In the Country We Love Page 7

  The first time we went to visit her, it wasn’t exactly a sweet reunion. She was obviously thrilled to be back—“I can’t believe I’m here with you again!” she kept saying as she hugged me—but honestly, I had mixed feelings. Of course, I’d missed her. I’d yearned to have her close again. But now that I had my wish, I wasn’t so sure I wanted it anymore. Papi and I had established our rhythm, and Mami’s reentry felt like an interruption. Really, I was just scared. Scared that I would be disappointed again, and I didn’t think my heart could take it. Our weekends consisted of Papi and I driving all the way to Jersey. Very unsettling.

  The visits were tense at first. Papi and Mami tried not to argue in front of me, but that didn’t last long. I heard all the dirt: Papi was still furious about how careless Mami had been in requesting that paperwork and walking the kiddies to school. And while he knew how deeply she missed us, he didn’t approve of her methods for getting back into the country. She wanted to come back to Boston briefly, but Papi flat-out refused. “If you’re going to return,” he told her, “then we need to move again and stay out of view.” I didn’t want to get in the middle of that argument. I just wanted our family to be normal. For once.

  Mami eventually convinced Papi that we should all reunite in Boston. Truth is, even amid their bickering and the chaos, their love for each other was still strong. He missed having her around as much as I did. So after Mami had been back in the country for a few weeks, Papi and I moved from that basement into a two-family house in Roxbury. It wasn’t very far away, but at least we wouldn’t be at the same address if ICE turned up again. Mami moved in with us shortly after that, and from there, things started to look up. The new place was large enough for me to have my own room. At last, I got my stuff out of all those boxes. And within days of Mami’s return, Papi’s funk began gradually lifting. There were reentry speed bumps, of course. Mami didn’t like some of the new friends I’d made in the area and let me know it. I was like, “Excuse me, but you can’t tell me what to do.” She got that message loud and clear and backed off.

  It didn’t take long for things to get back to normal—whatever normal is in a story like mine. By February of my eighth-grade year, she and Papi seemed more connected than ever. They argued, but with Eric gone, there was a lot less to fight about. Papi was still feeling quite hopeful about the lawyer; he’d assured us that, even with Mami’s troubles, he could continue moving forward on Papi’s case. And I was loving my room. Because we were in a different house—and, I hoped, out of reach of the ICE—I felt safe enough to actually sleep at night. Maybe I’d done something right. Something good. Something pleasurable to the Father above. Or maybe He’d simply chosen to look past my faults and reunite my family despite them.

  Right to left: Gabriela, me, and Dana at our eighth-grade graduation.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Plan

  I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

  Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.

  —MAYA ANGELOU, poet and novelist

  “You all right, sweetie?” I sat, doubled over with my face in my palms, in the office of my guidance counselor. Near the close of the school day, I’d come by for our scheduled appointment. What was supposed to be a quick check-in had turned into a cry fest.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I stammered, using my shirtsleeve to wipe my cheek. The counselor, an older woman with teased brown hair, reached for a box of tissues on her desk. She pulled one out and handed it to me.

  “It’s okay, Diane,” she said. “Let’s go over your choices again.”

  In May 1999, two short months from that day in the counselor’s office, I’d be done with eighth grade—which meant it was time for me to choose a high school. And if you think my middle school sounded like a scene out of American Gangster, multiply that times three for some of the area’s public secondary schools. By seventh or eighth grade, many of my peers had already fallen through the cracks. Teachers spent too much class time dealing with smart-mouthed punks. Students dropped out by the month. Those who wanted to do well were picked on. All of it made me more determined not to be the next statistic. So on the first day of that year, I’d gotten a spot on my counselor’s calendar, plopped myself down in a seat across from her, and begun strategizing my way out.

  “What about a charter or private school?” she had suggested. If accepted to the latter, she explained, I’d likely qualify for a strong financial aid package. Good idea. That fall, I had applied to not one. Not two. Not three. But six schools. Meanwhile, I lifted my grades from so-so to admirable. Those efforts, however, weren’t enough to significantly improve my overall GPA; it was too little too late. On the Friday that February when I stopped in to see the counselor, I’d come carrying my sixth rejection letter. I was fresh out of options—and no amount of cooing, comforting, and tissues could change that.

  “You know what, Diane?” she said, her face brightening.

  “What?” I muttered without looking at her.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier,” she said, “but I know something else we could try.”

  I stopped sniveling, sat all the way up, and stared at her. “What?” I asked.

  “There’s this performing arts school that opened a couple years back,” she said. She sifted through a stack of brochures on her desk and pulled out a leaflet. “Here it is,” she said. “It’s the Boston Arts Academy.”

  The pamphlet’s front cover pictured a young man playing the violin and another one painting; in a third photo, a girl was in a dance pose. The counselor handed me the brochure, and I leafed through it a page at a time. “Has the application deadline passed?” I asked. This looked too good to be true; there had to be a catch.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, turning to her computer screen. She brought up Google and typed in the school’s name. A few clicks later, she had an answer. “You’re in luck,” she told me. “It says here that the audition deadline is still three weeks away.”

