Sanctuary Read online

  “It’s okay,” Kenna said, looping her long arm in mine. “I mean, what else can we do?”

  It was a good question. And I had no answer for her. As we walked around the soccer field, I tried calling Mami just to hear her voice, but her phone was turned off. That was normal for her when she was at the farm, I told myself. Completely normal. Nothing to worry about or twist into some dark what-if.

  “Are you coming?” asked Kenna, pulling me out of the way of a flying soccer ball.

  “Yeah.”

  Uncle Jimi’s was just past the stone bridge at the edge of Southboro Park. Most days, when Kenna and I got off the bus, we went straight there to dig into our homework and a plate of fries. We were always greeted by one of Kenna’s little cousins. She had a ton of them. At least three of the little girls liked to run over right after school and start sifting through the bins of candy. By the time Kenna and I walked in, they were usually bouncing off the walls with a sugar high, begging to play with my hair or to climb on the red-and-white-striped awning.

  Only today, there was no awning over Uncle Jimi’s door. There was just the bare aluminum scaffolding that used to hold it up.

  “What’s that about?” I asked.

  “Dunno,” Kenna answered. Her voice was low and far away. She made a beeline toward the shop, and I followed close behind, even though all I wanted to do was turn around and go home. It was like walking toward the scene of a crime, being drawn in by a dizzying, magnetic pull.

  As I watched Kenna reach for the screen door, I saw there was a new white plastic frame in place of Uncle Jimi’s red wooden one. Kenna pulled too hard, and it swung open and shut with a loud clatter behind us. The shop was empty and still, the air so cold, I shuddered.

  “Hello?” Kenna called. “Uncle Jimi?”

  It was too quiet in there. Too clean. The jars of gumballs and jawbreakers were wiped down so there was not a single fingerprint or smudge. The grill behind the cash register was spotless, and the refrigerator for sweet drinks was open, puffing out cool, lemon-scented disinfectant. The rest of the room was still, too still. As if frozen in time.

  I wanted this all to be just a dream, but there were too many real sensations as we moved farther into the store. The divot from a broken piece of linoleum on the floor, the brown stain on the far wall from a long-ago soda spill, the sound of Kenna muttering to herself.

  “Hello!” she tried again, more forcefully now.

  Past the candy counter and stools, Uncle Jimi had a couple of shelves he kept stocked with crackers, canned soups, and random toiletries, and behind that was a door leading to a loading dock. The door opened now, and a long, bony man dressed in gray combat gear came barreling into the room.

  “Can I help you?” he barked. There was nothing in his voice that hinted at help. His skin was pasty white and drawn so tight across his cheekbones, I could see blue wormy veins crisscrossing underneath.

  “Where’s Jimi?” Kenna said. I tried to breathe for her, with her, to keep us both from losing it.

  “Don’t know who you’re talking about,” the man replied.

  “This is his shop,” I said. “We come here all the time.”

  The man squinted and gave me a snort. “Is that so?” he said.

  A female officer, dressed in matching gear, came through the screen door now. “None in the back,” she reported to the bony man. “But I have the team circling.”

  She stood in front of me and Kenna and pulled out a scanning device from her holster, waiting for us to comply. As she grabbed my wrist, I tried to look straight ahead, to count to eight as I inhaled and exhaled, just as Mami had once coached me. But I kept imagining Kenna rushing back to the soccer field and telling Ernie, They got your sister! They got your sister!

  The scanner clicked, and the woman let me go.

  Kenna’s scan clicked too. I shivered with relief.

  “So, what did you come in here for, girls?” asked the female officer. Her voice dripped with saccharine, and her pink eye shadow sparkled.

  “Nothing, thank you. Come on,” Kenna mumbled, tugging me toward the door.

  “Yeah, thank you,” I echoed.

  I had the feeling that Kenna and I were walking back down the hill toward the soccer field, but I couldn’t be sure. The ground felt like it could dissolve under me, or maybe I was the one dissolving.

