CHAPTER 39
Santiago and Pablo continue taking turns reading to the little kids. When Señor Dante gets permission for an extra reader, Listo joins them once before declaring the kids are brats, malcriados. Santiago silently thanks whichever “brat” scared him off.
Unlike the older boys, most of the little kids leave the center within a week. Still, it’s way too long. A lot happens in a week. Señor Dante says that being forcefully separated from a parent for a day can traumatize a child for life. Just seeing his buddy, the lap climber, called away during story time, tears Santiago up. Too much like Alegría—even after all these months, he can’t forget her.
By his calculations, considering he arrived in the fall when the nights were getting colder and it’s almost spring now, he’s been at the facility for about six months. No one besides Chismoso has been in the older-boy section as long as him. Many only stay a few weeks; several others board the bus that takes them back to México.
Each time the bus pulls into the parking area, Santiago’s throat goes dry. Heat, dehydration, memories. Santiago remembers Chismoso saying it costs over seven hundred dollars per person per day to keep them at the center. Sooner or later the officials will do the math and figure out he isn’t worth keeping five more years. Then his name isn’t called for the bus and he breathes again, remembers he will be here until he’s eighteen, and forgets about deportation until the next time.
The bus doesn’t come regularly, never even on a specific day. But instinct says it’ll be here soon. What felt like a packed space with ninety-some teens when he arrived now threatens to burst with almost double the amount. So when the bus comes, his gut says he’ll be on it. The tightness in his throat agrees.
“Who’s on the next bus, Chismoso?” Santiago breaks down and asks. After all these months, the secret to Chismoso’s information is still a mystery. Maybe Chismoso bribes (or blackmails) a guard, or provides him with favors in exchange for all the intel. But who knows which guard. However the job gets done, Chismoso is more reliable than a weather vane.
From where Santiago stands with his fingers laced through the chain-link fence in the outdoor area, no bus is visible in the parking lot. But tomorrow…
“How badly do you want to know?” Chismoso grins, leaning his back against the fence Santiago grips.
“Forget it. Forget I asked.” Santiago walks away, shoving his hands in the pockets stuffed with his metallic blanket, toothbrush, and mitten socks.
“According to a little bird I know”—Chismoso baits him—“the officials made contact with a woman called Agracia Reyes de la Luz.”
Santiago stops cold, his heart racing. He can’t believe it. That woman has no telephone, no actual address, and yet they’ve found her. Eyes narrowed, he turns slowly back to Chismoso.
“Looks like you’ve heard of her.” Chismoso strolls toward him, arms swinging casually. From across the yard, Sumo raises his eyebrow. Santiago shakes his head. This he has to do alone.
“You’re incorrect. I don’t know anyone by that name.” Santiago’s lips barely move. The rest of him can’t either.
“Really? Isn’t she your abuela?”
A muscle in Santiago’s neck twitches. “No, I don’t have a grandmother.”
“Interesting. She tried to deny knowing you, as well,” Chismoso mocks.
A spark of hope. If she claims not to know him, then he can’t be sent back to live with a “stranger.”
“But when they threatened her, she admitted being related to you,” Chismoso sneers.
Fine, so not the best news. What is Chismoso’s point? What does he gain from all this? He’s just a nobody.
“She’ll take you,” Chismoso says in one last stabbing remark. “Even though she wishes you were never born, Santi.”
Santiago gives the gossiper a cold stare. The center has made him hard, and Chismoso himself taught him how to inflict pain. “But at least I have family willing to take me. And my name is Santiago.”
Yes, she’ll take him. Especially if officials threaten her. She’ll complete her duty, as much as he wishes she wouldn’t. He thought he would never have anything to do with that woman ever again. Except now that she’s been located, he’ll have to soon enough.
Soon enough comes the next day. The outside temperature matches the inside one. Santiago shuts his eyes, leaning into the fence and enjoying the sun warming his back. He hears, or rather feels, the bus’s vibrations before it drives into the parking area. He cracks one eye open. Sí, there it is. A white bus, but other than that, completely nondescript.
The guards let them spend their whole recess outside, and when they return indoors, there’s no list of boys to line up for the bus. Santiago saw the bus, heard it. So why’s everything going on like a regular day? And if it is a regular day, why’s his stomach aching with nerves and fear?
“García?” Castillo calls out after a few minutes.
Santiago refuses to look up from his book. It’s not for him. At least two other Garcías reside in their area at the moment. If he ignores the guard, he’ll go away.
“García Reyes?”
Slowly Santiago stands, his finger marking the page of his book he knows by heart.
“Leave the book behind,” Castillo says.
What? No! Santiago grips his book, Mami’s book, tighter.
“Señor Dante gave me this book—gave it to me,” he stammers. A total lie. The book was donated to the center, and Señor Dante had nothing to do with the donations. But… “It’s mine—I have to take it with me.”
“No, everything that comes in belongs to the facility,” Castillo says. And Santiago always thought of him as the “nice” guard.
