Look Both Ways in the Barrio Blanco (23 page)

Mamá squeezed my hand. My ruby ring cut into my finger. I remembered slipping it on before Miss came to pick me up at Tía’s apartment.

Was it just last night?

The documents were handed through the window. The man in the uniform shuffled through them. “You’re from Colorado? Enjoying your stay in the Land of Enchantment?”

New Mexico was more like the Land of Perpetual Sweat, but I didn’t say so. I couldn’t have spoken if my life depended on it.

“We’ve been to Carlsbad Caverns. For spring break.” Miss sounded like the cartoon mouse after he’d sucked on a helium balloon.

“I’ll ask you to wait,” the other voice said. I watched through the window as his badge passed under my nose.

The next second I was hit by questions from Mamá.

Miss snapped at her, “No Spanish!” Then she said to me, “No English, either!” She turned to Ethan.
“What happened?”

“She told me to turn.”

“You take orders from a twelve-year-old?”

“You gave her the map!”

Miss glanced at the patrol car behind us. “Does he know I was sleeping?”

Ethan snorted. “How should I know? I’m a sixteen-year-old.”

“Let me do the talking. Unless he asks you a direct question. If you don’t know, just say so. Don’t guess. And don’t lie.”

“Whatever.”

My mind scrambled to find a way out. “Miss! Show him our tickets from Carlsbad Caverns. That’s our alibi.”

“I’ll handle this,” Miss snapped. She gave Mamá a tissue for her lip. Then we waited. And waited.

I really needed to pee.

Is the officer being slow on purpose? To torture us?

Miss had said that
thinking
and
adrenaline
are a bad mix. Fight or flight. Definitely
flight
. Running down the street screaming seemed like a good idea.

“Should I tell him I have my passport, Miss?”

“No Spanish, no English!” she hissed again.

There’s a solution
, I thought in disgust.
What’s taking so long? What if he arrests Mamá? What if he takes Miss and Ethan, too? What will happen to me? Foster care? I didn’t even say good-bye to my sisters. If I hadn’t insisted we stop. If I hadn’t gotten into that stupid fight with Ethan. If I hadn’t been so hot and tired and hungry
.

My heart was a bird, beating against my rib cage, trying to escape.

Mamá’s face was a mask of fear. I wiped my sweaty hand — the one she wasn’t squeezing — on my pants and tried to think.

No Spanish, no English. A lot of help that is
.

Miss had shown me that the only power was in
words
. Now she wanted me to be silent while my life slipped away.

Again.

This time, I knew there were things Miss couldn’t fix.

If there were a perfume called Fear, we could’ve made a lot of money. Ethan pumped out gallons of it, watching his side mirror. I saw him stiffen, then the shadow of the man in the uniform fell across me.

The officer leaned in the window. I could see my own face distorted in his sunglasses.

“Son, do you know why I stopped you today?”

Ethan looked at his hands on the wheel. “Because — ah — because back there — I shouldn’t have made a U-turn back there?”

He gulped and licked his lips.

“You know what double-double yellow lines mean?” the officer asked.

“You’re not allowed to — not supposed to — it means you can’t drive over it?”

I started to relax. Maybe this wasn’t my fight. Maybe that’s why Miss said what she said. Maybe this was between the police officer and Ethan.

“Those laws keep you safe.” The officer handed Ethan a piece of paper and a pen. “I’m going to let you off with a warning. You need to sign it.”

Ethan signed, then handed the paper and pen back to the officer, who tore off a copy of the paper and gave it to Ethan. “You folks have a safe drive home.”

A pause between fear and relief. One deep breath.

But in that moment the man with the badge turned his head to include Mamá and me, sitting behind Ethan. The beginnings of a smile froze on his face. Looking into the twin mirrors of his sunglasses, I saw Mamá sitting next to me. I saw what the officer saw. Looking into Mamá’s eyes, I could see her soul.

Not just fear.

Guilt.

“WHERE’D
you folks say you’ve been?” The officer’s voice had a new edge to it.

The fight-or-flight response. The only thing keeping me from doing either one was the adrenaline clogging my system.

Miss spoke in that squeak that didn’t belong to her. “Carlsbad Caverns. I have the receipts right here, Officer.”

I winced. It was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Miss knew it, and now the policeman knew it, too.

“I need you folks to step out of the vehicle.”

A new surge of adrenaline tipped the balance. Fight mode. Snatching my purse, I slid open the door and hurled myself at the man, grabbing his arm.
“S’il vous plaît, monsieur! S’il vous plaît!”

He threw off my hand, stumbling back.
“WHAT THE —?”

His sunglasses hit the asphalt.

I staggered forward, stepping on the lenses, shattering them.
“Je vous en prie, monsieur! Je vous en prie!”

His hand moved to his hip. Cars swerved around him. I fumbled to open my purse.

I heard the snap pop open on his holster.

“Drop the bag!”

My hand scrambled around inside my purse, trying to find my passport.

He pointed his gun. At me.

In the van behind me, Mamá screamed.

I froze. My hair stood away from my scalp.
Would he really shoot me?

“DROP THE PURSE! DO IT NOW!”

A memory flashed through my mind. Miss dumping the packet of trail mix out of her purse at the basketball game.

Slowly I withdrew my empty hand, then tipped my purse upside down. In slow motion, pens, pencils, nail polish, lip gloss, and my hair brush fell, then bounced across the street in all directions. Into the paths of oncoming cars.

