S E C R E T S O F A

W E T B A C K W A R R I O R

&

O T H E R S T O R I E S

Alberto Ledesma

Q/J Publications

Castro Valley, CA 94552

Copyright © 2006 by Alberto Ledesma.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

The names and details in Secrets of a Wetback Warriorare fictional. Any similarity to real individuals is

purely coincidental.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Alberto Ledesma

SECRETS OF A WETBACK WARRIOR

&Other Stories

To Sofia, Leticia, and the crowd at 82nd Avenue.

If he only knew what would happen to him.

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Wetback was never my word. It was what I heard when Eddie Freeman shot rocks at my legs with his sling as I ran up East 14th on my way to school. It was the echo I felt when I boarded the 82nd Local to downtown and

the driver stared at the brown sweat on the edges of my starched white collar. But I didn’t swim across the Rio Grande at midnight. No yellow sentry lights scanned my pale body wading in the dark and shallow water. I rode across smooth asphalt in a red Camaro. I used to think that wetback was just a word I heard on the street. A shard of bleached desert bone that had sliced my tongue in two. Wet-back. I damned it every time I heard it. It was mojado in Spanish, my father’s word at home, the epithet he flung at what he saw in the mirror, the black weight of never-ending work that kept him from jumping out of bed each morning. Yes, those two-syllables, wet•back, ruled my life. That word was the second of hesitation that kept my fingers from squeezing rage into a tight fist and the reason why I had no other choice but to disobey papá. Wetback—that miserable word—is what set me free.

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I saw Susana dart to papá as soon as she heard the click of the kitchen-door latch that day. “Luis won!” she screeched, her pink terry-cloth sandals sliding on the red linoleum as she cornered around the table. “Luis won!” she repeated, her high-

pitched voice bouncing on the tin-drum thickness of our kitchen walls with the added volume that speaking Spanish gave her. That day, I saw Susana dash to papá and I held my breath. “Wait a minute m’ija,” papá said to my older sister as he jiggled the key that had gotten stuck inside the pinchi lock again. “Let me just put my stuff down, okay?” Papá, a man so large that he eclipsed the afternoon daylight when he stood at the threshold, plodded into the kitchen with a sigh. “Okay m’ija, what’s the problem?” He groaned when he reached for his chair, slid his slate gray lunch box and aluminum thermos on the barren Formica table, and sat. Without even looking at her, he asked mamá to give him a glass of water, muttering as he took his wool coat off “It’s hot in here!” I still remember how his chair creaked, as if complaining when papá shifted the weight of his tired body to untie his yellow bootlaces. He glanced at me when he

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PART 1

SECRETS OF A WETBACK WARRIOR

bent over to loosen the double knots, studying me as I stood next to mamá across the room. “It’s all an illusion anyway.” Papá said when I had told him about the competition. “Kids from our part of the world never win anything. The only thing you’re going to do if you go through with this is get us in trouble.” I wondered what he would say once he found out that I had disobeyed him, that I had won the scholarship and not withdrawn. I wondered if he would yell at me again, if our neighbor, Mr. Jenkins, was going to ask me if everything was alright when I walked in front of his house on my way to school the next morning. I wondered if that web of tiny red veins that gave a pink hue to papá’s eyes was go-ing to appear, or if that bead of sweat was going to trickle down papá’s right cheek again and meander across the stubble on his chin. It had happened so many times before. Papá’s booming voice shaking the house the way that it did that night Susana graduated from high school. He had yelled at me then, too, because I had not thought of the consequences. After the crowd of congratulatory handshakes and hugs had slowed, when the laughs and tears had faded across Fremont High’s auditorium, I had been the one who had volunteered to go with Susana. Papá had told José and María, Susana’s graduating friends, that she could not go to their party without an escort and that he could not take her because he had to work the next day. Papá stared at me when I spoke up, clenched his teeth as Susana and I walked away from the station wagon. “Be careful!” he shouted across the parking lot as we got into José’s blue Chevy Nova. “You know the risk!” Later that night papá came to pick us up from the East 14th Shell station near 35th Avenue because the police would not let José drive anyone home in his Nova with two shattered headlights. That night papá reminded us again of who we were. “Are you so selfish that you forgot you don’t have papers?! Besides the fact that you embarrassed me in public, you could have gotten us all into serious trouble, Luis! What if the police had taken you in?” But we didn’t know that José was going to crash into that man’s pick-up! I told papá as he slowed his station wagon on a red light at 73rd Avenue, Susana slouching on the back seat with mascara streaking down her teary face. Besides, I told him, the police didn’t even care about us; they arrested the pick-up man and told us to go. He was a drunk, you know. “Look, I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses. You better learn how to accept who you are quick. Just for this you will not be able to go out with your friends for a month!”

On the day I received the scholarship letter Susana took a seat near papá, on the opposite side of the table, and was leaning forward, her chin resting on her folded elbow. “Luis is going to meet all the politicians we’ve seen on The 10 O’clock News, papá. He’s even going to go to the White House!”