  I raised my eyebrows and sat forward. “You mean I have to audition?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” she said, chuckling. “You’ll have to try out. But you love to sing. You’d be a great candidate for this.”

  With the pamphlet in my backpack, I left the counselor’s office and headed to the library. There, on a public computer, I read up on Boston Arts Academy (which, I learned, was the city’s only public high school for the visual and performing arts). I stayed just a few minutes because I knew Mami would be expecting me home before dinner. “How was your day?” she asked when I shuffled through the door. “Fine,” I responded. I kept the new possibility to myself because I didn’t want to jinx it.

  That evening, long after Mami and Papi said good night, I pulled out a blue journal I kept hidden under my pillow. I turned to a center page and wrote two large words across the top: “My Audition.” Beneath the heading, I scribbled every song I’d imagined performing. I could do some Mariah Carey, I thought. Or maybe a Broadway show tune. The list stretched on for pages until, my eyelids heavy with exhaustion, I drifted off into my dream world.

  * * *

  Eric was doing well in New Jersey—at least at first. With the encouragement of my uncle, he’d nailed down a few handyman gigs and begun studying for the GED. But then as he was regaining his balance, trouble erupted. One morning when he was on his way to work, metal toolbox in hand, he stopped at a convenience store. As he was leaving, three dudes pulled up, jumped from their car, and attacked him. The guys surrounded him, pummeling his head with their fists. Eric, who thought he was being robbed, desperately tried to defend himself by flinging his toolbox at them. A passerby called 911. When the police arrived, they arrested all four. Although the three other guys had been the perpetrators, they pressed assault charges against Eric. A court date was set.

  On the scheduled day, none of the attackers appeared before the judge. Eric’s court-appointed attorney suggested what he thought was
the best legal strategy. “Just sign this paper and say you were stalking them,” he told Eric. “Stalking is a misdemeanor—and you’ll be able to walk free.” My brother took that advice. What he didn’t know is that Gloria, who was considering divorce, had put a hold on his citizenship application. Without the protection of her sponsorship, Eric’s “misdemeanor” was grounds for his automatic deportation; in immigration law, stalking is considered a felony.

  Days after he scrawled his signature on that plea, Eric was shackled, put into a detention center, and shipped back to Colombia. It all happened so quickly that Mami, Papi, and I didn’t get to visit him before his departure. I last saw my brother in this country in 1999—the spring of my eighth-grade year.

  Mami was crushed. Her only son, her firstborn—the child she’d brought to America with a hope shared by millions of parents—had lost his footing.

  “I wish we could’ve done more,” she said to Papi through tears on the day of Eric’s deportation. “I hate the way things turned out.”

  “We did what we could,” Papi told her. “It was out of our hands.”

  I had mixed feelings. I was heartbroken that my big brother had become so disenchanted with his life here. That he’d grown up not knowing his own father. That he always felt like the odd child out in our family. That even once he turned himself around in New Jersey, hard luck knocked him to his knees. I was also sad about some of his choices, like getting caught up with a rowdy crowd. When you’re undocumented in the United States, you don’t get a pass under the heading of “youthful indiscretion.” Eric knew that as well as anyone did. But like all of us, he’s human. He faltered. And, instead of his mistakes bringing him a slap on the wrist, they cost him his opportunity for citizenship.

  In the months after Eric was gone, I missed him terribly. I had finally gotten my own room, but that didn’t feel very satisfying without Eric around. I longed for our afternoons down at the pizza joint. Our Sunday Fox marathons. Those times when he’d pick me up, hug me real tight, and then swing me around until I pleaded, through giggles, for him to put me down. And yet, as much as I wished that he’d remained here, a truth, one unspoken but understood among us all, hung in the space left by my brother. With Eric back in Colombia, Mami and Papi, with one less child to provide for, would have a stronger chance at their most fervent prayer. Mine, hidden away in the pages of a blue notebook, would remain my secret for a while longer.

  * * *

  Papi never missed a payment. Not one. For months, he dutifully gave the lawyer his fee, using the money he’d scrambled together with weekend janitorial and factory work. Before and after her deportations, Mami took on extra babysitting and housecleaning. In anticipation of a fresh start, my parents also ramped up their skills. Papi tried yet another English course at the community college; my mother enrolled in a computer course. When they could, they’d double up on the installments so they could speed up the application. And every couple of weeks, my father, increasingly eager to get things settled, called to check on his case.

  “How’s it looking?” he’d ask the attorney. “Are we getting close?”

  “I can’t say for sure,” the guy often told him, “but it shouldn’t be much longer, probably a few more months. We’re making good progress.” That exchange was typically followed by a request for us to complete more forms. We filled out enough of them to wipe out a forest.

  On the heels of Eric’s deportation, Papi became laser-focused on moving ahead. He called the law office frequently. One week, he left two messages for the guy. His calls went unreturned, which was strange since the guy usually rang back within a day. “He’s probably out of town,” Mami told my dad. “I’m sure everything’s fine.” The next week, Papi called again. When he still didn’t get a response, he had me call. More silence. That’s when my father chose a different approach. “Come on, Diane,” he said to me one afternoon. “Let’s go see him.”

