Illegal (9 page)

The next morning, I noticed Flora sipping coffee at the bodega inside the market. She nodded her head at me in recognition.

“The pool isn't open for two hours,” I said.

“Yeah, but my mom leaves for work at seven. I don't hang around because of my brother. He's kinda mad I won't do his…uh…deliveries.”

“So, you just come here?” I asked.

“What's wrong with here?” she said.

“I'm buying the produce for the stand,” I said, trying to prolong the conversation.

“Please don't stare when I…you know,” said Flora.

The mention of the shoplifting made me uneasy.

She looked up and said quietly, “Thanks for the sandwich yesterday.”

I shifted back and forth. “You're welcome.”

Flora fidgeted in our awkward silence. “Cash is a bit short, so I'm just stretching things out. If you need something, I could get it for you.” Her eyes pointed to the cosmetics aisle. “Like sunscreen.”

I shook my head. “No.”

She looked hurt. “You don't want to be around a person like me,” she said acidly.

I walked away. I wanted a friend and I needed sunscreen. But stealing made the deal impossible. I would just have to figure out a solution.

On my way back to the stand, I dropped off Mr. Mann's breakfast.

“Thanks, Tessa,” he grumbled.

“Nora,” I said wistfully.

“M-A-N-N,” he said back, as if it meant something meaningful. I noticed his coins were still in the plastic container, but my bowl sat next to it, empty.

 

My days began blurring together. Wake up, buy produce, sell tacos, swim, sell tacos, and go to bed. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. I stopped counting the days, as
they all seemed the same. Full of work and empty of Papa. I needed to make something happen.

But today seemed different; Jorge wore dark jeans and a pressed shirt. He looked completely different from his shorts, T-shirt, and baseball cap uniform of the stand. Even his truck glowed from a fresh wash. “Nora, you handle things this morning. I'm signing the lease for our restaurant.”

Halfway through the morning, Keisha showed up wearing a pink sundress instead of her worn swimsuit. “I wanted to see if you could come to Vacation Bible School with me. We get extra credit if we bring a friend, and I know how you like to craft.”

There wasn't anyone but me. “Not today. Sorry,” I said wistfully.

Keisha's shoulders slumped. “I've been telling everyone about you. Like hows we been good friends to each other, even though you a Mexican and all. It didn't matter about the extra credit and all.” The car on the corner honked. “I gotta go, but I'll make you something in crafts. The teacher said I had a real creative side that I should explore.”

I handed her a small tree I had made. “
Gracias
, Keisha.” My heart followed her quick steps back to her mother's car. How I wanted to escape this hot
trailer, full of burritos and chips, and follow her back to a simple childhood.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man covered with tattoos swaggering up the sidewalk.
“Concrete Guy!”
I said.

“Little one.” He tipped his hat, which was stained with sweat and grime. “Are you the
jefe
today? Where's Jorge?”

“He's getting ready for his restaurant.”

“I'm glad. Jorge has helped everyone in the neighborhood. You and your mama must be his lucky charms, because every time they tried to open the restaurant before, it fell through.”

Concrete Guy's hands were deeply lined. A jagged scar ran up his arm. “Where do men go to get construction jobs?” I asked.

“By the railroad tracks downtown where guys wait and trucks pick up,” he said.

“I wonder if anyone down there knows my papa.”

Concrete Guy raised his eyebrows in warning. “
Mija
, it's not a place for girls.”

Concrete Guy rubbed his stomach, which made his tattoo dance along his arm. “I would like two tacos this morning. I'll miss Jorge's cooking while I'm gone, but
mi tía's
cooking is from heaven. I'm
going home for a few days on the bus.”

I saw another chance to get information, so I lumped extra watermelon onto his plate. “Would you mail a letter for me in Mexico?” I needed to stop waiting and make something happen to find Papa. I found a pad of paper under the register and tried to write quickly, but I couldn't spell every word I wanted to write. I wanted to explain how things had gone wrong and how I was lonely. I finished by saying, “I love you.” Those words were the ones that mattered.

Concrete Guy folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “I'll mail it when I get across.” He patted my arm to reassure me. “You're a good kid.”

 

“I don't want you to steal,” I said to Flora later at the pool.

“I just borrow. It doesn't cost the store nothing,” she snapped back.

I shook my head. “No, really. It's a mortal sin and I wish you didn't have to.”

