, thinking they were so street, but the truth was you could name your price with those kids and whatever you told them, they would pay. They didn’t know any better, most of them. There were some real junkies who came by, too. Some pretty hard dudes. I got tangled up with a few of them once—just a stupid fight—and the next thing I knew, I woke up one morning busted out of my mind, bleeding out my side. I’d been stabbed and didn’t even know it. That’s when I decided it had to end.

I hitched a ride out of Arizona with a guy who was driving to Baltimore. But the drug scene there was wicked. Ten times worse than in Arizona. I was trying so hard to be on the straight and narrow. I was talking to God about it all the time. I was like, Where’s your deep voice now, God, when I really need help? And then I swear I heard it. He told me to split. To where? I asked Him. Funny thing about God, though. He doesn’t always give you the answers, not right when you ask for them anyway. ’Cause I didn’t hear nothing. But I knew. I gotta leave. So I went down to the Greyhound station and said, Here’s how much money I have. Give me a ticket. And the bus brought me to Delaware. It’s not paradise, but at least here I can be at peace. It was never like that for me in Nicaragua. And not at my first few stops here neither. I flip burgers now at the King. Used to be at Wendy’s but they gave me, oh, man, the worst shifts, so I switched it up. A person needs regular sleep, you know! I ain’t getting any younger! But I feel settled here. I took a couple nasty turns, but I ended up all right.





Alma


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.