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Papá mumbled as he drank from the glass mamá had placed in front of him. “Let me see.” He said. Susana handed papá the letter, sat back, and thumbed through the pages of the glossy red, white, and blue pamphlet that had arrived with the packet. It was as if she were the one who would be going away, the one ex-cited about being sent three thousand miles from our little blue house on East Oakland’s 82nd Avenue. But I was the one who had won, the one who now stood in a daze waiting to hear what papá thought about what I’d done. “Look m’ijo, I know how much you want to do the kinds of things your friends can do. I really wish you could. But you and I both know that all it takes is one little mistake, one little slip, and all of us will lose what we have.” But that doesn’t mean we have to live like prisoners in our own home! I would tell him. “It’s better than starving in Guadalajara, Luis.” That afternoon Susana was still wearing the pastel pink silk blouse and black pleated skirt she had put on before running to catch the 8:15 BART to San Leandro. Her brown hair still shone with all the Aquanet spray she had used to force it into shape before leaving for her shift at Mervyn’s. She smiled as papá’s eyes focused on the letter, seemingly anticipating our father’s happy reply. “You know, I thought that the mailman had made another mistake when I saw the big manila envelope leaning against our front door. But when I saw that it had our name on it, and when I felt all the stuff they had sent Luis, I knew exactly what it was. You’ll see, Luis, tomorrow...,” she beamed at me, “I will buy you a big red tie like the kind that Reagan wears.” Papá’s hazel brown eyes surveyed the page slowly. I gazed at him, still waiting for his approval. Instead, I saw his soot-stained jaw moving in a calcu-lated rhythm, the curl of his top lip glistening as it shaped whispered words, the hiss hiss of his voice lulling me like a prayer. Usually, when we received mail from school or late notices from the electric company papá would ask Susana to read the letters out loud. He would stand behind her, nodding and uh-huhing as she explained what we had to do. When she hesitated he would remind her that she was the oldest, that it was her responsibility to make him understand. Usually, when Susana read, I would stand with my back against the bathroom door, listening to my sister’s stuttered translations, correcting her language in my mind when she stumbled. But the letter seemed so clear this time: Two weeks stay at Washing-ton’s Swan Shores Hotel, roundtrip fare on American Airlines, daily breakfast buffet, lunch, and dinner, everything paid for. I heard the familiar wail of a speeding ambulance echoing a few blocks away and thought of how good it would be to escape East Oakland even if for a few days. Mamá, who was finishing the cocido soup I had chosen from the list of special dishes she had offered to cook me, turned to papá and said, “What a smart boy we have, Pedro! You should be so proud of him.” She had said something similar to me when I had arrived from school two hours before.

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“I am so happy for you, Luis. This means you will be the first in our fam-ily to get on an airplane!” The tips of her wet fingers held the letter gingerly as she smiled. “Not even your cousin Abel can say that.” But when I asked her what she thought papá would do, if he would let me go, mamá paused and looked at the plum tree outside our window before saying, “Ay Luis, you know how your father is. He always tries to do the best for our fam-ily. Sometimes he just gets frustrated.” Now, for the umpteenth time since Susana had run into the house with the packet in her hands, mamá stepped away from the stove and reached for me, pressing my pimpled cheeks between her soft hands as she kissed my forehead. She smelled like a bar of Dove soap, like freshly cut onion and cilantro, tomatillos and roasted serranos. Her dark, tired eyes glazed when she gazed at me, as if they needed more practice at being happy. I, on the other hand, felt like a ruby-throated hummingbird lost in a field of hollyhocks, as if I had finally given my parents a reason to feel proud of who they were, as if I had finally given them some of that respect they had yearned for in the years since we had crossed the border. Maybe things would be okay? I thought. Maybe our life in this new land would not have to end in tragedy? I smiled, excited to feel the way I did, and leaned on the sink counter, my arms tightly wrapped across my chest to contain what I felt inside. Papá stood up and walked to where I was standing. He held the letter at his side, his eyes cast towards the loose laces of my ragged Nike high-tops. With his front teeth he scratched at a piece of torn skin on his bottom lip. Even amid the aroma of boiling beef and crushed garlic, I smelled the Budweisers he drank before getting home. It was a familiar scent, a sign that things had been tough at the pis-ton foundry again. Papá’s eyes fixed on me and he spoke. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done to us, Luis?” he said. “You’ve just gotten us all deported.”

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It was a quarter past ten when our chartered bus merged into “E” Street. The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building was a few blocks ahead, on 9th Avenue. Soon, we would be there.

The sidewalks of Washington’s Federal Triangle were already crowded with tourists wearing white cotton shorts and straw panama hats, most of them holding unfolded DC maps above their 35 millimeter Minoltas. The bus driver slowed at the curb, about twenty yards from the street corner, and the air brakes deflated to a halt with a powerful whoosh. Mr. Douglass Brewer, the Assistant Director of the Congressional Classroom Summer Program, rose from his seat and held his right hand up. “The FBI Building tour will take us only an hour to complete,” he said. Behind him the cabin door squeaked open and the drone of the idling bus engine

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overpowered Mr. Brewer’s soft voice. He strained as he spoke over the jackham-mering engine, his pale face reddening when he said “Then, then we will have...our lunch outside.” But his sand-colored eyebrows arched and he paused when he noticed that those at the back of the bus couldn’t hear his instructions. He turned around, placed his hand on the driver’s shoulder and bent over to speak to him. Im-mediately, the bus door closed and the driver turned off the engine. ”We will be taking our group picture at the Lincoln Memorial later,” Mr. Brewer said. “So make sure to return to the bus by one.” It had been Mr. Brewer who had waited for me at Dulles International Airport earlier that week. Even then he wore the same beige corduroy pants with beige Top-Siders, beige striped tie and beige silk blazer that he wore now. Even his glasses, I had thought when I first met him, had looked beige, though now I noticed they were really amber-tinted and gold rimmed John Lennon’s. He had picked three of us up at Dulles that Sunday, had held a placard listing our names as we got off of American Airlines San Francisco flight #236. “You must be excited,” he had said as we hurried across the passenger walkway to the baggage claim area. “This is a very prestigious program.” I told myself then, as we crowded around baggage carousel #11, that things were going to be okay, that as long as I kept my cool I had nothing to fear. Then, he asked me the question: “So, what part of Mexico are you and your parents from?” I thought of the lies I had told Ms. Lobo when she had asked me that question, how I had told her that I had been born in Los Angeles and then taken back to Guadalajara, that that was the reason I had such a heavy accent. I wondered what Ms. Lobo had written in the application she had submitted on my behalf, if they had checked and knew that there was no Luis Acosta born anywhere in Los Angeles in 1966, that I had made it all up. The sound of thin steel sheets grating one on top the other as they circled in the giant oval carousel, the thuds of backpacks and boxes, golf bags and black suitcases landing in front of us, and the roar of jet engines revving up for take off made it hard for me to think of what to say. Mr. Brewer leaned closer and asked again, his blue eyes narrowing this time. I said something and Mr. Brewer furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you.” He responded. “Can you repeat it?” I tried to swallow before I spoke, but all the saliva had evaporated from my throat. I looked straight into his eyes, forcing myself not to blink, and calmly explained that my parents had emigrated from Guadalajara many years ago, but that I had been born in Los Angeles’ General Hospital. He nodded as he straightened. “So, do your parents ever go back?” Again, my cheekbones and the tips of my ears erupted with an unexplain-able heat and I pretended to look for my bag though it had landed in front of us two turns ago. No, I’ve always lived in California. I said.

