Return to Sender (29 page)

Have a great life. Sincerely, Clayton Lacroix Ill

María, you deserve to stay in our country. It would be a better nation with you in it. Your friend forever, Tyler

I hope Jesus takes care of you and your family. God bless you, Amanda

Here is a joke for you, María: Why did the burglar take a shower? He wanted to make a clean getaway! (I got a whole bunch more, but Mr. Bicknell says everyone just gets to send one message.) Keep smiling, Kyle

María, I've got a joke for you, too: Which state is the smartest? Alabama: it has four A's and one B! Michael

María, Mr. Bicknell says enough with the jokes, so I'll keep mine for when I see you again.
Gracias
for the help with my
español.
Dylan

Hola, María. Muchas gracias para mi amiga de su amiga.
Rachel

María, I really liked when you wrote stuff and Mr. Bicknell read it out loud. I loved learning about the dead people's holiday and how every night for two weeks before Christmas, you party. That's cool. If I could still be American, I would love to be Mexican, too. Love and
amor
to you, Amelia

María, Mr. Bicknell is letting me say my message privately just to him. I am very sad because my daddy just told my mom that he is in love with someone else and is going to divorce her. I sure wish you were here so we could be best friends because Rachel doesn't want to be mine anymore. Ashley

As you can see, María, you left behind many friends at Bridgeport. We hope for the best for you and your family. Always remember that you have a home in our hearts, no matter where you are. Friendship knows no borders! Mr. Bicknell

I've read the letter over and over, laughing and crying both. I feel so sorry for poor Ashley. As for Clayton and Ronnie, I sincerely hope they grow up to be nicer adults than they are kids. That Kyle tells the funniest jokes, and Michael is pretty funny, too. But my favorite of all is Tyler's.

It would be a better nation with you in it.
If only this country would listen to its kids!

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Dear Diary,

On Friday, a big thing happened.

The day before, Señora Ramírez stopped by, and I asked if I could have a private word with her. We went to the backyard, where there is a little birdbath and two stones that are big enough
to sit on. I told her the whole truth about how I wasn't a U.S. citizen. “I know,” she admitted. Then I asked if she'd drive me over to
la migra's
office so I could explain everything to them.

She was real quiet like she was working it all out in her head, what could happen. A little bird came and landed on the birdbath. When she looked up, it flew away.

“Are you sure this is something you want to do,
querida
?” she asked. She always throws a few Spanish words into her English. It helps connect me to where I came from and makes me feel part of a bigger story. It's one of the special things about talking to her. Plus, she really listens. Not the way some grown- ups pretend- listen, and you can tell they already have the answer and are just waiting for you to finish.

“Sí, estoy muy segura,”
I told her. Saying I was really sure in Spanish sounded more convincing to her and to me. Sure, I was scared. But I had thought and thought about it and made up my mind. Especially after Tyler told me that he overheard his mother talking to his aunt Roxie about my mother. It turns out that Mamá is in the clinic at her detention center in Boston “under sedation,” which Tyler says means they are giving her pills to keep her calm. I can believe that. Meanwhile, Papá has been moved to a place in
New Hampshire. The only good news is that Tío Armando is already back in Las Margaritas. Alyssa sent word that Tío Armando was really happy to be reunited with his family. That last piece of news is what convinced me.

“To tell you
la pura verdad,”
Señora Ramírez was saying. The pure truth was that she agreed with me! Having
la migra
see that my parents were not criminals but hardworking parents with kids might help. She was almost one hundred percent sure that my sisters and I would not be taken away to some foster home, since we were being well taken care of by friends of our parents and there were no relatives around to claim us instead.

“So will you take me, please?” I asked.

Again, she thought it over. “Tell you what,” she said, standing up and brushing off her pants. “Let me talk it over with Caleb, okay? And I'll get back to you.” It took me a second to remember that Caleb was Mr. Calhoun, the lawyer who had offered to help my parents just as he had Tío Felipe.

Later that afternoon, Señora Ramírez called to say Caleb had agreed. It couldn't hurt for ICE to put a face on case A 093 533 0744. He was free to accompany us to the Homeland Security office in St. Albans tomorrow morning. “Barry'll drive
us up in his Subaru. The three of you can ride in the back.”

The three of us? I was shaking my head even before I explained. I didn't want my sisters along. They had suffered enough without also having to go in front of scary agents who had taken our parents away. “Just me, and Barry, and you,” I pleaded with her. “Please,
¿por favor
?” Then I thought of one more person who would make it easier for me if he were along.

So the next day, the two of them and Tyler and I drove up to Burlington, where we picked up Mr. Calhoun. Today he was dressed more formally in black pants with his shirt tucked in. He'd also taken off his earring, though you could still see the little hole in his ear. It actually made me more nervous that he was trying to make a good impression.

He sat with us kids in the back and asked a whole lot of questions about what all I would say. The more I said, the more he kept nodding. “Just as I thought.” He went on to explain the whole situation. How my parents had been seized during a national sweep called Operation Return to Sender.

“Operation Return to Sender?” Barry was looking in his rearview mirror like he wasn't sure he had heard correctly.

Mr. Calhoun nodded. “Actually, the target was undocumented immigrants with a criminal record. That's probably why they flushed out your mother's smugglers down in Durham, where they found evidence linking your mother to them.”

“But isn't that what they stamp on a letter,
Return to Sender
?” Tyler asked. “When there aren't enough stamps on it?”

“Precisely.” Again, Mr. Calhoun was nodding. “People as excess baggage.” He looked disgusted. “Anyhow, your parents hardly fit the bill. Now we've got to convince Homeland Security.”

He was saying
we
, but it was up to me, and I knew it.