  “What do we do now?” I whispered at Kenna, but she wouldn’t answer me until we were past the bridge. At which point she turned to me, her eyes flashing hot and wide. She was quivering as she spoke through clenched teeth.

  “I’m going home, and I think you should too,” she said. Then she spun around and charged up the hill toward her apartment complex.

  There were helicopters circling overhead now—the thwap of their blades growing more and more deafening. Stirring up funnels of dry leaves from whatever trees were trying to bloom in this dry heat.

  “Ernie! Let’s go!” I called from the edge of the soccer field.

  “What? It’s only been, like, ten minutes!” he protested.

  “We have to go! Now!”

  He blasted the ball into a tree trunk and said something to Pete, which I’m sure was not flattering about me. Then he grabbed his backpack and met me on the sidewalk.

  “Why do we have to go?” He sulked, struggling to keep up as I race-walked toward home. There were sirens now too. Red, white, and blue lights spinning a few blocks ahead. The road next to ours was blocked off completely by a row of gray trucks with the words DEPORTATION FORCE splattered across them.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered to my little brother.

  Which I knew was no answer at all. But for once in our lives, he didn’t argue with me.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mami rushed at us before we’d even fully opened the apartment door. She squeezed us so tight, I felt like I might snap into pieces. Her body was jittery and damp with sweat.

  “El pájaro,” she said. “It saves me.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why is it so dark in here?” Ernie added.

  Mami had shut all the windows and put up sheets and towels to act as shades. The only light was from Mami’s Virgin Mary candle on her altar, so it felt like we were stepping from day into sudden night. The single flame lapped at the shadow of Mary’s tragically tilted head.

  “El pájaro,” Mami repeated. “Ven, let me show you.”

  She double bolted the front door and then led me and Ernie over to her altar. In between the pictures and crosses was an orange saucer no bigger than my palm. Once my eyes adjusted to this gloomy dusk, I could see the saucer had on it some dry twigs, a clod of dirt, and a crushed turquoise egg. Mami picked up the saucer and hovered over it. Her face looked swollen and eerie, her lower lip puffy and misshapen.

  “Mami, what happened to you?”

  I reached out to flip the kitchen switch on, but Mami stopped me with a sharp “No.”

  “But—”

  “Just look at this beautiful nest, mi’ja. It’s incredible. And they leave it behind because we have that second frost, so late.”

  “Mami, what are you talking about? You don’t make sense,” said Ernie. I elbowed him in the gut to tell him to shut up. Even though I was thinking the exact same thing.

  “Every year, there’s less animals,” Mami said. “Y las vacas. Las pobres vacas.”

  “Mami, please sit down.” I pulled a chair from the table, but she ignored me. “What’s going on?”

  “The farm. The farm.”

  “What happened to the farm?” Ernie and I said almost in unison. Mami’s eyes glittered. She chewed on the inside of her cheek like she did when she had too much to say and couldn’t decide where to begin. When she did speak, her voice was low and gravelly. She focused solely on the image of Mary in her votive.

  “I go to the farm this morning
, and it is so strange because Mr. McAuley, he stand at the wooden gate. He not normally do that. He is looking so sad. Liliana, it is very good to see you, he say. Maybe he already know. But I don’t think so.”

  “Already knows what?” Ernie pounced.

  I shushed him as Mami continued. She told us that she went to her workstation and got busy. She was just starting to flush the dairy pipelines with cleaning solution when she heard a loud bird squawking from outside the barn. It was angry or hurt—she couldn’t tell exactly. She just knew it was in trouble, so she followed its call down the hill to a dry riverbed at the edge of McAuley’s property. That’s where she found this nest with the broken egg inside. She even held out the saucer to us so we could understand better while she let out a sad, deep sigh.

  “Mami,” Ernie whispered, “I’m scared.”

  Mami’s eyes glistened with tears.

  “No!” she whispered, looking straight at Ernie. She put down the dish with the nest in it and faced us both. “What does this do, to be scared? They want us to be scared.”

