Sanctuary Read online

  As if to wipe us all away.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mami didn’t even pretend to sleep that night. I could feel her next to me on the pullout couch, rolling around, getting up, and lying back down. By three in the morning, I went to get a drink of water and found her in the kitchen making a big pot of ajiaco. Her long, wavy hair was slipping out of its usually tight bun. She was chopping and stirring so slowly as she stared out our palm-sized window. The sky outside was cool and steely, with just a scoop of fading moon.

  “Mami? Why are you cooking?” I asked.

  “¡Mi’ja!” she said, spinning around. She blinked quickly to wipe away any signs of being frightened or even surprised by my voice. Then she came over and squished my cheeks hard between her thick palms. “Vali, vete a dormir,” she told me.

  “I can’t sleep,” I said.

  “You have to,” she insisted.

  Mami was fiery and tough as nails. Even at five foot one, I was sure she could hold up the world, or carry me and Ernie through the apocalypse—whichever came first. She had broad shoulders, a barrel-shaped middle, and weathered café con leche skin; her dark eyes were always sparking with determination. Mami worked on McAuley’s Dairy Farm just outside of our town of Southboro, Vermont. A few weeks before, she helped birth a calf that was breech. She tried to tell me about the thrill of catching its placenta, but I gagged. Absolutely nothing made Mami squeamish or scared. Her rules for survival were:

  Love all creatures, great and small.

  Quit your worrying, and praise God you’re alive.

  Protect your family at all costs.

  “Mi’ja, a dormir,” she said, her voice low and husky. Her thick lips only worked their way into a smile if she truly meant it. Now they were pursed into a tight frown.

  I frowned back, our faces almost identical. I loved that I looked so much like my mami. We had the same skin color, the same long dark hair, even the same hips. We got to share bras, lip liners, and an obsession with old-school reggaeton. Most of all, I felt like Mami could see straight inside me, tunnel through all my confusion and fear, and hold on to my heart for safekeeping.

  On any other day, I wouldn’t have dared argue with my mami. I’d just have gone back to bed like she told me to. I was a pretty respectful kid. But I couldn’t ignore what I was feeling and go lie down. No matter what Mami said, this wasn’t a normal day. This was only a few hours since we’d witnessed that girl being blown to bits in front of the Mexican/United States border, since we’d seen people in San Diego charging toward the Wall and then heard shots tear through the crowds. This was the morning after, or maybe just a continuation of that terrifying instant when we were here and the West Coast was on fire, and nobody was telling us what was going on.

  I knew that if I tried to lie down for another minute, all I would see when I closed my eyes was that girl’s ponytail—so bouncy and full, and then swallowed in flames in the same breath. Or I would fall into another nightmare about her stepping on a land mine and her body exploding into guts and eyeballs and shreds of Mickey Mouse shirt.

  And me, running across that field, desperate to put her back together, knowing I never could.

  “¿Mi’ja?” Mami squeezed my cheeks. “Go.”

  “But what about Tía Luna? Have you talked to her yet?”

  Mami shook her head, turning back to her pot on the stove.

  “Is everything still down?” I asked. Mami didn’t answer. One glance at my phone said it all. The government had shut everything off—internet, cell service. Nothing to see here; nothing to be done. Feeding us only that empty chair and portrait in a cinder-block room.

  This was where we were now: in the utter darkness.

  “We still have the National News report,” Mami said, resigned. “They tell about same thing over and over. The economy so good, trade wars we win. And did you know there is a new sandal with a . . . cremallera? It is very popular this season,” she reported.

  “What are you talking about?” I shot back—a little too loudly for Mami.

  “Shhh. Por favor, Ernie’s still sleeping,” she whispered. “This is all they tell us. This is all the news I have for you.”

  I reached for Mami’s phone on the counter. It was hot in my hand. I saw she’d dialed Tía Luna’s number fifty-three times since last night. I tried for a fifty-fourth time, but all I got was that meaningless message again: Your request cannot be processed at this time.

  “Vali, por favor,” Mami said, taking the phone from me before I could dial again.

  “I wanna know what’s going on!”

  “Me too, mi’ja. Pero they tell us nothing right now. So just go to sleep,” she said. She smushed me into her chest for a brisk hug, then pushed me out the kitchen door. And that was that.

  I tried to go to sleep. I really did. I went into the living room and lay down, first on my side of the bed, then on Mami’s side, then horizontally. There was just too much tumbling inside of me. Bright flashes of that girl stepping forward. The earth erupting, the livestream falling, the stampede of feet and dust. The gunshots going wild.

  I grabbed my phone and searched for any possible pictures or reports about last night. There was nothing. Or really, there was the National News morning show, with hosts in chalky makeup, pointing to weather maps and sipping fake coffee from their empty mugs. Putting on this government-sponsored charade about the US waking up to a brand-new, fantabulous day, even though I knew for a fact that we were in the middle of the worst economic downfall in American history. Nothing was growing here. The drought was killing off all vegetation and livestock, we had strict water rations, and we were lucky that Mami even had a job.

