Something in Between (15 page)

Maria looks like she could be my aunt or an older cousin. I shift on the couch, adjusting my skirt over my knees. How is it that I'm dating someone and I have more in common with his house staff than with him?

“Thank you for the offer, but I'm not really thirsty,” I say.

“I'll check back in a little while,” she says, then leaves us alone together.

“She's only been here a few years,” he says. “Her family's from the Philippines too. We found her through an agency.” It's almost like he's saying,
She
'
s not illegal
. It's then that I remember I haven't told him about my undocumented status. Should I? Is that something people tell each other?

Before I start feeling too guilty, Royce's mother steps into the room. “Hi, darling, I thought I saw someone with you,” she says. “So who's our guest?”

Wait, Royce didn't tell her I was coming over? Has he even told his parents anything about me?

Royce stands up and I do too. “Jasmine. This is my mother, Debra Blakely, the Art Collector.

“Mom, this is Jasmine, the girl I met in D.C.”

He doesn't call me his girlfriend, but maybe it's because he's nervous too.

She takes my hand. Her fingers are soft and smooth, but she shakes my hand assertively. “Royce is always calling me the art collector. He's too embarrassed to say I buy and sell stocks
and
art. Two of my loves. Besides my children, of course, though I have to admit I haven't seen much of my two boys lately.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Blakely,” I say. “I'm sorry to take Royce away from you.”

We all sit back down and his mother leans on the side of the couch next to us. “It's quite all right. I hear he's in good company. He says you're one of the recent honorees for the National Scholarship Program?”

“I am,” I say.

“He told me you were Filipino. How nice. Like our Maria.”

I don't know how to take her comment. I don't need to have my Filipino-ness pointed out to me. Maybe she's as uncomfortable as I am that I'm the same race as their help? Maybe she doesn't know what to say. So I play nice. I've been taught to smile, to hide my inner fire when not appropriate.
Be polite, Jasmine
.

I smile at Mrs. Blakely.

Royce interrupts our moment. “Aren't you meeting Dad in Washington tonight?”

“Oh, dear Lord, I forgot!” she says. “Thanks for reminding me. I better pack. Nice meeting you, Jasmine. If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask Royce or Maria... Oh, Royce? Liv's coming with me. And can you please tell Mason to call me if you see him? His midterms must have started already, but that's no reason not to call his mother.”

“Don't worry, Mom. I'll let you know when he comes home.”

After she leaves, Royce turns to me, his eyebrows raised like a little boy. He looks so hopeful and excited, but I can't get rid of the nagging feeling that I don't belong here. We come from such different backgrounds. My mom doesn't even have a steady job right now.

How are we ever going to make this work?

He scoots closer to me on the couch so that our knees are touching. “You all right? You're so quiet.”

“Your mom is nice,” I say, still working over the
Filipino like our maid
comment and wondering how I should take it.

“Too bad she had to go. You haven't even seen half the art. And once she starts talking about it... In college, she and a bunch of her classmates protested at a museum in Chicago for exhibiting Renoir. I don't know what they had against the guy. ‘Aesthetic terrorism' they called it. It was probably just a prank. They wanted attention, don't you think?”

I don't know what to think. Aren't there more important things to protest than hanging a famous, beautiful piece of art on a wall? But I just nod and continue to let him talk and try to feel more at ease in his home.

* * *

We're back at my house a few hours later. My parents are home this time and, yep, this is the moment we've all been waiting for. I'm anxious, but Mom and Dad are perfectly normal and greet Royce like I bring boys home all the time.

Mom asks him a few questions about school and what he thought of D.C., and Royce is right. I can tell she's charmed by him. She smiles and laughs at his jokes. She also doesn't mention his dad and what he does, so I count it as a win.

Then Dad corrals Royce into helping him change the oil on his truck. Royce is wearing clean, pressed khakis and a nice blue-and-white-checked button-down shirt, but he swears he doesn't care about getting dirty. We head to the garage, where he rolls up his sleeves and hops under the truck. Apparently my world doesn't seem strange to him like his world did to me. Maybe I'm the one who's the snob, the one who thinks we're so different, when we're not.

“Who taught you how to change oil?” Dad asks.

“My dad hired a mechanic to teach me,” he says, filling the oil pan. “He said every guy needs to learn.”

“Daddy, Royce is here to hang out with me,” I say. “You have two sons to help you with that.”

Dad's arm pops out from under the car. He shakes a wrench at me. It looks like the arm isn't attached to a body, which makes me giggle. “If you were a good daughter you would fetch us some lemonade,” he says.

