The Book of Unknown Americans(32)

“When’s the next game?” he asked, like he was testing me.

“I need to check,” I said.

“You don’t know?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You don’t know?” my dad asked again, his voice booming this time.

This was how things went with him. One minute you were having a conversation and the next minute he was blowing up.

There had been one other time that my dad had mentioned wanting to go to a game, but the fact that his work schedule wouldn’t allow it had saved me. It was basically the only thing that had been saving me all along. By the time he came home each day, I just said I’d been at soccer and he didn’t know the difference.

But it was over now, I thought. He’d finally seen through me.

My dad raised his beer bottle and angled it toward the light. “Gone,” he muttered. He held the bottle over the back of the couch. “Get me another.” From where I stood, I could see four empties lined up next to the sink in the kitchen.

I took the bottle, and my dad slumped back down in the couch cushions.

Was that it? Were we done now?

Then from the couch my dad yelled, “Celia!”

I heard my mom’s footsteps move through their bedroom and down the hall. “Are you calling me?”

“You can’t keep up with the laundry?”

She walked into the living room, shaking her head. “What are you talking about?”

“Mayor’s soccer clothes. He says they’re in the laundry.”

My mom looked at me, confused. I just stared at her, trying to look as innocent as possible. But then her face changed, and for a split second I thought that maybe she had figured it out. But if she had, she didn’t give me away.

Instead she said, “Sorry. I’ll do laundry today.”

“?Carajo!” my dad said, and that was the end of that.





Quisqueya Solís


Where should I begin? Venezuela is where I was born and where I lived until I was twelve years old. I was a very beautiful child, happy in every way. But when I was twelve, my mother fell in love with a man from California. He asked her to marry him, so we moved to his home in Long Beach. It was an enormous house with a pool in the courtyard. I believe a famous architect had designed it. Hollywood studios called us sometimes to see about using the house in a movie or for a commercial shoot. It was very glamorous.

I was content there for a while. My mother’s new husband had a son, Scott, from a previous marriage who was two years older than me. Scott paid no attention to me in the beginning, but soon enough, as my body began to change and I grew into womanhood, he took another look. He was always walking in on me in the shower, claiming he didn’t know I was there, or I would catch him watching me while I tanned by the pool. I tried to ignore him when I could. I kept the door to my room locked.

Scott and I were at the house one night. I was sixteen. It was a rainy evening. My mother and his father were out at dinner. I was in the kitchen getting a soda from the refrigerator when he came up from behind and kissed me. I remember very clearly he said, “It’s okay. We’re not really brother and sister, so it’s fine.” But it wasn’t fine with me. I tried to push him off, but he was stronger than me. I wasn’t a prude. I had kissed boys before. But this was not what I wanted. He came at me again. He knocked me to the floor and climbed on top of me.

He did unspeakable things, all against my will. I don’t know why, but he thought he could do whatever he wanted. That’s how boys are.

Later, I told my mother what he had done to me, but she didn’t believe it. She accused me of trying to ruin things for her. She said, “Look at this life they’ve given us.” She warned me not to be ungrateful. Of course, I was only more upset after that. And I felt I couldn’t stay there, in such proximity to Scott. I knew it was only a matter of time before he came for me again. I told my mother I was moving out. She didn’t fight it. She didn’t offer to go with me. I don’t think she had ever even wanted a child. She had me as a result of a one-night stand. I was less important than the things she had now—a nice house and diamond jewelry, an expensive car and a big refrigerator. It was the life she had always dreamed of—we were even citizens now—and in the United States no less.

I went to a shelter and told them that I was on my own. I lied and said that my parents were both dead and that I had been fending for myself. I stayed with a girlfriend for a little while, too. I lived in her pool house for months, and her parents never even knew I was there. I missed my mother, but the truth was that I had missed her even when we were together, so it was nothing new.

As soon as I got my high school diploma, I left California. The girlfriend I had stayed with was going to college in New Jersey. Her parents had given her a car for graduation, so she was going to fill it with her belongings and drive across the country to her new school. She offered to take me with her. I stayed with her in her dorm for a while until I found a job waiting tables and saved enough money to live on my own.

I met a certain man while I had that job. He used to sit at the counter and order blueberry pie. He used to flirt with me sometimes. I tried to resist him. I was suspicious of men by then. I wanted nothing to do with them. But he was persistent and he was kind and he made me laugh. He started staying after the restaurant had closed, talking to me while I cleaned up. He used to walk me home when it was dark. He didn’t know what he was getting into with me, though. He never did anything wrong, but it was a struggle for me to be truly close to him. It was difficult, because of my past, to trust him. I pushed him away—every time he came back to me, I pushed again—until finally he left.