America's Dream (41 page)

“América?”

She’s startled out of her fantasy by Kyle, no longer punching a pad, but standing in front of her, ready to go.

“¡Ay! Let’s go get Meghan,” she says, scrambling up.

“You had a scary face,” Kyle says as they walk to the other end of the building.

“I think something ugly,” she explains, and he giggles.

“Can we go to McDonald’s?” the children ask the minute they get in the car. She doesn’t argue. It will give them something to do, and she won’t have to make lunch when she gets back.

The restaurant is crowded with children and their parents. The servers and kitchen workers are all from Guatemala or El Sal- vador. The three cashiers take the orders in English, punch them into the register, and translate them into Spanish to the people preparing and wrapping the food. América orders in Spanish.

“Dos Happy Mils con chísberguers sin pickols, dos Coca-Cola y un McChicken con papitas y una Sprite.”

“Those people are staring at you,” Kyle announces when they sit at a booth by the window. América freezes, is afraid to look, and when she does, Adela waves at her from inside a car that has just picked up an order from the drive-through. At the wheel is a man with straight black hair cut as if he’d placed a bowl over his head, then trimmed around it. He nods in her direction. América waves at them, smiles politely, and hands the children their Happy Meals.

“Not respectful point the fingers,” she says, helping Meghan open her cheeseburger.

“Not polite to stare,” Kyle responds, mimicking her accent. “You too smart for me,” she says, smiling.

When they leave the restaurant, the children want to go to the movies. It’s still dreary out. A fine mist that’s not quite rain sur- rounds them as they walk to the car.

“Movies too crowd today. We get videos better.”

Blockbuster Video reminds her of a supermarket. It’s enormous, the last store in a strip mall that would probably go out of business if Blockbuster decided to relocate. It’s bustling with children and their escorts looking for videos that will while away the rainy afternoon.

América helps Meghan and Kyle look for something they like. They find a couple of Disney movies for Meghan, but Kyle decides to get Nintendo games instead of videos. In the foreign section, América finds
Como Agua pare Chocolate
, which by the looks of the box seems like a romantic story. When Correa went to the video store in Isabel Segunda, he always came back with and made her watch movies about airplanes crashing, cars blowing up, or muscular bare-chested men shooting men in suits. It’s a new experience to have the choice of something she might like.

They return home, and it isn’t until they pull into the drive- way that América feels the familiar sense of dread at Correa’s possible arrival.

Once the children are settled in front of the televisions,

Meghan in the upstairs den and Kyle in the sports den, she does her rounds of the house, making beds, picking up dirty clothes, lightly dusting dressers and shelves, alert to the sound of her phone, which doesn’t ring.

Every so often Meghan or Kyle come looking for her, and she plays with one or the other, building bridges in Kyle’s Lego city or taking Princess Jasmine and Aladdin on yet another flying- carpet ride. She feels split in two, the body going through the motions of playing with the children, giving them a cup of cocoa, changing the video for Meghan or watching Kyle kill green monsters on the computer screen. But her mind is elsewhere, mentally seeking Correa driving around the country roads of Westchester County or lying drunk and happy on some puta’s bed in San Juan. The latter image is the one she hopes for.

She cooks dinner, serves it, eats with the children, whose eyes are glazed from too much television. She would like to interrogate them, the way Karen does, about what they did today, but she knows what they did. So she lets them chatter about she doesn’t know what, and when the chatter turns into fighting, as it usually does, she puts a stop to it with the threat that she will tell Mommy and Daddy not to come back to children who can’t get along.

Karen calls again, and the children relate the trip to McDonald’s and the video store, leaving out the fights. When Karen asks to speak to her, América repeats yesterday’s instructions. “You have good time. I take care everything,” and Karen seems satisfied.

Later, she runs from Kyle’s to Meghan’s bathrooms as they play with toys in the tub, afraid the minute she leaves one the other will drown in the bath water. Kyle does not want to be helped into his pajamas by América, so she leaves him in his room while she dresses Meghan, who loves to be powdered, combed, dressed in any of the pretty nightgowns with Princess Jasmine or Belle or the Little Mermaid in front.

Kyle comes into Meghan’s room, very proud of himself, wear- ing his green Power Ranger pajamas, his hair combed flat against his skull. América resists the smile creeping onto her lips.