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“Okay, I just thought that because of your accent that you probably go back to Mexico often.” I grabbed my suitcase on the third turn, almost falling over as I pushed my way in front of an old woman. It was on that thirty-mile drive from Arlington to Washington D.C. that I decided to say nothing more to Mr. Brewer for as long as I could avoid it. I didn’t want him to know me, to know exactly from where I came. I nodded whenever he glanced in my direction, always smiling as I turned away. In one of those passing glances, when I turned my head after the shuttle driver had handed me my suitcase, I sensed Mr. Brewer’s suspicion. He had been standing in front of me, ready to hand the shuttle driver several folded dollar bills. He held the money behind him, hiding his big tip from the driver who was unload-ing the last of the suitcases, when Mr. Brewer’s blue eyes focused on me. He must have wondered then, as we stood in front of the hotel’s glass entrance doors, how someone as obviously wretched as I had managed to afford the thousands of dollars needed to pay for the program’s tuition. He must have wondered what I would do in the hotel’s gift shop, how I would be able to afford anything now that I was here. He gave the driver the money and walked ahead of me, but not before checking if he still had his wallet.

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“Wait a second, Luis,” Ms. Mary Lobo said while I waited at the front of her class. “I need to get another pencil from my desk.” Outside the cracked windows of Room 122, past the withered

hedges surrounding Fremont High’s main building, a mechanic in a dirty blue jumpsuit was bent under the opened hood of a dented white Volvo. Other battered foreign cars were parked in a row in front of the open garage. It had been another busy day for Henry’s European Repair. Ms. Lobo gave me the cue and I continued. “Abortion is an act of compas-sion,” I said. “In East Oakland the abortion rate is triple the national average. Why would we want to force poor young women to become mothers for kids who will know nothing but misery? Why not give at the least one of these young lives a chance to live a productive life instead of shackling both to a destiny of guaranteed suffering? Abortion is an act of compassion because it symbolizes the hope of poor women who want to move ahead with their lives!”I took my seat at the front of Ms. Lobo’s class, smiling at what I thought was a flawless concluding argument. It was the same argument I had read in the Satur-day Oakland Tribune, an op-ed written by the president of Planned Parenthood. I clipped it after papá had finished with the newspaper, after he had torn the Bay Meadows horse racing results from the sports section and sped off on his station wagon to collect unexpected winnings. I plopped myself on the living room couch with the article, in front of the t.v., and memorized it, reciting bits and pieces to

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myself in between commercial breaks of The Tarzan/Lone Ranger/Zorro Adventure Hour.

Now Aurora Jimenez sat in front of me with her brown eyes cast towards the scattered pile of note cards on her desk. I wondered what she thought at that moment, how she would answer? Had she read the same article I had? Did she know how freely I had borrowed from Faye Wattleton’s 250-word opinion? It didn’t matter. I had her beat. She looked up from her desk, her brows like the wings of a sparrow, brushed a few strands of her long brown hair away from her eyes, and stood up. She seemed too serene for someone who had just been obliterated by a three-minute second affirmative rebuttal. Instead, she glanced at me, simpered, and nodded. Then she walked the five feet of gray carpet to the podium slowly, her cards left in a neat stack back at her desk, and pursed her scarlet lips as she took time to think of what to say. But it was the porcelain smoothness of her tan skin, the subtle arch of her thin waist as she stood next to the podium, and the way she placed the entire weight of her slender body upon her right hip that delivered the most devastating blow against anything I could’ve said. She leaned forward, her low-cut black blouse revealing the edges of a sleek red bra, and took a deep breath before she spoke.“Abortion is murder!” Aurora stated in a thickly accented English. “It shouldn’t be used as a morning-after form of birth control. It should be outlawed.” I can’t remember exactly what else she said that day, just the fact that she crushed me the way María Felix had crushed Agustin Lara, inspiring one of Mexi-co’s greatest composers to write his immortal ballad “Maria Bonita.” Ms. Lobo, who sat at the back of the room taking notes, grinned when twenty of her twenty-four students, mostly boys, raised their hands and voted for Aurora as the winner. The lunch bell rang and the rest of the students gathered their belongings before rushing to the freebie lines at the cafeteria. I lingered behind, my appetite gone, try-ing to figure out how a girl who had arrived from Mexico just three months before had bested me, Fremont High School’s debate team captain. “Please stay,” Ms. Lobo said as I headed to the door. “I’ve something important to discuss with you.” I walked to where she was sitting at the back of the room and stood in front of her, my backpack resting on the chair of the empty desk next to my right leg. “’Abortion is an act of compassion because it symbolizes the hope of poor women who want to move ahead with their lives?’ Where did you get that?”I noticed the hint of a smile on Ms. Lobo’s thin lips and her intense green eyes fixed on me. She wanted an answer. Maybe I should have used some other language? I thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have said the things I said without knowing what I was saying? “D’you like that?” I heard myself asking her, uncertain of what would fol-low. “Yes, it was quite poetic. But it didn’t really sound like you.” Outside the window, behind Ms. Lobo’s head, an out-of-service AC