  “Who is they?” I demanded.

  “They,” Mami said, as if that explained anything. “They. The men, you know? They have the yellow letters on their backs. I see them on top of the hill, next to the barn. They all come in with big cars. They drive so fast, they make dust into clouds. And then they scream at everyone to line up, and they hold the big rifles. They don’t scan. They shoot into the air.”

  Mami had watched from behind a tree as the Deportation Force shoved the day laborers onto the ground—Esteban, Nicola, all the people she’d worked with for the past six years. There were over forty women and men working there on any given day. Mr. McAuley came out of the house and tried to say something. He was a good man, Mami kept repeating. An older man with a stuttery limp and leathery white skin from all his own years out in the fields. Whatever he was trying to tell the Deportation Force officers was not working, though. The officers beat him to the ground. Kicking him in the head over and over again. That was when Mami started running.

  “I run, and I run,” Mami said. She stared at la Virgen’s flame again now, her face hardening as she spoke. “I run into the next farm. I go right through the animals, then I go into the hills again. And I fall on the rock.” Here, she pointed to her left cheek, which was not only puffy but was caked with dried blood under her jaw.

  “Mami, I’ll clean you up.” I could barely get the words out.

  She waved me away. “Estoy bien.”

  “No, you’re not.” I reached over to touch her gently, but instead, she took my hand in hers. Ernie burrowed his head into her side and started whimpering.

  “Come here, mi vida,” she said. She steered us both closer to the altar. Closer to that abandoned nest and its trampled egg inside. I could smell the dirt and dried buttermilk in Mami’s trembling skin. The bitter taste of too much coffee on her breath.

  “El pájaro, it is ready to fly in just the few weeks after it is born,” Mami told us. “And it sings . . . hermoso. So the whole forest can hear.”

  The three of us stood in front of that saucer for what felt like forever. I didn’t know if Mami was listening to the bird’s song in her head or expecting us to hear it somehow or what. All I could make out was the thrumming of the helicopters, still overhead outside. And Ernie sniffling into Mami’s shoulder as she rocked forward and back ever so slightly. I needed to rock with her. It was the only way to keep up with the world spinning this furiously.

  “Gracias por cuidarme, pájarito,” Mami prayed.

  Her voice was half whisper, half sob. But she was here. I had to keep reminding myself of that. The rest of the farmworkers had been taken, but our mami somehow made it through. Even though I wasn’t big on praying or lighting candles, I had to admit that was a miracle.

  “En el nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo. Amen,” finished Mami.

  “Amen,” Ernie and I chimed in after her.

  “A comer. Wash your hands. I will heat up the ajiaco and, Vali, get the arepas.”

  Ernie wiped his nose on his sleeve and nodded his head obediently. But I couldn’t do the same.

  “Mami, wait. How do we know they didn’t follow you home?”

  Mami looked at me as if I’d just slapped her across the face with my words.

  “They took Uncle Jimi. And Ernie’s soccer coach,” I pressed.

  Mami tipped her head toward Ernie. “¿Verdad, mi’jo?”

  Ernie just shrugged.

  “We have to get out of here,” I told her. “They’re coming for us! And what’s going on with California? Have you heard from Tía Luna? We have to find her and go . . . somewhere!”

  “Shhhh, mi’ja!” Mami gripped my arms. Her lips twitched as she tried to hold back whatever pain was now too close to ignore. Then she forced out a long exhale and pressed one of her callused palms into my chest. “Mi’ja,” she tried again in a more measured tone, “I call Tía as soon as I get home. It is still no answer.”

  “So then what do we do?” I pleaded.

  “What do we do? We be grateful that we are here and that we are together. And we eat. We cannot do anything with the empty stomach.”

  I had no appetite, but I couldn’t argue with her anymore. We were all silent as I reheated the arepas and she stirred the ajiaco. It smelled amazing, though I had a hard time putting anything in my mouth. My stomach was too knotted; my thoughts were too scrambled. Mami didn’t really eat either. She lit two more candles so we could see our meal. Then she pushed her food around her plate for a bit, got up, poured herself a shot of aguardiente, and lit a cigarette, which she rarely did.