“
Fetch
, Dad? Dogs fetch things. Not daughters,”

Royce peers up at me with a pouty face and a puppy dog look.

“Fine,” I say, but in truth I can't resist him.

When I enter the kitchen, I find Mom counting the cash from today's work. I think of Maria doing the same job over at Royce's house and feel a mixture of shame and irritation at myself for feeling strange about the whole situation, like I'm embarrassed about her, which I'm not.

Opening the refrigerator, I reach for a big pitcher full of juice. “What do you think of Royce?” I ask, pouring the liquid into a couple of glasses for Royce and Dad.

“He's very nice, like you said,
que guapo
,” she says distractedly, even as she notes how handsome he is. She finishes counting the bills, then turns her attention to me. “But you watch out you don't get hurt.”

“Is that what your mother told you when you brought Dad home for the first time?”

“Not at all. Your Lolo took Dad outside and was about to chop the head off a chicken. But your father stepped in, took over, showed Lolo that he wasn't afraid of a chicken without a head, or of blood, that he knew how to take care of business.”

“Gross, Mom. Are you trying to say Royce needs to impress Dad by chopping off the head of a chicken? The Blakelys live in Bel-Air. They've probably never even seen a live chicken. Well, maybe on TV or something.” I laugh, thinking of Royce beheading a live chicken.

I head back to the garage with the glasses of juice. My dad comes out from under the car, wiping the sweat from his head with an American-flag bandanna. He takes big gulps from the glass.

“Thanks,” he says, after greedily finishing it. Without saying anything more, he starts to leave.

“Where're you going?” I ask.

“Wherever the next chore is,” he says, leaving us alone in the garage.

Royce pops out from under the car too and washes the grease from his hands. He tucks his shirt back inside his pants and finally takes a drink. He's sweaty, and there are grease marks on his clean pants and shirt. “Thanks,” he says. “Wow, this is really good, what is this?”

“It's calamansi juice. It's a Filipino key lime, I think?”

He guzzles the rest of it down. “Yum.”

“You know that was a test,” I say.

“What do you mean?” Royce crinkles his forehead.

“My dad, making you change the oil—that was him trying to see what you were made of.”

His face brightens. “Oh yeah? And did I pass?”

In answer, I tiptoe and give him a quick kiss. Somehow, I know he'd behead a chicken for me if he had to.

17

Long, long ago, I learned the heart cannot live in two places. I had to choose. My heart is in America.
Where is yours?

—MARIVI SOLIVEN,
THE MANGO BRIDE

THE END OF
November comes and goes, and the deadline to apply for UC schools passes. I didn't turn mine in, since it seemed like a waste of the application fee. I know I made the right call, but I'm still down about it.

Also, on Tuesday evening, the House of Representatives fails to pass the immigration reform bill.

I'm watching the news with my family, stunned. We'd been counting on that bill passing, and now it feels like yet another nail in the coffin. Worse, it failed largely because of Mr. Blakely's leadership. I feel sick to my stomach. How can I see Royce and his family without thinking of the bill and freaking out about it in front of them? I need to tell him the truth about my situation, but I'm too scared.

I was stupid to think that the bill would ever pass with the way politics are right now.

I'm sitting next to Mom and we're holding each other, staring as a dumb furniture store commercial blasts from the television.

Dad sighs.

“It'll be okay,” I tell Mom, who's dangerously close to crying.

“What's wrong?” Danny asks.

He and Isko are confused about why we're all devastated by the announcement. They're concerned about Mom. No one really quite knows what to do when she gets upset. I've seen her this way only a few times in my life.

“We're not supposed to be here,” Mom chokes out.

“What do you mean? In this house?” Isko asks.

His eyes are watering. I don't think he's seen Mom so upset before either. “Come here, Koko,” I say, holding out my arms.

He comes to me like he did when he was a toddler, and I throw out my arms around him, hugging him as tight as I can.

Danny is usually the levelheaded one, but he starts to raise his voice. “What do you mean we're not supposed to be here?”

Mom sniffles. “We're undocumented. We're not supposed to be in the United States. We're here illegally. We have been for a long time.”

“I thought we had green cards? What are you talking about? You lied to us!” Danny shouts.

“Don't talk to your mother that way,” Dad says.

“It's not his fault,” I say. “We should have told him sooner.”

Danny stands up from the couch. “
You
knew?”

I nod. “I'm sorry, Danny.” I think about trying to explain to him that I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want him to worry, but then I realize I'm being a hypocrite. That's the same reason Mom and Dad gave me when I found out.