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Transit bus lumbered by. It was empty, it’s engine sputtering as it traveled slowly in front of a plume of dark smoke. I felt my face getting warmer, a nausea grow-ing just below my chest. I could see my image reflected on the window’s hazy glass behind Ms. Lobo, the crooked smile on my pallid face barely disguising the rapid throbbing of my heart. I could see my image as if in a mist, my face and dark brown hair floating above the crisp whiteness of the neatly ironed shirt I was sup-posed to wear for work after school. “I guess I was just trying to change the way I sound,” I said, searching for anything that would provide an explanation for what I’d done. “After all,” I grasped at anything that might distract her, “didn’t Dickens write that our brains, like our faces, will become ugly if they get too comfortable?” I didn’t know what else to say. The quote on the cover of the Charles Dickens Anthology the neighbor had given us—a book that I had leafed through the night before as I lay in bed—was the only thing I managed to remember that might cause Ms. Lobo to change the conversation. But it didn’t sound right and instead I felt like mamá’s hero, El Chapulin Colorado, inventing half-truths in order to avoid admitting that I didn’t know what the hell I was really doing. Ms. Lobo pressed her lips together tightly and tilted her head, nodding to herself as she processed the information. “No, what he wrote in Barnaby Rouge was that ‘Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.’ But that’s good. You made a very good argument. Next time just make sure to attribute your sources. Okay?” I nodded and felt myself breathing again. And I expected Ms. Lobo to say that that was all, that I could go. But her smile and nodding continued while her elbows rested on the arm pads of her chair and she tapped her fingertips into a lazy prayer. I couldn’t resist the silence and so I blurted, “You know, it was hard pre-paring for this debate.” “What do you mean?” “Well, I know it’s not right, but it seems that all the girls in the class, including Aurora, already know more about abortion than any of the boys. Then you made me the affirmative and when I went to the library I found much more material on the negative side.” “Yes, I knew this would be a challenge for you,” said Ms. Lobo. “It was unfair,” I responded, suddenly feeling as if I was arguing with my father. “But I knew you could handle it Luis. And you almost won.” There was more. She had already submitted my name and now “they” wanted to interview me. That afternoon. There was no way I could avoid it, she said, without disappointing her. “It’s a very prestigious organization, Luis. They want Fremont to send them our most talented Latino junior. Principal Edwards and I both think that’s you. It could mean you winning thousands of dollars of support for yourself and our school. I’m sure your parents would be very proud if you were to win the

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Washington D.C. scholarship.” Suddenly, I didn’t care about Aurora anymore. Instead I felt paralyzed, incapacitated by a complete loss of words. How could I tell Ms. Lobo that I couldn’t go anywhere out of Oakland, that my parents thought that even coming to Fremont High was a risk for the family? How could I tell her that I was undocu-mented, locked away in a tiny East Oakland home most of the day, with only her books and afternoon cartoons for company? How could I tell her and still have her believe that I could become more than one of the thousands of poor East Oakland boys she had seen ending up dead or in jail? I said nothing. She handed me a yellow slip with a Fruitvale Avenue ad-dress on it and told me to be there at 4:00 PM. They would be waiting for me.

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The committee seemed impressed with me from the moment that I entered their Fruitvale Avenue meeting-room. I wasn’t sure what Ms. Lobo had said about me in her referral. What was clear, however, was that I was the best-

dressed barrio kid that the committee saw that day. I usually wore a black tie and slacks after school because it was the required uniform for my work as a busboy at Chuck’s Family Restaurant. They understood my choice of wardrobe as a good case of anticipated protocol—something the other student’s lacked. The interview consisted of three questions: they asked us to discuss what kind of leadership we thought the “Hispanic” community needed; what our aspira-tions in college were; and, what questions we would ask our congressman if we ever got a chance to see him in Washington. I panicked at the thought that I would have to face “my congressman,” a man for whom neither my parents nor I could ever vote for under our present condition. It was at that moment that I truly recognized what going to Washington meant. In spite of my nervousness, I kept my cool, letting the four other students who had come to the interview answer ahead of me. We had each been allotted five minutes to respond to the questions. I barely heard what the other students said. And I just sat there, silently contemplating my fate, feeling my heart racing against the clock on the wall, against the seconds that passed and got me closer to my turn. The other students stuttered and some rapidly shouted their answers, as if time was not enough to fit what they had to say. One girl stood up, raised a clenched fist, and proudly asserted that if she got the chance to go to Washington that she would give those politicians a scolding. “They don’t care ‘bout us! Mami says that all them politicians want to do is just ignore poor people! They think we poor because we want ta be. If you send me, I’ll tell ‘em!” Though I had already realized that I couldn’t win, I also didn’t want to

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disappoint Ms. Lobo, the only teacher I had at Fremont who thought I could suc-ceed outside of Oakland. I concluded that the best way to lose the competition was by being vague, but not obnoxious so that Ms. Lobo could hear some good things about my interview. It never occurred to me that in the United States one of the hallmarks of a good politician is the way that he or she skirts controversy only to answer questions without really addressing the issues. This is the way that I came across that after-noon. “Gangs are bad for our neighborhood, yes, but they are also good,” I said, careful not to take too strong of a stance. I took my time with every answer, seeking only to delay, to avoid offering anything that could be construed as a coherent answer. “Maybe the reason students who belong to our neighborhood gangs don’t do well is that they really can’t perform what is being asked of them?” I said, thinking that I was presenting nothing in all that I said.In their letter, my interviewers stated that they thought I had reflected intelligently on every question. They wrote that I had been reasonable and polite, not angry or abrasive like some of the other candidates. That afternoon when I got the letter, when papá prophesized the end of our life in the United States, mamá and papá agreed that if I declined the scholarship I might arouse unwanted questions about our immigration status. I had to accept it until I could find the right excuse.

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Papá sat on a blue plastic chair, my beige Derby jacket draped over his right knee, and waited. I came out of the dressing room and stood in front of him, but his eyes were still frozen on the purple shag carpet of Ernie’s Shop for

Distinguished Gentlemen. I walked up, my white tube-socked toes peeking at him from underneath cold black polyester bell-bottomed pants. So, what do you think? I asked him. He said nothing when he looked up. Rather, it was the salesman stand-ing behind the counter who spoke from across the gray gabardine emptiness of the almost-at-closing-time store floor. “Now, that sho is class young man. You will definitely impress them girls with that fine suit. Yes seh, you sho will.” “How much?” Papá, now standing, asked as he reached for the wallet in his back pocket. The thin, grizzled man with the gray eyebrows and horn-rimmed glasses limped from behind the counter and walked to me, a yellow measuring tape hang-ing freely around his neck. He pulled down on my coat sleeves, put his hands under my armpits and asked me how it felt. “Well seh,” he said quizzically as he massaged the gray stubble on his chin with his left hand, “that depends on whether or not you goin’ to get the shirt that goes with this fine suit.”

