The Book of Unknown Americans(41)

Alma


I hadn’t uttered a word to anyone about finding the boy with Maribel, but ever since it happened, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, either. I was suffocating under the weight of it, and I was furious at myself for letting him get to her, for creating an opening just big enough for him to slip through and find her.

So finally, just after the new year, I did what I should have done in the beginning—I went to the police. In México the police were corrupt and often powerless. No one trusted them. But maybe here, I thought, they would be different.

The police station was a brick and glass building with an American flag cemented in the ground out front. Inside, it smelled of cleaning solvents. I strode up to a window behind a black counter where a woman in uniform sat, turning the pages of a magazine.

“Me llamo Alma Rivera,” I said when I got to the counter, shouting so she could hear me through the glass.

The woman held up one finger, got off her stool, and disappeared into another room. When she came back, a male officer with a chiseled face and a cleft in his chin accompanied her. He stood behind the glass and said in Spanish, “I’m Officer Mora. Can we help you with something?”

“I’m Alma Rivera,” I shouted again in Spanish.

“I can hear you fine. How can we help you?”

I took a deep breath. “I’m here about a boy.”

Officer Mora nodded. I waited for him to invite me behind the glass so we could talk in private, but he simply stood, waiting for me to continue. There was no one else in the lobby, so I went on. “I came home one day and a boy was with my daughter.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Fifteen.”

“And the boy?”

“He’s her age, I think.”

“So a teenage boy was with your teenage daughter?” Officer Mora said.

“He had her against the wall of our building.”

“Did he assault her?” Officer Mora asked.

“He had her against the wall,” I said again.

“Did you see him punch her or kick or physically harm her in any way?”

“No. But the only reason he didn’t was because I got there.”

“Did he say something that made you think that?”

“No, but he came for my daughter,” I said again, frustration burning my throat.

“Maybe she’s friends with him.”

“No.”

“In our experience parents don’t always know what their teenaged children are up to.”

“You don’t understand …,” I started. I had the urge to tell him about her brain injury, but I didn’t want his pity. I only wanted his help.

Officer Mora planted his hands on the counter behind the window. “What I’m hearing is that you came home and found your daughter with a boy her age. That’s all you know. Is she a pretty girl?”

“He looked at us when we went to the gas station,” I said.

“Who? The boy?”

“He was staring at my daughter.”

“Staring at her? Se?ora Rivera, that’s not criminal.”

“He had her shirt up,” I said. Shame had kept me from revealing it sooner. I didn’t want anyone, not even the police, to envision Maribel that way.

Officer Mora’s expression changed. “When?”

“When I found them the other day.”

“You saw him pull her shirt up?”

“No, but—”

“So she might have done that herself?”

“She’s not like that!”

Officer Mora rubbed the back of his neck, rolled his head around once, and took a deep breath. “Se?ora,” he said through the glass, “this is a police station. We don’t deal with teenage relationships here. Unless he assaulted her in some way, or unless he made some kind of verbal threat, there’s nothing we can do.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “I thought you would help her.”

Officer Mora sighed, as if it were a great exertion to have to deal with me any longer. He said, “We can’t protect her from a boy who, honestly, probably just has a crush on her. That’s your job.”

In English, he said something to the woman officer, who shook her head before flipping another page of her magazine. I was a fool, I realized, to believe that they would care about any of this. I tightened my lips and straightened my purse strap on my shoulder with all the righteousness that I could muster. Neither Officer Mora nor the woman seemed to notice.

“Gracias,” I said sarcastically.

“De nada,” Officer Mora said in earnest, as if he believed he had done his job.


I SHOULD HAVE gone home. But anger roiled in my belly, and after I boarded the bus back to the apartment that day I was seized by another idea. Fito had said the name of the neighborhood where the boy lived once. Capitol Oaks, wasn’t it? If the police weren’t going to help me, I thought, I would go over there myself.

I walked up the aisle and tapped the bus driver on the shoulder. In my best English I said, “Capitol Oaks?” He nodded and said something I didn’t understand, but I waited behind him, hoping that when we got to the right stop, he would signal for me to get off.

As the bus drove on, I pulled my dictionary from my purse to look up the words I wanted. I hadn’t learned them yet in my English class—I had been to a few more since the first time—so I would have to teach them to myself. I looked up dejar. Leave. Sola. Alone. Leave alone. Leave alone, I said in my head. I practiced the words, mouthing them silently, until the driver stopped the bus and fluttered his hand over his shoulder at me. “Capitol Oaks,” he said.