The Book of Unknown Americans(13)

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 “She is withdrawn and rarely interacts with other students, even in activities that require no verbal communication.”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.