The Book of Unknown Americans

by Cristina Henríquez

She wasn’t very demanding, Celia. She didn’t care that I couldn’t give her a lot of things. But I cared. Eventually I got a job at a restaurant, just so I could have enough money to buy her gifts and take her out once in a while to a movie. That’s what the man is supposed to do. She was in university, studying to become a secretary, but I didn’t want us to have to rely on the money she would be making one day. I wanted to be able to take care of her myself. And, I guess, all of a sudden I wanted to be able to take care of me.

Sometimes I think I would rather just remember it in my head, all those streets and places I loved. The way it smelled of car exhaust and sweet fruit. The thickness of the heat. The sound of dogs barking in alleyways. That’s the Panamá I want to hold on to. Because a place can do many things against you, and if it’s your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That’s how it works.

When soccer wasn’t on, my dad turned to football. One week during an Eagles game when Sr. Rivera cheered Donovan McNabb on, my dad rode him, saying, “Arturo, it’s no use. I’ve been watching this game since I got to this country, and yes, the Eagles are a bird, but let me tell you, they no can fly.” He said the last part in English, to be funny, and even though I’m not sure Sr. Rivera understood him, he was nice enough to laugh.

Garrett didn’t have a single friend that I knew of. His older brother had gone to Iraq with the air force and had come back in a body bag. The rumor at school was that Garrett’s mom had a breakdown after that. She just couldn’t handle it, so she’d split and hadn’t been back since. Supposedly Garrett’s dad started drinking so much that he lost his job. They must have been living off benefits from the military or something. Or maybe they were on welfare by now. I didn’t know.

Now I have two jobs. Five mornings a week I work at the Newark Shopping Center movie theater, cleaning the bathrooms and the theaters. I make sure there’s toilet paper in the stalls. I mop the floors. I have a wire brush I use to clean the sinks. In the evenings I work at the Movies 10 movie theater in Stanton. That job is harder because there are so many theaters. If too many movies finish all at once, it’s a challenge to clean the theaters before the next group of people comes in. I have been reprimanded for leaving an empty cup in the seat arm. Usually I don’t have time to go home between my shifts, so many times I eat popcorn and soda for dinner. But I am very grateful for these jobs. They allow me to send money to my children to pay for their schooling. When both of them graduate, I would like to go back to México to be with them. My wish is that they’ll do something worthwhile with their lives, something more important than sweeping popcorn. I have done what I can for them. I would like to see them give something back.

ceiling. Sleep was like wealth, elusive and for other people. I lay rigid on the mattress, remembering what it used to be like, before all of this.

“Do you even remember it?” “I was on the …” “Ladder,” I filled in. She nodded. “And then I was in the hospital. I don’t know where I went in between.” “Well, someone must have taken you to the hospital.” “I mean … I lost myself. In between.” “Oh,” I said, and then I just sat there, because something about that idea—that you could be one person in one moment and then wake up and be completely different—punched me in the gut.

knocked me to the floor and climbed on top of me. He did unspeakable things, all against my will. I don’t know why, but he thought he could do whatever he wanted. That’s how boys are.

I missed my mother, but the truth was that I had missed her even when we were together, so it was nothing new.

He didn’t know what he was getting into with me, though. He never did anything wrong, but it was a struggle for me to be truly close to him. It was difficult, because of my past, to trust him. I pushed him away—every time he came back to me, I pushed again—until finally he left.

Almost no one in my life now knows what I’ve been through, nor do I want them to know. Some things should be private. That’s what I always say. Besides, I don’t need anyone’s pity. My life has been what it has been. It’s not a wonderful story, but it’s mine.

Contigo la milpa es rancho y el atole champurrado. And then, the rush. It was as if the whole world sighed. As if every human and every creature and every gas and liquid and speck of dirt and granule of sand and gust of air settled all at once, and all was right in the universe. If only for that moment.