“What's going to happen to us? We can't leave LA!” Danny yells. “I don't want to go back to the stupid Philippines!”

I can tell that Dad's about to send Danny to his room, but he stomps off anyway. As the news starts up again, Isko starts asking a million questions that I barely know how to answer.

He looks at me. “Does that mean we're going to jail?”

“No, Isko,” Dad says. He's annoyed. “They don't put you in jail.”

“Does that mean we're criminals? Are we bad people?”

My heart is breaking for my brothers. I have no idea how I would have handled this at their age. I probably would have gone completely off the deep end.

I shake my head. “I don't think so. Do you think you're a bad person?”

Isko smiles a little. “Only when I play mean pranks on Danny...”

“I don't think you're a bad person,” I say. “We're not criminals either.”

Mom shakes her head. “I hate this. We wanted to do things right. We came here on legitimate work visas, but when they expired we couldn't find jobs that would sponsor us.” She looks at me pleadingly. “What were we supposed to do? Pick up you three and move you back to Manila? You'd already been through so much. And Dad and I figured out a way to stay. We survived. We made a life here. A good life. Isn't that worth something?”

I let go of Isko and turn to give Mom a hug. “It's okay, Mommy. We're not mad at you. Danny's not mad at you. He's just hurt.”

“Do we have to leave?” Isko asks.

“I don't know, Ko,” I say.

Of course my brothers don't understand, but now that they're witnessing our broken hearts, they're sad because we're sad. At least that's a start for them.

The news is back. “That same ex–weather girl is still the political analyst?” Dad complains. “I don't understand. Did she go to college for this? I could do her job.”

Mom's smeared her mascara all over her cheeks from wiping her tears. I hold her even tighter, remembering how she would scoop me into her arms and hug me tight every time I fell off my bicycle and skinned my knees when I was learning to ride without training wheels.

“Will you stop that?” Dad says. “The weather girl talking politics. Now that's something to cry over.”

“If you say that again, I'll put chili powder in your meat loaf.” Mom sniffs.

I guess she hasn't lost her sense of humor quite yet.

“I just want to talk about what we're going to do,” Dad says. “Crying isn't going to help.”

“It's going to be okay,” I say again, but I don't even believe my own reassurance.

The bill not passing doesn't mean my family will automatically be deported, but we'll have to continue to lie low. Maybe I'd be better off if we did end up going back to the Philippines. How can I hide the fact that I won't be able to vote because I'm not a US citizen? How will I explain that my driver's license will be a special one for undocumented immigrants? That's not the kind of thing you can hide forever.

If the bill had passed, at least my family would have been able to apply for green cards and then citizenship. We could have become real Americans at some point. Now it feels like everything is spiraling out of control. Like everything I've been trying to do with my life, including dating Royce, is getting grounded before it even has the chance to take off.

Mom's keeping her eyes trained closely on the news anchor.

“The vote wasn't even close,” she says. “Why does America hate us?”

“They don't, only some of them do,” I say. It's too depressing to sit in the living room with my family. I leave for the comfort of my room, look at the bottles on the shelf and the quotes I've pinned to my wall.

There's the one from
Armies of the Night
, the one Royce let me “borrow.”

There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

I wiggle my phone out of the pocket of my jeans and text him. I have to tell him the truth about me, and I can't put it off anymore. Especially since I want to confide my fears in him. We've been dating for a while now, and spending every weekend together. He drives over and we hang out at my house, eat at Denny's, go to movies, go bowling. When we hang in his neighborhood, we go to the Brentwood Country Mart and gawk at celebrities. Once we even ran into his famous reality–TV show cousin. She was sweet and we took selfies.

I talk to him every day; he's the last voice I hear before I go to sleep. Sometimes I fall asleep clutching the phone to my ear. He knows everything about me, how much I want to win Nationals this year, that I already wrote my valedictorian speech, because I'm so confident I'll be number one, that I'm worried that my mom still doesn't have a job. Although I didn't tell him why she lost it. And I know everything about him—that he had a dog when he was little and that, when it died last year, he buried it himself in his backyard, and that he wants to get another one but is worried he won't be able to love it the way he did the first. I know that he's turned in his Stanford application, deciding to go Early Decision for the best shot, since he's worried he doesn't have the grades, that he had to take the SAT at a special place because people with learning disabilities are allowed more time, and how embarrassed he was, that he felt like he was cheating or something. He knows Stanford is my first choice too.

So I text him. I refuse to believe he wouldn't support a reform bill like this one, even if his dad was the main architect of its demise. It's
Royce
. Sweet, wonderful, amazing Royce,
my
Royce. He can't believe in his father's politics, can he? He hates politics, he's said so more than once.