Brakes squealed. Horns blared. Traffic came to a stop.

I dropped the purse.

“Jacinta! What are you doing?”

The corner of my eye caught movement. I turned to look.

Miss ran around the front of the van.

The officer shouted, “STOP!”

She stopped.

Then I saw that Mamá had jumped out of the van, too.

Turning back, I looked into the officer’s eyes — and saw his
indecision
.

He didn’t know where to point the gun.

My eyes scanned the asphalt for my passport. Spying it, I fell to my knees.

The officer jumped. His aim followed me.

People flowed out of buildings, craning to see over each other. Drivers leaned out of their windows.

I snatched up my passport.

The officer braced himself.

Holding out the blue booklet, I pleaded,
“Allez, monsieur, regardez! Vous voyez? Je suis américaine, monsieur! S’il vous plaît, laissez-moi tranquille!”

The policeman stood in the center of a crowd, his gun pointed at me as I groveled on the pavement. Sweat soaked the armpits of his shirt as he gaped.

Slowly he lowered his gun.

“What’s she saying?” he croaked. His eyes never left me, but everyone else looked at Miss.

So did I.

She blinked. Then she spoke.

Spoke in her TV voice so everyone would hear. “She says she’s an American, and she begs you to leave her in peace.”

Her explanation did nothing to clear the confusion on the officer’s face. People murmured. His eyes finally took in the crowd around us. His face was deep red and sweaty as he returned his gun to its holster.

Someone might wonder,
What was Jacinta thinking?
But that’s just it. I
wasn’t
thinking. For the first time, Miss was wrong. Thinking and adrenaline aren’t a
bad
mix. They
don’t
mix.

The officer strode over to Miss. Lowering his voice, he bit off each word.
“Get — her — things — and — get — back — in — the — car.”

He snatched his broken sunglasses off the street, then barked to the crowd, “Move along! It’s over! Clear the area!”

Some people looked relieved. Others seemed disappointed as they shoved their phones back into their pockets. The officer directed traffic around us while Miss gathered my stuff. I stood on shaking legs, my knees burned and bleeding from the blistering asphalt. I stumbled to the van.

Mamá grabbed me and dragged me back inside with her. She hugged me to her, her face wet with tears. I whispered for her to stay quiet, but she sobbed, trembling.

Miss dumped my stuff on the seat next to me and slammed the door closed. Then she waved Ethan over.

He leaped gratefully into the passenger seat. She climbed in the driver side, grabbing the wheel for support, her hands shaking.

The policeman slammed the door behind her and leaned into Miss’s window. His heavy breath blew strands of her oily hair. She leaned away. His face was an angry shade of purple.

He glared at me. Still clipping his words, he asked Miss, “What — did she think — I was going to do?”

“Sh-she’s seen people get deported. She wanted you to know that she belongs here.”

“Et ma mère aussi. Il faut qu’elle reste chez moi,”
I said.

“And her mother, too.” Miss didn’t translate the last part, that I needed Mamá with me. But it was true.

The officer continued to glower at me, his face a mix of embarrassment and resentment for what I’d put him through, causing him to hold a gun on a kid in front of a crowd.

This isn’t such a big town. Everybody’s going to hear about this
.

There’s a word for what I felt.
Remorse
.

“Je m’excuse, monsieur. Désolée.”

His face told me that he understood it was an apology. He asked Miss, “What language is that? French? Her family’s from French Guiana?”

Miss shifted in her seat. “One of those places south of here.”

Even when she wasn’t exactly lying, Miss was a bad liar.

He gave me a piercing look. I almost dropped my eyes again.

That would’ve been a mistake.

It would’ve been so easy to let my eyes slip away from his. But everything I’d learned in the past year argued against it. It was time to claim my power. My
Jacinta Juárez
power.

Without his sunglasses, I could see into his soul. His eyes said he was trying to decide what to do with me. Jerking his head in my direction, he asked Miss, “She a good student?”

There was surprise in her voice, but otherwise Miss sounded like herself. “Quite gifted, actually.”

Gifted?
The word flared in my mind, like a newly lit birthday candle.

I lifted my chin a bit more and allowed the man in the uniform — the stranger with the gun and the handcuffs — to look right into my eyes. Not my puppy-dog eyes.

I let him see my soul.

Let him see my pain. Let him read my love for my family. Let him see my need to belong, to feel safe. To hang on to those who belonged to me.

It wasn’t a demand for fairness. It was an
appeal
for
grace
.

I made myself vulnerable, but whatever he decided, I would carry my power inside.

His look traveled across Mamá’s trembling form, but he made his eyes soft, trying not to hurt her with a rough stare. Light came into his eyes as he read the story in her sun-ravaged, beaten body. A hoarse whisper.
“¿Su madre es mejicana?”

A cold thrill went through me. I felt Mamá stiffen when he asked in Spanish if she was Mexican.

But the time for lies and manipulation was past. We’d seen into each other’s souls.

My head tilted up, then down. The smallest of movements.

After a few moments — or maybe a lifetime — his eyes slid away from mine. He looked at Miss. “Your little friend has made a big problem for me. I could lose my job over this.”

I sensed her tension as she waited to learn what he would do.

But I already knew.

He said, “You have exactly ten minutes to get back to Colorado.”

“WHAT
the
HELL
was
THAT
?”