Afterlife Page 15

But he doesn’t have the language or know-how to negotiate the medical bureaucracy, which has eluded Antonia herself since she went on Medicare. The entrails of the health care system, a phrase she has come to associate with the whole dysfunctional federal government, a stinky coil of stomach, small intestine, bowel (the three branches), none of them working properly.

There’s always Mama Terry, though Mario would have to come up with some cash to pay for her services.

Recently, several ad hoc migrant groups have sprung up around the state with a phone tree of volunteers who can translate, offer rides. Antonia somehow got put on that list. Just because she’s Latina doesn’t automatically confer on her the personality or inclinations of a Mother Teresa. It irritates her, this moral profiling based on her ethnicity. Forget The Odyssey and the tradition of harboring strangers. When is Mario coming by? Antonia blurts out.

Estela winces. Antonia has touched a sore spot. I don’t know, Estela says in a whisper.

How can she not know? Don’t parting lovers always arrange for their next rendezvous? Unless, of course, those parting lovers don’t have the luxury of controlling their lives. Or thinking they can.

Little by little the girl explains the fix she is in. She was not evicted by el patrón. It’s Mario who wants nothing to do with her. It turns out Mario has been gone almost two years, first Tejas, then Carolina del Norte, finally settling in Vermont this past January. No way el bebé is his. (So, she does know her science.) When Estela arrived with that big belly of hers, he was as surprised as Antonia. Furious Estela had not told him.

But he wouldn’t have let me come if I had told him, the girl is quick to add. He says so himself: he is not going to raise another man’s bastard.

But it’s not your fault, Antonia defends the girl. Antonia has been following reports on the news: girls traveling to the border, raped by coyotes, by those who run the so-called safe houses, by thieves, thugs, even by other migrants. But when Estela doesn’t jump to her own defense, Antonia asks as delicately as possible, not wanting, God knows, to stir up any dragons. ?Te violaron?

Estela bows her head in shame.

Dímelo. Tell me your story.

Sobbing, Estela confesses. She was not sure Mario was ever coming back. She was lonely. There was a man in her village, un hombre importante. He paid her attention, bought her pretty things, gave her money for her mother and younger siblings. We are seven sisters, she explains. No brothers.

Seven sisters! We are—Antonia stops herself. Is it still four sisters? She shakes away the horrible thought. It’s been a respite from that horror to have to attend to someone else’s horror.

Estela goes on to recount that when she became pregnant, the important man wanted her gone. He had a wife, his honor to protect. He found a coyote and paid for Estela’s journey.

But wait, I thought Mario paid for the trip? He borrowed a bunch of money.

That was after the robbery. The first coyote abandoned Estela’s group in the desert, after stealing from them all they carried; Estela ended up in the hands of a second coyote, and that’s when Mario stepped in to help. He only knew that Estela was en route to him. Had she told Mario then about her condition, what would have become of her, of her baby?

This is telenovela material—in fact, some critics would say, Too much, ratchet it down a notch. But it isn’t a telenovela to the people it happens to. Another way to dismiss their plight. Ratchet it down a notch.

I will talk with Mario, Antonia promises.

The girl’s face lights up. Tell him I want to be with him; tell him I didn’t know what else to do.

Desperate situations call for desperate moves, Mario should understand. But for the obfuscations of machismo—Antonia’s own father banished first one, then another daughter when he discovered they had transgressed with their American boyfriends. Antonia’s exile came spring of her senior year at college: her father called her dorm one Saturday only to find out from the big mouth at the switchboard that Antonia was away for the weekend with her boyfriend. When she returned, there were half a dozen pink message slips tacked to her door, Call home. Her father answered on the first ring, shouting into the mouthpiece, YOU ARE DEAD TO ME.

A year later, Antonia showed up at her parents’ house in Queens. Her boyfriend had left her; she had lost her job, working the night shift at the state mental facility, her charges tied to their beds—the days before patients’ rights and HIPAA monitoring of conditions. Nights were surreal, filled with howling, screams, shrieks, wails. The distraught and disturbed in need of soothing. The soiled in need of a cleanup. And here Antonia had taken the night shift thinking she’d get a lot of writing done. When she complained to her supervisor about the patients’ mistreatment, she was fired. Where could she go? She hitchhiked home. Only then, when she had hit rock bottom, did her father “forgive her.”

But along with machismo, the culture also commands respect for elders. Antonia is now la do?ita. Older than Mario’s mother by a dozen years. She will counsel him on the right way to act in this situation.

Gracias, gracias, ay, gracias, the girl keeps saying, tears in her eyes.

Wait to thank me till it’s over, Antonia jokes. She feels uneasy accepting Estela’s gratitude when she knows damn well she’d rather pass on this heavy load.

*


After settling Estela into the guest room, Antonia heads for next door. She turns into the driveway—Roger’s pickup is gone—and parks in front of the trailer behind the barn. The curtains the workers always keep drawn lift ever so slightly. Before she can even knock, the door opens: José comes out on the concrete stoop, then steps down to the ground to stand eye level with her.

Mario no está, he announces.

Mario not here? ?Por favor! she challenges the nervous young man. It’s not like the undocumented have the freedom to go missing or for a leisurely stroll in this predominately white town and state. Her minority students often complained to Antonia about being followed around in stores, as if the darker color of their skin made them likely shoplifters. Migrant justice groups have taken up the issue: immigration control is not supposed to be the province of local law enforcement. Some enlightened counties—like her own—have outright refused to be an arm of ICE. But that doesn’t guarantee a damn thing; a disgruntled state trooper or a cop in a bad mood after his wife left him or after he nicked himself shaving can always phone in an anonymous tip. Alerts are constantly issued—somehow Antonia got herself on that email list, too: La migra picked up two outside Walmart in Burlington; ICE arrested three passengers getting off a bus. La policía stopped a car about a broken taillight and apprehended three individuals, a college girl transporting two undocumented migrants. The student was taking them out for pizza, first time off the farm in months the day after Thanksgiving—jeez, Black Friday all right—and the three were brought to the local jail: the student was later released, a hearing pending; the two young men kept behind bars, soon to be deported.

No me voy hasta que no lo vea, Antonia announces, loud enough for Mario to hear her on the other side of the thin door. She is not leaving until she talks to him.

Okay, okay, José concedes, looking over his shoulder. He reminds Antonia of a teenager covering for a buddy in hot water. Mario is somewhere on the farm; José is not sure where. We don’t want any trouble. La do?ita knows how difficult el patrón can be.

I can be difficult, too. Antonia stands her ground, one hand on her hip, a cultural signal if there ever was one that this viejita means business. Mario! she calls out, her voice in command mode. Mario!

How different her behavior at this moment from her docility in the Illinois station with Officer Morgan. Sam often noted that Antonia got a lot bossier in Spanish. The minute they touched ground in the DR, a more self-assured self took over. But in English, even after years of education and employment, the worm of self-doubt still eats away at the core of her certainties.

The trailer door finally opens a crack. Déjala entrar, Mario calls to José. Soon el patrón will be back from his errand, and he has already told them in a loud voice, as if the issue is volume not language: NO VISITORS. Visitors spell trouble. Roger’s illegal aliens are his own dirty little secret. He doesn’t relish breaking the law but sometimes even law-abiding citizens have to defy the authorities in order to survive. Desperate situations call for desperate moves. Not so different, after all, from the undocumented he employs. Antonia was at that debate on campus a few months ago, farmers and their workers, talking about the similar predicaments they were in.

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