The Governor's Wife (7 page)

How the hell was the State of Texas supposed to educate so many poor, pregnant, non-English-speaking kids?

But the law required the state try, so Texas schools didn't just employ 330,000 teachers; they also employed 330,000 cops, social workers, nurses, counselors, ESL (English as a second language) facilitators, tutors, administrators, school bus drivers, janitors, and cooks. Schools now served free breakfast, lunch, and dinner, administered achievement tests and flu shots, supplied textbooks and toothbrushes, offered classes in math and parenting, and provided pregnancy counseling and childcare. Public schools had become social agencies sucking billions from the state budget. But the education activists—including his wife—wanted even more money. "Educate or incarcerate," she always said, and he knew in his heart that she was right. But he also knew a harsh political fact of life: there was no more money for these children.

The State of Texas was broke.

He turned back to the book and read another passage—the little llama named Lloyd now thought a kangaroo might be his mama—then again showed his audience the picture, which evoked another loud "Aah" and "
canguro
" from the kids. They were bright-faced and wide-eyed and seemed to be enjoying themselves, English-language skills notwithstanding. A few listened intently, but most were too busy eating peanut butter crackers and sucking on juice boxes to pay attention. At the back of the classroom, two cameras captured the moment; one was from a local TV station, the other from a private production studio. These kids didn't know it, but they would soon be starring in a "Bode Bonner for Governor" commercial.

Mandy had arrived early to set up the event. She chatted with the TV reporter and checked the production camera to ensure the angle caught Bode in his best light; she looked incredibly sexy in a skintight knit dress, the perky blonde cheerleader-turned-political aide. He wondered if she had any underwear on.

Jim Bob stood in the corner, as if he'd been put in time-out with an iPhone. He seemed pleased. Because he had dreamed up another brilliant campaign photo op: the Republican governor reading to a bunch of kids. And not rich white kids in West Austin, but poor brown and black kids in East Austin. West of Interstate 35 was downtown, the State Capitol, the Governor's Mansion, lakefront estates, and rich white people; east of the interstate was the city dump, crime, and poor black and brown people. Democrats. The Republican governor had a sneaking suspicion that his political strategist had intentionally sent the governor's wife out of town so he'd have to read to these kids. He looked back down at the book and read the final passage when the little llama finally found his mama llama.

" ' "
My
mama's a … llama! And this is … the end." ' "

Praise the Lord. Bode turned the book so the kids could see the picture of the mama llama cuddling the little llama. One kid pointed at the book and said, "
Un camello
." The others nodded.

Un camello?
A camel?

"No, no, it's not a camel," Bode said. "It's a llama."

Their faces were blank.

"
Una llama
," he said, even though he had no idea if that were the correct translation.

From his audience: "Aah."

"
¡Un libro más!
" one cute little girl with dangly loop earrings said.

Un …
one
… más
… more …
libro
… book? She wanted him to read another book? Not only no, but hell no.

"Oh, I'd love to, kids, but the governor's got to take care of some real important state business."

The teacher, a sweet-faced young woman named Ms. Rodriguez, stepped to the front of the classroom and said, "Well, Governor, that was, uh … that was wonderful. Thank you so much for visiting our class today. Children, let us thank the governor with a big round of applause."

The kids didn't make a move.

So she said, "
Niños, dénle un fuerte aplauso al gobernador.
"

Now they clapped—as if they'd been told they had to come to school that Saturday. The teacher forced a smile for Bode.

"Thank you, Governor. I am sorry Mrs. Bonner could not come today. She has adopted our school, as you know—"

He didn't know.

—"and spends entire days in my classroom, tutoring the children, trying to teach them English."

So that's what she did with her days while he played golf with lobbyists.

Ms. Rodriguez's soft brown eyes took in her charges, now experiencing a collective sugar high from the juice: the boys, booger-farming, butt-scratching, crotch-grabbing, pushing and shoving and taunting—

"
¡Cabrón!
"

Ms. Rodriguez's eyes flashed dark.

"Ricardo!"

She glared at the boy and put a finger sharply to her lips, as if to say, Watch your mouth!

—and the girls, twirling around in their fluffy dresses or colorful sweat suits and singing
Tejano
tunes and smelling of perfume.

"I love these children," she said, her face back to sweet.

"You do?"

"Yes. In my classroom, they are my children."

Ms. Rodriguez sighed, and her shoulders sagged. She seemed older now.

"Of course, I often think I am their mother. I have them from seven in the morning until seven at night. They come for the free breakfast and stay for the free dinner. They are on welfare and WIC and CHIPS, but they have the manicured nails and the pierced ears and the new Nike sneakers and their parents have the iPhones and drive the fancy pickup trucks with the silver wheels and they all have the satellite TV. Most are undocumented, as my parents were, but my parents sacrificed so I could go to college and have a better life. I do not think these children will have a better life."

She bit her lower lip, and Bode thought she might cry.

"Thank you, Governor, for caring about these children. Mrs. Bonner, she has told me how much you care. As she says, 'If we do not educate them, we will certainly have to incarcerate them.' I look at them each day and wonder who will be educated in twelve years and who will be incarcerated. I am afraid that more will be in prison than in college. That saddens me. I know it saddens you as well."

She planted her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around him.

Bode felt terribly uncomfortable. The truth of the matter was, he hadn't thought about these kids in that way. He thought of them as a budget item—an item that was ballooning out of control, just like the defense budget at the federal level. And just as the president would be committing political suicide if he cut the defense budget, Bode Bonner would be committing political suicide if he cut the education budget. That would mean he didn't care. So, like every governor before him, he had thrown billions more at education to prove he cared. But for what? Half of these kids would drop out before graduation to get a job, join a gang, go to prison, or have a baby. He took one last glance around the classroom and wondered how the State of Texas could ever spend enough money to make the public schools work. How could any state? It was depressing, another aspect of the job he didn't much care for.