  Through the sliding doors and up the elevator, Papi didn’t say much; by the way he kept wringing his hands, I could tell he was nervous. The walk down that corridor, which had always been long, now seemed to stretch into eternity. When we got close to the legal office, I immediately noticed something odd. The lawyer’s nameplate was missing. Papi and I glanced at each other, not sure what to make of it. My dad placed his palm on the door’s handle and turned it to the left. It was unlocked. We entered.

  The room was dark. When Papi flipped on the switch, fluorescent light flooded the space. Dad lumbered to the center of the empty office and looked around. The lawyer’s desk was gone. In a corner sat a stack of cardboard boxes and some rolls of packing tape. Old newspapers lay scattered across the floor. Except for the nail upon which the Lady Justice picture had hung, the walls were totally bare. I turned to Papi, whose brown eyes widened. He put his hand on his head. “No le puedo creer,” he murmured almost inaudibly. “I can’t believe it.”

  A moment later, Papi rushed back to the door, pulled it open, and darted into the hall; I trailed. Several paces down, he stopped in front of a dental practice and rang a bell to the right of the entrance. Once we heard a buzz, we opened the door and stumbled inside. In the lobby, a secretary, this elderly Irish woman in reading glasses and with a poodle-curl perm, looked up from her clipboard.

  “May I help you, sir?” she said in a heavy New England accent.

  Papi stared over at me—which was my cue to become his spokeswoman. “Um,” I said, “do you know that lawyer at the end of the hall?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “What about him?”

  “Well,” I said, “his office is cleared out. We’re wondering where he is.”

  She squinted at me over the top edge of her reading glasses. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I think I saw some moving guys here last week.” With that, she returned her attention to her clipboard.

  We walked back to the legal office as if, supernaturally, the attorney might’ve appeared. My father paced across the floor and slowly looked from one corner to the next. “How could this happen?” he repeated, his voice quivering more each time he said the words. “I don’t understand. Ayúdame Dios.” His eyes filled with water. He then looked over at me and said, “Let’s go.”

  Later, at home, in a moment I’d wish upon no child, I saw my papi, my rock, crumble before my eyes. “Why?” he said over and over. He kept rubbing his head in disbelief. He simply could not believe he’d been taken advantage of in this way—and especially in front of his little girl. So emasculating. What kind of hope could he offer his family? His daughter? Seeing my father in that state broke my heart. My sweet dad had been hoodwinked by this monster. In a feeble attempt to console him, I whispered, “It’s okay, Papi. I’m sure we can figure this out.”

  Even as those words passed from my lips, I knew they weren’t true. There was no way out of this mess. My parents had forked over thousands of dollars, close to everything they had. For nearly two years, Papi had worked like a dog to improve our family’s position, believing that, at the end of that push, he’d find himself on the verge of a better existence. Instead, what he found was an abandoned office. A crooked lawyer who’d strung him along with broken promises. And little money left to his name.

  I lowered myself onto the carpet and scooted right next to Papi. I put my arms around his neck, and, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I embraced him for the longest time. I cried not just because my daddy’s last-ditch effort at citizenship had fallen apart. Mostly I cried because someone I cared for so much, someone I’d watched fight with everything in him, was hurting beyond words. In some ways, the heartache we feel for our loved ones is deeper, rawer, than any we could feel for ourselves. Witnessing my father in such despair still haunts me to this day.

  Papi tried an old number he had for the lady who’d put us in touch with the attorney. She didn’t answer. Later, in talking with others around the neighborhood, Papi found out that this woman was actually working for this fake lawyer; for each unsuspecting and vulnerable undocume
nted worker she’d bring him, he gave her five hundred dollars. And the Harvard degree? That was all made up. Thanks, bitch.

  Dinner that evening was the most quiet in the history of our house. Mami sat stone-faced and sullen, as if there’d been a death, and in a way, there had been. “Are you sure he wasn’t there?” she asked my father several times. She couldn’t accept that we’d been scammed again. “Maybe he’s coming back,” she said. “You should go over there again tomorrow.” Dad didn’t respond. He got up from the table and left his meal half-eaten. I stared down at my food and said nothing. When you’re back at the starting line of a race you have no reason to think you’ll complete, there isn’t much to talk about.

  Later that night, I could feel his pain through the walls that separated our rooms. He wept not just for himself, but for me. How could he protect me if he couldn’t protect himself? My father felt helpless—and on that evening as I struggled to get to sleep, so did I.

  Sabrina and me on July 21, 2000, in Dedham, Massachusetts. My first grown-up birthday dinner at Uno’s with the girls. Picture credit: Gabriela V.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ground Shift

  If you’re never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances.

  —JULIA SOREL, novelist

  A week after my family’s devastation, my audition for Boston Arts Academy came around. I finally told Mami about my plans to apply. “Wow, that’s wonderful!” she said. As always, she was excited for me. She’d often call me her hormiguita de bulevar, which means “little ant of the boulevard.” I was always on the move, searching for fulfillment and ready and open to opportunity. But then, when I was about to give her details of the audition, the phone rang—it was about my brother—and my excitement took a back burner.