  The TV hosts’ teeth were so white and straight as they yammered on about made-up facts, like

  The US economy is soaring!

  The drought is almost over!

  And look at these adorable new sandals!

  I got it. I got how Americans could become mesmerized and hypnotized by these vapid talking heads. I wanted to get lulled into believing them too. It probably would’ve been so much easier that way.

  Only, I knew what it meant to live a lie. A lie that made me awkward and shy around people I didn’t know. A lie that made me skittish when I heard sirens or got assigned a project in school that involved personal family narratives. A lie that thrived off of all my fear.

  For me, the lie started when we left Colombia.

  My name is Valentina González Ramirez, but people who really know me call me Vali. I was born in a town called Suárez, wedged between mountains in el Norte del Cauca. I lived there until I was four years old, so I only remember it in blips of color and sound . . .

  The orange glow of the sun seeping through our wooden door frame.

  The quick panting of Papi as he hiked up a steep, muddy path, with me on his back.

  The dust below me turning dark red after I tripped over a mining excavator and sliced open my lower lip.

  The sweetness of Mami cooking plantains over our stove.

  I didn’t understand all the threads connecting these details, though. I didn’t know that there were big corporations trying to take over our town when I was little. That people were getting death threats and being murdered as they tried to stop the corporations from taking the gold under our mountains. I certainly didn’t know that my abuela and abuelo had burned to death in their own home or that five girls had been tortured and drowned in the river where I first learned how to swim.

  They were all casualties of this undeclared armed conflict in Colombia. It was no longer the fifty-two-year civil war, but instead it was a quieter war. Almost deadlier, because it was so stealthy and cruel. A war camouflaged inside the shadows of peace.

  Mami only told me all this after we’d come to the United States. She said she missed Colombia every second of every day, but that the mountains and river
s were covered in blood. That was why we had to leave our home and make a new one here.

  Tú naciste en Colombia pero también eres de acá, Mami told me every night before I went to sleep.

  And I said it back to her: Naci en Colombia pero también soy de acá.

  It was like my prayer, my plea. I would always be Colombian. Just like I would always be American. At least, I felt like I was American after living here for twelve years now.

  Mami, Papi, and I crossed into San Diego two weeks after my fourth birthday. I remember that day because I saw Mami crying for the first time, and she couldn’t tell me whether she was happy or sad. We had to sleep in a homeless shelter for a while, and they separated me and Mami from Papi, which made me angry and scared. So Mami decided we would sleep in the parks instead; that way we could be together. Papi found a farm where he and Mami could pick tomatoes during the day. I had to sit behind a shed and be very quiet so no one got mad. My tummy hurt from too many tomatoes, and I got stung by bees a lot.

  San Diego was beautiful and horrible all at once. The roads were wide and paved. The sun turned pink before it set every night. There was an amusement park with jumping dolphins and roller coasters. But even after I started going to kindergarten and hanging out with kids my age, I had this lonely feeling that wouldn’t go away. I knew that I was different. I knew that most families didn’t have to plan for if Mami or Papi didn’t come home from work because ICE took them away. I knew it wasn’t normal that I jumped if there was an unexpected knock on the classroom door.

  I memorized the Pledge of Allegiance and tried to recite it very loudly every day in class. On the school playground, I made friends with a blond-haired girl named Rosie. She said we should be besties and that I could sleep over at her house anytime. Only, when I tried to, her dad asked me where I was from and I got so nervous, I said, “Nowhere!” and ran home. Rosie stopped talking to me after that.

  Mami, Papi, and I moved into an apartment of our own. It was really an office above a car dealership, so it smelled like gasoline and we had a cooler instead of a refrigerator. But it was ours. I remember that when I started the first grade, I got a laminated notebook and wrote my new address across the top of it—just in case it got lost. And because I was so proud.

  I kept begging Mami to buy me zippered jeans and stretchy headbands so I could look like all the popular girls in my class. But I didn’t look like them. I never would. I was wider and darker. One girl said I was the color of her favorite kind of caramel. Another asked me why my arm hair was so long and if I could teach her to roll her r’s.

  I just wanted to be done with school. I wanted to go to work like Mami and Papi. I told them that one day I would be a heart doctor or a famous singer, and I’d make enough money to buy them a fancy car from the dealership below us—at the full price. Mami laughed, and Papi said he couldn’t wait to drive it. I figured a car was the thing they needed most. They were both working their asses off at two and three jobs apiece, trying to pay for things like food, and rent, and saving up for the new baby. Mami was pregnant with my little brother, Ernesto, who was born the same day the President replaced California’s governor with a cabinet member to promote “unity and integrity.”

  By this point, the deportation raids were getting more and more intense. There were daily riots and protests. The night after the President won reelection for his third term, Mami and Papi let me stay up and watch television with them. We stared at the red, white, and blue fireworks going off as the first steel columns were drilled into the ground just north of the border.

  It was really happening. The Great American Wall was going up between Mexico and California.

