The Book of Unknown Americans: A novel (14 page)

“
WHAT
’
S WRONG
?” Arturo asked that night while we sat at the kitchen table—that ridiculous stolen kitchen table—drinking manzanilla tea, as we did most nights after Maribel went to bed.

I looked at him, startled, as if he had woken me from a dream. “What do you mean?”

“You’re so quiet,” he said.

“I was thinking.”

“About what?”

I hadn’t told him what had happened. I wasn’t going to tell him. I didn’t want him to know that I had failed Maribel again. Besides, she was okay. I had asked her what the boy had done—if he had kissed her, if he had touched her, if he had hurt her—and she shook her head no. He had pushed her against the wall. He was
going
to do something. That was clear. But I had gotten there in time. And when I inspected her, examining every visible part of her body, there were no scratches, no marks of any kind. She’s okay, I told myself, with a certain, strange relief. I tried to focus on that instead of on the other part of me that chimed, “This time.”

“Alma?” Arturo prodded.

“I was thinking about Maribel,” I said. It felt like a way of telling the truth.

At the sound of her name, he softened. “She’s doing better, no? The reports from school—”

“Yes.”

“But you’re worried?” Arturo asked.

I attempted a smile. “No.”

“You’re worried about something.”

I stared at him and shook my head lightly.

“Yes, you are. You worry about everything. You’re a true mexicana. A fatalist.”

“As if you don’t worry about things.”

“Of course. But I’ve been thinking. What if God wants us to be happy? What if there’s nothing else around the bend? What if all our unhappiness is in the past and from here on out we get an uncomplicated life? Some people get that, you know. Why shouldn’t it be us?”

I flattened my hand against the table, spreading my fingers out. It was a lovely thought, but hearing Arturo’s optimism bubble to the surface, hearing the rawness of it, was excruciating.

“You have to think like a gringa now,” Arturo said. “You have to believe that you’re entitled to happiness.”

I took a small sip of tea, feeling the warmth of it bloom in my mouth. Outside, the wind howled and sent the tops of the leafless trees casting back and forth in the night. Soon it would be Christmas, and all at once I wished that we were back in Pátzcuaro, where Christmases were warm and thick with the scent of cinnamon, where piñatas filled with oranges and sugar canes hung from the rafters, and where children paraded through the
streets carrying paper farolitos in their small hands. I wished we were anywhere but here—geographically, emotionally. I wished our life was different, that it was what it used to be.

Two years ago, only six months before the accident, my parents had come over for Christmas Eve dinner, bringing Maribel a dress from Diseño y Artesanía that my mother insisted they wanted to give her.

Maribel had made the buñuelos that year because, at fourteen, she wanted to prove her independence and her capabilities. She first claimed she wanted to make the tamales and revoltijo de romeritos, but I argued they were too complicated. Besides, they were the main part of the meal. I thought, If they don’t turn out, what will we eat? I told her, “Maybe you can make the buñuelos.” Buñuelos had what? Flour, sugar, salt, eggs, milk, butter, baking powder, cinnamon. No more, no less. How bad could they be?

Early in the morning, she got out a bowl and fork.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m making my buñuelos.”

“Already? They don’t take more than half an hour to prepare.”

“I know.”

“Do you also know that it’s eight thirty in the morning?”

“Yep.”

“But we’re not eating them until tonight.”

“Mami,” she said, putting her hand on her hip.

“Maribel,” I said, putting my hand on my hip the same way.

She rolled her eyes.

“Come back around six,” I said, shooing her out of the kitchen. “I’ll be finished by then and you can have the kitchen to yourself.”

At six on the dot, she came back and announced, “Buñuelo time!”

I was wiping down the counter. My food was ready, heaped into bowls that I’d covered with foil and put in the refrigerator. “Do you want my help?” I asked.

“You told me I could make them.”

“You can. I’m just asking if you want help.”

I knew the answer, though, when she pulled out a bowl, set it on the counter, and lined up her ingredients next to it.

“So you know where everything is?” I asked, before I left her alone.

“Mami,” she said, “I live here. I’ve lived here all my life.”