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Confused by the man’s reply, papá turned to me. The old man limped back to the glass counter, opened it from behind, and pulled out a folded purple tuxedo shirt with ruffles. “This one includes a clip-on bow tie, young man,” he said as he held the folded shirt in front of my chest. “In all, it will run you ‘bout ninety.” Papá looked at me again and I noticed the heavy bags under his eyes. We had come to Oakland’s Eastmont Mall right after papá had gotten home from work. Mamá had insisted on it, had told papá that it would be a shame if we didn’t do it. “Tell him that we’ll take the suit by itself,” papá said to me in Spanish. The old man was already putting the shirt back in the case and taking the yellow tape off of his neck when I told him that we would buy the suit after all. “I’m leaving for Washington tomorrow,” I said to him as I placed mamá’s money on the counter. “Well, isn’t that great, young man!?” Papá glared his disapproval, as if he thought the old man would stop punching the register keys, pick up the telephone, and call immigration right then and there. When we got to the station wagon I reminded papá that I had to be at the airport at dawn. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take you in the morning.”

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The blast of the 737’s engines rumbled in my stomach when we ascended above the San Francisco skyline. I wondered, as the jet ripped through the clouds, how long I could sit with my head resting on the fuselage wall,

feigning sleep, when Washington D.C. was 3,000 miles away. A hand tapped me on the shoulder and I opened my eyes to find a man’s ashen face mouthing some-thing. I could barely hear and so raised my head closer to my slender inquisitor. “Can you please take your hand off of the ashtray? I need to throw my gum.” Sure, I mumbled. I’m sorry. I had done it, had left mamá, papá, and Susana standing at the terminal gate like statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Fatima, and the Immaculate Heart of Jesus. I had hurried on the crowded airplane knowing that I was one of the last pas-sengers on board and had searched for my seat, stumbling through the narrow lane while holding my boarding pass in front of my nose. I scanned faces as I walked past each row of seats to see if there was anyone I recognized. Maybe someone from school, a teacher or the principal might be going to Washington, too? I thought. But, as I passed each row, as I made eye contact with people I had never seen be-fore, I realized that I was alone.

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when I entered the room. I had waited five minutes after knocking on the door before one of them said come in. “The receptionist told me you had my key in the folder she gave you.” I said meekly as I took off the black windbreaker I had worn since I had left San Francisco.“Oh, yeah. Come right in.” We stood in front of each other for what seemed like hours. I didn’t know what to say or do. They had already unpacked, had closed the heavy drapes above the air conditioner, and were now lounging in their blue pajamas watching Ted Koppel. “I hope you don’t mind that we put our clothes in the two top dresser drawers.” Frank Johnston, the taller of the two boys, spoke and suggested that I change into my own sleeping clothes. The next day we were to have a busy schedule, he said, so getting a good night’s rest was important. I put my brown suitcase down in the middle of the room and rushed backwards into the restroom. But when I realized that I had forgotten all my clothes in the suitcase I had to come out almost immediately. From that day on, for the next two weeks, I hardly said a word to the boys and just did whatever they told me. If it were deadly duels we were having each night as we stood examining each other before going to bed, I would have died each and every time. Like the rest of the members in the program, the two boys and I shared a single king-sized mattress each night when we went to sleep. The boys, with their matching Steve Garvey haircuts and soon-to-deepen voices, looked at each other with a smirk as I walked out of the toilet wearing a green salsa and coffee stained white tee shirt and my yellow Fremont High gym shorts. Each of them, with their flaxen eyelashes barely shading turquoise eyes made me feel dirty, as if my brown gaze contaminated them every second I remained in the room. I could barely sleep that first night. Instead, I shrank towards the upper right corner of our mattress, my arms reaching down to the floor to prevent me from falling. They, on the other hand, slept peacefully in the ample space I had given up, their freckled pallid skin taut in the night’s blue light. That Monday morning of the first week, as the boys from Indiana lay in our bed sleeping, I wondered how I would manage my stay in Washington without getting deported. How would I cope with all of the things I didn’t know? After all, the bed! It was the only one in the room, I thought to myself as I slowly opened my parent’s gigantic suitcase on the carpeted floor in the early morning darkness. I walked around the bed, searching for my right shoe, and looked towards the boys as they continued their slumber. They seemed so fragile and androgynous in their sleep. I gazed at them before I left the room, how they melded one unto the other. How was I supposed to know what to do if a Washington policeman stopped me when I didn’t even have an inkling of the world these boys knew? How was I supposed to survive Washington, to pretend that I fit in, when I was in a place with people so foreign to me? Would these boys be the ones to deport me? On the night when I arrived, before we turned off the lights, the boys had told me their names. I had also told them mine. And yet, even before I stepped out of the room, even as I looked behind me towards the sunrise on the other side of the balcony window, I had already forgotten them. John, James, Jason? Herb,

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My seat was located just behind the left wing. I squeezed past the man who was already occupying the middle seat, took my place, and waited. Mamá had made the sign of the cross on my forehead when she said goodbye, hugged me for a few seconds, and kissed my cheek before telling me, “I’ve asked the Virgin to watch over you, Luis. Just remember, you need to help her by always being careful.” Papá stood still behind mamá. He looked melancholy, as if he knew that he was letting something terrible happen, something that he didn’t have the power to stop. When the loudspeaker announced that my group was to board next, he em-braced me like he always did—a hug that could only be seen with instant replay—and gave me a quick pat on the shoulder. “Cuidate m’ijo. Call when you get there.” It was Susana who surprised me. She had already given me the small brown leather briefcase I carried at my side. She pulled me a few yards away from the line, towards the restrooms, and handed me a blue envelope. “Look, papá didn’t want to say it. He got you this.” I opened the envelope and found six folded twenty-dollar bills and what looked like a brand-new California identification card with my picture and name on it. But why? I found myself asking as papá looked at us from afar. I couldn’t believe it. I squinted towards papá and saw the sadness in his moistened eyes. He smiled when I mouthed my gracias. “It was the best he could do with the money he had, Luis.” Susana said. “The man from Salinas charged him a lot and barely got it done in time. But he did a good job, huh? Just don’t try to use the numbers for anything. They’re fake. Now put that away and go.” Sitting on the airplane I reached my back pocket and sensed how thicker my wallet was with the money and card in it. The bulge bothered me, how obvi-ous and heavy it felt inside the thin polyester twill of my blue slacks. I shifted my weight to my left side and leaned towards the airplane window, to prevent myself from ripping the newly minted card. Outside, I gazed at the gentle sea of gray cotton thunderheads below us, how soft and inviting they appeared. And yet, the trembling of the jet and the momentary flashing of the cabin lights suggested a chaos that lay right beneath their surface. I closed my eyes when the pilot asked the stewardesses to sit. Six hours later we landed at Dulles, where Mr. Douglass Brewer picked two others and me up. As the blue hotel van weaved in and out of Interstate 66’s fast lane the sycamores on the other side of my window were barely perceptible. Where was I? I wondered.

