The Secret Side of Empty (16 page)

He glances sideways at the floor. “No, you wouldn’t understand.”

“How can you just not go to work?”

“I go. I just couldn’t go today. I just wanted to . . .”

“You wanted to what?”

“I don’t know how to explain it to you.”

“Explain what? Explain that you’re lazy? And selfish? Jose needs clothes besides those hideous hand-me-downs that people give us. I need money for school. We need food besides lentils.”

“Your mother seems to be figuring all that out.”

“Is that what this is? Because she’s working? Or have you been doing this for a long time? Is this why we’re always getting kicked out of our apartments?” I point to his book like it’s dirty. I notice it’s from the library. He probably couldn’t afford to buy it if he wanted to.

Normally if I talked to him like this we’d be three smacks in by now. But I’m towering over him and he looks tired.

“Are you going to tell your mother?” he asks.

“Am I going to tell her what? That you’re a coward? That you’re sitting here in a coffee shop reading instead of hustling and building a future for us?”

“That’s all done now. You’ve got to figure out your own future.”

It knocks the wind out of me—not that I’m on my own, but that he knows it, too.

I fish around for the most hurtful thing I can think of. I don’t come up with much. “I wish you’d had the imagination to at least be at a bar. But you’re sitting here . . . what?
Reading?
That’s your big try for freedom?” I turn to walk away and say over my shoulder. “You’re pathetic.” The barista stares at me. The cold air feels good when it hits me outside.

I pedal all the way home, as fast as I can.

I run up the stairs two at a time. I walk into the kitchen fast, out of breath.

“Monse!” says Jose at the top of his lungs and runs face-first into me.

“Hey, little man.”

“Do you want something to eat?” says my mom.

“Ma, where’s Dad?”

“Working,” she says.

I want to shake her, but somehow I can’t make myself even tell her.

“Monserrat, I wanted to ask you about something.”

“What?” I say.

“How are things with that boy?” she says.
Boom.
That knocks some of the anger out of me.

“What boy?” I try to sound calm and curious, running down the inventory in my mind of how I might have been busted.

“The boy you’re seeing,” she says.

“I don’t know what you—”

“Is he nice?”

I consider how much denial to get into. Sometimes that makes it worse. “How do you know?”

“I’ve seen you. After school. Once I rode by on the bus in front of the diner. And you’re never home.”

“He’s just a friend.”

“He’s not just a friend.”

I sit quietly for a while. “Yes, he’s nice.”

“Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“It’s different here than in Argentina.”

“But are you?”

“I guess.”

“I’m glad you have someone that makes you happy. You deserve that.”

Her cloying at me makes me go want to scrub my skin.

“You know, getting married might be one way out of this for you,” she says.

“What do you mean?” I say.

“Marrying an American.”

“That’s really disgusting. Getting married for the papers? Seriously, Ma?”

“I mean, only if you really loved him, not if you . . .”

But I don’t hear the end of that sentence. I don’t want to hear it. It ruins everything to even think of love as a something I’d use to get out of this mess.

 “L
ADIES
, I
HAVE
SOMETHING
TO
TELL
YOU
.”

We all freeze. Please, not another eight-page paper. Ms. North’s the kind of sadist who would give us one over the break, just because life is unfair like that and she wants us ready for it.

“I’ve accepted a position at another school. I won’t be coming back after the break.”

I start to vibrate like I’ve just been hit with the cartoon frying pan. I must have heard her wrong.

To my total horror, I start slobbering immediately. The more I try to stop, the harder the tears come.

Quinn Ford turns around and stares at me.

Ms. North keeps talking, but I have no idea what she’s saying. I hear something about “successor is a great teacher,” and college, and email addresses. I can’t hear her. My sobs have gotten so loud more people turn around.

Already I’ve started to feel the utter pointlessness of continuing to try in school when there is no hope of any more school in my future. I finally understand the question
:
when am I going to need this in real life
? Passing school is
not
real life when you are going to go on to a life where what you think and what you know don’t matter. It might be for Mack and Chelsea and everyone else here, but not for me. What will all these books and theories and equations matter when I am scrubbing toilets or when I am deported to Argentina and learning a whole new way of doing things from scratch in a country I’ve never been?

My universe has only a few lights in it, and a big one just went out. I feel stupid for feeling this way about a teacher. I’d just stop seeing her at the end of the year anyway. But her leaving feels tragic in a way I can’t even explain to myself.

I get up and run out of the class. Ms. North calls after me but I am in a full-on run. I keep going down the stairs, out the front door, and to my bike. It is the last half day before Christmas break, the day of our party, of our secret Santa. I’ve forgotten my gloves, and my hands freeze on the handlebars. But I just can’t go back.

Maybe my father is right after all. Maybe I should just stop going to school now.

None of my friends are around and I can’t think of anywhere to go. So I go home.

I sit in the kitchen. It’s hot but not like the way it is in my room. I should be safe for hours. Around the holidays, my father’s restaurant gets busier so he is rarely around. My mother, home early from her job and making some concoction on the stove, is luckily not in the mood to chat. I should have peace for a while.

Except . . . is that the front door? In the middle of the morning? It seriously can’t be.

He comes into the kitchen. I prep for a fight. He is usually mean as hell around the holidays and it can’t be good if he is home at this hour.

But he looks pale. And something else I can’t quite identify. Scared maybe. He sits down at the table like he doesn’t have any wind left. I see his left hand shaking.

