In the Country We Love Read online

  —JANET EVANOVICH, novelist

  My parents raised me Catholic. Like most Colombians, Mami and Papi had been brought up in that faith and were intent on passing the traditions to me: Sunday school and Mass every week. The Rosary. The holy water. The Ten Commandments. Confession. They weren’t super-devout themselves, but they did want to give me a solid spiritual grounding, to teach me how to be honest and generous and good. I was an eager student. I didn’t just learn the Catholic Way. I completely embraced it. By middle school, I’d taken the whole Good Catholic Girl thing to its highest level.

  To be Catholic was to live by the rules—a slew of Thou Shalt Nots and Hail Marys. In our house, which had become increasingly tense, the guidelines gave me something to hold on to. Something to focus on. Something steady and unchanging. No matter how heated the arguments got, no matter how precarious my family’s situation seemed, I could always light a candle or review the catechism. I was convinced Catholicism was the answer to every problem, the one sure way to bring good things into your life. Gabriela, Sabrina, and Dana all went to my parish, Sacred Heart, which made showing up to parish all the sweeter. Not only did I feel close to God, but Catholicism also gave me a sense of community—of being part of something bigger and more significant than me alone.

  Papi frequently reminded me how I should behave. “Be careful how you talk to your mother,” he’d tell me if I snapped at her. “God is always watching you.” I came to know the Heavenly Father as, yes, the Great Protector, but also as the Ultimate Judge—one I feared deeply. I envisioned Him sitting up in heaven on His throne, scanning the Earth below with an all-powerful eye. Like Santa Claus, He knew who’d been naughty and who’d been nice, and He kept a record of it. Anyone who consistently disobeyed His commands and refused to repent would end up in hell. Starting when I was in second grade, I became keenly aware of this. If I, say, rolled my eyes at my teacher, I’d rush home, lock the bathroom door, cry, and then slap myself or pull my hair. It was my way of doling out punishment on myself before God could step in and do it.

  At age ten, I began preparing for my First Holy Communion—a huge deal among Latino Catholics. There were classes to complete. Verses to memorize. Prayers to recite. And I took it all on with the kind of enthusiasm that must have surprised and secretly delighted my parents. On the Sunday when I officially committed to the faith and accepted God into my life, I stood there beaming and dressed from head to toe in white before the congregation. I’d been baptized and confirmed. I’d received the Body of Christ (the bread) and the Blood of Christ (the grape juice). At the time, I actually thought it was wine. “I’m so drunk,” I’d tell my friends as I stumbled back to the pew. Afterward, at home, friends and neighbors gathered for a special dinner hosted by my mother and father. People gave me gifts and flowers. From then on, it was me, God, the Virgin Mary, and Saint Anthony—and as far as I could tell, I had everything to do with whether the four of us stayed tight.

  I prayed constantly. On my bed in the evenings, I’d pull out a small flashlight and look through my little New Testament that Mami had bought for me. After reading a few passages, I’d then squeeze my eyes real tight and ask God to keep my family safe; for some reason, probably because I’d watched one too many scary movie, I had this unreasonable fear that my parents would die. My favorite Hail Mary prayer was one I’d memorized in Sunday school: “Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén.” After that, I’d go on to make all my other usual requests. A little house, any house, one we could at last call our own. Citizenship for my family. That I could one day become a star. And, of course, that we’d forever stay together. If I sought God fervently enough, if I lived according to His principles and never strayed, He would reward my faithfulness by protecting my family. I believed that with all my heart. Every Good Catholic Girl does.

  * * *

  Papi continued paying the attorney each month, and whenever he checked in, he received a fresh assurance. “Things are looking good,” the man told my father. “We’re getting closer.” That was enough to keep my father’s heart rate steady, but my mother was starting to get antsy. “What’s taking so long?” she’d press. “We’ve been handing over money for months.” “Just be patient,” Papi told her. “It’ll happen.” For a while, Mami would chill, but then a couple of weeks later, she’d be stressing again. She wanted to do something more. She thought we should put as many irons as possible in the fire. So in spite of Papi’s pleas for her to slow down, she took a giant leap forward.