“Can you read us a story?” Meghan asks. “I no can read inglis, baby.”

“It’s too early for bed,” Kyle complains.

“You come América room we make drawing,” she suggests, and they troop after her. They reach her room as the phone rings. She dives for it, surprising the children.

“¿Haló?”

“Baby.”

“Correa, where are you?”

“You sound upset, baby. What’s the matter?” “Where are you?”

“I’m coming to get you, baby.”

“Don’t do this to me. I told you I was coming back. Why are you doing this?” Kyle and Meghan stand by the bed, watching América tremble, speak her foreign language into the phone as if she’s going to bite the person at the other end.

“I told you, we’re going on vacation. We’ve never taken a va- cation together.” Oh, he’s so smooth. Even when he’s drunk, his voice is like a radio announcer’s, low and modulated.

“América, can you hang up now?” Meghan asks. She looks frightened, and Kyle too stares at her as if she had suddenly turned into one of the humanoid characters from his video games. “Correa, I have two kids here. I have to put them to bed. Don’t hang up. We need to talk.” She’s trying to get the honey back in her voice, the syrup of seduction. But her jaw is clenched tight, her tongue feels swollen, and it’s an effort to speak at all, because her whole attention is on listening to him, to the whish of cars driving by somewhere outdoors, somewhere where there are no

coquís.

She props the phone on her pillow without waiting for his an- swer.

“You go bed now. América talk on phone,” she tells the children as she nudges them out.

“But I don’t want to go to bed now,” argues Kyle, staring at the silent phone.

“You go your room, wait for América.”

Reluctantly, the children shuffle away. She waits until they’re far enough down the hall that they won’t hear her, then closes her door and runs back to the phone.

“Correa?” The phone is dead. She hangs it up, her hands shaking. “Oh, my God, oh, my God.” She tries to collect herself, to stop the pounding in her heart, the trembling that makes it hard to walk the short distance from her bed to her door.

Both children sit cross-legged on Kyle’s bed, looking through a picture book. The minute she walks in, they look up, search her eyes, and see the fear in them.

“You go bed now, kids. Is late.”

They don’t argue. She carries Meghan to her room, tucks her into bed, props her bunny on her pillow. “Good night, baby.” She kisses her forehead, and the little girl reaches up and hugs her and wishes her good night.

Kyle has tucked himself in. She wraps the comforter tighter, pulls his teddy bear up so that its nose is outside the covers, as Kyle likes it. “I’m not tired yet,” he complains but makes no effort to move, as if he understands that it’s important to her that he cooperate. She leaves both children’s doors open, as she did last night, and goes into her room, to wait for the phone to ring.

Dingdong

he doorbell. Two tones, dingdong, just like in commercials. In the three months she’s been there, no one has rung the doorbell. She’s been sitting motionless on the edge of her bed next to the phone for so long that she has to think about moving before she can. And then she runs, down the hall, down the back stairs, to peek out the shaded windows of the den at the front door and see who rings the doorbell at ten on a Saturday night.

Knowing who it is but wishing it’s someone with car trouble needing to use the phone, or a neighbor seeking a lost cat.

Dingdong. It’s a leisurely sound, a friendly reminder that company has arrived.

Correa is on the gracious semicircular steps framed by columns. He stands as if he’s visited here many times, neither skulking in the shadows suspiciously nor looking around to acquaint himself with the place.

The door does not have a chain stop. If she opens it, there’s nothing between them. She stands with her back against it, trembling, not knowing what to do. Dingdong. Maybe, if she doesn’t answer, he’ll think there’s no one home and go away. Dingdong dingdong.

“Mommy!” Meghan is at the top of the front stairs. América runs up on tiptoe. He mustn’t hear. He must think

there’s no one home. “Shh, baby, shh. No make noise. América coming.”

Dingdong dingdong dingdong.

“Who’s ringing the doorbell?” Kyle stands in the hall, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Is nobody, go back your room.” She scoops up Meghan, carries her to her bed. Kyle follows her.

“Somebody is at the door,” he says louder, as if she didn’t hear him the first time. He’s about to turn on the light.