“What, are you the Pope now?”

I chewed my lower lip. “You're better than that. You can work for money.”

For once, her tough, cool exterior melted. Hurt
pooled in her eyes. “I can't work because I'm only fifteen. Not legal yet.”

The words stung. This was her fifteenth year, and she seemed to be living day to day. I doubted anyone had given her a
quinceañera
, either. Seems weird how she was illegal, in a different way, but just like me.

“I need to know about Tessa,” I said.

“She hung with my brother. He's somebody you don't want to know.”

“Is that why you're here?” I asked.

“It's why I'm not anywhere. I'm just flying below the radar. You should too.”

“Why does it matter what I do?”

Flora looked me straight in the eye. “'Cause I don't want you to disappear like her.”

A shiver ran down my spine. I didn't want to be anything like this Tessa girl.

“I could have done something, but I didn't,” Flora said with disgust at herself. “When she got jumped into the gang, my brother made me watch.”

“What?” I said.

“It's a fight where you aren't allowed to defend yourself. Ten girls pummeled her. She never cried, she just turned her head and watched me like a dead
cat on the road,” said Flora as if she were watching it replay in her mind.

“Why didn't you do anything?” I asked.

“She wasn't my friend. And what could I do? Save her from something she wanted? She got a new family. Getting into a gang is a way of being reborn. And being born ain't a pretty thing.”

“Then what happened?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

“Those girls made it real hard on her because they wanted the power.” Flora looked over my shoulder toward Jorge. “Just the sister gang. Some of them hook up, but the girls do their own thing 'cause they like the power and the drugs.”

I thought about what that money meant. Death money. Dirty money. Money that strangles you.

“You don't want anything to do with it. Stay low and keep quiet.” Flora pulled the magazine up over her eyes. “And it ain't stealing if I put the magazines back.”

It was her way of acting tough. But I had learned that Flora was alone in the world. Kind of like me. “I guess this makes us friends now,” I said.

Flora looked at me sadly. “I'm not really friend material, but if that's what you wanna call it…”

And I realized it was exactly what I wanted.

Flora had disappeared from the pool for several days after our last conversation.

“Where have you been?” I asked with a sour tone. It had been three days.

“Things have been a little tough at home,” she said. “I'm not taking stuff anymore, but don't think it was anything you said.”

I smiled to myself because I knew it was
exactly
because of what I had said.

She twisted her mouth. “I'm not in a gang. My
brother pays the bills my mom's job doesn't.” She took a deep breath. “I kinda wish my brother would get capped; then I could be done—just go home and be normal. But without him, the bills wouldn't get paid.”

I noticed she looked even thinner. Her hair usually covered up her shoulders, but they seemed to be jutting out more than usual. “Are you hungry?” I asked.

Her eyes looked tired. “Yeah, I haven't been home in a few days.”

“Is your mother worried?” I asked, giving her a plate of leftover fajitas.

“Nope. I don't think she even knew I was gone. You're lucky with your mother—how she's always looking out for you.”

Mama was trying hard, but lots of times I felt very alone.

“When I'm seventeen, I'm out of this neighborhood. I still got a chance of being something more than this, so maybe I'll join the military.”

“Where's your father?” I asked. “Could he help out?” I thought about how Papa was so much of my life, even in his absence.

“Nope. Gone.” She said it like he never existed.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“What am I supposed to do? Crafts at the Boys and
Girls Club? I got the pool and I got a bed. Occasionally, I got the library when things go really bad.”

I looked at her hands. “You painted your nails,” I said.

Her eyes brightened as she opened her green backpack. “Yeah, I got like six bottles of polish. The lady was throwing them away because they were expired. How can nail polish go bad?”

I shrugged my shoulders, but stared at the glossy pink with sparkles.

“You want me to paint yours?” Flora said between hasty bites of fajitas.

“I've never had my fingernails painted. Could you do it in the pink?”

She held my hand so that my fingers dangled. I noticed the beginnings of a star tattoo between her thumb and first finger. “What's that?” I asked.

She grabbed my other hand and began painting my nails. “Something I ain't gonna finish.”

 

If it was possible, the days grew hotter. The blue water of the pool looked like a heavy soup with people of every color splashing in and out.