  Back when my parents were still living in New Jersey, Mami had reached out to a lawyer who promised to help her get a green card. She submitted papers for the agency to file on her behalf with the federal government, but before that was complete, she halted the process upon our move to Boston. “I should reopen the case,” she told Papi whenever he tried to convince her to await the outcome of the attorney’s efforts. “By the time you get your green card,” she told him, “I’ll also be close to having mine.”

  In the fall of 1997, Mami connected with a lawyer in Boston who reached back out to the lawyer in New Jersey, who pulled her file. “We still have your paperwork,” the New Jersey lawyer told Mami, “but it was never actually submitted to Immigration. You’ll just have to give us some updates, and then we can get started on your case again.” When Mami told Papi what she’d heard, he didn’t like the sound of it. “That was years ago that you filed those papers,” he told her. “There’s a whole new staff there now. How do they even know what was or wasn’t already submitted? And why don’t you just sit tight until I’m done with my papers, and then we can look into it?” But understandably, Mami was tired of biding time. She was beyond ready for our circumstance to shift—so she forged ahead.

  * * *

  I started sixth grade—and extracurriculars aside, the school was a bit of a hot ghetto mess, I’m not gonna lie. Dedicated administrators worked around the clock to pull students up to academic snuff, but they were battling what must’ve felt like an unwinnable war, because the issues that plagued our neighborhood showed up on campus. Fights broke out often. Students disrupted class by throwing paper planes and pencils at teachers. Some girls turned up pregnant. And tensions erupted between rival gang members who’d show up to school with knives. It all freaked me out. Of course, plenty of kids, like me, wanted to excel. But how can a teacher bring out the best in students when she’s simply trying to keep the peace?

  It’s not that my classmates were bad children. Looking back on it, I can see that many were discouraged. They’d given up on themselves. They were caught in a cycle of poverty and low expectations. When parents have little education, and struggle to keep food on the table, the American Dream feels pretty unreachable. And let’s keep it real: When you grow up in the hood, you’re not exactly on the fast track to Yale. But I kept my head down and got through it.

  On an afternoon during my spring semester, I came home ready to hit the books. Lily, one of Mami’s closest friends in the area, had stopped in to see her. The two were talking in the kitchen as Mami prepared dinner for the evening.

  “The strangest thing happened yesterday,” Mami told her.

  “What?” said Lily.

  “I heard someone knocking on our back window,” she said.

  “Who was it?”

  “I peeked through the blinds,” Mami said, “but I didn’t get a good look at him. Then he came around and knocked on the door.”

  “Did you open it?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I just yelled out, ‘Who is it?’”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He goes, ‘Ma’am, I’m here from your utilities company. We’re just checking things out.’ When I didn’t respond, he went away.”

  “Did you call for someone?” asked Lily.

  “That’s the thing,” Mami said. “I didn’t. And no one called to tell me someone would be stopping by.”

  Lily was quiet for a moment. �
��I’m sure it was nothing,” she finally said. “He was probably just checking your meters in the back of the house.” Mami nodded, and they went back to talking about how much they’d enjoyed the previous Sunday’s Mass.

  One morning about three weeks later, I arose super-early for school. I’d been working on a science project for our school fair, and because I needed to get it to class in one piece, Mami had agreed to drive me to campus. She dropped me off at around eight thirty a.m., and as she did, she tried to kiss me. “Mami, not here!” I snapped while pulling myself away. I’d reached that age when I didn’t want to be seen smooching my mother in public. “I hope it goes well today,” she said. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

  The project was a hit with my teachers. I’d tested the hypothesis that aspirin makes plants healthy and strong by growing two potted evergreens—one with aspirin water added, the other without it. The first was the clear winner. Its plentiful leaves were a deep green compared to the yellowish leaves of the other. “Good job, Diane,” said my science teacher. I grinned. Since science wasn’t exactly my thing, any “atta girl” felt like a high five straight from heaven. Wait until Mom hears, I thought. She’d helped me with the project.

