The Sun Is Also a Star(58)

I hold out my hand for a shake. “Mr. Fitzgerald. It’s nice to meet you.”

He doesn’t shake my hand. “You’re late,” he says, and walks back into his office.

I turn to say goodbye to the secretary, but she’s already gone.





I TAKE MY PHONE OUT of my backpack. Still no return call or text from Bev. Maybe she’s on another tour. I remember she said she wanted to make it to University of California, San Francisco, too.

I should call my mom. Probably I should’ve called her at many points today. She’s called three more times while Daniel and I were on the roof.

I text her: coming home soon.

The phone buzzes back at me almost immediately. I guess she’s been waiting for word from me.

been trying to reach u for 2 hours.



sorry! I text back.

She always has to have the last word, so I wait for the inevitable reply:

so no news then? hope u didn’t get u hopes up.



I toss the phone into my backpack without answering.

Sometimes I think my mom’s worst fear is being disappointed. She combats this by trying her hardest never to get her hopes up, and urging everyone else to do the same.



It doesn’t always work. Once she brought home a casting-call flyer for an Off-Off-Off-Broadway play for my father. I don’t know where she found it or even what the role was. He took it from her and even said thank you, but I’m pretty sure he never called the number.

I decide to wait for the final call from Attorney Fitzgerald before saying anything to her. My mom’s already dealt with too much disappointment.

The trouble with getting your hopes too far up is: it’s a long way down.





SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN FOR greatness. God give a lucky few of us some talent and then put us on earth to make use of it.

Only two times in my life I get to use mine. Two months ago when I did A Raisin in the Sun in Manhattan, and ten years ago when I did it in Montego Bay.

There’s just something about me and that play that was meant to be. In Jamaica, the Daily called my performance miraculous. I got a standing ovation.

Me. Not the other actors. Me alone.

Is a funny thing. That play send me to America, and now it sending me back to Jamaica.

Patricia ask me how me could tell the cop all our business. Him not no preacher, she say. It not no confession, she say. I tell her I was just drunk and coming off the stage high. The highest thing you can do is the thing God put you on this earth to do.

I tell her I didn’t mean to do it. And is true what I tell her, but the opposite true too. Maybe I do it on purpose. This not no confession. I just saying that the thought is there in my mind. Maybe I do it on purpose. We couldn’t even fill all the seats in the place.



America done with me and I done with it. More than anything, that night remind me. In Jamaica I got a standing ovation. In America I can’t get an audience.

I don’t know. Maybe I do it on purpose. You can get lost in you own mind, like you gone to another country. All you thoughts in another language and you can’t read the signs even though they everywhere all around you.





THE FIRST THING I SEE on his desk is a file with Natasha’s name on it. Natasha Kingsley, it says. It has to be her, right? How many Natasha Kingsleys could there be? Not only are our meetings in the same building, but also her lawyer and my interviewer are the same person? The odds have to be astronomical, right? I can’t wait to see the look on her face when I tell her.

I look up at him and then around the office for other signs. “Are you an immigration lawyer?” I ask.

He looks up from what I presume is my application. “I am. Why?”

“I think I know one of your clients,” I say, and pick up the file.

He snatches it away from me. “Don’t touch that. It’s privileged.” He pulls it as far away from me as possible.

I grin at Fitzgerald and he frowns back at me. “Yeah, sorry,” I say. “It’s just you saved my life.”

“What are you talking about?” He flexes his right wrist and I notice that his hand is bandaged. Now I remember that his paralegal said he’d been in a car accident.



I point at the file. “I just met her—Natasha—today.”

He’s still frowning at me, not getting it. “When I met her she was being deported, but then she met with you and you did your lawyer magic, and now she’s going to stay.”

He rests the bandaged hand on his desk. “And how did that save your life?”

“She’s the One,” I say.

He frowns. “Didn’t you say you just met her today?”

“Yup.” I can’t do anything about the big smile on my face.

“And she’s the One?” He doesn’t actually put air quotes around “the One,” but I can hear them in his voice. Vocal air quotes (not better than actual air quotes).

He steeples his fingers and stares at me for a good long while. “Why are you here?” he asks.

Is this a trick question? “For my admission interview?”

He looks me over pointedly. “No, really. Why are you here in my office right now? You obviously don’t care about this interview. You show up here looking like you’ve been in a brawl. It’s a serious question. Why did you come here?”