Act of God (17 page)

It wasn’t yet dark. The weak light stranded her few possessions in obscurity—the plastic laptop on the bureau, the penthouse’s napkin used as a doily. Through the house’s thin
walls, she heard the din of camaraderie coming from the living room as everyone made a fuss over Kat and forgot about Ashley.

She didn’t want to become Anushka again. How could her eighteen-year-old life already be over?

Hurling off the covers, she rose, smoothed the wrinkles from her satin dress, mounted her platform heels, and clacked into the living room. “I be deported because I help you,” she told Kat.

“I won’t let that happen.”

“Impossible help me.”

“She’s right,” said Mr. Syzmanski. “I had a cousin who had lived in Jersey for forty years when he got deported. He had an American wife and kids, but they never officially got married because he also had a wife and kids back in Poland.”

“What does this have to do with Ashley?” asked his wife.

“They weren’t a legal family. You have to have a relative who’s a U.S. citizen.”

“I alone,” said Ashley, hunching on the sofa beside Kat.

“You’re not alone.”

She felt a gentle touch lift her chin until she was looking into Kat’s smiling face. Kat’s two front teeth were bigger and brighter than anything else Ashley had to guide her.

“You
do
have a family in this country. I’ll adopt you,” said Kat.

Clearing the dinner dishes, Ashley accidentally dropped a greasy spoon on her lap. She went straight to her room, peeled off her dress, inside out, like a latex glove, and then rushed to the bathroom to submerge it in soapy hot water. She held the stain under the steaming faucet even when her fingertips burned. Could Kat really adopt her?

After hanging the dress over the tub to dry, she returned to her room, leaving the door ajar for the cat, but when she woke just before dawn, the cat wasn’t there. Gyrating blue beams danced around her dark room. Naked, she rose from the warm covers and peered out the window. A squad car and a windowless van were parked not twenty feet away. Even before the loud knocking rattled the front door, she dropped to her knees and crawled to the bathroom on the house’s far side. Slipping on her still-damp dress, she was about to steal out the window when she heard Kat shout, “Who are you looking for?”

“This is not your business, ma’am, please step away from the door.”

“The door you’re pounding on is mine, so it is my business.”

“We are looking for Anna Alevtina Sokolov.”

“I want to see a warrant.”

Silence prevailed while Kat read the warrant.

“There is no one by that name living here.”

Ashley was halfway out the window when she spotted a bearish man wearing a vest that said
ICE POLICE
. His flashlight beam caught her just as she leapt.

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Stop!”

She started to run in her bare feet, but the ground was mined with broken glass. Her right heel got punctured. The policeman caught her. Not only did he handcuff her, he shackled a chain around her waist.

“Are the
chains
really necessary?” asked Kat.

“Until she’s cleared by Homeland Security, yes,” said the officer.

“You think she’s hiding explosives under that dress?” asked Frank. He, Gladys, the Syzmanskis, and the cat now crowded the stoop.

“She’s shivering, for pity’s sake,” said Kat. “Frank, go get her coat and boots.”

Just before Ashley was shoved through the van doors, Frank ran over with her coat and boots. While he helped her into her boots, Kat draped the coat over her shivering shoulders.

“Where are you taking her?”

“What is your relationship to this girl?”

“I’m in the process of adopting her.”

“The Elizabeth Detention Center.”

“We’ll get you out, Ashley, don’t worry,” promised Kat as the van’s rear door shut. There were no windows. The darkness was absolute. The crypt began rolling. About fifteen minutes later, it stopped and the engine was cut. She heard shouting. Someone or something was thrown against the van’s side. A police siren wailed. When the rear door finally opened, six Mexicans were pushed inside.

In the dark, Ashley listened for clues as to where she was going—a bridge’s clang and clank, bullying horns, a swishing echo, an eardrum pop, a distant jet. About an hour later, the van stopped again, and the doors opened to reveal a brightly lit, windowless, three-square-block, one-story brick warehouse, bigger than any gulag she’d ever seen. The humped roof was crowned with razor wire.

Inside looked like a dog pound—cement floor, rows of wire cages. A female ICE officer led Ashley to a crowded cell in the women’s section.