“That doesn’t help your father,” I said. “Try asking him where anything is.”

Maribel dipped a finger in the sugar and licked it.

“Okay,” I said. “Call if you need anything.”

From the next room I could hear her humming as she measured and poured and stirred. I heard drawers opening and closing, and the clank of spoons against the inside of bowls. I heard the dough hit the counter and her little grunts as she kneaded it and rolled it out. I was sewing a button onto one of Arturo’s work shirts when she walked out with flour on her chin.

“Are they done?” I asked.

She sat next to me and laid her floured hand on top of my knee. “It’s going well,” she said solemnly, as if she were a doctor who had emerged from the operating room to deliver an update.

She disappeared again, and I heard the crackle of the oil as it heated and the sighing sizzle as she dropped the flattened discs of dough in one by one. She’s doing it, I thought. My girl.

My parents came over for dinner that night and we ate, flush
with the merriment of the season. After everyone was finished, Maribel hurried into the kitchen, where her buñuelos waited on an oval platter covered by a dish towel. She brought them out proudly and, like a perfect hostess, carried the plate around, holding it over each person’s shoulder while they helped themselves to the desserts. The buñuelos were golden brown, and the cinnamon Maribel had sprinkled on the top of each while they were still warm had melted into the dough like tiny amber crystals.

“You made these?” Arturo asked in disbelief.

“All by myself,” Maribel said.

Arturo looked at me.

“She did,” I confirmed.

“They look wonderful,” my mother said.

And I saw Maribel, looking over all of us, her face ripe with pride. I saw her growing up before me. I saw the family she would have one day and the food she would make for them. I saw her entire life in front of her, waiting.

I hadn’t had a run-in with Garrett since I’d stood up to him that day with Maribel. I’d seen him around, hanging out alone behind the school, scratching at the sidewalk with a rock, flicking pebbles at the tires of the buses as they lined up to take everyone home. I’d seen him slouched in the hall, his hands in his coat pockets, staring at his scuffed boots. And I’d seen him during gym even though he never got changed anymore. He showed up in his regular clothes, and Mr. Samuels would say, “You don’t get dressed, you don’t participate,” and Garrett would shrug and plant himself on the wood bleachers and close his eyes for the next forty-five minutes while we ran around shooting basketballs and learning badminton.

Then one day, just before the winter break, I was digging a notebook out of my locker when I heard someone say, “How’s birdbrain?”

I turned around.

“How’s your girlfriend?” Garrett asked. “Retard girl.”

“Don’t call her that,” I said.

“What? ‘Girlfriend’ or ‘retard’?”

“I told you to leave her alone,” I said.

“You did?” He screwed his face into an exaggerated look of confusion.

I put the notebook in my backpack, shut my locker, and started walking.

“Hey!” Garrett called. He trotted up beside me and grabbed my arm, yanking me so that I was facing him again. “I was still talking to you.”

“I need to go,” I said, trying to pull my arm free.

“She a good lay? I bet she is. I bet you can do whatever you want to a girl like that.”

“Stop it.”

“I’ve been thinking about all the things I could do to her. Tell her to take her clothes off—”

“Stop.”

“Have her suck my dick—”

And that’s when I punched him. I’d never punched anyone in my life, but before I knew it, I squeezed my hand shut, drew back my elbow, and punched Garrett right in the side of the neck. I’d been aiming for his face, but I missed.

“Jesus!” he shouted, falling back.

Then he ran at me, throwing his arms around my waist, ramming his head into my stomach, tackling me to the floor.

“Get off me!” I yelled.

Garrett socked me so hard I could taste blood in my mouth. All his weight was on top of me, pinning me to the floor. Very dimly, I was aware of a small crowd forming around us.

Garrett nailed me a few more times, in the chest and the ribs, before Mr. Baker, the driver’s ed instructor, broke it up. “That’s enough,” he said, prying us apart. “Up on your feet, boys.”

Garrett shook Mr. Baker off and paced in a tight circle. Mr. Baker snatched Garrett’s coat sleeve. “Settle down,” he said.

