Return to Sender (23 page)
Authors: Julia Alvarez
“Is your dad upset again?” Tyler asks after a moment's silence.
“Well, it's just …”, Mari begins. “The president, your Mr. President, was just on TV saying he's sending the National Guard troops down to the border. They're going to build a huge wall.” Mari's voice is as damp as the night. What a way to spend her birthday! “My parents are talking about going back before that happens.”
“Do you want to go back?” Tyler asks. What he doesn't say is that he doesn't want her and her family to go at all.
“I always thought I would,” Mari says, her voice steadier
now. It's as if talking with Tyler also makes it easier for her to face difficult news. “But I don't know. I… I love it here on your farm.”
That could be the single most wonderful thing a girl could say to Tyler. “I love it here, too,” he agrees. “It's like my favorite place in the world.” Not that he's seen much of the world: three big cities and the highway out the car win-dow between them.
Just then, the door flies open, startling them both and breaking the spell. It's Mr. Cruz, and he does not look happy. He barks some accusation at Mari, who defends herself by holding up her gift and again mentioning her
cumpleaños.
But Mr. Cruz just seems to get angrier at Mari for offering excuses. He jerks his head for her to go inside. But before she can, Mrs. Cruz appears beside her husband. She smiles warmly at Tyler, the gap of missing teeth turning her beautiful smile into something broken and sad. She says some-thing softly to Mr. Cruz, touching his arm. But he shakes her off and gestures for her to go back inside as well. Then, glaring at Tyler, he says something to Mari that Tyler can tell she doesn't want to translate.
“¡Díselo!”
her father commands.
“My father”—Mari hesitates—”he says he doesn't have your money yet. To stop coming around to collect. He'll give it to you as soon as he has it.”
Tyler wants to say that that's not what he came for. But the look on Mari's face is begging him not to contradict her father. To please leave right away. That much he can give her for her birthday.
He turns and walks back home, not bothering to put his hood up. If they were not salty, Tyler would pretend his tears were just raindrops washing down his face.
Sunday night before Memorial Day, the skies suddenly clear. The stars sparkle as if they've been washed by the rain. Tyler is up at Grandma's with the three Marías, pasting little paper American flags onto pencil- sized rods. Tomorrow, they'll all go to the town cemetery and plant a flag beside each veteran's grave, including Gramps's. All the members of the local VA will be there, giving speeches. Mr. Rossetti will play taps, which he says he'll do as long as he has enough breath in his lungs. Tonight as they work, Grandma has the radio turned on to this station that is playing lots of music in honor of Memorial Day tomorrow.
“Grandma, are you really eloping to Mexico to get mar-ried to Grandpa?” Ofie starts in.
Grandma's cheeks again turn pink, but this time she hasn't been drinking champagne.
“Who told you such a thing?”
Ofie looks confused. Every kid in the world knows when they're about to get a grown- up in trouble. “Aunt Jeanne was just saying …”
“I knew it!” Grandma says crossly. “That Jeanne! She imagines things and then I'm held accountable. I'm going to give her a piece of my mind!” She marches toward the phone, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
Mari flashes Ofie a look. See what you've done, causing a family fight! “Remember, Grandma, Ofie has a big imagination and a big mouth,” Mari reminds the grandmother.
“I do not!”
“You do too!”
Ofie shoves Mari, who shoves her back. That's one thing Tyler has noticed. Mari is learning to stick up for herself.
“Okay, okay,” Grandma says, coming between them. She has forgotten her phone call. There's a more immediate fire to put out.
“Mari and I have to check on something outside, okay?” Tyler tells Grandma, who nods, looking relieved. “Thank you, dear,” she murmurs, giving Tyler credit for being a peacemaker. In fact Tyler is glad for this fight, since it gives him an excuse to do something with Mari without her usual tail of two younger sisters. Earlier, he set up the telescope on the small hill just above Gramps's garden. It's the only way Tyler will be able to deliver his rain- checked gift. He doesn't dare go near the trailer anymore, feeling so unwelcome.
Out they go, across the backyard, past the garden that Gramps would be planting tomorrow if he were still alive, uphill to the very place where last November they saw the Taurid meteor shower.
“Where are we going?” Mari asks finally. She must not have guessed the big hint Tyler dropped on her birthday about waiting for a clear night to deliver the second half of her birthday present. No doubt the scene with her father erased happier moments from that evening.
But as soon as she spots the telescope, she gives a little cry. “Can we find my star?”