  When I arrived at the front of the house, I immediately knew something was off. The door was cracked. Eric was peeking out of it. When I reached the entrance, he opened it and pulled me inside.

  “What’s going on?” I said. Lily was sitting on the sofa. Her eyes were red. She and Eric glanced at each other before he answered me.

  “It’s Mami,” he said. He paused.

  “What happened?” I asked, my pulse quickening. “Where’s Mami?”

  “She’s gone,” he said crisply. He looked down at the floor.

  I gazed at him. “Gone?” I repeated. “What do you mean gone?” I dropped my book bag at my feet. My palms trembled. So did my lips. “Is she dead?” I asked.

  “No, no, no,” Eric said, shaking his head from side to side. “She’s not dead. Immigration came and took her.”

  The room became blurry. I felt light-headed. My brother kept talking, but I couldn’t comprehend all that he was saying. I was in the Twilight Zone, or more like that Disneyworld ride, the Tower of Terror.

  “Are you even listening to me?” snapped Eric when he noticed how I was off in never-never land. His words jolted me back to the present. “Our mother is about to be deported,” he repeated. “She’s been locked up.”

  After Mami had dropped me off at school, she’d returned to the house to get her own morning under way. She went to her cleaning job. Afterward, she picked up some groceries. Eric’s car was in the shop for repairs, so Mami agreed to drive him to an appointment that afternoon. She stopped at the house again and picked up my brother. An hour later, just as Mami turned back onto our block, the police pulled her over. The man who emerged was no ordinary cop; he was an immigration officer—and he was the same man Mami had noticed creeping around our house. He opened her door and asked her to step out—and when she did, he asked her to put her hands up. “We have a warrant for your arrest, ma’am,” he told her as he slapped a set of handcuffs on her wrists. “You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Eric sat stunned and shivering in the front passenger seat. The officials didn’t even question him. They just took Mami away, and a moment later Eric got into the driver’s seat and pulled the car into our driveway. He first called Papi and told him to rush home from work. His second call was to Lily.

  Moments after I came in, Papi stormed through the door. He flung down his lunch box on the floor, looked directly at Eric, and shouted, “What happened?” Eric gave him the blow by blow, and as he did, I watched every bit of life drain from Papi’s cheeks. He was white by the time Eric got done speaking. If death itself had a face, it would’ve been my father’s in that moment. He had no words.

  The following hours were a blur. Papi went into his bedroom, yanked the door closed, and thought about what we were gonna do. Lily got down on the floor next to me and rubbed my back, trying to console me, but I cried even louder. “It’s okay,” she told me. “Everything will be fine.” When Papi emerged from his room a short time later, he told me something similar. “We’ll get through this,” he kept saying. But his eyes and demeanor betrayed him. With every fiber in me, I knew he was as terrified as I was—maybe even more.

  His conversation with Lily was proof of that. Later, in hushed tones in the kitchen, the two talked through the next best move. They thought they were whispering low enough to keep me from hearing. They were wrong.

  “What do you think we should do?” Papi asked. “Should we go to Jersey—and what if they come back for me tonight?” That question alone was enough to overtake my heart with a new wave of panic. What would happen to me if both my parents were taken?

  Lily sighed. “They might return,” she told him. “They know where you are now, and—”

  Papi interrupted. “But they knew where I was even before today,” he told her. “If they’d intended to arrest me, they would’ve done that this time. They know exactly where we live. It’s no secret.”

  Lily shook her head. “I don’t know,” she told him. “You probably shouldn’t stay here. It may not be safe.” I felt like I was Anne Frank, hiding from the Nazis. Next up: a nice cold attic and my very own diary to document the horror.

  But we did stay. My father’s theory was that Mami had put herself on the ICE’s radar when she’d restarted her paperwork. Although the agency claimed her paperwork had never been submitted to the feds, perhaps it had been. Maybe that “utilities guy” had really been someone from ICE sent to stake out the place. If Papi was correct, then Mami had been walking around with a target on her back for weeks. And as long as we laid low, he figured they would leave the three of us alone.