There was nowhere to sit down. She lost track of time. The fluorescents hissed and sparked. Her freed wrists still chafed from the cuffs. She hitched up her red dress and peed in a drain, then sat on the cold floor and employed her bitten fingernails to excise the glass shard from her throbbing right heel.

She was fingerprinted, photographed, showered, deloused, issued an orange jumpsuit, and then led into a dark dormitory stacked with sleeping, moaning, crying, praying women.

She found an empty cot, the bottom in a stack of three. The mattress gave like a hammock. The pillow’s batting smelled of foreign breath. The blanket was thinner than her old beach towel.

A voice whispered to her in Spanish.

“Russian,” Ashley said.

“Where are you from?” someone called to her in a Siberian accent.

“Omsk.”

“No, I mean which detention center are you from? My sister was supposed to be transferred here from LaSalle. We got separated but we’re supposed to be deported together. ICE has to find three hundred and fifty Russians before the plane can leave.”

“How long have you been waiting?”

“Six months.”

Wearing only a thin robe and slush-sodden slippers, Kat stood on the curb shouting at the receding van, “I’ll get you out, Ashley! Hang in there!”

“She can’t hear you,” said Frank. “Come inside, Kat, you’ll catch pneumonia.” She allowed herself to be led back into the warm house.

“Blackie and I will pray for her,” said Gladys, picking up the cat.

“The kid must be so scared,” said Mrs. Syzmanski.

“I should have listened to her. I knew I should have moved her to a hotel last night,” said Kat.

It wasn’t yet dawn. Everyone went back to their room. Kat left an urgent message on Stanley’s office voicemail to call her back no matter the hour. “Should I try his house?” she asked Frank.

“Let the guy sleep. There’s nothing anyone can do until morning.”

She joined him under the covers and nestled against his warmth, but she spared him her cold feet.

“She didn’t have to help me this afternoon, Frank. She could have refused to testify after Vida’s lawyer threatened her with deportation, but she bravely told the truth. She knew what that woman was capable of. She’d already thrown
Ashley out on the streets once before. She’s eighteen years old, for god’s sake. What kind of human being is so vengeful that she would have a teenager arrested in the middle of the night and deported?”

Frank had fallen asleep, his arm heavy on her shoulder. She tried to lull herself to sleep too, but her thoughts wandered back to the quiet library after everyone had left this afternoon. While she had been struggling with mercy and forgiveness, Vida’s lawyer had already called immigration. How else could they have gotten here so fast? Vida must have known. Maybe it was Vida who called? How could she have asked to be forgiven and then gone ahead and done this?

Kat had so many questions. She reached for her new smartphone on the nightstand. It was hardly the wise advice giver of yesteryear, but it was all she had.

“What can I help you with?” asked the phone.

“How do I adopt a foreign national?” she whispered into the tiny microphone so as not to wake Frank.

“Let me check that,” said the phone. “Would you like me to search the web for ‘How do I adopt a foreign national’?”

“Yes.”

Every link showed a young couple embracing an infant.

“How old is too old to adopt?”

“The cutoff age is fifty,” answered the phone.

“Look up images for the Elizabeth Detention Center.”

A windowless warehouse festooned with razor wire filled the screen.

“How do I sponsor a foreign national already in custody?”

“I don’t know what you mean. Why do you want to sponsor a foreign national already in custody?” asked the phone. “Would you like me to search the web for ‘How do I sponsor a foreign national already in custody’?”

“Yes.”

Every link led to another link.

“Who qualifies for amnesty?”

Who qualifies to be forgiven?

At nine sharp the next morning, without having gotten a wink of sleep, she called Stanley’s office, but Janice told her that he was in court all day. “How are you holding up after yesterday, Kat?”

“I’m fine, I’m calling about Ashley.” She told Janice what had happened. “I’ve been doing research all night. If she stands a chance of being released, Stanley needs to file Form I-864 and draft an Affidavit of Support granting me the right to sponsor her. I’ll also need an affidavit from the trust proving I have the financial means. We have to hurry. She can be deported at any time.”

“You sound just like your sister. Edith was always telling Stanley what to do.”