Tyler has the coordinates all ready. They crouch down, taking turns looking through the telescope. Her star is a teensy smudge of light, but the way Mari oohs and aahs, you'd think it was as big and bright as Venus or Mars!
At one point, as Tyler is angling the telescope lower in the sky, he notices a clump of stars he has never seen before. Puzzled, he stands up to orient himself. Those lights are not in the sky but on the dark edge of the horizon and getting closer. As he watches, the glare coalesces. A battalion of cars, lights flashing, is racing toward the farm without a name.
“What are those?” Mari has stood up beside him. Her voice is edged with the worry that seems threaded through everything she says nowadays.
As they look down toward the farmhouse, the swarm of cars comes to a screeching halt. Dark figures leap out and surround the small trailer, where three Mexicans are just now watching a game of
lucha libre
and waiting for the three Marías to come home. Meanwhile, in Grandma's kitchen, peace has been restored. Ofie and Luby finish up the little flags that they intend to plant tomorrow at the graves of patriots who died for their freedom.
Sunday, June 4, 2006
It's been over two weeks since Mamá gave you to me for my twelfth birthday You looked so official, with a little strap and lock and teensy key! I couldn't seem to come up with anything important enough to write down.
But then, after two weeks of nothing happening, suddenly a lot has happened and writing in a diary was the last thing I could think of doing. Besides, it was only yesterday that we made a list for Grandma and Tyler of things to pick up for us at the trailer and bring over to our secret location, which I don't have to keep secret from you. So until today I didn't even have you along. It feels so good to have this safe place where
la migra
can't come and haul my words and thoughts and feelings away.
We are hiding, my sisters and I, so I don't have much privacy. And most of the time, I'm too worried to write. Worried about Mamá and Papá and Tío Armando, and what will happen to all of us. I bite my nails so much that at night my fingers throb.
Friday, June 9, 2006
We haven't been to school for almost two weeks now. Mrs. Paquette went over to Bridgeport and talked to Mrs. Stevens. Tyler says nobody except Mr. Bicknell and my sisters’ teachers know about us.
But by now everyone in class is asking where I am. Some of them have been asking Tyler if it's true what Clayton and Ronnie have been spreading, that I am in jail! I guess there are rumors all over town about what happened over at the Paquette farm.
So I'm going to write down exactly what happened. If I am finally taken away to jail, I will leave you, dear Diary, to tell the world the whole truth of what we have been through.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Mr. Rossetti went to church with Grandma, so for the first time we are alone in the house. My sisters are downstairs watching television, as Grandma finally brought our TV over. Mr.
Rossetti doesn't own one. He calls it the idiot box and says there wasn't anything wrong with radio that needed fixing. He has a lot of opinions about things, I am finding out.
No news yet about Mamá and Papá, but Mrs. Paquette says that she and Señora Ramírez have contacted Mr. Calhoun, the lawyer who helped out with Tío Felipe.
When I heard Tío Felipe's name, I suddenly thought of our family in Mexico! They would worry so much when they didn't hear from us. I asked Mr. Rossetti if we could call Mexico, but he doesn't have long distance on his telephone. He says he doesn't know anyone he wants to talk to outside Vermont!
So I asked Mrs. Paquette, who asked Ben, who asked Alyssa to call and explain. My whole
familia
was so worried. But Alyssa told Tío Felipe that a lot of people are working on getting my parents out of jail and reuniting us all again.
Just hearing about that reunion, I start crying and can't stop. That just gets Ofie and Luby going, and then it's terrible as Mr. Rossetti doesn't know what to do except give us his handkerchief to blow our noses. That's another thing about him. He doesn't believe in Kleenex. There wasn't anything wrong with handkerchiefs that needed fixing, he says.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Today, I am going to write down what happened when Mamá and Papá were taken away I meant to do it on Sunday, but my sisters called me down for a special program about swallows on TV. They know swallows are my favorite animal because of the song
“La Golondrina.”
I didn't realize there was so much to know about them! How they fly for days and days, eating and even making babies as they fly, so desperate are they to get where they are going. How they bring good luck to farmers when they nest in their barns. (Tyler says his grandfather would never let anyone disturb a swallow's nest, even when the milk inspector said there was too much of their poop around.) Best of all is how, like my own family, swallows have two homes, one in North America and one in South America.
