Yours to Keep (26 page)

Her green card would be provisional for two years, and then she’d have to renew it, but a year after that she would be able to apply for naturalization.

Naturalization.

A huge part of her couldn’t believe this was happening. That someone was uttering those words in conjunction with her. Two years, three years,
citizenship.

Her country. Hers.

Abrams must have seen on her face how big her emotions were, because he smiled at her and said, “It’s the dream scenario for an immigration lawyer, because it’s actually possible. Bottom line, since you’ve been inspected and admitted, and because you were too young to make any misrepresentations about your intentions when you entered, even though you overstayed, you’re eligible to apply inside the country, and you’re eligible for cancellation of removal if we can argue—which we can—that it would be a hardship to Ethan if you weren’t allowed to remain.”

He told them that, in addition to a copy of Ana’s original visa, he’d need copies of the wedding invitation, copies of their wedding-present thank-you notes, copies of letters and emails from friends and family congratulating them. He recommended that Ethan put Ana on his health insurance as soon as possible after the wedding.

“It’s great that it’s a relatively conventional relationship, too,” Abrams said. “If two people aren’t age- and background-appropriate for each other—one is much older, one is Jewish and one Muslim, that kind of thing—it raises more eyebrows. But no one is likely to seriously question this marriage.”

He gave Ethan’s shoulder a slap. “The best thing you guys can do for Ana now is tie the knot. I’ll give you some forms to work on, but we won’t be able to actually send them in until we have the signed marriage license. When are you planning to do it?”

Ana looked at Ethan, and Abrams looked from one of them to the other. They hadn’t discussed that. Of course they hadn’t—she’d never actually said yes to him.

He seemed to be waiting for her to say something. She felt suddenly nervous and awkward. Wouldn’t it be presumptuous for her to name a date, in light of her failure to give him a firm answer?

The silence dragged out. “We can talk about it tonight.”

“That sounds good.”

“How—” Ethan turned back to Abrams. “How do we get a marriage license? With her being—”

“Undocumented,” Ana filled in, since he seemed stuck.

“Right, with her being undocumented.”

Abrams smiled, an easy, reassuring grin. “You live in Beacon, right?” he asked Ethan. “Go to the town hall there. They never ask to see ID.”

Abrams leaned forward over the desk. “Theoretically, they can ask to see a birth certificate as proof of age, but they never do in Beacon, as far as I know. If you have any trouble getting one in Beacon, I have a friend who’s a town clerk out in Lillington, so you can always drive out that way. On principle, he never asks to see a birth certificate.”

Ana knew from personal experience that, especially in a state like Massachusetts, there were plenty of people in power who were willing to look the other way. But, on the other hand, there were people like Ed Branch, exactly the opposite. She shuddered, remembering the smell and sight of him close up. “Is it—is it legal for a high school to ask me to fill out a CORI form to recommend me as a tutor?” she found herself asking.

“What’s a CORI?” Ethan asked.

“It’s a criminal-background check,” Abrams said.

Ethan made a small, harsh sound. He’d made the connection. “Was that what that was about with Branch? That f—. He was … I’m going to kick his—” He clamped his mouth shut, casting a glance at the lawyer.

Her chest felt thick with pleasure at his ferocity on her behalf. And even though she had little wish to incite anyone to violence, she had to admit that she wouldn’t mind seeing Ethan beat the crap out of Ed. “I had a little incident,” Ana explained to Abrams. “This guy at the high school wanted me to fill out a CORI, and he was trying to get me to … be intimate
with him in exchange for his not making a big deal of it. He figured out that I don’t have papers.”

Abrams sighed. “We’ve been hearing a lot about CORI forms lately, and unfortunately, at the moment, short of making a stink that would expose you to
more
trouble, there’s nothing we can do. But once you have a green card?” Abrams grinned again. “Sounds like you could probably file a harassment complaint.”

She exchanged glances with Ethan, whose scowl said nothing on earth would make him happier than to see Branch held accountable. Except maybe exacting his own revenge.

Abrams handed Ethan a glossy black folder full of forms and shook their hands again. “I do some pro bono work,” he offered.

