The doors open and the cool air washes over my skin again. I’m hot and cold at the same time. I open my arms for a hug at the same moment he does. We try to hug each other from the same side and end up bumping chests instead. We laugh awkwardly and stop moving.
“I’m going to go right,” he says. “You go left.”
“Okay,” I say, and go left. He holds me, and since we’re both about the same height my face brushes against his cheek, which is soft and smooth and warm. I let my head drop onto his shoulder and my body relaxes in his arms. For a minute, I let myself feel how tired I am. It’s hard trying to hold on to a place that doesn’t want you. But Daniel does want me. I feel it in the way he holds me tight.
I pull out of his arms and don’t meet his eyes.
He decides not to say whatever he was going to say.
I get out my phone and check the time.
“Time to go,” he says, before I can say it first.
I turn and walk into the cold building.
I think about him as I sign in with security. I think about him as I cross the lobby floor. I think about him in the elevator and down the long hallway and every moment until the moment that I have to stop thinking about him, when I enter the office.
The construction noises I heard over the phone earlier were actually due to construction, because the office is only halfway built. The walls are partly painted, and bare bulbs hang from the ceiling. Sawdust and paint splotches cover the tarped floor. Behind the desk, a woman sits with both hands resting on her office phone, as if she’s willing it to ring. Despite her bright red lipstick and rose-rouged cheeks, she’s very pale. Her hair is deep black and perfectly styled. Something about her doesn’t seem quite real. She seems like she’s playing a part—an extra from an old-school Disney cartoon or from a period movie set in the 1950s that called for secretaries. Her desk is neat, with color-coded stacks of files. There’s a mug that says PARALEGALS DO IT CHEAPER.
She smiles a sad, trembling smile as I approach.
“Do I have the right place?” I ask out loud.
She stares at me mutely.
“Is this Attorney Fitzgerald’s office?” I prompt.
“You’re Natasha,” she says.
She must be the person I spoke with earlier. I approach the desk.
“I have some bad news,” she says. My stomach clenches. I’m not ready for what she’s going to say. Is it over before it’s even begun? Has my fate already been decided? Am I really being deported tonight?
A man in paint-splattered overalls walks in and starts drilling. Someone else I can’t see begins hammering. She doesn’t change her volume to adjust for the noise. I move even closer to the desk.
“Jeremy—Attorney Fitzgerald—was in a car accident an hour ago. He’s still in the hospital. His wife says he’s fine, just a few bruises. But he won’t be back until late this afternoon.”
Her voice sounds normal, but her eyes are anything but. She pulls the phone a little closer and looks at it instead of me.
“But we have an appointment now.” My whine is uncharitable, but I can’t help it. “I really need him to help me.”
Now she does look at me, eyes wide and incredulous. “Didn’t you hear what I said? He was hit by a car. He can’t be here right now.” She pushes a sheaf of forms at me and doesn’t look at me again.
It takes me at least fifteen minutes to fill out the paperwork. On the first form, I answer several variations on the questions of whether I’m a communist, a criminal, or a terrorist and whether I would take up arms to defend the United States. I would not, but still I check the box that says yes.
Another form asks for details about what’s happened in the deportation process so far.
The final form is a client questionnaire that asks me to give a full accounting of my time in the United States. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what Attorney Fitzgerald is looking for. Does he want to know how we entered the country? How we hid? How it feels every time I write down my fake social security number on a school form? How every time I do, I picture my mom getting on that bus to Florida?
Does he want to know how it feels to be undocumented? Or how I keep waiting for someone to find out I don’t belong here at all?
Probably not. He’s looking for facts, not philosophy, so I write them down. We traveled to America on a tourist visa. When it came time for us to leave, we stayed. We have not left the country since. We have committed no crimes, except for my dad’s DUI.
I hand her back the forms and she flips immediately to the client questionnaire. “You need more here,” she says.
“Like what?”
“What does America mean to you? Why do you want to stay? How will you contribute to making America greater?”
“Is that really—”
“Anything Jeremy can use to humanize you will help,” she says.
If people who were actually born here had to prove they were worthy enough to live in America, this would be a much less populated country.
She flips through my other forms as I write about what a hardworking, optimistic, patriotic citizen I would be. I write that America is my home in my heart, and how citizenship will legalize what I already feel. I belong here. In short, I am more sincere than I’m ever comfortable being. Daniel would be proud of me.
Daniel.
He’s probably on a train on his way to his appointment. Will he do the proper thing and become a doctor after all? Will he think of me in the future and remember the girl he spent two hours with one day in New York? Will he wonder whatever happened to me? Maybe he’ll do a Google search using only my first name and not get very far. More likely, though, he’ll forget about me by this evening, as I will certainly forget about him.
The phone rings as I write, and she grabs it before it has a chance to ring twice.
“Oh my God, Jeremy. Are you all right?” She closes her eyes, cradles the phone with both hands, and presses it close to her face. “I wanted to come, but your wife said I should hold down the fort.” Her eyes flick open when she says the word wife.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” The more she listens, the brighter she becomes. Her face flushes and her eyes shine with happy tears.
She’s so obviously in love with him I expect to see heart bubbles floating around the room. Are they having an affair?
“I wanted to come,” she whispers again. After a series of murmured okays, she hangs up the phone. “He’s all right.” She beams. Her whole body is aglow with relief.
“That’s great,” I say.
She takes the forms from my hands. I wait as she reads through them.
“Would you like to hear some good news?” she asks.
Of course I would. I nod slowly.
“I’ve seen lots of cases like this, and I think you’ll be okay.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say, but certainly not this.
“You really think he’ll be able to help?” I can hear the hope and skepticism in my own voice.
“Jeremy never loses,” she says, so proudly that she could be talking about herself.
But of course, that can’t be true. Everyone loses something sometime. I should ask her to be more precise, to give me an exact win/loss ratio so I can decide how to feel.
“There’s hope,” she says simply.
Even though I hate poetry, a poem I read for English class pops into my head. “Hope” is the thing with feathers. I understand concretely what that means now. Something inside my chest wants to fly out, wants to sing and laugh and dance with relief.
I thank her and leave the office quickly, before I can ask her something that takes away this feeling. Usually I fall on the side of knowing the truth, even if the truth is bad. It’s not the easiest way of being. Sometimes the truth can hurt more than you expect.
A few weeks ago my parents were arguing in their bedroom with the door closed. It was one of those rare occasions when my mom actually got angry with my dad to his face. Peter found me eavesdropping outside their door. After they were done arguing, I asked him if he wanted to know what I’d heard, but he didn’t. He said he could tell that whatever I learned was bad, and he didn’t really want any badness in his life just then. At the time I was annoyed with him. But later I thought maybe he’d been right. I wished I could unhear what I’d overheard.