Now that Sherree was in third grade she wrote English—very good in English—but Nicola hadn’t written English well enough to send out detailed news.
When the baby died, oh, that was terrible. Se?ora Mercedes couldn’t go to Coolis: she didn’t have a green card, she didn’t know what papers you had to show, and what if they arrested her when she was visiting her daughter? Then, too, everything cost money, the bus fare to Coolis, it was all too much. So she sent a letter in Spanish, Sherree sent a letter—the priest helped her write it in English, this was before Se?or Morrell became a friend or he would surely have helped—but she never heard from her daughter again, she didn’t even know if Nicola learned the news about the baby’s death before she died herself, and now here was poor Sherree, no mother, no sister, father dead in the Philippines.
Sherree seemed to have heard this lament before. She frowned over the dolls she was playing with and turned her back on her grandmother as Se?ora Mercedes went into detail about the baby’s death. The poor baby, the cause of so much misery, needing money for the hospital, causing Nicola to steal, but then, those employers, so mean, not letting her get away to be with her own baby in the hospital, not lending her money, it was wrong of Nicola to steal, but Se?ora Mercedes could understand why she did it. And then, five years in prison? When men who did far worse crimes were there for much less time? Here in America it was all terrible. If not for the money, for the chance to have Sherree get a good education, they would never stay.
We took a break to let Se?ora Mercedes recover her poise before I asked what I most wanted to know: about Nicola’s work in the prison shop. That was good, her mother said, because she got paid two dollars and fifty cents an hour. It was for sewing, sewing shirts, and Nicola was very fast, her little fingers so—so nimble, yes, that was the word, the best on the floor, the bosses at the prison said. It was piecework, but Nicola was so fast she made the top rate.
What kind of shirts? I asked, but Se?ora Mercedes had no idea. Of course she’d never seen her daughter’s work. Even if she had visited her daughter, she would not have seen her work. Shirts, that was all she knew. She pulled out a letter from Nicola to show me.
With Morrell leaning over my shoulder to help translate, I stumbled my way through the text, which had been heavily censored:
My dear Mama,
I am well, I hope you and Sherree and Anna are well and happy. I am working now in the sewing shop, where I can make very good money. We sew (crossed out), I make more than anyone else in an hour, the other girls are jealous. For a higher rate you can work the (crossed out), but it is too heavy for me.
You must not worry about me, even though I am small (two lines heavily crossed out). Se?ora Ruby is a sweet old lady who takes care of me, and now that people see she looks after me the big women (crossed out). The food is good, I eat well, I say my prayers every day. Please give many many kisses to Sherree and to Anna.
Nicola
Anna had been the baby’s name. There were six letters in all, all Nicola had been able to send in fifteen months, and most of them with large sections excised.
When we moved onto more delicate ground—namely, Nicola’s love life—Se?ora Mercedes either knew nothing, or there was nothing to know. When did Nicola have time to meet a man? her mother demanded. She worked six days a week for those cruel people. She came home on Sundays and spent the day with her own children. Nicola worked, Se?ora Mercedes worked on the night shift at a box factory, all so that Sherree and Anna could have a good life. A man named Lemour? No, Se?ora Mercedes never heard Nicola mention him. And Mr. Baladine, Nicola’s employer? Nicola didn’t like him but the money was good and she tried not to complain. Sherree, busy on the floor with her dolls, didn’t seem to have anything to add to the story.
We had been talking for two hours. Morrell took us down the street to a tacqueria for lunch. Over burritos and fried plantain Se?ora Mercedes told me about the day that Nicola died.
“I didn’t know she was dead until the next day. My own daughter. Because on Monday the marshals came and Se?ora Attar, a good woman even if a different religion and a different language, woke up and saw them before they could arrest me and Sherree. She told these officers I was her own mother. What a good woman! But of course I had to move away at once.”
I interrupted Morrell’s translation to ask for a detailed description of the men. There were two. And how were they dressed? In suits. Not in uniforms?
“What’s the point?” Morrell asked, when I pushed for as accurate a description as possible.
“If they were state marshals, they would have been in uniform. INS, who knows, but these men sound expensively dressed. I don’t think they were with the law, except the one unto themselves.”