“What is it, Jorge?” says my mom.

“Can you get me some water, please?”

Please?

“What is it?” she says, handing him a glass.

“They raided the restaurant.”

“Raided?”

“We were cleaning up. Immigration came in the front and back. Sealed off all the exits.”

“Oh my God, Jorge!”

My heart starts to pound. He sucks, but I know we can’t get along without his measly tips. Did they just let him come home to get some clothes or something? Are they guarding the door? I listen. I think I hear someone outside. Maybe Immigration is raiding our apartment next. Or maybe he’s led them here. Turning us all in for the free airplane ride to Argentina.
Maybe this is it.

“They put us in the banquet room.”

“How did you get out?”

“They interrogated us one by one. I had my fake papers, you know, that photocopy I have.”

“Yes.”

“Somehow that worked. I don’t know. I think it was because my English is pretty good. I’m convincing. Plus it was crazy. Men with guns everywhere. The women crying. They gave me some notice to appear, but since the papers don’t have my real name or address on them, I think we’re okay.”

“You’re sure no one followed you?”

“No. I mean . . . I don’t think they’d do that.”

“How did you get out?”

“They just let me go. I don’t know. But so many others . . .”

“Who?”

“Everyone. The whole kitchen. Paco, too.”

“What!”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Poor Carolina.” My mother’s eyes water up with tears when she says her cousin’s name, knowing that her husband is now gone, taken by the immigration people. I think of little linoleum-eating baby Julissa. Her father disappeared. Poof. Her mother making two hundred dollars a week cleaning houses. Julissa was born here, so she should be able to stay, to grow up in the country where she was born. The rules are that you belong where you’re born. But it’s not that simple.

“You’re sure they took Paco? Maybe they let him go, too?”

“No, I saw him in a van. He’s gone.”

“What will Carolina do?”

“I don’t know. You know having American kids doesn’t save you from anything. I guess we’ll help her however we can . . .” He puts his head in his hands, rubbing his face like he’s trying to scrub something off. “We have to get the hell out of this country,” he says after a long pause.

“Jorge, you’ll find another job.”

“That doesn’t really solve anything, does it? Not
really
?”

My mother doesn’t seem to have an answer to that.

I
stand outside while Nate makes the fifteen-minute drive to pick me up. I can’t be in the apartment, and I don’t want him to get any ideas about coming up. He belongs in one world, but this is another world. I know that the two could never be one.

The cold feels good somehow, making the skin on the front of my thighs numb. The pain makes me happy, like carrying something heavy makes people happy. Like you’re standing up to the elements and winning. Although, of course, you’re fooling yourself, because there is always something big enough to crush you, and a day cold enough to kill you.

All in all, I’m pretty relieved when he pulls up with his heated seats and pine-scented leather interior.

“Mademoiselle, your chariot awaits.”

I think he’s trying for French this time. “You still sound Indian,” I say.

“That what I was going for.” He winks.

He drives away, but not in the direction of his house. He takes a few turns and we’re in the parking lot of Summer Park, where we played basketball what feels like years ago.

“What are we doing here?” I ask.

“I thought we’d have our own Christmas for a few minutes before we go to my house with everyone running around.”

“Okay.” I have his present in my backpack.

“I thought it might be nice to do it here since this is where we first kissed.”

“Very romantic. But let’s stay in the car, okay?”

He laughs. “Good idea.”

He pulls out the most exquisitely wrapped small, slim present I’ve ever seen and hands it to me. I kind of don’t expect it. I’ve never seen a present so beautiful, heavy with ribbon and a bling tag.

“It’s so pretty! What is it?”

“It’s normally customary to take off the paper to find that out.”

“Wait, hold on. Let me get yours.” I pull out the box. It’s a personalized golf shirt, golf gloves, and a copy of
Hamlet
. The
Hamlet
is a gag. I’ve gone through and scribbled in the word “hootch” everywhere Hamlet’s mother is mentioned.

“Go ahead, open it,” he says.

“I almost don’t want to mess up the paper.”

“If only I would have known that I could have just gotten you a box.”

I open it carefully, being sure not to rip anything, and lift the lid off the little box. It is a delicate gold chain.

“An ankle bracelet,” he says. “Because you have such pretty feet. Or ankles. Or legs. Whatever. I just think this would look nice on you.”

I run my finger on it. “Oh, and look . . .”

“M and N. You and me.”

“It’s perfect.”

“But wait. You didn’t notice the best part. Look at the inside of the top of the box.”

I tilt it. It’s covered in tiny Post-it notes that say
I love you
.

I start to cry. Because a day can have such different things in it, like Ms. North going away and Julissa losing her father and a boy sitting at his kitchen counter, writing tiny
I love yous
over and over again just to make you happy.

He puts his arm around me. “Hey, why are you crying? It’s a good thing, right?”

“The best thing,” I say.

b

W
E
GO
TO
N
ATE
’
S
HOUSE
. T
HE
HOUSE
IS
STILL
V
ICTORIAN
C
HRISTMAS
perfect, but there is a vibe of activity, with Nate’s mother and sisters and the maid Carmen running up and down stairs.

“Natey, sweetie, you’re here.”

I guess he knows that he’s about to get marching orders, because he cuts in, “We’re going to watch our ‘Why can’t I spend Christmas with you’ movie together right now.”

“M, honey, it’s wonderful to see you. Happy early Christmas. Nate, sweetie, are you packed?”