Ethan shook his head. “I’ve got the money, and if I pay for us, then you’ll be able to do pro bono for someone who really needs it.”

“That’s the spirit,” Abrams said, which made Ana laugh.

He walked them out, and they held hands as they descended the wide front steps of the house to the sidewalk level. As they did, a car pulled out across the street, an aging navy-blue Ford Focus. Familiar. The back of the car was papered with Red Sox window and bumper stickers.

Crap. Ernie’s car.

She’d better talk to Ricky sooner rather than later.

That night Ana’s students played Around the World, a version she’d invented for them. One student stood up and went to the far-left front corner of the classroom, where she stood next to a classmate. Ana asked a question in English. Whichever student could most quickly utter an accurate, coherent, grammatically correct answer moved on to the next challenge. The questions were easy—“What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “What time is it?”

Ling was in the process of sweeping the room; she’d advanced from her seat, second from the front, to stand beside a new student, a Somalian teenager. “What was the weather today?” Ana asked them.

The door of the cafeteria banged open and Ricky clomped across the floor toward her. Every head in the room turned to look at him. “What were you doing at the lawyer’s?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Ana said to her students, though none of them were looking at her. They were all watching Ricky. He was a sight, almost two hundred lean pounds of enraged Dominican male. His brows were low, his jaw set, his eyes aflame. Because he was her brother, she was only a little scared of him. She couldn’t imagine how the rest of the class must feel about this intrusion. She strode out from behind the podium and took her brother’s arm. She led him back toward the door. In a hushed voice, she said, “You can’t come in here like this.”

“What were you doing there?” He’d lowered his voice a tiny bit, but he was still much louder than he needed to be, considering that her ear was less than a foot from his mouth.

“Can we talk about this later?”

For the first time, it seemed to completely sink into him where they were. He looked over his shoulder at her students. Their expressions varied from amused to cowed. Ling looked outraged, probably furious that he’d put her reign in jeopardy.

“No,” growled Ricky. “Tell me what the fuck you were doing there.”

At least he was quieter now. Behind her, the class began to murmur among themselves. That was something. Maybe they’d speak English and get some practice. Nothing like gossip to spur conversation.

“I can’t do this now. I have to teach this class. Can we talk about it when my second class is done?”

“I have to be at work early tonight.”

“What the hell do you want me to do, Ricky?” Her temper was spinning away from her. If this went on much longer, she’d be shouting, too.

He looked taken aback. Well, good. She’d gotten through to him.

“Tomorrow morning.” He started toward the door.

“Ricky.”

He turned back to look at her.

“You owe my students an apology.”

“Lo siento,”
he muttered.

“En inglés. Más fuerte.”

His eyes narrowed, but he apologized, more audibly, in English, to her class. Then he gave her a hard look and left.

“It was cloudy today,” Ling’s opponent said quickly. The door hadn’t even clicked shut yet.

“Cheating!” Ling cried.

Ana was torn between concern that she’d lost control of the situation and pride that Ling had chosen to speak English in a moment of high emotion.

“Do-over.” Ana said it as calmly as she could, but her heart pounded in her ears so loudly that she could barely breathe.

Chapter 23

Ana’s beginners filtered slowly out of the cafeteria, crossing paths with her incoming advanced students. One of the beginners approached her. It was Nati, the Salvadoran woman whose daughter had been deported. Nati had gone down easily in the game of Around the World—too easily. Her comprehension of English was excellent, her ability to make herself understood nearly as good. But her self-confidence was poor, and she disliked speaking in front of the class.

“It’s none of my business,” Nati said now to Ana in Spanish. The roots of her hair above her drugstore dye job were white. Her lips were thin, compressed.

“In English, please,” Ana said. Her heart rate had returned to normal, but queasiness lingered, a tightness in her chest. She was not in the mood for any conversation that started with “It’s none of my business.”

“It no my—problem,” Nati began again, heavily accented but perfectly clear.

Ana crossed her arms.

“The lawyer,” said Nati. “If you see him about papers, he no help. He charge you money, lot of money. He no help. Nobody help. This country, it no want us.”