I put my hand to my mouth and felt my bloodied lip, split right down the center. What had just happened? Had I really punched him? But instead of feeling pain or any kind of remorse, I felt exhilarated.

“Principal’s office for both of you,” Mr. Baker said, still working to corral Garrett. “And then we’re calling both of your parents.”

Garrett spat out a laugh.

“Something funny, Mr. Miller?”

“Good luck with that.”

“With what?”

“Listen, you talk to my dad, do me a favor and ask him where the fuck he’s been. I haven’t seen him in three days.”

Mr. Baker took a deep breath. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to sort this all out.”

THE SCHOOL WANTED
my parents to come in for a conference.

“What is this about?” my dad asked when my mom mentioned it that afternoon. She had intercepted him at the door when he got home from work.

“We need to go meet with his teachers,” my mom explained.

“All of his teachers?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just the guidance counselor. But I told them we would come in as soon as you got home. Someone’s there waiting for us.”

I was standing by my bedroom door, out of view, but I could hear everything my parents were saying. I had gone straight to my room when I came home, holding my phone over my mouth as I walked through the apartment, trying to hide my swollen, cracked lip from my mom, and I hadn’t come out since. The school nurse had wanted to clean off the blood, but I’d begged her to leave it alone, and now I kept looking at it, dried and crusty, in the mirror, in amazement.

“Now?” my dad said.

“They want to see us as soon as possible.”

My dad sighed. “Is he in there?”

“He’s in his room. But he won’t tell me anything. We can talk to him when we get home. Come on, let’s go.”

“Don’t push me.”

“We need to go.”

I knew my mom was trying to guide my dad out the door, probably thumping him on the leg with her purse.

My dad shouted into the apartment, “What did you do, Mayor?” before I heard the door click shut.

An hour and a half later I was sitting on my bed, awaiting my fate, when my dad stomped down the hallway and swung open the door to my room. He wasn’t a huge guy, but he was breathing in a way that seemed to inflate him, and he stood there staring at me, his neck bent over, his arms down at his sides. I swallowed hard. In the time that he and my mom had been gone, I’d talked myself into the idea that maybe my dad would be proud of me—just a little bit—when he found out I’d gotten into a fight. Maybe it proved I had a little bit of machismo in me after all. Plus, it was something that not even Enrique had ever done, at least not that I knew of. But now, seeing my dad’s face, I could tell that idea was out the window. Silence festered in the room. I swallowed again, trying to get down the saliva that had collected in my mouth.

My dad closed the door behind him. He paced in front of me, breathing like a bull. I sat on my hands and stared at my knees.

After what must have been five full minutes, I said, “What?”

My dad stopped pacing and looked at me like I had just broken the first rule of engagement. Like I should have known that I wasn’t supposed to talk first.

“What?” my dad repeated incredulously. “What? I’ll tell you what. You punched someone.”

“He deserved it!”

My dad started pacing again and suddenly, somehow, I knew that the fight wasn’t the thing that was bothering him.

After another long stretch of silence, he said, “Your counselor told us your grades are slipping.”

I hung my head. So that’s what this was about. I’d been spending so much time with Maribel lately that I hadn’t really been focused on things like homework.

But then my dad said, “I asked her if it was because you were spending too much time at soccer.”

Something dropped through me like a runaway elevator. Shit, I thought. Shit, shit, shit. My dad was still pacing. I tried to steel myself for whatever was coming next. There was a distinct possibility, I thought, that he was going to hit me. Not that he’d ever done it before—he’d thrown things and kicked things—but I sometimes had the sense when he got angry that he was only about an inch away from getting physical, as if so far over the years, even though the thought might have crossed his mind, he’d been able to control himself, but that if he were pushed too far into the fire, there would be no stopping him.

“You lied,” he said.

I nodded.

“This whole time.”

I nodded again.

My dad worked his jaw from side to side. “This whole time!”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You made me look like a fool tonight! Is that what you think I am? A fool?”

“No,” I squeaked.

“I thought you were out there, every day, playing, part of the team. But what have you been doing instead? Drugs? Drinking?”

“No!”

“How can I know?”

“I’m not, Papi.”