  I hated that she was hurting so much and that she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. My mami was a force to be reckoned with. She kept us clothed and fed; worked the land and protected all the animals. She got shit done. Maybe that was what made this night so terrifying to me—watching her dish out soup and pray to a broken bird’s nest, struggling to make everything or anything seem okay again. She drained her shot of aguardiente and lit up a second cigarette, taking a long, slow drag. The embers got brighter as our apartment sank into a hazy dark. At least the smoke from her cigarette helped put some distance between us. Otherwise, it was too spooky catching her eyes roam around our apartment, dull and distracted.

  Ernie had at least three portions of ajiaco. I swear that boy could have eaten even if he was being chased by a pack of ravenous wolves. When he finally pushed back his plate, Mami said, “Bueno,” and started clearing the dishes. She washed, and I dried. Ernie was in charge of sweeping up the stray crumbs on the floor. These were our everyday chores before homework and bed. Because I guess that was our plan—to just keep going as if this were every other day.

  Though it so clearly wasn’t.

  I was drying the last of the spoons and putting them away when Ernie opened the back door by the fire escape to dump out his dustpan. The beating of helicopter wings got so loud, I gasped.

  “Mi’jo! Mi’jo! No!” Mami yelled. She lurched at Ernie, pulling him back from the door like she was saving him from the edge of a cliff. Then she slammed the door shut and pressed her body against it.

  Ernie’s small face dissolved into tears. “I’m sorry, Mami. I’m sorry!” he repeated over and over.

  “Shhh . . . it’s okay, mi’jo,” she said, hugging him. “We just have to be even more careful now.”

  My eyes flooded with tears. I fought hard to push them back down. I didn’t want Ernie to see me cry. He didn’t need to be more scared than he already was. He was just eight years old, after all. He’d already lost his papi, and now he was facing the idea of losing me and Mami too.

  “We’re going to be okay,” Mami repeated. “We just have to . . .”

  It sounded like Mami didn’t know how to complete that thought.

  “We just have to what?” I asked.
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  “We have to remember . . . Ven.” Mami led us into the living room, and we all sat on the couch together. She pulled us in close, so I could feel all our hearts thumping in stereo, her voice vibrating through me as she traveled back in time.

  “Let me tell you about how we first come here. When Papi and I live in Suárez, it is so green everywhere. The mountains so big, the trees so tall. Because they have been there for hundreds of years. The flowers are all colors. The chivas, remember what those are, Vali?”

  I had to shake my head no.

  “They are buses, but so beautiful. They are painted all different colors. And inside the bus is like a rainbow. Color everywhere. Artists paint them. They take people from town to town. And we ride on them to see family, to go to work. So much beautiful things in Suárez. But then it was not safe. You understand?”

  Mami told us about the violence and the threats. She told us about getting off a chiva and smelling the charred remains of her house. Walking, then running, searching for her parents. Next to her, I heard Ernie sniffling, trying to hold back more tears.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Mami said, pulling Ernie in and rubbing his back, as if he’d gotten some of her grief stuck in his throat. “This is why Papi and I come to the United States. Because the mountains in Colombia have más sangre que agua, and we want to be here, safe with our family. We walk through Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico. All for both of you. Vali, you remember when we go to the beach and el parque de atracciones in San Diego?”

  “Yeah!”

  “And I was in your belly, right, Mami?” asked Ernie.

  “Not quite yet, mi’jo. Not until after we are living in California for some years.”

  Ernie still confused time a lot. He could always remember exactly when the next World Cup was going to start and, of course, his birthday and Christmas, but he couldn’t really fathom that a whole world existed before he was alive.

  “But you are always in my heart,” Mami explained. “This is why we have to come here, and this is why I know we will be okay. Because you are a strong boy. A smart boy. This is your home!”