“No! Kyle. No lights.” Kyle stops. Meghan, who has been half asleep, whimpers. “No make noise,” América says, drawing Kyle close. They all sit on Meghan’s bed, both children now aware that something is wrong.

Dingdong dingdong dingdong. Thump. “Is it a burglar?” Kyle asks.

What do I do now, she’s asking herself. He’s trying to break down the door, what do I do? Charlie’s knives. I must get one of the knives, so I can defend myself.

“Is it a burglar?” Kyle repeats.

“Berglar? I don’t know berglar.” She stands, wraps both chil- dren with Meghan’s comforter. “You stay,” she warns. “No come out. Comprend? No come out.” She closes Meghan’s hall door, drags a chest in front of it.

“I’m scared,” cries Meghan.

“You take care little sister,” she charges Kyle, who looks just as frightened but hasn’t expressed it. “No come out.” She tiptoes to the back of Meghan’s room, toward her playroom.

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Kyle asks.

“Police?” She stops with her hand on the doorknob as if this were a new concept. “Police,” she says, “Yes, police. I call.”

There’s a crash, the sound of breaking glass. “You no come out,” she orders in a cracked voice, as filled with fear as the chil- dren. She tiptoes through Meghan’s playroom, steps quietly across the hall into Kyle’s playroom, through his bathroom into the bedroom. The door is open, and she peeks into the dim hall. She can run across it into the Leveretts’ bedroom and call, or she can run down the hall into her own room. But then she’d have

to go past the back stairs, and she hears shuffling down there. And she’d be too far from the children in her room. She presses against the wall, whimpering. Her hands are formed into tight fists, the fingernails digging ridges into her palms.

I should have opened the door for him. I should have let him in, made some excuse for not going tonight. Oh God, help me.

All is quiet downstairs. It might have been her imagination before. Maybe, she hopes, he broke a window and is content with that. Maybe he knows he’s in trouble if he damages other people’s property. Maybe he thinks he came to the wrong house and is now driving away, lost. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. She steps into the hall, runs into the Leveretts’ bedroom.

When she picks up the phone, a bright green light goes on, enough for her to see the dial pad. Nine-one-one. Karen has a label stuck on every phone. Emergency 911. She must translate it into Spanish. Nueve once. A woman answers the phone, and América whispers.

“Emergencia, por favor, ayudénme, por favor, emergencia.” Crying quietly now, whispering over and over, “Emergencia, por favor, policia, emergencia.”

The woman on the other end responds in English. When América switches to English, “Plis,” a hand covers her mouth and yanks her away from the phone, and she smells his scent, Brut, and liquor, and his sweat, and he’s pulling her away, away from the chattering phone, which is now speaking Spanish.

“You think you’re so smart,” he whispers. “You think you’re really something.” He hangs up the phone.

“Ooph!” she says when he slams her against the wall. “Ooph!” when she falls, out of breath with a blow to her belly. “Ooph,” when he kicks her.

“You cunt! You bitch.”

She crawls away from him, half drags herself toward the open bedroom door. He kicks her ass, sends her sprawling at Kyle’s feet. Kyle is there, in front of her, silhouetted on a rectangle of light. And Meghan is behind him. Kyle steps back, and

América can see the expression on his face, the terror, pure and innocent.

“Run, Kyle, run, Meghan, run!” she yells. Meghan screeches, and both children run screaming down the hall.

She turns over on her back as Correa lurches toward her. He must have seen the children, but he’s not interested in them. He grabs her hair, pulls her up to her full height, and then she sees a flash, the gleaming flash of a blade arcing toward her. Her first thought is that he got to Charlie’s knives before she did. But no. It’s a kitchen knife, the one she uses to cut plantains into tostones. She ducks as the blade comes down, and it burns into her left shoulder. There’s warmth where the blade plunged, no pain, just a burning when he pulls it out and raises it again. He’s going to kill me. He wants to kill me. She forgets she’s shorter than he is, lighter by fifty pounds at least, weaker. All she knows now is that Correa, the man who claims to love her, is trying to kill her. And somewhere in the house, Meghan and Kyle are screeching. She pushes against Correa with all her strength, is as surprised as he is when he stumbles back and drops the knife. In that split second, she’s able to run out of the room, yelling at the top of her lungs.