  The censorship laws went into effect soon after that. Papi threw out our TV and said from now on we only listened to independent, real news sources. But the government invaded our space any way it could. The President started broadcasting his vision through gigantic holograms, flashing and flickering like some intergalactic prophet. He talked about “cleaning up” this country so there would be no more homelessness, no more infestations, no more opioids or threats to our democracy.

  What he really meant was, no more immigrants without papers. No more us.

  From now on, he explained, everyone living in the US had to get an identification chip implanted in their wrist. The chips would have all of our information on them—ID number, birthplace, blood type, medical history, even allergies. The chips would make everything so much easier, the President told us. With just a simple scan, we would know who belonged here once and for all.

  If you didn’t have a chip, clearly you were “illegal.”

  Getting a chip put in was free and painless, but mandatory. All we had to do was show up at a clinic with our birth certificates or proof of citizenship. Each chip was small enough that it could be injected using a little numbing spray and a syringe. I watched Ernie get his when he was just a baby, and he barely squeaked. It was easy, since he was born in the US.

  Mami, Papi, and I were a different story, of course.

  While the President was still yammering in front of those fireworks, Mami started reaching out to everyone she knew in San Diego for help. She managed to connect with some guy who was implanting fake ID chips in his kitchen. He was charging five thousand dollars each, which was way beyond what my parents had, even if we paid in installments. Papi said he would get one later; it was most important for me and Mami to have them. He promised he would be careful; he would be fine.

  I remember the chip was no bigger than a grain of rice, but it hurt so much when the man cut into my skin—anesthesia was extra—that I passed out. I was trying with all my might to be brave for Mami. Squeezing her hand and boring my eyes into her steady gaze for strength. She’d given this guy literally every penny we had. When I woke up, I was now

  Amelia Catherine Davis

  ID number 072-54-3998

  Born on July 22, 2016, in Arcata, CA

  Blood type: A+, brown eyes, no allergies

  I didn’t know who Amelia Catherine Davis really was. I didn’t know whether she was even alive or dead. I just knew that she had given me a new identity, a new chance at being safe. I recited these facts over and over again. I said them to my parents, to baby Ernie, to the walls, to the sky. I said them ten times before going to bed, ten times before brushing my teeth, and ten times for each shoe I put on in the morning. I rubbed that tiny lump of scar tissue on my right wrist until it was red and raw. Because I had to reassure myself it was still there, and I was still here.

  The government installed the first ID scanners in California soon after. They looked like those devices used to pick up the barcodes off groceries. Only instead of cashiers using them, there were ICE officers in full combat gear, waiting to see that we all made it through. When I got stopped for my first scan at school, I watched the thin blue light wash over my lumpy wrist and thought I might shatter into a million pieces.

  I am Amelia Catherine Davis. 072-54-3998, I repeated in my brain. I was born in the United States.

  When the scan was done, I heard a quiet click, and the ICE officer nodded, sending me on my way. I was so sick from holding in all my nerves that I had to go to the bathroom and press my cheek against the cold tile to calm down. But when I told my parents about it that night at dinner, they nodded with pride. Papi even called me his little guerrera.

  “I’m not little,” I told him, puffing out my chest. He laughed and tugged at his beard. He was always doing that.

  Until they shaved it off.

  On my last day of third grade before winter break, while I was hanging up my backpack and braiding my friend’s hair at school, my papi was taken by ICE. He was handcuffed and herded onto a cattle truck. Everyone working on the tomato farm—over three hundred total—was rounded up and carted off to a detention facility in some undisclosed location. Mami was actually home that day because Ernie had a fever. But as soon as sh
e heard about the raid, she strapped my brother to her chest and ran to the schoolyard to get me at recess.

  I remember that instead of greeting her with a smile or even noticing the circles of worry under her eyes, the only thing I said to her was “What are you doing here? I’m playing tag!”

  Papi was in that detention center for the next six months. He was stripped of all his possessions and shaved bald. I bit my cheeks to stop from crying every time he called us on a videophone. He tried us at random times every few days and asked us questions about all the silly details of our lives. I told him that Ernie was crawling and eating a ton of avocados. I made sure he knew I was the only nine-year-old soprano in the school choir, and that I got 92 percent on my spelling test. It felt so stupid to be saying all these things to him, but he acted like he wanted to hear it. Like he wanted to know we were all getting on without him.

  We weren’t, though. At least, I wasn’t. This was the hardest part of those long months—pretending we were all fine and happy and smiling at my teachers in school or the guy who owned the deli near us and wondering, Do you want me gone too?

  I was scared of everything and everyone. Of scanning stations and empty trucks and the question What’s up? or You okay?

  I got quiet and angry and small as a clenched fist. I flinched if I thought someone was looking at me funny—if I thought someone was looking at me at all. I just wanted to punch the world and grab my papi and run, run, run.

  We had to leave the car dealership and live in the shelters again. Mami couldn’t go back to work. Both farms where she’d been a day laborer were hiring again, but it felt too risky, even with a fake chip. She heard about a network of nannies who got paid well, but that seemed dangerous too. We had no idea where the “cleanups” would happen next or who could be trusted. Every time we talked to Papi, he told us he would be home soon. Only, his voice was getting so tired and unconvincing.