The Book of Unknown Americans(33)

But he’s the father of my two boys, and I’ve gone out of my way to make sure that they turn out to be good and respectful. When they were in my house, they never laid a hand on a girl, never a kiss, nothing. I was very watchful. It’s possible they’re the only good boys in the world. With the help of scholarships and financial aid, they’re able to attend university. They’re studying hard there.

Now I receive money every month as part of my divorce settlement. So financially I’m secure, but I also choose to volunteer my time on Mondays and Wednesdays at the hospital because I feel I should do something positive with my time, something to help people. It’s the least I can do. I have enough money that maybe I could live somewhere else, but my friends are here. Besides my boys, my friends are all I have.

Almost no one in my life now knows what I’ve been through, nor do I want them to know. Some things should be private. That’s what I always say. Besides, I don’t need anyone’s pity. My life has been what it has been. It’s not a wonderful story, but it’s mine.





Alma


The days that December were long and cold. We had been keeping our thermostat at eighty degrees but then our first heating bill arrived in the amount of $304.52, which made me cry when I saw it and made Arturo shred the paper into bits the size of confetti. Neither of us needed to say out loud that we couldn’t pay it.

We turned the heat down to sixty after that and huddled by the radiators for warmth. We wrapped blankets around our shoulders, pinching them closed in our fists, and wore extra pairs of socks. I tied a scarf over my head, even though Arturo said it made me look like a terrorist. The wind sliced through the edges of the old, loose windows and shuttled cold air into our bedroom. Arturo tried to smooth caulk into the crevices, but the caulk cracked when it dried. He taped rags around the window casings, but it was little help.

“My body isn’t made for this weather!” I told Arturo, who laughed the first time I said it and frowned when I repeated myself again a few days later.

“We shouldn’t complain,” he said.

So I did my best to focus on the positive. Maribel had laughed twice since that first time, and it seemed to me that she was able to remember more on her own now, too. She still relied on her notebook, but during Mass, for example, she knew when to kneel and when to stand, when to go up for communion and how to find her way back to our seat afterwards. The reports from school were encouraging, too. The most recent one had said: “Maribel speaks with increasing frequency, both to the teacher and to the aide, although only in Spanish. She has begun to respond to questions, although at times her response is inconsistent with the question asked. Both in voluntary speech and in reply, she has begun to modulate her voice to be more expressive.”

Even so, I was a worrier by nature and I couldn’t escape the feeling that anything could happen to her at any time. As if because something terrible had happened to her once, there was more of a possibility that something terrible would happen to her again. Or maybe it was merely that I understood how vulnerable she was in a way I hadn’t before. I understood how easily and how quickly things could be snatched away.

Every school morning, I stood outside and waited for the bus with her. Every afternoon, I met her again in the same spot. Maribel had developed a sort of friendship with Mayor Toro, which seemed like one more way that she was making progress—he was her first friend since the accident—but I told her that she and Mayor were only allowed to spend time together under supervision, either at our apartment or at the Toros’. About that I was firm. The Toros’ front door was no more than ten meters from ours, down on the first floor, but I stood outside and watched Maribel walk the distance, waiting for her to go inside before I did. When it was time for her to come home, I watched for her again.

I was making enchiladas de carne one day with some near-expired brisket I had found on clearance at the meat market. I was humming to myself, a song my mother used to sing me when I was a girl. I washed the black pasilla chiles off my hands, patting them dry against my pants, and glimpsed the clock, which read just past five. My heart leapt. How had it gotten so late? Maribel should have been home by then. Quickly, I walked to the door and opened it, expecting to see her mounting the stairs, walking toward me, but all I saw was the cracked asphalt and the faded white paint lines in the empty parking lot. Where was she? Was she still at the Toros’?

I closed the door behind me, stepped outside, and started toward the Toros’ apartment. When I got to the bottom of the staircase, I heard laughter. Not Maribel’s, but someone’s. Coming from around the side of the building. And then I heard a boy’s voice.

I crept toward it. “Maribel?” I called. No one answered. “Maribel?” I said louder, inching my way forward.

I kicked something and looked down to see Maribel’s sunglasses on the ground. Unease rose beneath my breastbone. I picked up the sunglasses and kept walking, listening for her, but everything was quiet now.

And then, as I turned the corner, I saw her. Her back was against the cinder-block wall, and her hands were up over her head. A boy—the boy from the gas station, I recognized him instantly—was holding her wrists in place, staring at her. Her shirt was bunched under her armpits, exposing her white cotton bra, and her head was turned to the side, her eyes squeezed shut.

I screamed. The boy startled and spun his head around.