His number is the first one on my phone. I send him a quick text.

jasmindls: OMG. The immigration reform bill didn't pass. Can you believe it?

Royce hits me back immediately.

royceb: you're worried about that? the immigration bill? why?

jasmindls: America needed this.

My phone buzzes again. Another text. My stomach churns as I read it.

royceb: maybe, but you know my dad was working against it.

royceb: he went through a lot of trouble lobbying to help kill it and put a lot of hard work into it.

jasmindls: That's what you call hard work? Immigrants work hard too you know.

royceb: yeah, and so does my dad.

I don't know what to say to that.
I put on my coat and go outside. I don't want Mom or Dad to see that I'm totally devastated and not just by the news, but by Royce's reaction to it. I knew what his dad's position on the bill was, what Congressman Blakely stood for, and I know that Royce is loyal. It's one of the best things about him.

Of course he's loyal to his dad, to his family.

But it still makes me feel ill. Maybe he doesn't think like his dad does on the issue, but that doesn't mean he would deliberately choose to be with someone who's exactly the kind of person his father has fought so hard to keep out of the country. Once he learns the truth, he'll probably be furious with me for not being honest with him in the first place.

I should have told him when we met in D.C. I should never have let it go this far.

What was I thinking?

My phone buzzes again.

royceb: Jas? Are you there?

royceb: That was rude of me.

royceb: I know immigrants work hard too, but it was an important victory for my dad.

royceb: I'm sorry I snapped at you.

I start typing a reply then hit Delete. I don't know what to say to him.

I always text him back within seconds, but since I don't, he knows something's wrong. My phone rings this time.

ROYCE BLAKELY pops on my phone, with that goofy photo of him crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue.

I hit Ignore.

I can't do this right now. I'm scared about what happened with the bill, and I'm mad at him too, even if he did apologize.

So instead, I text Kayla. I need a friend, an old friend, someone who'll accept me no matter what.

jasmindls: Are you busy? Want to hang out? I need you.

kaykayla: Coffee? I'm here.

jasmindls: I've got a better idea. Donuts?

* * *

We're at the doughnut shop drinking green tea and sugar-free raspberry lemonade. In front of us are four big, fluffy doughnuts, two covered in frosting and sugar cereal, and two slathered in chocolate.

“Coach Davis would kill us if she knew we were about to eat these,” I say.

Kayla has the same terrified smile. “I know.”

“But you've taught me something, K. It's an important lesson I've had to learn this year. Something I didn't really think about until the last few months.”

“What's that?” Kayla asks, considering the doughnut covered with crispy cinnamon-swirl cereal.

I grab a chocolate one and ravenously tear off a huge bite. “You only live once.”

As if given permission by my indulgence, Kayla dives in to the doughnut she's been eyeing. I don't think I've ever had so much fun eating something I shouldn't in my entire life. The chocolate is smooth and coats my tongue, and I feel the bliss of a sugar high. These people must make a killing off sad girls.

We devour every crumb within minutes, every bit of frosting and cereal. I point to the corner of Kayla's mouth where there's a chocolate smudge, and she wipes it away.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“For what? Getting me fat?” Kayla jokes.

I pick up my glass of green tea, leaving a ring of condensation on the table. “Well, now I guess I have
two
things to apologize for.” I put down the glass without taking a sip.

Kayla looks out the window. “Nah.”

Honesty is the best thing sometimes. If you're never honest with someone, then you're pretending to be perfect all the time. That's what people expect from me, and I don't want to be that girl anymore. I'm tired of it, of having too much pride.

But I don't know how to start, and because she knows me so well, Kayla talks first. She says that her dad served her mom divorce papers, so it's official. They're definitely not getting back together.

“I'm so sorry,” I tell her.

“It's okay. At least they're not yelling at each other all the time anymore. The house is peaceful for a change. And now that Dad has to see us on the weekends, we actually end up spending more time with him.”

“How's Dylan? Is he back?”

“Yeah, and he told me I shouldn't worry about groupies or anything. Not that he would cheat on me, but also that when they're on the road all they do is eat at vegan restaurants and do yoga. They don't party that much. That's not what they're about. It's the music. I guess some rock bands really are different.”

“I guess so. He is a nice guy, and he adores you.”

“Yeah,” she says happily. “He told me not to quit cheer and keep going so we can kick butt at Nationals. But we're not here to talk about me. What's up, Jas? What's wrong?”

My phone buzzes.

“You've got a text,” she says, sipping her tea. “Aren't you going to read it?”