He could refuse. Refuse to give up the book, refuse to leave the center. Except they would drag him out anyway. After taking away his book.
He removes his finger marking the page where he stopped and strokes the cover one last time. The edges firmed up a bit after that day in the rain but are still fatter than normal. The spine also shows signs of having been opened too many times. He traces the title written in wind puffs. Just as well. At least here someone else might enjoy it. At la malvada’s house it would only be used to feed the fire.
He turns to Pablo—both he and Sumo came to his side when Castillo called him—and hands him the book. “The little kids like it when you howl like the wind and make special voices for the other characters.”
Pablo accepts the book with a nod. Santiago then turns to Sumo, who’s lost some weight but looks more deflated than healthy. With his back to Castillo, he offers the big guy his hand. Sumo’s eyes widen as Santiago inconspicuously passes him a packet of (wheat-free) fruit gummies in the handshake.
“Take care of yourself,” Santiago says as Sumo quickly shoves his hand into his pocket. He also hands over his toothbrush. According to Chismoso, the center might stop handing out toothbrushes to newcomers, claiming it as an “unnecessary expense.” Better someone use it than it getting thrown away.
Santiago retreats, unable to look at them anymore. Every time he makes friends, he loses them.
He takes in the main room once more. Cold, noisy, crowded, confining, but still his home. Still better than what he has to look forward to. The door to the classroom, which opened so many opportunities, now stands perpetually closed and locked. If only he could say good-bye to Señor Dante.
On the plus side, there’s the surprised expression on Chismoso’s face. For once something is happening without his knowledge. Take that, Santiago thinks.
Castillo leads him down the hall and through the windowed door to the same holding room he’d been in so many months ago. In his hands, the guard places a plastic bag holding the clothes he’d worn when he arrived.
Despite the center’s fear of vermin and disease, no one bothered to wash his clothes. The smell they give off from having been sealed in a plastic bag can knock down an army. Body odor, foot odor, dust, blood.
And the faintest hint of fruity shampoo.
He airs them out with a few good shakes. But the odors linger.
The jeans barely fasten at his waist and stop well above his ankles. The T-shirt fits fine, but that’s the one with the strongest shampoo scent. If only he could find out if she’s okay, then the memory wouldn’t hurt so much. He shakes the shirt vigorously, turns it inside out, and puts it back on. With any luck, the scent will disappear quickly.
Something crinkles when he pulls on his socks. Too flat to be a cockroach, but probably something just as sinister. Another shake and out comes the twenty-dollar bill Don José gave him before he left Capaz. He thought he’d lost it. It goes back in the sock before he puts it on.
The shoes have been stripped of their laces. Had he done that in his delusional, heatstroke state? He can’t remember. But even without the laces, the shoes don’t fit at all, and not just because his feet have gotten used to socks and flip-flops; his toes curl under completely. Despite the blazing, mountainous trek, at least the shoes are in decent condition. When he gets back to México, he’ll go to the market and see if he can exchange these shoes for a larger, secondhand pair. Without laces, though, he won’t get a good price. Why had he gotten rid of the laces?
He hands his facility clothes to Castillo along with his metallic blanket.
“Where are the others?” Santiago stops. No one else waits in the holding room.
“¿Cuáles otros?”
“The others riding the bus back to México?”
“You’re not on the bus. Your family came for you.”
Santiago trips on his too-small shoes. No, she didn’t. She must have known that if he went back by bus, he’d make a run for it at the first stop. He’d run right now if his shoes weren’t so small.
Only, she wouldn’t have come herself—spend money to travel all this way on a bus? No, someone else got bullied to come instead. Maybe Tía Roberta, except who’s looking after the kids? Tío Ysidro surely can’t. Then it must be Tío Bernardo, Santiago’s drunk uncle. It surprises Santiago that la malvada trusted him to make it to the center. The Tío Bernardo he knows would have disappeared into the wind as soon as he managed to cross the border. Guess things change.
They make him pass through the same metal detector he went through upon arrival. Did they think he’d try to steal one of those cozy metallic sheets? A guard he doesn’t know hands him a clear plastic bag with his possessions. Except his pocketknife and Domínguez’s lighter are missing. He definitely hadn’t lost those on the journey—he remembers the metal detector beeping on arrival.
“Con permiso,” he says to this unfamiliar guard. “I’m missing some of my stuff.”
The guard shakes his head. “Nothing that can be used as a weapon gets returned.”
That explains the missing shoelaces. Great. Not only do they return people to their countries, they return them worse off than when they left.
All that’s left in the plastic bag is the peso coin. And the triangular black lava stone he forgot to return to María Dolores, not that he believed her when she said it meant something to her. He shoves the worthless coin into his pocket.
The stone he’ll toss once he gets outside. The burden of it is too much to carry. For a few more seconds, though, he keeps it in his hand, twirling it between his fingers until a shout causes him to drop it.
“Hey! You still have my family’s heart stone!”