  None of us slept a wink that night. Nor the next. Nor the one after that. “Padre Nuestro,” I’d whisper to God as I lay awake on my bed, “please help us.” I recited every single prayer and Scripture I’d ever memorized. I racked my brain about whether I might’ve done something, anything, to bring the Lord’s wrath on us. I’d had a bit of an attitude with Mami that morning. Could that have been it? Or had I committed some other sin I hadn’t repented for? All through the evening and into daybreak, I heard every single sound in the neighborhood. A barking dog. A passing car. An alarm going off in the neighbor’s house upstairs. With every shadow across the walls, with every slip of a key into a dead bolt, I feared the police had returned for the rest of us.

  * * *

  “Everything okay, Diane?” my teacher asked, leaning in to whisper to me. A few moments before, he’d asked the class to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I was usually the first on my feet; I loved the pledge, and given the fact that I’ve always been the only American in my family, it had always had a special meaning for me. But on this morning, I stood, zombie-like, and mouthed the words as if my head was on another planet. The teacher had noticed.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little tired.”

  I told none of my teachers that my mother had been taken. In fact, I didn’t reveal it to anyone at school. Only my closest friends knew what had happened, and frankly, if I could’ve kept it from them, I might’ve. That’s how mortified I was. With Mami gone, there was no one to watch me after school. This meant I went straight from campus to either Gabriela’s or Sabrina’s house until my father could pick me up from there. Before, I would sometimes go over to my friends’ houses after school to do homework together, but this felt different—and awkward. I just wanted to be home. I felt out of place. Girl in hiding. WTF.

  A day after Mami had been taken, she called. From Papi’s side of the conversation, I pieced together the details. She’d already been taken to a women’s facility in New Hampshire, and within weeks she’d be deported from there. “Yes, we thought about moving,” Papi told her. I was surprised to hear them talking so candidly since Mami was on a prison phone. “
But I don’t think they’ll return. And besides that, I don’t really have the money to move right now.” Right before Mami’s arrest, Papi had just made a double payment to the attorney. Toward the end of the call, Papi handed me the phone. “Your mother wants to talk to you,” he said. I took the receiver.

  Before Mami could say a word, I began to sob. “It’s okay, Diane,” Mami said. Why the hell does everyone keep telling me it’s okay? I understood that she, my dad, and Lily were all just trying to make me feel better about the situation. But the more they tried to assure me that the world was right side up when it had clearly gone to hell, the more agitated I became.

  “You’re going to be fine,” she went on. “Your father is taking care of everything. I just have to go away to Colombia for a while. This is all going to work out.”

  She paused and drew in a breath. “Diane?” she said.

  “Yes?” I said, sniffling.

  “Why don’t you come to Colombia with me?”

  I froze. I’d never even fathomed the idea of a life away from Boston. Away from America. Away from the only country I’d ever lived in. Although I’d grown up hearing plenty about my parents’ homeland, it felt more like a concept than a real place; it was a world far, far away, one we couldn’t even visit because of my parents’ in-limbo status. I was also really scared to leave my father and brother alone without me there to referee.

  “No, Mami,” I said, my voice shaking. “I can’t go with you. I have to stay here with Papi.”

  The line went dead silent. “Take care of yourself, honey,” Mami finally said. “I love you. I’ll see you again when I can.”

  In the following days as I watched my father slide from devastation into despondence, one thing became clear to me: Papi blamed Mami for her arrest. And if I’m being honest about it, so did I. Behind his closed bedroom door, Papi argued with my mother nightly. Why hadn’t she left well enough alone? Why did she need to go sniffing around for those papers? Why hadn’t she listened to him? And why did she have to go around being the neighborhood socialite, letting anyone and everyone know our business? “You’re too open,” he told her. “Just too damn friendly. Maybe it was that stupid paperwork that got you caught—but it also could’ve been someone around here who secretly wanted to take us down.” Those were harsh words, especially for a woman sitting in prison, but our family was falling apart. The stakes were high and the pain was raw. The mix of panic and fury came spewing out like untreated sewage. This wasn’t the time for politeness or niceties. We were in crisis mode.