We drove up to a low brick building and pulled into the parking lot. I felt almost as scared as that day when we had ransomed Mamá back from the
coyotes
in North Carolina. Now I was going to try to do the same, but instead of money, I was going to offer a story. The story Mamá had told me about what had happened to her.

Just inside the door, we found ourselves facing a glass partition. An officer in a uniform looked up, scowling, from the other side. “Bulletproof so they don't get shot,” Tyler whispered. He would know from when he visited Tío Felipe at the county jail. It just made my heart race all the faster.

Mr. Calhoun gave our names through a little speaking hole and explained who we all were and why we were here. The officer picked up his phone and repeated the whole story before buzzing us in. “Go ahead and take a seat.” He nodded toward a long bench against one wall. “Mr. O'Goody'll be right with you.”

“Oh jeez!” Mr. Calhoun sighed. Right then and there, I knew that despite his name, Mr. O'Goody was not good news.

Before I could get too nervous, a stocky man with a thick neck and a big jaw stood before us. He didn't look a whole lot older than Mr. Calhoun, except for being bald with just a fringe right above his ears. But what he'd lost on his head, he had on his eyebrows. They were real bushy, which made his eyes look sneaky, like they were undercover but ready to pounce on you if you told a lie and lock you up in jail.

He shook everyone's hands. When he got to me, he said, “You must be María?”

I couldn't find my voice, no way, so I just nodded.

“Come along then,” he said real gruff like he already knew that I was going to be a waste of his time. Especially if I wouldn't talk. “Your friends can wait here.”

Mr. Calhoun quick stood up and said he needed to come along and represent his client.

“Me too,” Tyler added. He had promised to stand by me, no matter what. For a second there, I'd been afraid he had forgotten.

Mr. O'Goody turned to face them both. “I know you got your law degree, Calhoun. But what about you, young man?”

Tyler shook his head and his face got even redder than Mr. Calhoun's hair. “I'm Mari's friend … and I just … came along so she wouldn't be so scared,” he stammered. Then, he added, “Sir,” the way a soldier might salute some important general.

Mr. O'Goody looked Tyler over for a minute. It was like he was running through a checklist in his head about what to look for in a terrorist. Thank goodness Tyler looked just like who he was, a Vermont boy with a bunch of freckles on his nose and the prettiest blue eyes.

“Come along then.” Mr. O'Goody herded us down a long, empty hall without windows or pictures on the walls. Only posters with stuff printed on them. Probably rules and regulations that would trip anybody up.

He opened the door to an office, then stood to one side and let us go in first. A couple of chairs faced a desk with its back to a window, which seemed a shame with such a pretty view of a field with some horses munching on wildflowers. Mr. O'Goody didn't have any
pictures on his desk like most of the teachers did at school. It was like he didn't have a wife or kids, so how would he ever understand why my family was suffering from being separated? “Take a seat,” he said, nodding at the chairs. It was a trick offer, because there weren't enough to go around. But Mr. Calhoun went ahead and took a chair, and Tyler and I stayed standing.

“You, María, you sit here.” Mr. O'Goody moved the other chair to one side of his desk where a machine was all set to go. At first, I thought it was a lie detector, but of course, without wires connected to me, how would it know my heart was in my throat? “I'll have to tape her testimony,” he explained to Mr. Calhoun, who nodded his approval.

Mr. O'Goody turned the recorder on. I could hear that tape making little clicking sounds, but I couldn't seem to turn on my voice. Then from behind my chair, Tyler came and stood in front of me. “Hey, Mari. Just make believe you're telling me, okay?” That was the most helpful thing anybody could have said. Even Mr. O'Goody, I could tell, was impressed.

And so I started…. The whole story of what had happened to Mamá, of how she'd been gone for a year and four months. How my father couldn't go to the police because he wasn't
allowed to be in this country in the first place. How we had moved to a farm so he didn't have to leave his kids all alone for weeks at a time now that we didn't have our mother. Somewhere in there I threw in that my sisters were American citizens. I didn't say anything about myself. I would leave that for the end.

When I got to the part about ransoming my mother, I just wanted to cry. But I told myself this was one time I couldn't give in to my sadness. I had to keep going. So I told how we had come back from North Carolina with my mother always jumpy and screaming in the middle of the night. How instead of my father being overjoyed to have her back, he was angry all the time, losing his temper, mostly because he blamed himself that he hadn't been able to protect his wife.

“That's why when
la migra—
I mean the ICE agents—came to the door, he just wasn't thinking. He would never ever have hit anybody in the world before all this happened. It's like he's turned into someone else with the bitterness and the hurt inside him.”

Nobody was saying a word, and I was too scared to look up and see if Mr. O'Goody was even listening.

But now I had gotten to the really hard part, the part I'd been thinking and worrying about for
days. “I'm not an American citizen,” I confessed, “just my sisters. So I'm turning myself in. I hope you'll take me instead of my mother, as she will go crazy if you keep her in prison. She's not going to run off, I promise, if you've got me in your jail.”

It was over. I had said what I came to say. All those tears I'd been holding back just came flowing down my cheeks. My nose was running, but I didn't have anything to wipe it with. I felt someone else join Tyler in front of me. I thought it might be Mr. Calhoun wanting to console his client. But it was Mr. O'Goody, and he was offering me a whole box of Kleenex!

“You're a brave and noble young lady,” he said. His gruff voice had softened. “I can't make any promises, but I'm sending this information down to our regional office in Boston, along with my recommendation that your mother be released pending her hearing. I'm also going to add a personal note, commending your exemplary behavior.”

I didn't know what exactly that meant, but it must have been good because I wasn't hauled away and locked in a jail. In fact, Mr. O'Goody shook my hand extra long as we said goodbye in the waiting area.