“You can’t do that alone?”
I open my mouth, ready to say get lost, but her voice sounds strange, garbled, almost as if she’s trying to hold back tears. She’s all alone. Maybe she needs a friend. Maybe that’s why she was so willing to help me.
“I guess I can’t,” I make myself say.
“All right, then.” She walks toward me, sneaker laces flapping. “I’ll stay, but only for a couple of days. I have a bunch of things to do. Do you think I can waste my whole life with you?”
“No,” I say. I see she’s trying not to smile. I see how happy she is. So I’m right about her being lonely. And then I remember hearing her whisper a name in the truck. What was it? Dario? Desiderio? “Who’s…Danilo?” I ask.
“How should I know?” She wipes her hands on the sides of her jeans. “Let’s go,” she says, back to her bossy self. “Do you want to stand here forever?”
I take a breath and go up the cracked cement path to the middle house. The bell is broken. I knock a few times, then turn the handle, but the door doesn’t budge; it’s locked, of course. I listen, but inside, everything is still. I stand on tiptoes to peer through the window on top.
The living room, if that’s what it is, is almost empty: no rug, no chairs; only a couch, a table full of scratches, and a TV.
A TV! We don’t have one at home. We don’t have an iPhone or an iPad, or any of those things I hear about in school.
“Someday,” Mami said, sighing.
Angel doesn’t wait for me. “We’ll go around the back,” she calls over her shoulder. She cuts across the weedy lawn and disappears along the side of the house.
She’s impossible.
I follow her, though. What else is there to do?
There’s one backyard for all the houses. It’s filled with junk: an old tire, pieces of wood, a table turned upside down. Four brightly colored wooden birdhouses hang from a tree. They match the birdhouses that hang over our door. Julian!
I circle around to the steps and glance up to see a fuzz of green trees in the distance.
Angel is in the kitchen, her hand on the faucet; rusty water runs in the sink. She shrugs. “The door wasn’t even locked.”
She motions to me, still on the step. “Move it, Matty. We don’t want the whole world to see we’ve broken in.”
I shake my head. “We didn’t break in,” I say as I go inside. “It’s Julian’s place.” Was Julian’s place? “Besides, it was your idea, Angel.”
The water runs clear in the sink now, and Angel takes a sip.
How strange. There’s nothing in this kitchen of Julian’s that I recognize. “Almost empty,” I whisper. There’s a smell of sour milk.
“Not exactly. We haven’t looked in the cabinets yet. And there’s an old cup in the sink. A plate, a spoon, a bowl of half-eaten cereal, and a half-eaten piece of toast on the counter.”
I nod. The cup in the sink is half filled with dried-out coffee. “I can’t start the day without it,” Julian said.
“Your brother isn’t going to win any prizes for keeping a neat house,” Angel says, and hesitates. “Maybe he left in a hurry.”
How can I tell her about Julian? That he’s usually neat, that he’s a terrific cook, and when he talks, he always has his hand on someone’s shoulder.
Outside, someone is walking a dog. Angel looks up. A flash of unease crosses her face. She puts her finger to her lips and runs out of the room.
We’re far from the border now. We don’t look as if we belong. And we certainly don’t belong in this house.
I stand back, peering out the window to see a woman on the sidewalk. As I turn to follow Angel, my arm grazes the bowl on the counter. It tilts, spins! I reach out, too late, as it smashes on the floor.
I’m frozen, listening. Outside, the footsteps stop. Maybe I should open the door and tell her who I am, ask if she’s seen Julian. But I don’t know that many words in English. It won’t help to say: The cat is scrawny.
Scrawny. I love the feel of that in my mouth.
And what about Clouds are puffy?
Puffy, a good word too.
Julian taught me those.
I try to remember what I know, and begin to whisper to myself: the days of the week, broom and sweep, fish after work. What else?
But suppose the woman outside calls the police?
Another word: illegal.
I can’t take a chance.
I skirt around the broken bowl and the lumps of cereal and dive into the bedroom behind Angel, closing the door. I check to be sure the long curtains cover the window in case the woman peers in.
A clock with a dusty face stands on a small table; the hands have stopped at twelve. When I pick it up the battery falls out: the whole thing’s a mess. Was it even Julian’s?
I look out the window. The woman is gone. I sink down on the edge of the bed. The closet door is half open, and there are clothes inside. Julian’s clothes? A pair of jeans, the hems in strings, and a pair of sneakers as worn as mine, with rubber missing at the toes.
I turn. On the bed is a patchwork quilt made with red and yellow squares. It lights up the room, even though it’s a little torn, a little dirty. It’s come a long way. I flip it over, and in neat dark stitches, I see the initials, Mami’s and Abuelita’s.
I run my hand over it, patting it, almost the way I’d pat the cat’s head. If only I could find Julian. I’d fly home like one of Julian’s birds and be there in time for dinner.
“What’s going on with you?” Angel bangs her hand on the door molding.
She sees too much.
I don’t answer. Instead, I pull open the drawer in the clock table. Inside, Julian’s flashlight rolls around, and there’s a small package of batteries in the back. I reach for the lamp, but nothing happens.