Here is what happened the night
la migra
took my parents away:
Tyler and I were outside looking at my star, which is the most spectacular birthday present I have ever received. I still cannot believe there is
a star in the universe with my name on it! I don't know how Tyler could have afforded to buy it, as he loaned all his money to Papá to help ransom Mamá back. He also gave up his birthday trip to go to North Carolina to rescue Mamá and invited me along. That is all the birthday gifts I will ever want from him for a whole lifetime.
Just as Tyler was about to take his turn at the telescope, we saw cars racing toward the farm. Next thing we knew, all these agents had surrounded the trailer and were shining huge searchlights so nobody could escape in the dark. They banged on the door, but when Papá opened it, just as quickly, he slammed it shut. Two agents had to push against it hard, finally knocking it down. Next, they were hauling Papá out, but he was struggling and swinging at the agents. Meanwhile, Mamá was jumping out of the window of our bedroom, but there were agents all around ready to catch her. Two of them grabbed her by the arms and herded her inside one of the cars. She was screaming the whole time. Only Tío Armando came out peacefully, head bowed, his hands handcuffed behind him.
Meanwhile, Tyler's parents came running out of their house. His mother was shouting something, but the agents were not listening. She ran back inside and came out waving a piece of
paper, which one of the agents grabbed and put in his pocket.
All the time we were watching, I was sobbing hysterically. When Mamá began to scream, I tore off down the hill toward the trailer to be with her. After all she had been through, I just knew she'd have a nervous attack right then and there. But Tyler caught up with me and wrestled me to the ground.
“Don't, Mari!” he whispered, pinning me down by my wrists. “You can't go, you can't. They'll take you, too.” When I finally stopped struggling, he pulled me up and took my hand, and we ran as fast as we could down to his grandmother's house.
When we burst inside, Grandma and Luby and Ofie looked up surprised. I guess they hadn't heard all that commotion with the radio playing. I couldn't talk because I was crying so hard. Tyler explained to his grandmother what we had seen. “They were all dressed in jackets with guns and stuff, not like real policemen in uniforms. The jackets had ice written on them.”
“That's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, oh my!” Grandma's hand was at her chest, her breath coming fast. Even she was in a fluster. “They didn't take your parents, did they?”
The color drained out of Tyler's face. “I don't know.” Suddenly he looked as scared as I was.
Luby and Ofie had begun to cry, which made my own tears dry up. Months ago, when Tío Felipe had been jailed and Papá was all worried that he was next, he made me promise that I would take care of my sisters like their little mother. I had to stay strong for them.
Grandma ran to the phone and dialed Tyler's parents, but nobody answered. Either they were still outside, talking to the agents, or maybe they, too, had been taken away for committing the crime of hiring Mexicans without papers.
The grandmother looked so pale, I was afraid she was about to faint. “We're going to stay calm. Really calm. And very calmly we are going to get in my car.” It was like she was talking to herself, but we were more than happy to follow her instructions.
Next thing we knew, we were driving in the opposite direction from the trailer, taking the back way into town. It wasn't like Grandma told us to hide or anything, but my sisters and I crouched down in the back. I felt just a taste of what it must have been like for Mamá, riding under a false floor in a van all the way across America.
We pulled into Mr. Rossetti's driveway, and Grandma ushered us to the back door, knocked
once, then walked right in. Mr. Rossetti was already in bed upstairs. “Joseph!” she called up. “You got company.”
A few minutes later, Mr. Rossetti came down the stairs in his bathrobe as fast as he could with the help of his cane. His white hair was all messed up like a little baby's. “What in tarnation?” he said when he found us standing in his kitchen, all looking terrified.
“We need for you to take us in,” Grandma began. Then she sort of raced through a crazy explanation about agents surrounding the farm and us escaping the back way. Before she had even finished her account, she was heading toward the phone mounted on the kitchen wall. It looked like a telephone from when telephones were first invented. No wonder we couldn't call Mexico. Mr. Rossetti probably couldn't get long distance on that old phone even if he wanted to.
“Hold your horses, Elsie,” Mr. Rossetti was saying. “Maybe I just woke up, but this isn't making a bit of sense to me. Why would the law be after you?”
“I don't know that they are, Joseph,” Grandma said more calmly. She already had one hand on the phone. “But if you'll kindly let me make a call, then I can tell you what is going on.”
The phone couldn't have rung more than
once, and then Grandma was talking to Tyler's mom. She repeated some of the stuff she was hearing out loud for Mr. Rossetti's benefit, as he looked like he was going to grab the phone away from her any minute. “Let me talk to her,” he kept saying, but Grandma kept holding up one hand and shaking her head.
