The Book of Unknown Americans

by Cristina Henríquez

And since the accident, those traits that I loved had given way to something darker—seriousness had become gravity, sensitivity had transformed into melancholy. I didn’t always see it. Arturo fought to preserve his better nature. But occasionally his despair came through.

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.

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.”

He believed a man should work hard with his hands, that toil and sweat were evidence of a virtuous life. He did not appreciate that I wanted to read books and that I saved money to buy an easel when I turned fifteen and that I would spend the afternoons painting pictures of trees.

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.

“Listen to me,” Arturo said. “It’s you. It’s you who needs to forgive yourself.” I couldn’t speak. Tears from a wellspring deep and dark streamed down my face. “Do you hear me?” Arturo asked. “Forgive yourself.” I nodded and felt a distant sort of release, as if something inside of me was draining away.

Forgiveness

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.

“I want him buried in México,” I said. I didn’t tell her that I wanted him in the Panteón Municipal, where we could celebrate him on el Día de Muertos. I wanted to bake pan de muerto and prepare calabaza en tacha for him. I wanted to make an ofrenda with the cempasúchil flowers that grew in our yard. I wanted to put candles on his tomb. I wanted to honor him. I wanted him near me.

“We still have our house. My parents have been checking on it since we left. They’re waiting for us.” “And then?” “I don’t know. I can barely even believe that the days will go on. It seems like it should all stop somehow.” “But it doesn’t,” Celia said.

I took another plate from the cabinet and dropped it, too, watching it bloom at my feet. Then another. Then another. I thought suddenly, What is the meaning of all these things?

bobbing in the breeze like something joyful. I stared at them now, leafless at the end of winter, and saw the same thing. To my surprise. I saw trees that looked happy, trees that looked hopeful, their naked branches suspended in reach toward the sky. Spring would come soon, I thought, and fill them up again.

What I didn’t understand—what I suddenly realized now—was that if I stopped moving backwards, trying to recapture the past, there might be a future waiting for me, waiting for us, a future that would reveal itself if only I turned around and looked, and that once I did, I could start to move toward it.