Ana felt a wave of pain. For everyone like her, everyone who had found a way to belong, there was someone like Nati’s daughter who had been barred. Ten, twenty, a hundred, thousands, millions more people who, even if they had the courage to ask for a lawyer’s help, would face years of exile before they could apply for a visa that might take twelve to fifteen years to materialize. She was a drop in the ocean, the luckiest of all lucky circumstances. A swerve here, a deviation there, five years older, a mistake made, and she’d be Nati’s daughter.

“The lawyer just want to take your money. He no help.” There were tears in Nati’s eyes. “He make everything worse.”

Ana took a deep breath. “I’ll be careful, Nati. I promise.”

“Please, Ana. Please be careful.”

Ana shook her head. “This lawyer is the very best. And I will be very careful. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I will, though,” Nati said in Spanish. “I will worry about you all the time. And I will pray for you. I won’t stop praying until you are a citizen.”

Since her mother’s death, no one had promised to pray for her. She didn’t exactly believe in God—and, if she did, he wouldn’t be much like her mother’s version—but she was still touched that Nati would put in a good word for her. She reached for Nati’s hand, clasped it in hers. “Thank you.”

“We need you here,” Nati said.

She surprised herself by attacking Ethan in the bedroom, grabbing handfuls of his hair and tearing at his clothes, her breath coming in gasps and moans. She kissed him everywhere she could reach, ear, throat, jaw—licking, sucking, biting at his mouth, sliding into the V made by his open top button. She fumbled with his shirt buttons, and he helped her, because she was clumsy in her desperation.

She pulled him down, demanding, “Kiss me,” grabbing his hands and urging them onto her breasts, biting his lips and tongue, obeying a violent fever in herself that had come from nowhere as they’d stepped into the bedroom. She pulled her knees up, and her hips lifted to him, pressing against his hot, substantial hardness. He rolled away, dived for the night-table drawer, as clumsy unwrapping and unrolling the condom as she’d been a moment before with his clothes, and then he was in her, and she was demanding again, “Harder. You aren’t hurting me. I promise. I won’t let you hurt me.”

She was so wet she could feel it on her inner thighs and hear it as he thrust into her again and again, and then—

Her mood shifted suddenly as desperation gave way to tenderness, the satisfaction of possessing him and being able to wrap herself, her whole, greedy self, around him. She relaxed under him and smiled, then reached up and put both her arms around his neck and they began moving against each other slowly, slowly. He drew out the strokes and watched her face, his eyes locked on hers. She didn’t think he’d ever watched her like that, as if he were reading her, as if he were memorizing her, as if he were trying to understand from the most minute details of her expression exactly what was going on in her head.

Or her heart, really. Her heart full, suddenly, of something heavy, molten, something whose heat matched the heat where his body met hers. Matched the heat of the gaze he was
holding with her, igniting the heat there, firing the shared gaze and the points of contact on their bodies like a glassblower’s furnace, until she lost track of where she ended and he began. She dissolved, lost her edges, and she tried to grab him and pull him down, but he resisted. “I want to watch your face,” he said, and she felt the words like a line of stray wildfire exploding into a new conflagration.

Time slowed down, then, and they made love that way for a long while, the heat building and rising and spiraling. A look of concentration came over his face, ratcheting her desire suddenly upward, and she felt a flush rise from her chest to her face, saw it echoed on his face, the matching surprise in his eyes, and they went over together, bodies clenching and rising and meeting, holding, suspended, starstruck. She longed, wildly, as she temporarily lost track of her surroundings, except for the green of his eyes and the sense of being connected, to know that he felt it, too, the link and the understanding that they were melodic and harmonic counterpoint. He had to feel it, too.

She wanted him to love her, because she loved him. Knew it now beyond a shadow of a doubt.

When they were lying in the contented aftermath, he asked, “Were you angry earlier? When we were kissing?”

Surprised, she shifted in his arms, raised herself on one elbow to look down at him. “No, not angry, exactly, but—my brother’s friend Ernie saw us coming out of the lawyer’s office together.”