The Book of Unknown Americans(29)

Maribel stayed in the hospital for weeks. She regained consciousness shortly after the surgery and woke agitated and confused. With the tube in her throat, she couldn’t speak. She looked hysterically at us, asking with her eyes where she was and what had happened. We explained everything. We explained it and told her we loved her until she calmed down.

Most nights we slept on a blanket on the floor of her hospital room. When we slept at home, we trembled and huddled against each other in our bed in the dark. Many times, we cried. My parents came over and cried with us. Our friends came and wrapped their arms around us. I woke up every morning and knelt on the floor, praying to God to heal her. I might have questioned God, I suppose, about how He could have allowed such a thing to happen, except that it didn’t just happen. It wasn’t an earthquake or a gust of wind that knocked her to the ground. It was me. I believed that completely by then. So I prayed for forgiveness and for God to bring her back to us. I wanted Maribel to grow up and get married and have children and friends and find meaning in her life. I wanted to see her graduate from high school, and I wanted to see how shy she would become when she introduced us to the man she had fallen in love with, the man that one day Arturo and I would welcome to our family. I wanted to sew yellow, blue, and red ribbons into her wedding lingerie for good luck. I wanted to see her grow round with a child and hold that child in her arms. I wanted her to stop by the house for meals and laugh at the television and rub her eyes when she was tired after a long day and hug me when it was time to leave again, her husband waiting in the car, her child’s hand in hers. I wanted her to have the full, long life that every parent promises his or her child by the simple act of bringing that child into the world. The implicit promise, I thought. I said every prayer I knew.

After the surgery, a therapist came to Maribel’s room and administered tests, to make sure she could move, to make sure she could understand basic instructions, to make sure that her brain could still tell the rest of her body what to do. The doctor was pleased. She had a brain injury, but it could have been much, much worse. We began to hope. Would she come back to us? Our Maribel? The Maribel we had known for nearly fifteen years? They said perhaps. In time. But more likely, there would be something about her that remained permanently changed. They couldn’t say for sure. Every brain injury patient was different. We heard that too often. It began to sound like an excuse for ignorance. It made me want to scream, “What do you know?” After weeks of rehabilitation, after working with a psychologist and a speech language pathologist and the doctor, all they could tell us was things like: She struggles with finding the right words sometimes, and that will likely persist. Her short-term memory is erratic at best. Her emotional affect is flat, which may or may not change. She has trouble organizing her thoughts and her actions. She gets easily fatigued. She might be more prone to depression, even long-term. But she’s young, which gives her a better chance at recovery. “Besides,” they all said, “the brain is a remarkable organ. With the right attention and exercise, it can heal.”

Neither Arturo nor I knew what that meant. We thought, We’ll be gentle with her. We’ll be patient. And when she was released from the hospital we sent her back to school with the idea that a learning environment was exactly what she needed. Get her using her mind again, we both thought. That would be good.

But day after day Maribel came home frustrated and depressed. The teachers talked too fast, she said. She spent hours in the nurse’s office, complaining of headaches. Even when the teachers tried to be accommodating—giving her extra time to take tests, repeating things for her benefit—it was of little help.

After two weeks, we went back to the doctor at the hospital and asked for advice. He told us that if we could find her the right kind of school, a school with a strong special education program, it would help immensely. There were a few in México City, he said. But the best were in the United States, if we were willing to go. He gave us a list of schools that he knew, schools with good reputations. Which one we chose was just a matter of where Arturo could find work.

I said, “Well, why didn’t they tell us that earlier!”

“The United States?” Arturo said.

“You can get a job there, can’t you?” I was energized now that a solution was within sight.

“But this is our home,” Arturo said. “It’s always been our home.”

“It would only be temporary.”

He furrowed his brow in his particular way. “Why are you so sure she can’t get what she needs here?”

“?Qué vergüenza, Arturo! I’ll take her there myself if you won’t go.”

“It’s just … So much has changed already. We’ve been through so much.”

“So it’s just one more thing.”

“I don’t know if she can handle one more thing.”

“Well, she can’t stay here, doing this. Don’t you want her to get better?”

“Of course.”

“Then … ?”

He nodded. But when I looked at him, I understood. He was the one who wasn’t sure he could handle one more thing.

“We have to do this,” I said. “All I need is for you to say yes, and I promise I’ll take care of everything after that. You won’t have to worry about anything.”

“I want to do what’s best for her,” Arturo said.