Return to Sender (15 page)

“He'll be middle- aged by the time he gets out of there.” Mom is beside herself. She calls a group of lawyers up in Burlington who help poor people in trouble for whatever they can afford to pay. She finds one who is willing to donate his services for free to see if they can't get Felipe deported without having to make him into a criminal first.

But even with a lawyer on board, it's the holiday season, so cases are stacking up and everything is moving a lot slower than it normally would. But the good news in all this bad news is that Felipe is actually being held in the local county jail, where prisoners can receive visitors on Satur-days and Sundays from ten to three, one- hour slots, first-come, first-served. Mom signs them up for the only slot left open, ten o'clock Saturday morning.

“But we can't go see him,” Mari reminds Tyler when he gives her the news. They're in the kitchen, helping Grandma make her gingerbread house. Going to the county jail without papers would be basically like turning themselves in.

Tyler never thought of that. Still, somebody will have to translate for Mom and the lawyer. “I know!” Tyler says. “How about Ms. Ramírez?” Their Spanish teacher was born in Texas, but her parents came from Mexico. It's a brilliant idea except her number isn't in the phone book.

“We could just go house to house asking for her,” Grandma suggests as she lays another wafer shingle on the roof of her gingerbread house.

Mari thinks Grandma is serious. “It'd be just like the
posadas.”
Mari goes on to explain how for a whole week before Christmas, Mexican kids have a kind of trick-or-treat where they go from house to house pretending to be Mary and Joseph. At each house, they ask if there's any room at the inn. Everyone turns them away until the last house of that night, where they're let in and have a party and break a piñata with candy and treats for all the kids. The very last night of the
posadas
is on Christmas Eve and the last house that night has a really big party because it's the actual night the whole story happened. Grandma thinks
posadas
are a great idea, which she's going to bring up at the next church committee meeting as something the youth group can do right here in Vermont.

Although Ms. Ramírez isn't in the phone book, Mrs. Stevens is. Mari doesn't want her principal to know that her uncle's been picked up by the police. So Grandma calls Mrs. Stevens and tells her an elaborate story about how she wants to give her friend Martha Spanish lessons for Christmas, as their youth group is considering going to Mexico on their service trip next summer, and so can she please have Ms. Ramírez's phone number? For a churchgoing person, Grandma sure knows how to tell a good lie.

By the next night, it's all set, Ms. Ramírez and Tyler's mom and the lawyer from Burlington are all going to visit Felipe on Saturday, which happens to be Christmas Eve day. But get this. Visitors cannot bring any packages or presents or clothes or food or anything to the prisoners even though it's the day before Christmas!

“I feel just like Mary and Joseph at all the
posada
stops where they're turned away,” Mari says, tearing up. “No room for us in this country.”

“But there's room for you here on our farm,” Tyler tells her. They are outside while Ofie and Luby help Grandma finish up the lawn on the gingerbread house. Tyler is teaching Mari the winter constellations. Orion, the hunter, wears his belt of three stars. To the west, a bunch of little stars glitter like teensy blue diamonds. “They're the Pleiades, the seven sisters,” Tyler says.

Mari is momentarily distracted. “Seven? I only count six.”

“You're not supposed to see all seven,” he explains. “One of them is so dim you can only see her with a telescope. She's supposed to be missing or hiding out or something.”

“Why?” Mari wants to know. Tyler has noticed this before, how Mari is always so intrigued when the subject of someone missing comes up. The day Mrs. Stevens and the school counselor talked to their class about missing children and the appropriate behavior if a stranger approaches you, Mari, who never asks questions, wanted to know all about what to do if someone was missing in your family. Mari has told Tyler that one of the things she likes the most about astronomy is how you can use the stars to guide your way, so you never ever have to be lost. “How come that sister star got separated from the others?”

Actually, Tyler can't remember. It's some Greek myth. He'll have to look it up in his star book.

“I know,” Mari proposes. “She's crossing the sky to get back to her six sisters. But when she gets to the Milky Way, there's no bridge. So she asks that constellation that's the charioteer.”

“So does she get across or what?” Tyler is now the one intrigued. Maybe astronomers should hire Mari to make up new stories about the constellations. Hers would probably be a lot better than all those dumb Greek gods falling in love with mere mortals. Suddenly, Tyler is aware that Mari is not looking up anymore, but looking straight at him.

“Can I tell you something, Tyler?” When he nods, Mari goes on. “You know how I said my mother might be calling us?”

Of course he remembers. He and Sara both thought it was weird that the girls’ mother wouldn't know where they are.

“My mother, she went to Mexico last December,” Mari begins. “And then when my
abuelita
died, my mother left Mexico to come back, but she never showed up, and my fa-ther, he tried to find her, but no one could tell him where she was.” Mari pauses to catch her breath, as if she might drown in the torrent of words tumbling out of her mouth.

“We've waited and waited. A whole year now. My fa-ther, I can tell, doesn't think she's going to come back. And my sisters, too. But how can somebody just disappear?”

“You think maybe something … happened to your mom?” Tyler hates bringing it up, but it's clear Mari really wants to talk about it.

