The Book of Unknown Americans(77)

Calmly, I pulled the rest of the plates out one by one. I dropped them all and watched the shards spin across the floor. I did this not in anger, but in the spirit of release. Vaguely, I noticed Maribel standing at the edge of the show. I heard her asking questions. I kept going.

After I dropped the last of them—six in all—I looked up.

“Why did you do that?” Maribel asked.

“It made me feel better.”

“It was so loud.”

“It’s done now,” I said.

I swept the pieces into the trash can. I took most of the garbage bags that I had piled in the hallway out to the Dumpster in the alley. Maribel helped me carry the mattress down to the parking lot, where we left it. Somebody else could have all of it if they wanted. I didn’t need it anymore.


CELIA CAME OVER early the next morning, dressed in her bathrobe and slippers. Her hair was in rollers. There was a chill in the air and she shivered when I opened the door.

“You look awful,” she said when she saw me.

“I haven’t been sleeping.”

“You should take medicine. Like a Tylenol PM. I use it sometimes when I’m anxious.”

“It works?”

“De maravilla.”

“Come in,” I told her. “Maribel’s still sleeping.”

“No. I need to go home and get dressed. We’re going to eight o’clock Mass. Actually, you know what? You should come. We could go together.”

“No, thank you.”

“It might make you feel better to get out.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”

“I just came to give you something,” Celia said. She pulled a plain white envelope from her bathrobe pocket and handed it to me.

“What is it?”

“Look inside.”

I lifted the flap and saw the edges of bills—there must have been a hundred of them—open like a fan.

“We took up a collection,” she said. “Everyone chipped in. The teachers at Maribel’s school, the receptionist in the school district office. Oh, and the translator there, too. Arturo’s coworkers at the mushroom farm, the manager at Gigante, a teacher from the Community House, the translator and some of the nurses from the hospital. The church made a nice donation, and Father Finnegan added more on top of that. Plus, everyone in the building.”

I stared at the money, overcome.

“Mostly it’s just a little bit from each person,” Celia went on. “Twenty dollars here, ten dollars there.”

I couldn’t speak.

“But Rafa and I talked it over. You know we got some money recently? From my sister? Of course there was hardly any discussion. The bigger bills are from us, so you can afford to fly Arturo back to México. I hope it’s not too late.”

The envelope felt weightless in my hand.

“It’s five thousand one hundred thirty-two dollars,” she said.

“You did this?”

“We all did. I just mentioned the idea to a few people in the building first. But word spread. And before I knew it people were contacting me to find out how they could contribute. People I didn’t even know you knew.”

I stared at the envelope.

“Everyone loved him, Alma.”

Until that moment, tears had welled in my eyes, but I had beaten them back with furious blinking or distraction. Somehow I had managed not to cry. But right then I broke down. I fell on Celia and cried with more gratitude and happiness than I knew I was capable of feeling anymore.


WE LEFT TWO DAYS LATER in a black pickup truck, driven by a man Rafael had found who took people to and from the border. Apparently he had family in Texas, so he didn’t mind the trip.

“How much does he charge?” I asked Rafael.

“Nothing,” Rafael said. “He’s doing it as a favor to me. I used to give him free breakfast when he stopped at the diner on his way up 95. Don’t worry about it.”

I knew he was lying. It had to have cost something. But I let it go.

Maribel and I sat in the back with a blanket draped over our laps. I had Arturo’s hat on my head, my purse at my feet. Everything else—what little we were taking with us—was once again in plastic trash bags in the bed of the truck.

The man was quiet. He looked like a gringo, but what did I know? He didn’t introduce himself nor turn on the radio nor talk on his phone. He just chewed sunflower seeds that he kept in a plastic cup between his legs and flicked the shells out through the window, which he left rolled down. I was grateful for his indifference to us. To him we could have been anyone. We weren’t people who were grieving, or who needed to be taken care of, or who were to be pitied. We were simply people who needed to get from one place to another. In a way, it was a relief to have the privacy of our mourning.

It was early when we pulled out of the parking lot. The air was hazy. Feeble sunlight pressed through the filter of clouds. We drove past the pancake restaurant and the Red Lobster, the Dunkin’ Donuts and the Rita’s Italian Ice, the bowling alley and the Sears, the David’s Bridal with its white gowns in the windows and the Walmart next to the highway. Within minutes we were on I-95, heading south.

All morning, I stared out the window as the world rushed by. We drove over the Susquehanna River, where the water was a ribbon, wide and flat. We passed red barns and stone mills, small white houses with black shutters and houses with wooden fences around their sprawling land, everything silent and still. We passed roadside restaurants advertising breakfast specials and movie theaters with the show times listed on towering signs near the edge of the highway. We drove through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and then along the outskirts of Washington, D.C., where we passed a temple with gold spires striking up into the air.