“No electricity,” Angel says.
I take one of the batteries and slide it into the back of the clock, which begins to tick immediately.
Back in the living room, we sit in the dark. A spring from somewhere deep inside the couch suddenly pokes up between us, with an odd sound.
“Boing,” Angel says, and we both laugh.
I like Angel’s laugh; it’s almost as if she’s trying to catch her breath, sucks it in, and begins that small uh-hu again.
A streetlamp goes on—it’s so strange to see it—shedding a path of light across the couch.
It isn’t much, but enough to see a pile of mail scattered on the floor that’s come in through a small slot in the door. I hesitate. Should I look at it?
It’s not mine. And no one I know would write to Julian.
I glance at Angel. She has a sour look on her face. Her mouth is pursed like a bird’s beak.
She reminds me of the old woman at home. I pull Felipe’s pad toward me.
The house halfway down along the creek where the old woman lived. Her dark hair, shot with gray, was always pulled back in a bun, with pieces of hair flying into her face. She wore jeans that must have belonged to someone much bigger than she was.
She seemed to know when I was wading in the creek, bending over to run the cool water over my head, singing the frog song with my cracked-egg voice.
“I need peace,” the woman yelled.
I looked up. She was standing at her door with a broom in her hand.
I backed away toward the bank of the creek. Was she going to swing at me with it?
Yes. She moved forward; I moved back. We were like the fighters in the ring I saw one summer night. If she landed with that broom, I’d be like the fighter who staggered around with a bump on his head the size of a rock.
But Julian splashed in behind me, scooped me up with both hands under my arms. We headed toward home along the creek, my feet hanging just above the water, laughing.
“Don’t tell Mami,” I said. “She’ll want me to stay out of the creek.”
“How about Abuelita?”
“Neither one.”
We sat at the edge of the creek close to our house.<
br />
“That old woman is mean,” I said.
“Abuelita says she’s not mean; she’s miserable.”
“What do you say?” I asked.
Julian tilted his head. “She’s a little wretched, I guess.” Wretched. An English word. I could say it with my teeth together and my mouth barely moving. Wretched!
Julian skipped a stone into the water; then he ran his wet hands through his hair.
I didn’t bother to tell him that his head was full of mud now.
Instead, lying there on the edge of the creek, we held our faces to the sun.
“Wretched,” I said again.
Something is in my eyes—a pinprick of light; it’s almost blinding.
I raise my hand to push it away. And then I realize it’s morning. A sunbeam darts through the edge of the curtain like an arrow, changing the color of the floor to honey, the couch pillow to gold. The warmth on my face reminds me of mornings at home.
It seems as if I slept for only moments. Angel sprawled on the bed under Mami’s quilt, and I threw myself on the couch in the living room.
I look around. On the windowsill is a small pencil drawing of a woman. It’s Julian’s work! The woman’s face is turned away, but a thick braid rests on her shoulder.
Abuelita?
Propped up in the corner is the guitar.
I peek through a gap between the curtains. Outside someone is jogging down the street; then someone else, a bulky woman, marches by, holding a purse up to her chest. Two kids fight a duel with their backpacks, never stopping, probably on their way to school. A pickup truck lumbers down the street.
Everyone is awake.
Can they see me?
I tug the curtains together and the arrow of sunlight disappears.
I reach over and pull the guitar onto the couch with me, picking at each one of the six strings, hearing the difference in the sounds. One reminds me of the chimes at San Pablo Church at home. Another plinks high and thin: the meow of the stray cat as she greets me after school.
Angel stands in the kitchen doorway. “Be quiet, Diego. They’ll hear you.”
Diego! That was the name she whispered in the truck. “Who is that?”
Her hand goes to her mouth. “Nobody. You just looked like a guy who might be named Diego.” She presses her lips together for a moment. Then she shakes her head. “My brother.”
She rushes on. “If they hear you outside, they might think this place is haunted. They’ll guess some idiot ghost is trying to make music.”
I’m ready to ask her to tell me more. But I can see she doesn’t want to talk about him. “I forgot,” I say instead. “You never read what I had to say about Julian.”
She goes into the kitchen and I follow her. I put the pad on the table and open it to the Julian section.
She doesn’t reach for it. She doesn’t even look interested.
If only I could look up and see Julian sitting at the table, or cooking at the stove. From the window, I see the backyard, the alley, and in the distance, just a hint of what might be a forest.
“I have to eat,” Angel says. “We have to eat.”
I glance at her. Her face is white as milk. And I feel it too now, a hollow pain in my stomach.
Yesterday we ate sandwiches that Felipe put together for us in the truck, but we’ve had nothing since.
“We can’t go to a store yet,” Angel says. “It’s too early. People will wonder why we’re not in school.”
I miss school. That’s a surprise.
She begins to go through the cabinets, running her fingers over the shelves, searching. She finds something and smiles back at me, holding up a can.
It’s soup with a picture of a bowl, steam rising in a swirl above vegetables and rice and meat. My mouth waters.
Angel is way ahead of me. While I clean up the cereal and pick up the shards of the bowl that I broke last night, she rummages through the drawers, pulls out a can opener and a pair of spoons, and puts the can of soup on the burner.