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I stood in front of room 2104, wondering how long it would take me to walk all the way back to Oakland. Two identical-looking blonde boys from Evansville, Indiana greeted me

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Hank, Howard? The only thing I could remember as I closed the door behind me was the anxiety I had felt when they asked me to say where I was from. I had said nothing more than the fact that I was from California. That didn’t surprise them at all.

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The traffic on Connecticut Avenue buzzed near the open window of the Swan Shores second floor balcony. I waited for the elevator, not know-ing that a staircase was but three yards around the corner. Though our

hotel room had been pitch black and the air cool, I hadn’t been able to sleep and imagined myself standing in the D.C. sunlight waiting to be arrested. I trembled at the thought that my father’s prophesy was about to come true and felt guilty about being so far from my house in East Oakland. Back in Oakland we squeezed into 500 square feet of space. Now, in Washington, as I dawdled under the fifty-foot ceiling of the hotel’s rotunda, I yearned for papá, mamá, and Susana. I missed hearing their voices on the other side of the thin walls, the crisp smell of steamed shirts after my mother ironed. I missed sitting in the kitchen at night with a hot cup of café con leche while Susana watched Veronica Castro hamming it up in Los Ricos También Lloran. “How could he? Why, doesn’t she know it? I bet she dumps him!” she would say. El chapulín colorado, a comedy, was my mother’s favorite show. “El chapulín is so funny but always looks so sad.” She once told me when I asked why she liked the show. I missed hearing my father’s commentary every night as he heard the news reports on El Canal Catorce. “What a bunch of fools!” He would exhort in between sips of Coors and V8. “These politicians have no idea what being illegal is like in this country.” And yet, what I missed most was my tiny room at the back of the house. There, each night after everyone else had gone to bed, I would close the door and open a book to read, any book. Some nights I only slept a few hours before getting up to go to school the next morning. Often, I would lose myself in the tattered pages of Dickens or H.G. Wells, books our Baptist neighbor had given papá when we first moved in. Each night I would open them and try to make sense of what they said. I read each paragraph slowly, paying careful attention to the messages the authors crafted into each sentence and paragraph, trying to discover something in their pages that would allow us to escape our life in East Oakland. On that first day in Washington I wondered if, as my father had warned me, I would indeed be the cause of the whole family being deported to Mexico. As I saw more of the two hundred and fifty students who had enrolled in the Congres-sional Classroom coming down for the breakfast buffet, I could feel my heart beat-ing faster and faster. What if one of them was from Los Angeles? What would they

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when my fourth grade teacher had taken our class to see an emphysema exhibit at the Alameda County Health Center; at The Treasury Department Store check-out line when papá had asked me to go back and pay for two Iron Man comic books myself after I had belatedly brought them to the register. I had even fainted in Mr. Aguirre’s Spanish class when he had asked me to explain in front of my friends how such a studious student could choose to associate with so many dope heads and losers.

The darkness always came as I was trying to think hard about something: What would mamá do if papá’s drinking sickened him all of a sudden? What would I do if the cashier asked me to show her that I was old enough to buy those books? What would Mr. Aguirre do if he figured out that I was the real loser in that group, the only wetback in a group of citizens? It always came while I pondered these ques-tions—an abrupt ringing in my ears, the muffled sounds of people asking me what was happening, and the rapid sweat, the profusely, never-ending stream of sweat that drenched me as I drifted into oblivion. As the line waiter handed me an empty plate and checked my name off of a list, I realized that it was different this time. Others were sweating too. In fact, most of the other hotel guests were wearing single layers of clothing, short-sleeved shirts or light dresses. Their reddened faces said it all; it was a hot and humid day. I thought of taking off my black polyester jacket as I hovered over the sausage tray, but I remembered that the white shirt I had put on that day was slightly torn at the left armpit. I decided to keep it on and proceeded to an empty table. After eating breakfast and before the welcome ceremony took place I went to a lobby couch near an air vent to feel the breeze of cold air. A few moments later I realized that the air conditioning was drying my throat so much that I found it difficult to swallow. I tried to find the right distance from the vent and as I moved I opened the small leather case Susana had given me. In it I had squeezed my American Airlines return ticket and the letter I had been sent about my scholarship. I searched and found a stick of peppermint gum. “The Congressional Classroom is a very old and prestigious program,” the letter said. “We are very proud to be sponsoring you as our representative. You are a bright, polite, and quick-witted young man who will undoubtedly leave a favorable impression of our community of Spanish speaking citizens among our elected representatives. We know you won’t disappoint us.”