“They were taken away…. You don't know where…. They left you a number…. You didn't mention … Yes, they're here with me. So's Tyler. But you're okay?”
When she was done, she hung the receiver carefully back in its holder and sort of collected herself, then turned around. She still looked worried, but her voice was calm and strong like she was an actress playing the part of the heroic grandmother who saves the day. “I want everyone to take a seat—you too, Joseph.”
Mr. Rossetti grumbled about the gall of some people not letting him use his own phone, but he did finally sit down. Once we were all seated, Grandma explained what had happened at the farm. How my parents and uncle had been taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. How Mrs. Paquette had tried to show them the paperwork that proved the Cruzes were paying taxes. How Sara had arrived as it was all happening with her boyfriend, Mateo. How Mateo had translated for Mr. Cruz, who asked the Paquettes to
please not say anything about the three Marías as he was afraid they would be taken away. How before they drove off, the agents gave Tyler's parents a phone number that they could call for more information on the status of the Cruzes, and if and when they would be deported to Mexico.
Mr. Rossetti had both his hands on his cane in front of him and now he put his head down on his hands as he listened. Seeing this, both Ofie and Luby began to cry.
“I want my daddy,” Luby wailed. “I want my mommy. I want my doggies.” All I could think was that just what Luby called our parents—not Mamá, not Papá, but Mommy and Daddy— showed she didn't belong in Mexico.
“That's no way to treat decent folks!” Mr. Rossetti said when Grandma had finished her account. “And what's more, these here girls have rights. They're American citizens!” he added angrily, jabbing the air with his cane. Tyler glanced at his grandma, who flashed us a look to keep quiet. So much for telling the truth to your friends to improve their characters.
There were a bunch more phone calls back and forth, but Grandma said that Tyler's parents were afraid to say too much in case their phone was being tapped.
“That's when they spy on what you're saying without you knowing it,” Tyler explained. It
sounded just like what Mr. Bicknell had said happens when your government is a dictatorship.
It was very late by the time we piled into Mr. Rossetti's spare bedroom upstairs with pillows and blankets that smelled musty, like they had not been used in ages. Ofie even found this cocoon in her blanket with a little moth folded inside it. Tyler slept downstairs on the couch. I don't know where Grandma slept. Mostly, she stayed up, talking to Mr. Rossetti late into the night. I could hear their worried voices drifting up from the kitchen.
As for me, I don't think I slept a wink. I couldn't bite my nails as there were no more nails to bite. By the time I finally got out of bed, light was pouring in the window. Grandma was gone and so was Tyler. They had driven back to the farm early to help out with chores. That's right! Papá and Tío Armando would not be there to milk the cows this morning.
Later that day when Grandma came by with Tyler, she told Mr. Rossetti she had called someone from the VA to come over and pick up all the little flags we had put together. “I just don't have the heart to celebrate anything today,” Grandma admitted. Her nerves had calmed down, but she looked tired and as sad as when we arrived on the farm last August a few months after her husband had died.
Mr. Rossetti was nodding his head. “My
sentiments exactly, Elsie. I called up Roger and told him I couldn't blow for them today, either. And it's a crying shame, because if anyone deserves our gratitude it's our vets.”
That's why later that night, once it had gotten dark, we piled into Grandma's car. It is the one and only time we've been out since coming over to hide in Mr. Rossetti's house. We were surprised they were risking it just one day after everything had happened. But Mr. Rossetti said he wanted to be sure we girls saw the proud face of America.
Which was why I was confused when we ended up in a graveyard! There were little flags all around that Tyler shone his flashlight on, the very ones we had put together the night before. We stopped at one gravestone that Mr. Rossetti explained belonged to his older brother, Gino, who had died in World War II.
“These boys did not die in vain,” Mr. Rossetti said in a gravelly voice. Then he cleared his throat and said it again. “I'm going to make damn sure of that.”
“Watch your language in the graveyard,” Grandma reminded him. But she didn't sound that upset at all over Mr. Rossetti's swearing.
Before we left, Mr. Rossetti pulled out his trumpet from the trunk of his car. There in the dark with sprinkles of rain falling on our faces, he played the saddest tune, as sad as
“La Golondrina.”
“God bless America,” he said when he was done.
Both North and South America, I thought, remembering the swallows on the TV special.