A few months ago I met a man who came to the theater. He’s younger than me, a gringo, an attorney, so young and handsome. ¡Cielos! We have almost nothing in common, but somehow we’re a good fit with each other. He makes me laugh. How can I explain it? He has a spirit. I’m fifty-three years old with wrinkles on my hands. I’ve never been married in my life, and now this. You never know what life will bring. Dios sabe lo que hace. But that’s what makes it so exciting, no? That’s what keeps me going. The possibility.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” “I want you to tell me the truth.” “I am telling you the truth!” “Come on, Alma! You think I don’t know you? You think I don’t breathe you and dream you every single day of my life? You think I haven’t been inside you? I know when you’re lying to me. There’s something else.” And again, for the briefest moment, I thought, How easy it would be. To say, Here. I’ve been holding on to this all this time, but here, if you want it you can have it. When I look back on it now, I see that I should have done it. In that split second, telling him might have changed our fates. “There’s nothing else,” I said.

This was the thing about Maribel: No matter how many times I proved it, she didn’t think I was an idiot. She just took me. She took me in. Such a simple fucking thing.

I put my hand on her head, on her damp hair, and when I squatted beside her, she looked at me with her golden brown eyes and her long black eyelashes. I reached under her hair and put my hands behind her neck and kissed her. Her face was moist from the falling snow. Maybe I should have stopped, I don’t know. I should’ve given her a chance to come up for air or to protest or whatever. But when she put her hands on my shoulders, pressing her mouth to mine, I knew she wanted to be there as much as I did. I kissed her again and again and again, greedily, like I was making up for the time I’d lost, like I was making up for all the times I might not get to kiss her again once our parents found out what we’d done, like I was making up for my whole life when I hadn’t known her, which seemed unbelievable and like a crime. And by the time I finally pulled away, I wanted to devour her.

like that.” I was trying to comfort her, but both of us were trying to make sense of it. And sitting there, I started thinking, Who can say whose fault it is? Who can say who set this whole thing in motion? Maybe it was Maribel. Maybe it was me. Maybe if I hadn’t left school that day, or if I had answered my stupid phone when it rang, or if I hadn’t fallen asleep in the car on the way home, none of this would have happened. But maybe if our parents hadn’t forbidden us from seeing each other, I wouldn’t have needed to steal her away like I did in the first place. Maybe if my dad had never bought that car, I wouldn’t have had a way to get to the beach. Maybe it was my tía Gloria’s fault for giving my dad the money that allowed him to buy it. Maybe it was my tío Esteban’s fault for being a jerk who she would need to divorce to get that money. You could trace it back infinitely. All these different veins, but who knew which one led to the heart? And then again, maybe it had nothing to do with any of us. Maybe God had a plan and He knew from the second the Riveras set foot here that He was putting them on a path toward this. Or maybe it really was completely random, just something that happened.

“You could come back one day,” I said. “Or I could come there.” “Maybe.” “I could find you.” Maribel shook her head. “Finding is for things that are lost. You don’t need to find me, Mayor.”

Maribel with sleepy eyes and uncombed hair, sitting cross-legged on the seat, turning around and looking back for me. But it would be okay, I told myself, that she wouldn’t find me. It was like she had said—finding is for things that are lost. We would be thousands of miles apart from now on and we would go on with our lives and get older and change and grow, but we would never have to look for each other. Inside each of us, I was pretty sure, was a place for the other. Nothing that had happened and nothing that would ever happen would make that less true.

I learned something about grief. I had heard people say that when someone dies, it leaves a hole in the world. But it doesn’t, I realized. Arturo was still everywhere. Something would happen and I would think, Wait until I tell Arturo. I kept turning around, expecting to see him. If he had disappeared completely, I thought, it might be easier. If I had no knowledge that he had ever existed, no evidence that he was ever a part of our lives, it might have been bearable. And how wrong that sounded: part of our lives. As if he was something with boundaries, something that hadn’t permeated us, flowed through us and in us and all around us. I learned something about grief. When someone dies, it doesn’t leave a hole, and that’s the agony.

People do what they have to in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.