The Secret Side of Empty (29 page)

“Did you? How wonderful! How?”

“Chelsea’s mom helped me a little. I got financial aid. I’m going to start next January. It’s . . . a college where you sleep away.”

“How far?”

“Connecticut. A few hours’ drive.”

She sits down on the bench. Something crosses over her face. She tries to push it off with a smile.

Jose has heard this last part. “Where’s Connecticut?” he asks. He’s gripping my leg, playing with the hem of my shorts.

“Not too far,” I say.

“Will you come visit me?”

“We’ll see each other, of course. And if Mommy learns to email, I’ll email you pictures.”

“I told you you’d go to college,” says my mom. A tear spills over the rim of her bottom eyelid and hangs there in her eyelash.

“Yeah, you’re like some fortune teller or something. So what are you going to do?”

“I talked to the Nun and she told me about a place I can take my high school test. I’m studying for it now.”

“And it’s okay? With the no papers?”

“Yes.”

Jose says, “Mommy is like you now, always reading books.”

“I guess we won’t see you much when you’re in Connecticut,” she says.

“I’ll come home on vacations and summers. I mean, I won’t come to the apartment, but I’ll be around here.”

“He doesn’t hit anymore, since you’re gone.”

“I guess I was the trigger.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

“He’s really sorry he got like that. If you were only in the apartment every once in a while, it might not be so bad.”

“I can’t. You know that.”

“I do know, yes.” She’s quiet for a long time. She absently plays with a blade of grass Jose has picked for her.

She reaches in her purse, pulls out a roll of bills, and puts it in my hand.

“Are you into robbing banks now?” I ask.

“Since you’ve graduated the nuns are paying me. A little. And I’m sewing more. Here, take it.”

“Why don’t you go buy Jose some new clothes with it?”

“Don’t worry about him. I’ve got it.” She’s quiet for a minute. Then she says, “Your father asked me to ask you to see him.”

“Why?”

“I just think he wants to talk.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I think you should.”

“I don’t want to hear his insults anymore.”

“I think he’ll be different this time. Just try. In a public place. Even if you just say good-bye to him.”

“Okay.”

“So when did you say you’re leaving?” she says.

“January.”

“So next week here then?”

“Every week until it gets too cold.”

She puts her arms around me. I hug back. She says, “I don’t think it will ever get too cold.”

We sit like that, hugging, for a long time. She’s stronger than I remember her being. Or maybe I didn’t used to let her hug me. I bury my nose in the hair that falls down around her neck. She smells like picadillo, and the apartment, and every lullaby she ever sang me. But I won’t let her see me cry.

She says, “This thing, you know. There are more important things than whether someone says you can have some papers and numbers. You’re one of the strongest people I know. Way stronger than me. Step by step, you’ll find the way. You’re going to do amazing things.”

“You too, I think.”

“I think so, too.” She takes my hand. I let her. “Let’s walk together halfway.”

I
meet my father at the coffee shop where I caught him reading instead of working. He’s got a cup of coffee in front of him. He stands up when I get there. I sit across from him.

“So,” he says.

“Here we are.”

“You never came back.”

“No.”

“You still wear too much eyeliner.”

He says it sheepishly, like he’s trying to make a joke and it’s the only one that occurs to him. Like he’s trying to call up a shared memory, but the only ones he’s coming up with are the ones when he says things like, “You wear too much eyeliner.”

“So . . .” I say, my eyes steady on him.

“I just . . .” He lifts up his chest, breathes in deep, like he’s screwing up courage. “About that night.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know . . . I don’t know how we got here.”

“You hit me. That’s how we got here.”

“No, I mean . . .” He looks like he gives up trying to explain, is quiet for too long a beat, and moves on to another approach. “You know, when you were born, I felt guilty.”

“Why?”

“I just held you and I had never felt anything like that feeling. I was just some snot-nosed kid. All I’d ever cared about was hanging out with my friends, looking cool. But you . . . you looked just like me, but in tiny baby form. It was the most amazing thing. I felt guilty. I knew I would never be able to love your mother the way that I loved you.”

I don’t know what to say to this. Luckily, I don’t have to say anything. He’s on a roll. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to come to this country alone. You know that? Work and send money back home to your mother.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because you came along and I couldn’t leave you.”

“So it’s my fault.”

“No, that’s not . . .” I know it’s not what he means, but I enjoy making it difficult for him. So many times when I was little and he would hit me, I would close my eyes to fight back the tears by thinking to myself, “One day I’ll be big and strong and you’ll be old and weak.” He isn’t exactly old and weak yet, but is that white hair by his temple? And I’m not big and strong, at least not in the way that I dreamed I would be one day. But I’m not small and weak, either.

“That’s not what I mean,” he repeats. “You changed the plans, yes. But I was glad you did. So we all came together. We were only supposed to be here six months, to save money.”

“But it didn’t work out that way.”

“You were so precious. We both knew right away that the plan of your mother and I both getting jobs would never work. We couldn’t leave you with strangers. And then . . . the time goes by so fast in this country. Everything is sped up.”

“Stop saying ‘this country.’ This is
my
country.”

“But it’s not. That’s what you don’t understand. One day when you’re older, you’ll understand.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever see it that way.”

“This country was just a detour. It’s like a detour that won’t end. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way. You talking like them. You saying you wouldn’t go back home. You always worry that
they
don’t want
us
. But it’s
us
who shouldn’t want
them
. They put their old people in old age homes to die alone. All they care about is money. We’re not like them. Don’t you see?”

“No.” We are on two sides of a big canyon, screaming as loud as we can, but barely getting our messages over to each other.

“You should come home,” he says.

“You said you were going to kill me. You did more than say it.”

“I never would have let it get that far.”