Flora sat under the trees, looking hollow until the stand would empty of customers. She would come
over and repaint my nails or braid my hair. I would do the same for her. I fed her the old sandwiches we usually threw away while we painted and repainted our toes with the nail polish. We talked, but never about the things we really wanted to say.

I questioned more workers as they came to the stand. “Do you know an Arturo Mirales? He works construction.”

No one knew my papa. It seemed we were doing more working than looking. I missed Grandma terribly. I didn't talk to Flora about that, either.

Even my dreams felt tired and humid. How could I have a
quinceañera
if I felt a thousand years old?

I needed to make something happen instead of waiting for the information to float into Quitman Park. At the apartment, I sat on the stoop, thinking of what life could be if I just had an education.

Mama walked up the sidewalk and sat down next to me. “Where has your friend, the little black girl, gone?”

I sighed. “She went to Vacation Bible School. She wanted me to come with her, but I said I had to work.”

“You didn't tell her anything, did you?” asked Mama with concern.

“What would I tell her? She's not going to call
la
migra
.” I felt my hands go up to my hair to try to comb out the tangles.

“I hear the other girl is a troublemaker,” said Mama, jingling coins in her pocket.

I paused, curling my fingers under my legs. “Not true,” I said. I gave Flora a little bit of free food, but I didn't consider feeding the poor anywhere close to stealing.

“Just remember, you can't feed every beggar.” Mama ruffled my hair. “I got a phone number today from someone who really described Papa.”

“What are we sitting here for? Let's go!” I said. We ran down to the market where we would wait in line with the others to use the public phone.

Even though it was hot outside, I was shivering. Maybe this would be the day we would hear Papa's voice.

I thought about the day of my first communion and how I stood on Papa's shoes during a dance in the town square. The lights twinkled, and I felt like a princess. Papa whispered in my ear, “You will always be my perfect little girl.” I remembered how Mama glowed watching us, her hands cupping the light bump of her belly—my future sister.

But Mama miscarried. Sadness moved into the
orchard and gobbled up whatever we had left until Papa had to leave for Texas.

I didn't want to be a victim anymore. I wanted to be in charge of my life. I realized I hadn't heard the voice in my head in a long time. Was that a good or bad thing? I stared at the jewelry store across the street.

The telephone booth ate our coins hungrily. I pressed my ear against the receiver to listen as Mama spoke.

“
Buenas tardes.
My name is Aurora. I am looking for my husband, Arturo. He is a worker from Cedula, Mexico. Do you know him? Is he there?” asked Mama.

“We haven't seen him in a while. Sorry,” said the voice.

Mama hung up the phone.

No one had seen him.

I hate the telephone.

The sound of distant bells haunted me. Flora hadn't come by in a week, and I was worried. Perhaps I could light a candle for her and Papa today. “Can we go to Mass?”

Mama rubbed her neck and stretched her fingers. “I'm still tired, maybe we should rest more.” She was still sniffling from the phone call on Saturday night.

Every morning I had been doing errands for Jorge, I explored a little farther into our neighborhood.

“But I wanted to show you a shoe store across the street from the market. The church is on the way and we haven't been to confession in years. It's time to go. It would make Grandma happy,” I said to Mama.

I also worried that no one would show up with food for Mr. Mann. Someone needed to feed that crazy man.

“Nora, we don't have money or time for any of that. No shoes. No clothing. No confession,” answered Mama.

I wiggled my toes so that they seemed extra long in my brown
huaraches
. “I need new sandals. I wanted to light a candle for Papa.”

What I really wanted was that calm feeling in a quiet place. Not the muffled voices of a television I couldn't watch blaring from a wall.

“We have to do something. Let's go downtown. To the tall buildings.” I put the postcard in my pocket in case we found Papa. I could show him how I carried it everywhere to think of him. “Maybe we could even stop by the shoe store? Payless. Isn't that a pretty word?” Perhaps if I stood at the back door of Payless, someone would throw out a pair of expired shoes, just like the nail polish.

At the market, I bought the bus tokens and two
doughnuts for Mr. Mann.

Mama was in the produce aisle holding a grapefruit. “These are no better than what we had in our orchard,” Mama said. “We could have sold our grapefruit here and none of this would have ever happened.”

I hugged her. “But now we know, and we can tell Grandma to send all of our grapefruit right here to this market.”

I crossed the street to Mr. Mann. When I put out the bag, he crumpled his eyebrows. “Jorge doesn't make donuts.”