Ms. Rodriguez hung tight.

He patted her back but desperately hoped to escape her grasp and this classroom without her tears or the kids' peanut butter fingers all over his Armani suit. But when she finally released him, Mandy herded the little rugrats around him for the cameras.

"Come on, kids, we'll make a memory," she said in her perky voice. "I'll send your teacher a photograph for your classroom."

The kids gathered close and put their sticky hands all over his suit, which now looked like an Armani peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the jelly. Memories were made, and Bode was brushing the peanut butter off his coat when a black boy, taller than the others and wearing brand new Air Jordan sneakers, low-slung pants, and a Kobe Bryant jersey when he still wore number eight, pushed forward and said, "My mama says you don't care about poor folks like us."

The kid was in kindergarten but looked like he should be in the penitentiary; his hair was braided into long dreadlocks in the fashion favored by black pro athletes. And he sported the same gangster attitude. Bode wanted to get down in the kid's face and say something like, "Poor? How much did those sneakers cost your mama?" But the Professor cleared his throat like he was choking on a chicken bone and nodded at the cameras. So Bode forced a smile.

"Well, son, your mother's mistaken. I'm the governor, and I care about all Texans."

"You sayin' my mama's a liar?"

"I'm saying your mother doesn't know me."

"Unh-huh. Mama says only time you come east of the highway is when you wanting to get reelected. Rest of the time, we don't never see you."

"Well, you're seeing me now."

"Mama says she saw you play football on TV, says you wasn't no good, says—"

That did it. Now Bode got in the kid's face. He spoke through clenched teeth while smiling for the cameras.

"Yeah, well you tell your mama I was a two-time all-American and I got scars up and down my goddamn knees and anytime she wants she can come over to the Mansion and kiss my big white—"

"Okay, kids!" Jim Bob said, loudly enough to drown out Bode's voice. He stepped between Bode and the black kid like a referee breaking up a fight. "Time for the governor to go."

Bode exited the classroom and gave the reporters his standard spiel about public education being the future of Texas then finally escaped the cameras. When they got out of microphone range, Jim Bob said, "That'll make a nice commercial."

The governor of Texas turned to his strategist and said, "Next time, let's hire some kids."

Tears ran down the child's dirty cheeks. She was perhaps five or six and looked like the girl who had run up to Lindsay when they had first arrived at the
colonia
, with the same stringy hair and gaunt face and dangling earrings. She whimpered softly; the doctor handed her a tissue.

"That is a nasty cut," he said in Spanish to the girl.

Lindsay and Congressman Delgado had just entered a small clinic housed in a white modular structure situated at the northern edge of the
colonia
sporting the distinct scent of disinfectant and a sign over the door:
Médico
. A golden retriever lay just inside the front door next to an unoccupied desk. The girl sat perched on a stainless steel examining table along the far wall. The doctor sat on a rolling stool in front of her with his back to them. But he glanced up at a mirror on the wall, apparently positioned so he could see who entered the clinic. The space was compact but orderly and well lit—

"The lights," Lindsay said. "How does the clinic have electricity?"

The congressman pointed to the ceiling. "Solar panels on the roof. When he built this clinic, Jesse put in a solar-powered generator, small, but enough to power the clinic. There is much sun on the border."

—but the shelves seemed too bare for a medical clinic. Fans sat propped in open windows and created a warm breeze. An office with a desk occupied one back corner, the examining table under a bright operating room light the other. A woman stood next to the child and patted her hand, more to soothe her emotions than the child's, it seemed. The doctor examined the girl's foot under the light and spoke to her softly. After a few moments, he held out a shard of glass with tweezers.

"You must wear shoes, Juanita." She was the same child. To the mother, the doctor said, "Does she have shoes?"

"No."

He began cleaning and bandaging her foot.

"Jesse Rincón," the congressman said to Lindsay. "Our celebrity doctor. Inez, the doctor's assistant"—he glanced over at the unoccupied desk by the door—"is gone. She must be on an errand."

The congressman stepped behind the desk and rummaged through papers as if he had done it before.

"Inez collects his press clippings in a book. Ah, here it is."

The congressman picked up a thick binder and came back around the desk to Lindsay. He held the binder out as if he were a preacher reading scripture from the Bible. The pages were filled with newspaper clippings.

" 'Harvard Doctor Returns Home to the Colonias' -
Laredo News.
" He turned the page. " 'Doctor Trades City Practice for Colonia Poverty' -
Brownsville Post.
Jesse graduated from Harvard Medical School, then surgical residences at Boston Mass and Johns Hopkins. He could be getting rich performing heart surgeries in Houston or giving Anglo women the large new breasts in Dallas, but he came home to work in the
colonias
." He paused a moment then looked at her. "Who does that sort of thing these days?"

He flipped the page. The clipping showed a grainy photo of a young man speaking at a podium.

"When he came home, Jesse spoke to civic groups to raise funds to build clinics in the
colonias
up and down the river. The local papers picked up his story. You have not heard of him in Austin, but from here to Boca Chica, everyone knows of Jesse Rincón."

He held the book out to her. She took it and turned through more pages and read of the doctor's early life in Nuevo Laredo and his education at Jesuit in Houston and Harvard in Boston, her concentration interrupted by the girl's sudden cry. The doctor had given her a shot, no doubt tetanus.