Instead of going ballistic like she usually does when Tyler has suggested her mother might be dead, Mari begins to cry. Tyler has no idea what to do when a girl cries— except get her to stop. “But maybe it's like the seventh sister, Mari. Maybe your mom is just lost and trying to find her way back to you.” Just saying the words, Tyler has himself half believing it could be so.

And Mari is believing it, too. The sobs turn into sniffles. “You think so? Oh, I think so, too. But sometimes … some-times, I just worry. And I can't talk to my father or my sisters and worry them more.”

Tyler knows all about how hard it is to talk to adults. “Gramps is the only one I can really talk to. I mean, when he was alive,” he corrects himself. “Gramps used to tell me to look up when I felt down.”

“Fell down?” Mari doesn't quite understand.

“
Feel
down, like when you're really, really sad.”

“Look up when you feel down,” Mari repeats, looking up.

Looking up with her is what gives Tyler the idea. Tomorrow night, he's going to bring the telescope over to Grandma's. He can't give Mari her mother, but he can at least show her the seventh star reunited with her sisters.

His mom and dad and grandma are determined that the girls will have a nice Christmas. Especially now that the whole story is unraveling that their mother has actually been missing for a full year and probably died on the dangerous border crossing. There is a small chance, a chance Tyler is really hoping for, that the mother is alive and trying to reach the family. But the calls have stopped. That's what comes of an older sister with a big mouth threatening the caller with the police.

“How was I supposed to know?” Sara defends herself when the whole Cruz situation comes up. Everybody in the family is feeling the tug of guilt: Mom and Dad for hiring them and enabling a sad situation, Ben for getting Felipe into the mess he's in, Sara for possibly scaring the mom away from ever calling again, Tyler for shunning them when they first came to the farm.

“What do you think we should get them for Christmas?” Mom wonders. Tomorrow she has a trip planned to the bigbox stores across the lake. Since the Christmas tree farm is closed down this year, Tyler doesn't have the cut that Gramps always gave him for helping run the operation. So a group present would be great, especially with three girls and three men to shop for. Actually, two men. The third isn't even allowed a phone card.

“Have the girls mentioned anything they might want?” Mom asks Tyler. You'd think he was the resident expert on the three Marías.

Tyler shrugs. The one time he asked the girls what all they were getting for Christmas, they explained that there'd be no gifts this year. Money is tight now that there are only two sons working to send the same amount home. Besides, their father can't risk going off the farm to shop. Tyler's mom used to take them all once a week to the Wal- Mart across the lake. Now they just make a list and Mom gets them whatever they need.

But that same morning in the milk barn, Mr. Cruz pulls Tyler over. He unfolds some pages torn out of a flyer and points to a stuffed dog that could be the rich, glossy cousin of the scrappy puppy Luby carts around, a cardboard dollhouse with a sack of teensy furniture, and a very pretty purple backpack with pink butterflies. He counts out five twenty-dollar bills from the zippered pocket in his jacket. “María, Ofelia, Lubyneida,” he says. “Santa.”

Tyler understands. The backpack is probably for Mari, since she's too old for a stuffed animal or dollhouse. But what will his own family get her and her sisters? Tyler drops by the trailer, hoping to tease out something else the girls might want.

No problem getting Ofie and Luby to rattle off a list a mile long. But Mari shakes her head like she's too proud to ask for what she knows she can't get. Tyler says nothing about the money in his pocket. Although Mr. Cruz didn't say so, Tyler assumes that the gifts are meant to be a surprise. “Santa might just want to leave you presents at our house. Come on, Mari,” he coaxes. “There must be
something
you want?”

Mari gives him a fierce look, tempered by the tears glinting in her eyes. “Okay, I'll tell you what I want. I want my mother to come back. I want my uncle Felipe to come back.”

“Me too,” says little Luby. “That's what I want, too.”

Ofie looks torn. She doesn't want to give up the dollhouse or the Strawberry Shortcake Fruity Beauty Salon or the new Barbie in a skating outfit. “I know,” she pipes up, her face brightening. “We can ask Santa for presents and then we can ask the Three Kings to bring both Mamá and Tío Felipe back.” She looks hopefully at her sisters.

“We're not going to get anything from anybody,” Mari reminds her in a scolding voice.

“You are too!” Tyler puts in.

For a moment, a look of yearning comes on Mari's face, like a break of sunshine on a cloudy day. She hesitates. “Maybe … maybe if we could just know my mother is okay, my uncle is okay…” Her voice fades away. She bows her head, trying to keep her tears to herself.

If only those were things Tyler could give her! Instead, that afternoon in the crowded store, Tyler helps his mom pick out a little boxed set of stationery, as Mari is always writing letters, and for Ofie and Luby, a puzzle with puppies and coloring books and crayons. He finds the gifts Mr. Cruz asked for, and from himself, he decides on a packet of glow-in-the-dark stars Mari can paste to the ceiling in the trailer. That'll bring a smile to her face. Christmas tears are just the worst unless they're the kind that spring to your eyes when you are so touched, your happiness has to borrow from your sadness. As he stands in the checkout line with his mom and Sara, Tyler is amazed how thinking of making Mari happy has lifted the dark cloud that was hanging over his own holiday.