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I remained seated by the bus window, watching as the other students hurried off the bus and rushed to the FBI Building’s main entrance. Already the stream of sweat flowing down my neck drenched the collar of my black polyester suit

jacket. I thought of illnesses to keep me on the bus: fainting, a stomachache, breaking a foot as I stepped outside. But in the days since I had arrived in Washing-

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high school in Michigan, would probably have me taken inside. The FBI doctors would ask to contact my parents. If that happened, papá’s prophecy would certainly come true. There was no choice. I had to go through with it. As soon as I stepped on the sidewalk I saw the long line in front of the FBI Building’s glass doors. There were guards and two gray metallic structures in front of the people. I waited close to the bus, a few steps behind Mr. Brewer, still sweat-ing while everyone else walked ahead of me. But he turned around and said, “Get in line Acosta! We don’t have all day!” “Please place your coats, purses, belts, and pocket items inside the gray trays,” the stolid guard behind the conveyor said when we approached the metal detectors. He frowned and held his thick arms crossed on his hefty chest, the five-inch ponytail hanging behind his policeman’s hat, and his flaxen goatee, making him look like a big blonde genie. He arched his bushy right eyebrow upwards as he surveyed what each of us pulled from our pockets and put in the trays. Other, shorter and thinner guards stood next to him examining items that passed through the x-ray machine. Mr. Brewer, who was walking behind us, glared at me. “C’mon Acosta,” he said, “I can see our tour guide waiting inside!” I took off my jacket and wrist watch and shuffled them from one hand to the other while I waited for an empty tray to be placed in front of me and reminded myself that I had been through all of this before at the airport, that I had survived the furious palpitations in my chest, that I had managed to calm my breathing as the agents paused to look at my things. Yet when I saw that my black wallet had landed open in the tray, that the crispy white fake identification card papá had bought me was in plain view, I froze in place and Mr. Brewer bumped into me. “Keep it moving Acosta!” he said as he rearranged his glasses back on his nose. “You are holding up the line!” The blonde genie stepped forward, uncrossed his arms, and reached down with his fat, hairy hand to stop my tray from entering the machine. He felt the bundle of items I had placed in the gray tray with the tips of his thick pink fingers as if he were massaging pastry dough. He grabbed my wallet, held it in front of his face, and grunted an “uh-huh.” He looked at me, cocked his head to the left, and said, “So, Lou-ees Ay-coat-ah, do you mind if I look through your things?” I couldn’t think of what to say. Instead, I imagined myself standing in front of papá, his brown eyes and heavy lids looking exhausted and melancholic while his lips mouthed “Be careful, Luis. Be careful.” Though I felt a terror spreading like the arctic wind across my body, though I felt as if the nerves holding the back of my skull attached to my neck were snapping one by one, I nodded energetically and forced the most gullible smile I could muster to my lips. He pulled the six weathered twenties Susana had given me at the airport and carefully looked at each one. I had spent nothing since I had arrived. Then he put them back and picked up my jacket from where I had placed it. I didn’t have anything in my pockets but an empty Double-Mint wrapper and my Congressional

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Classroom nametag. He put my coat and wallet down on top of my watch and belt. Then I saw it, as clear as the midday sun. The wallet had opened again on its fold and I saw that my name had been misspelled on the card—L-U-I-S-A-C-O-T-A. I thought of Mr. Brewer, that he would also notice it and ask why the name on the card was different from the name in my registration. I looked away, a smile frozen on my face, and tried not to give away what I had noticed, to show how little the type-written print behind my wallet’s clear plastic ID window was bothering me. Not knowing what to say or do I turned and faced Mr. Brewer directly. He had a smirk on his peach-colored, round face, that almost looked as if he was glad that I had been stopped, as if he knew that something like this was going to occur while I was in Washington, as if he knew that this was inevitable. He grinned, his blue eyes squinting behind his amber-tinted glasses, and stepped around me as if I were a stanchion in an empty waiting-line at the bank. “Is everything okay, officer?” He said to the blonde genie as he leaned over the conveyor. “I’m the Assistant Director of the Congressional Classroom. If there is anything I can help with, please let me know.” The guard came closer to Brewer and me and I felt his black pupils boring my forehead. I could smell the nicotine on his breath and hear the faint rustle of his black leather holster on his khaki pants. “It’s nothing sir. I just noticed that this fella looked a little too nervous in the line. Is he one of yours?” In spite of the heat of the day my face felt frigid. I continued to smile, carefully following each word they said as if it were a tennis ball in a long volley, ready for the interrogation I was sure was about to come. But I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t allow my lungs to betray the terror I felt inside. “Yes, officer. Mr. ‘Ay-cost-ah’ is with us.” I heard the murmur of the crowd behind me. A man’s voice in the dis-tance asking, “What’s happening?” A woman answering, “It’s just a search.” “Why do you call him Mr. ‘Ay-cost-ah’ when his identification says ‘Ay-coe-tah’?” The guard asked Brewer.I heard a sharp ringing in my ears and felt a cold breeze that made my lips tremble. Brewer straightened his back and put his left hand in his pocket. He said nothing and quickly turned to look at me.The tension in his jaw, the glistening vein above his right eyebrow, were all like papá’s. “Be careful Luis,” I heard Brewer saying though he didn’t move his lips. Maybe it was because he reminded me of papá that I found myself saying such a reckless thing. But words were all I had. My only defense. “’A-coh-ta’ is my name. But the school misspelled it when they sent in the forms. I had asked them to correct it but when I arrived I saw that everything was already written in that name. I didn’t think it would cause a problem.” “What?!” He said as he stepped closer to me.Lies. Lies upon lies. There was no turning back. I had said the lie already. What had I to lose? I thought of the lies I had told papá in order to do the things I did at school: When papá asked why I had joined the wrestling team, I told him that the