At noon, Kat went to bed with a splitting headache and a chill. Frank closed the blinds, but she still couldn’t sleep, though she lost track of time. When she next checked the alarm clock, the hands read four, though a.m. or p.m. she wasn’t sure. Frank was napping beside her, or maybe he’d been sleeping there all night. Had Stanley left a voicemail? Had Ashley been given her one phone call and Kat had missed it?

No one had called.

The next time she opened her eyes, her lashes produced a swish like high grass blowing in a gale. Lightning branched whether or not her eyes were open or closed, a cyclone of brilliance. She could see the shimmering tornado simultaneously from all sides, as if a storm posed before a three-way
mirror. Was she having a migraine? Edith had suffered them, though until now, she’d been spared.

Just as abruptly as the headache began, the pounding quit. She could hear herself think again. But no thoughts came. She listened for her internal voice but the silence was absolute. All she heard were the inhalations and exhalations her throat made with each involuntary breath. She had never been so alone with herself before.

Frank was less than six inches away, but when she tried to call his name, her tongue slapped against her teeth. She tried to shake him awake, but her arm was gone. If she hadn’t been able to see the flaccid limb beside her, she’d have thought her whole arm was only a memory.

Summoning the last of her strength, she managed to swing her torso until her dead arm lassoed against his chest.

Only when she saw his frightened, confused expression did she panic, if one could be said to panic in utter stasis.

“Kat, what’s wrong? Say something, you’re scaring me.”

A bubble rose from her open lips as she struggled to construct a word. A speech balloon?

He leaned closer, his ear to her mouth.

She’d forgotten how to speak.

“Don’t leave me, Kat. Stay with me, please. I can’t be alone.”

He phoned for help, then returned to bed and stretched out against her. He wrapped his arms under and over her useless body and held her as tightly and securely as he could, so her soul couldn’t escape.

She recognized the paramedics, the same two seasoned men who had come for Edith, though they didn’t appear to remember her. The skinnier of the two aimed a penlight into her pupil. The brilliance was so excruciating, the beam might as well have been a knitting needle. The next thing she
remembered was being hoisted onto a gurney and strapped down, like a log on a flatbed truck. Frank wasn’t allowed to ride in the ambulance with her. They weren’t related. He took her hand and squeezed. She felt nothing.

Maybe she was dead? But if she was dead, wouldn’t Edith come find her?

Anushka’s arrest met the quota of Russian deportees needed to fill a chartered plane bound for Volgograd. She was handed back her new dress, winter coat, and boots, and put on a plane in the dead of night. At least she had the window seat. She’d only flown once before, nine months ago when she and her red suitcase had traveled to America. Unlike the first flight, this one didn’t have any stewardesses to demonstrate how to fasten a seat belt. Two armed guards were posted at either end of the cabin and no one trundled colas and peanuts and pretzels down the aisle.

Until the plane door closed, her fisted heart clung to the shredding hope that Kat could still save her. After the plane took off, she started to despair. The lights of New York City were now passing below her, as if millions and millions of stars had fallen out of the night heavens. Would she ever come back? What if she never did? She could feel her panicked heart trying to punch free of her tight dress.

Then the curvature of the earth grew saturated with red, as if a knife had sliced the night in two. Dawn bloomed over the eastern horizon. Her mood began to lift with the young sun. Just because she was being sent back to Russia didn’t mean that Kat couldn’t adopt her. Look at all those Chinese babies with American mothers. Kat wouldn’t let her down. She hadn’t let Kat down. Kat probably had no idea
where she was. No one let her make a phone call before she was marched onto the plane. She’d call Kat as soon as she landed.

The plane was flying straight into a new day. The sun broke through the sea’s surface and rose faster than a bubble in water. The red quickly diluted into pink, and then orange, yellow, flax, straw, and soon it was colorless. Dawn’s promise was over before it started. At this speed, she would be back in Russia in no time. She felt despondent again. Who would be waiting for her when she landed? No one.

The plane had been flying only three, four hours when the sun began its descent behind her. How could the day already be over? Clouds cluttered the western horizon, their tips flaming. Mauve and pink vapors crisscrossed the sky. Where the sky and the sea kissed looked tooled in gold and silver. Then, just as fast as a coin drops into a wishing well, the sun fell into the sea and the world lost all color.