The Book of Unknown Americans(3)

I was used to people looking at her. It had happened often in Pátzcuaro. Maribel had the kind of beauty that reduced people to simpletons. Once upon a time grown men would break into smiles as she walked past. The boys in her school would come to the house, shoving each other awkwardly when I opened the door, asking if she was home. Of course, that was before the accident. She looked the same now as she always had, but people knew—almost everyone in our town knew—that she had changed. They seemed to believe she was no longer worthy of their attention or maybe that it was wrong to look at her now, that there was something perverse about it, and they averted their gaze.

But this boy looked. He looked because he didn’t know. And the way he looked made me uncomfortable.

I pulled Maribel closer and edged us backwards.

The boy took a step toward us.

I moved back again, holding Maribel’s elbow. Where was Arturo? Wasn’t he done by now?

The boy picked up his skateboard, tucking it under his arm, and started toward us, when suddenly—?Gracias a Dios!—the gas station door opened. Arturo walked out, holding a plastic bag in one hand and shaking his head.

“Arturo!” I called.

“Twenty-two dollars!” he said when he saw me. “Can you believe that? Do you think they took advantage of us?”

But I didn’t care how much money we had spent. I lifted my chin enough so that Arturo caught my meaning and glanced behind him. The boy was still standing there, staring at the three of us now. Arturo turned back around slowly.

“Are you ready?” he asked Maribel and me a little too loudly, as if speaking at such a volume would scare the boy off.

I nodded, and Arturo walked over, shifting the bag as he clasped Maribel’s arm and put one hand on the small of my back.

“Just walk,” he whispered to me. “It’s fine.”

The three of us started toward the road, doubling back in the direction from which we had come, heading toward home.





Mayor


We heard they were from México.

“Definitely,” my mom said, staring at them through our front window as they moved in. “Look at how short they are.” She let the curtain fall back in place and walked to the kitchen, wiping her hands on the dish towel slung over her shoulder.

I looked, but all I saw was three people moving through the dark, carrying stuff from a pickup truck to unit 2D. They cut across the headlights of the truck a few times, and I made out their faces, but only long enough to see a mom, a dad, and a girl about my age.

“So?” my dad asked when I joined him and my mom at the dinner table.

“I couldn’t really see anything,” I said.

“Do they have a car?”

I shook my head. “The truck’s just dropping them off, I think.”

My dad sawed off a piece of chicken and stuffed it in his mouth. “Do they have a lot of things?” he asked.

“It didn’t seem like it.”

“Good,” my dad said. “Maybe they are like us, then.”


WE HEARD FROM Quisqueya Solís that their last name was Rivera.

“And they’re legal,” she reported to my mom over coffee one afternoon. “All of them have visas.”

“How do you know?” my mom asked.

“That’s what Nelia told me. She heard it from Fito. Apparently the mushroom farm is sponsoring them.”

“Of course,” my mom said.

I was in the living room, eavesdropping, even though I was supposed to be doing my geometry homework.

“Well,” my mom went on, clearing her throat, “it will be nice to have another family in the building. They’ll be a good addition.”

Quisqueya took a quick look at me before turning back to my mom and hunching over her coffee mug. “Except …,” she said.

My mom leaned forward. “What?”

Quisqueya said, “The girl …” She looked at me again.

My mom peered over Quisqueya’s shoulder. “Mayor, are you listening to us?”

I tried to act surprised. “Huh? Me?”

My mom knew me too well, though. She shook her head at Quisqueya to signal that whatever Quisqueya was going to say, she’d better save it if she didn’t want me to hear it.

“Bueno, we don’t need to talk about it, then,” Quisqueya said. “You’ll see for yourself eventually, I’m sure.”

My mom narrowed her eyes, but instead of pressing, she sat back in her chair and said loudly, “Well.” And then, “More coffee?”


WE HEARD A LOT of things, but who knew how much of it was true? It didn’t take long before the details about the Riveras began to seem far-fetched. They had tried to come into the United States once before but had been turned back. They were only staying for a few weeks. They were working undercover for the Department of Homeland Security. They were personal friends with the governor. They were running a safe house for illegals. They had connections to a Mexican narco ring. They were loaded. They were poor. They were traveling with the circus.

I tuned it all out after a while. School had started two weeks earlier, and even though I had told myself that this would be the year the other kids stopped picking on me, the year that I actually fit in for once in my life, things already weren’t going exactly as planned. During the first week of school, I was in the locker room, changing into my gym shorts, when Julius Olsen tucked his hands into his armpits and started flapping his arms like wings. “Bwwaak!” he said, looking at me. I ignored him and cinched the drawstring on my shorts. Actually, they were my older brother Enrique’s shorts that had been handed down to me, but I wore them because I thought that maybe they would make me seem cooler than I was, like maybe some of Enrique’s popularity was trapped in the fibers and would rub off on me. He’d been a senior the year before, when I was a freshman, and every single person in the school had adored him. Soccer stud. Girlfriends by the dozen. Homecoming king. So opposite of me that when I tried to earn points with Shandie Lewis, who I would have given just about anything to hook up with, by telling her that I was Enrique Toro’s brother, she said that was a really stupid thing to lie about.