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principal had required it; when he asked why I had joined the debate team, I told him that that was only way I could pass my English class; and when he asked why I was receiving admissions applications from colleges, I told him that there was an-other kid at school with my name, “It was probably a mistake.” He was always skep-tical, as if he felt that something I was telling him was not right. But he wouldn’t have let me do anything if I didn’t lie, if I didn’t maintain that illusion he wanted so much to be true that I was following his orders. “Acosta is not your real name?” Brewer asked. I don’t know why my heart slowed down or why the smile I was wearing on my face disappeared. The finality of Brewer’s question terrified me as much as the steady anger in his blue eyes and the unpredictable confusion on the guard’s face. Without pause or reservation I looked directly at Brewer and said, “I’m not sure if all the forms the school submitted were correct. I just know that this is my card.” “Well,” the guard chuckled as he stepped back from my tray, apparently amused by my situation. Then he looked at Brewer and with a half-grin said, “It look as if you don’t know your own students sir.”I could feel the simmering fire in Brewer’s eyes concentrating on my face, his ears reddening again the same way they had when we were on the bus. He looked at me for a moment, his face devoid of any expression, and didn’t say a single word. The he tugged on his beige tie ceremoniously, as if he had reached some complicated conclusion in his mind that only he could understand. “I guess we are going to have to update your information when we get back to the hotel Mr. Acota,” he said and turned around. Then the guard put my wallet in the tray and pushed it through the machine. I looked at his face, paying careful attention to the curve of his mouth, and continued to smile while I waited for his instructions. But he just nodded and crossed his arms again and I walked slowly across the detector, picked up my things, and waited for Mr. Brewer. It occurred to me how easy it would be for Brewer to find out that I had lied, that my name was written on all the books I had brought to DC. It was printed with green block letters on my Fremont i.d. card. It was what I wrote any-time anyone asked my name. I knew that it wasn’t over, that as soon as Brewer had the chance he would try confirming that I was who I was. Brewer said nothing to me as he put his beige blazer and brown belt on. Yet, when we turned to walk down the hall, after we had traveled a few paces toward the center of the atrium, he leaned close to me and said, “I don’t know what you’re up to Acosta. But I’m watching you and I will help prosecute you if there is anything you do to embarrass our program. Got it?!” I smiled and nodded again. Brewer trotted ahead of me to where our guide was waiting and I stayed back, pacing slowly, his words reverberating as I took step after step on the polished marble floor. Inside the FBI Building lobby there were countless exhibits on the walls and items

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do if after telling them that I was born in the General Hospital they would discover that I was lying, that it couldn’t be true? Ten years of living in the United States had taught me nothing about how to fit in a place like this. It occurred to me as I walked towards the line in front of the hotel’s res-taurant that that vertigo I was beginning to feel was familiar. I looked for a railing to hold myself up as I came closer to the restaurant’s entrance. Was I so nervous now that I was on the cusp of fainting? It had happened before: On a field trip high contained in glass cases: Al Capone’s oak-handled Tommy gun; Elliot Ness’s cot-ton-padded bullet-proof vest; a 1930s copper boiler used for distilling sunshine; and pictures, many pictures, of famous G-men. I looked around for Brewer and heard the multitude of voices echoing from all corners of the enormous cavern that was the FBI lobby. That’s when I noticed it. At first I thought that it was my anxiety that made me think that every-one was looking at me: The sneer of the guards, the woman at the tour desk biting her pencil eraser and grinning every time she made eye contact with me, the three men who whispered when they sipped their coffee as I walked by the elevators. But when I saw a group of chubby-cheeked girls from another Congressional Classroom group huddled together, giggling and pointing their pale fingers at me, I was con-vinced that I had finally been caught, that soon I would be hand-cuffed and taken away. We walked down the busy hall, our group being led by a tall, thin Asian woman wearing a gray skirt, starched white blouse, and a red, white, and blue FBI badge. I held on to the pamphlet that we had been given when we came in, almost tearing it, while behind me I heard chuckles and whispers. I noticed that even the lady who was guiding our group was now tilting her head to get a look at me. In my mind I thought that the group was going through some kind of collective sadism, that upon finding out about my illegality they had been amused and now enjoyed watching me suffer. People I didn’t know were looking at me everywhere I walked, all of them with that same grin that made me curse them under my breath. Then Frank, one of my Indiana roommates, walked towards me. He was looking to the ground, as if trying to evade my stare. He walked slowly, with a half-cocked smile that symbolized the greatest kind of arrogance to me. Was it my fault that I was undocumented? I thought. My father had been trying to fix our papers for years. One lawyer had even taken hundreds of dollars from him, only to tell him that there was no chance to legalize our status. There was a woman who charged little and promised a good result; of course, father had to marry a citizen for her plan to work. The marriage would not be real, only a neces-sary ritual to satisfy the immigration authorities. Mamá, however, would not allow this alternative. The boy from Indiana faced me now. He seemed to struggle to find the right words and finally mumbled something that I could not really hear at first. I had seen a Carmen Salinas drama once where she played a woman who had found out that she was suffering from some incurable disease and that she was about to die. Right before she died, she told her lover that she finally felt free from the pain her illness had been causing her. Then she closed her eyes and the film

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“I have some bad news to tell you Luis.” He came close to me, much closer than I anticipated and told me in a clear voice that my pant’s zipper had been unzipped for most of the day. It took me a moment to register what he had said, that he had not mentioned deportation in any of the words he spoke. I looked down and sure enough the zipper of the slacks that were part of my black, polyester three-piece-suit was wide open, revealing the off-white Y-front of my Fruit-of-the-Loom’s. I reached down and, in front of all those who had been viewing, fumbled with the zipper so much that I broke it. I blushed, smiled, and took my coat off and held it across my arms in such a way that it covered the broken zipper. But, as I felt the cool oxygen of the building’s air-conditioned air fill my lungs, I really didn’t care about that. Hours later, after our picture had been taken in front of the Lincoln Memorial, we rode back to the hotel on the chartered bus. As we cruised past the entrance to Washington’s Zoo, just a few blocks before our hotel’s driveway, Brewer walked to my seat, crouched and said, “I didn’t see you at lunch. Where were you?” It seemed that not a hair on his head had moved in all the hours we had been away. Again his eyes squinted. I came back to the bus when I tore my pants; I smiled and said. “Oh,” he smirked. “I didn’t notice anything wrong when we took the picture.” The driver gave me a safety pin. “Oh, okay. I guess you can use your money to buy new pants at the hotel.” Maybe. He stood up and staggered up the isle when the bus tires turned and hit and edge of the sidewalk. He seemed puzzled when he looked back at me as he sat down. I too sat back on my seat. But I smiled and felt free, as if I had survived a kind of death that few people come back from. I still heard whispers and smirks behind me, but I closed my eyes knowing that my secret was safe. Who would look for an undocumented immigrant amid a group of elite, spoiled, rich brats? I thought. I was safe. A week passed and I went everywhere Mr. Brewer took us, met with every-one he wanted us to meet. By the end of the program he shook all of our hands and told us to go change the world. When I returned to East Oakland, I told Susana, mamá, and papá about what had happened to me and they couldn’t stop laughing. When relatives came, they would invite me to tell the story over again and I would even bring out the black pants to show them.

The end.

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