“I should have had you arrested.”

He looks out the window. “If you had, maybe I’d be home by now. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad after all. You should come home. You think the brave thing is running away. The brave thing is facing the problems.”

“The way
you
do?”

“Better than me, I hope.”

“I’m not coming home. But what about them? Mami? Joey? What’s it going to be like for them?” I want to hear him say he won’t turn his anger on them now.

“You think I don’t learn anything. And maybe I don’t, who knows? But something broke inside your mother the day you left. It’s over with us, I think. Anyway, I can’t . . . I don’t know how to explain it to you. But I won’t do that to them.”

“People like you don’t change.”

“Probably not,” he says. “Too proud. Too stubborn. But the world changes around us, keeps on going without us. That’s how it is with your mother. I don’t count anymore. You were the last person I could ever hope to—You’ll have kids one day and you’ll see. There will be one that is just like you, and you’ll do anything to make her come out perfect, to not grow crooked. One day when you’re older, you’ll understand.” It’s like if he says it enough times, maybe he’ll believe it. He looks so sad and tired. And for the first time, small. And I feel strong for realizing that maybe I will never understand. That I will always have my own separate truth that no one can ever change.

Then he says, “You used to take money out of my wallet, right?”

I look at him, not at the spot on his forehead I’ve been looking at to keep from making eye contact but, for the first time, right in his eyes. I am shocked that he knew all along, that he’s saying something now. I feel a deep shame. Not that he knew, but that I once was the kind of person who stole.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“That money you took out of my notebook. You owed it to me.”

“How much was it?”

“A hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

“How much were you able to get back?”

“Sixty-two.”

He reaches into his pants pocket, takes out his wallet, pulls it open, grabs a twenty. “This is all I have. I’ll send the rest with your mother, a little at a time.”

I don’t know which is worse, that he’s only got twenty dollars, or that he’s offering his last twenty dollars to me.

“It’s okay,” I say, pushing his hand back. He looks at me a long time, then puts the bill back in his wallet.

C
helsea’s mom comes into the family room where Chelsea and I are eating popcorn and watching that reality show about the swimsuit model who marries the little person.

“Turn on CNN,” she says to Chelsea.

“What?”

“The president just made an executive decision on DREAMers. Teenagers who were brought over here when they were kids, like you, M.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not even sure yet. When I saw the headline online I just came in here.”

We switch the channel. I catch it just in time to hear a part of the president’s speech. He’s saying, “Now, let’s be clear—this is not amnesty, this is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It’s not a permanent fix. This is a temporary stopgap measure that lets us focus our resources wisely while giving a degree of relief and hope to talented, driven, patriotic young people.”

Talented. Driven. Patriotic
. The words echo in my chest. I try them on, wondering if they could apply to me. I decide they do.

They end the clip of the president and go to a news anchor, a woman with perfect blond hair and huge glow-in-the-dark teeth and a whole lot of eye makeup.

“There you have it, the president making his historic announcement today, issuing a politically charged policy directive that will make about eight hundred thousand young people who were brought in to the country illegally as children safe from deportation proceedings, and may make them eligible for work permits.”

Chelsea mutes the TV. I keep watching the anchor with the tons of eye makeup talking on the screen on mute. Next to her in a box they show an image of a baby, then some students holding a sign saying, ‘No human being is illegal.’ And finally the president again.

“This doesn’t help my mom,” I say.

“No. I think it’s only for people who were sixteen or younger when they came over.”

“She was twenty-two.”

“So no.”

“But my brother is okay.”

“Where was he born?”

“Here. Mid-Bergen.”

“So he’s a citizen.”

“This means college and a work permit for me, but no citizenship,” I say.

“For now,” says Chelsea’s mom. “But it reminds me what Martin Luther King said about justice. Do you know the quote?”

“No.”

“‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’”

“I like that. The start of the arc.” I smile.

I close my eyes, for the first time in a long time not wading a lake of silence. The future begins to take a color in my mind. And it shines.

I was “illegal” like M.T. once. The Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986 put me on a path to eventual citizenship and changed my life in every way imaginable. I spent many dark and lonely years wondering what the future might hold for me. Now I wake up every morning grateful for the opportunity to have a life I love in the only country I’ve ever called home. I always like to joke that you never love your country as much as when you’ve grown up being afraid you’d get kicked out of it. M.T.’s story is very much like mine, but very much her own, too.

Besides her uncertain immigration status, there are other serious issues that M.T. faces. One is domestic violence. Her dad is abusive for his own hard-to-understand and complicated reasons. Like many kids who are abused, M.T. spends a lot of time hating herself and wondering what she did wrong. It affects all her relationships, not just the one with her father. It’s common but misguided. The abused is never to blame. If you or anyone you know is facing a situation like that, the important thing is to reach out for help from a trusted adult. There are also organizations that can help, and they’re listed at the end of this note.

The other issue she grapples with is suicide. Contemplating suicide is a common if extreme way to cope with situations that feel hopeless. According to a study from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services administration, thirteen percent of teens between the ages of fourteen and seventeen have seriously considered suicide. It doesn’t make you weird or wrong to try to think of all the ways out of a situation that hurts. I thought about it for years in my teens and twenties. It was isolating and sad. Now, decades into the happy life that came after all the pain, I realize what a drastic and permanent solution that would have been. It would have prevented everything wonderful I have now. I know now that it always gets better.
Always
. If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, reach out for help immediately.

How can you tell if someone is “just trying to get attention” or seriously contemplating suicide? You can’t. It sounds and looks the same. (And I would argue that if someone is trying to get attention by threatening suicide, they still need someone to talk to.) Reach out for help anyway, even if your friend gets mad at you. Alive and mad is better than dead.