“I know,” I replied. “M-A-N-N.”

A small smile creased into the filth on his face. “Thanks, Tessa.” I had found that when you spelled his name it made him happy.

Bus 212 arrived. We sat in the center of the bus as it rumbled down the street. I watched the streets roll by. We crossed under a huge highway and the tall buildings sprang to life in the front window. They shone in the morning sunlight and almost looked like tall soldiers with gleaming badges of mirrored windows.

“Let's get off here,” I said. “Maybe we can find a construction site.”

The buildings stretched to the sky in front of us. I bent my head all the way back just to see the top. The buildings shaded the sun and the concrete sweltered around us.

I imagined that during the week women in fancy suits wore high heels, making them as tall as the men. Men wore suits and ties in dark colors and shined shoes. Perfume, lipstick, briefcases.

Maybe one day, I could be one of these people. When I was better educated. When I had shoes that fit.

“We need to find Canal Street. That's where men go to look for work,” I said.

“How did you find out about Canal Street?” asked Mama.

“I asked, and all the men say that's the place to go.”

The buildings began to fade, and soon there were no more fancy shops, and I couldn't read the signs. We walked under a large freeway.

Across an empty lot, several groups of men stood alongside the road. I squinted to see the name on the sign:
CANAL
.

In Spanish,
canal
means a big place of water. It can also mean a trough. I didn't know what it meant in English. It looked like a dead end.

“This is the street. Let's go talk to some people,” I suggested.

A truck stopped at the corner, and suddenly all of the groups burst into action, screaming at the truck.

“I've got a team of eight! Ten dollars an hour!”

“His team is all drunk. Choose us. Nine dollars an hour.”

One man pushed the other, and soon they fought in the dirt.

Three other men approached the truck. Mama and I looked through the crowd for Papa. I couldn't see him anywhere.

A white man in a cowboy hat stuck his head out of the pickup truck. “I need ten men. The first ten into the truck come with me. I only need diggers today.”

The men poured in, each scrambling for a seat in the back. The smallest one was pushed off to the side so that an older man could get on. He threw a clod of dirt.

All of this happened in less than a minute. Mama grabbed my hand. “He's not there. Let's go.”

“Someone has to know him,” I said with a strangle in my voice. The hair on the back of my neck
stood up and tingled. Grandma said tingles were a sign of bad things. She always told me to be aware of the signs. I looked up. No birds.

Men sauntered back to the shade and pulled out brown bags.

“¡Hola, mami!”
one of the men shouted. It wasn't a compliment.

Mama stopped in her tracks, flinching.

“Let's go,” she pleaded under her breath. “He's not here. Papa wouldn't want us to be here.”

“¿Cuanto?”
screamed another man.

How much? Why was this man asking “how much”? Mama began to step backward.

“Has anyone seen Arturo Mirales from Cedula, Mexico?” I yelled from our spot across the lot. I wasn't leaving without information.

“I've got something for you to see.” The man pointed at his pants. Mama's nails dug into my palm.

“Arturo Mirales from Cedula, Mexico. We haven't heard from him in a long time. We need to find him.” I tried to sound as adult as possible.
Pretend it's easy until it is
.

“Come here and I'll give you something.” I could smell the alcohol from across the parking lot.

We turned and ran.

“I think we should go home now,” said Mama with a sigh.

 

We were finally at the bus stop. “It won't be long. At least the bus will be air-conditioned.”

“No, I mean home to Mexico. Home,” she said softly.

“We can't. Not without Papa.”

“But maybe he's already on his way. Maybe he's at home waiting for us,” Mama said in an unsure voice.

“We'll find him!” I screamed, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. “We're here, and we're staying. We just need to try harder.”

Mama shook her head. “But what else can we do?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But Papa promised me we would be together.”

Mama wiped another tear from her eye. “
Mija
, I know….”

“No! A promise is a promise. We're staying.”

I could go to school. I could have friends and a real life. It was a plan.

We boarded the bus and sat on opposite sides of the aisle all the way back to Quitman Street.

The bus finally squeaked to a stop. The squealing brakes reminded me of the creaking branches from our orchard.

Mr. Mann sat on his corner, face frozen and shoulders hunched. What was his plan? Is that what happened when everything went wrong?

Where was God for him?

Or for us?