But nothing happens. The stove doesn’t work. I fiddle with the knobs, then shrug. “No electricity. Right!”
We stare at the can with its picture of chicken and carrots. I imagine the dark soup simmering, then bubbling around the edges, the wonderful salty smell of it filling the kitchen, the whole house.
“We’ll eat it cold,” Angel says.
She opens it and brings the can to the table, holding it as if it were a baby, careful not to spill even one drop.
She sets it down exactly in the center between the two of us. “I warn you—” Her freckles dot her nose; her cheeks are sunburned. “I’m a fast eater.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, “I’ll beat you.”
She grins. We dip in our spoons, but we don’t try to race each other. We’re just glad we have enough to eat. We keep going until every piece of vegetable, every tiny grain of rice, every shred of meat is gone. Then I tip the can and hold it out. “Go ahead,” I tell her. “Take the last sip.”
And she does, a drop sliding down her chin. She rolls her thumb over it and puts it in her mouth. “I never tasted anything so good.”
I nod, running my tongue over my lips. I stare out the kitchen window, at the tree branches that bend toward me.
But where’s Julian? I have to start looking now. “Maybe you’ll spell out a couple of words in English for me so I can start looking.”
“Leave me alone for a while,” she says. “I can’t be doing stuff like that all the time.”
What’s the matter with her now? Maybe she’s thinking about her brother. Maybe she’s thinking about home.
Never mind. I go into the living room. I think of the building Julian was working on. I’ll find it.
Haven’t I found my way here, thousands of miles?
With the taste of soup still in my mouth, I say, “Angel, I have to go out for a while.”
“People will wonder why you’re not in school. I told you that before, Matty. We’ll have to go to the store later.”
She thinks she’s my mother.
I press my lips between my teeth. And then I say it slowly, my words spaced, and I can hear the anger in my voice. “I have come here, all these miles, to find my brother, to make sure he’s all right.”
I brush away thoughts of prison or death. “I’m the only one to help him, Angel. If I get caught, there’s nothing I can do about it. Not one thing. It will just have to be. And no, I’m not going to the store right now.”
“Where, then?” she says, checking the cabinet for food again.
“He was working on a building near here. I want to see it. Maybe I’ll find something.” I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll come with you. I’m good at this kind of thing.”
I take a breath, and then two or three more, calming myself. “You don’t have to do that. You might get caught. People will think you should still be in school.”
“What am I supposed to do all day? Stir a pot on the stove that doesn’t work?” She grins, surprising me. “Look at a blank TV?”
“You can’t sit still for a minute.”
“So I’m coming.” She flips her hair off her neck. “It’s hot.” And then, “Where is it?”
“I’m thinking.” I turn away from her before she can say anything to that, and open the back door slowly to glance outside. No one is in the yard, which stretches across three houses. No one is in the alley beyond that. “Come on.” For once I’m the one who’s in charge.
We scurry across the yard and down the alley. I try to remember what Tomàs might have said about the building.
On a busy street?
No. It wasn’t that.
Maybe stories. Yes. Ten stories high.
And the name of the avenue…No, he didn’t say that either. He said it would be the tallest building in the town.
We stop at the end of the alley, hesitating, and look up. Not far away is a building with scaffolding…. We crane our necks. It looks ghostly with floors mis
sing. Sunny blue sky filters in here and there.
We keep going past rows of shops; in dusty glass windows, we see piles of summer shirts, sneakers, and men’s jackets on hangers.
Angel and I glance at each other as we pass the food store. We can smell something….
Meat and salads, a whiff of garlic and onions, a vat with pickles swimming in vinegar at the door.
Angel can’t resist. The door is open. She walks inside and stands there as I motion to her to come back outside.
The man behind the counter watches her, but at last she backs out the door. “That’s my favorite place right now,” she whispers as we circle around a man stuffing a huge sandwich in his mouth; it drips tomatoes and mayonnaise.
Next to me, Angel hurries. She’s thinking about being caught. She’s right again. People may look at me and think Immigrant. Illegal immigrant. Wetback.
I step out on the street and cross to the other side. Angel follows, hurrying away from the food store where the man in the apron stands at the window.
And then we’re running.
Flying.
Now the tall building is only blocks away.
We reach that corner and stop to take a breath. In front of us is a gray slatted fence. The building isn’t finished, not nearly.
But where are the workers?
I stretch my neck looking, and shiver thinking about being up so high, balancing myself on the beams.
Angel moves two of the fence slats aside and squeezes herself through to the work site.
“Not a good idea.” I whisper, in case anyone is around. “Come back.”
She pays no attention. She just keeps going.
All right. I’ll do the same thing.
I duck my head and go through the fence. Inside, I search for friendly faces, for faces that look like mine, with dark eyes, dark hair, smiling faces. But I don’t see anyone. And there’s no noise: no sound of hammer and drills, of workers on platforms.
But there is someone. A watchman? He looks a little like me, but much older, with lines slashed across his forehead. He puts down a newspaper and stands, staring, then comes toward me.
I take a chance and speak in Spanish. “I’m looking for my brother Julian.”