She nodded once.
Ben thumbed through the box—math assignments from school, a marked-up essay on Macbeth, a swimming cap—while Esperanza talked on about the swim coach. Wakeland sometimes brought them food from the grocery. He bought Lucero his books for English class. When Esperanza was afraid to go to school conferences, Wakeland got a written report from each of Lucero’s teachers. On Christmas, he gave everyone gifts. Ben found a piece of paper with neat cursive written in the margins, notes on a rough draft of an essay that Lucero was writing for history class. Need a topic sentence here. You’re not proving your thesis. This section makes no sense. Wrong word. Great point here. Ben found another envelope with the same neat cursive on the front.
“Recognize this writing?” Ben said to Santiago pointedly, holding the envelope up to him.
Santiago looked at the ground.
Ben opened the envelope and found a birthday card. Inside, beneath the Hallmark platitudes, was written: You’re a wonderful young man, talented and thoughtful, special in every sense of the word. I’m happy to know you, coach you, guide you as you grow up. I hope our friendship will carry beyond your years here. Happy 16th!
It was nothing. Paternal, genuine, the love of a mentor. But there was that special. You’re special. You’re different from the rest. Why did that word have so much power? There were no other letters in the box, just teenage-boy detritus—Sports Illustrated, a photograph of what Ben assumed was the boy’s father, swim goggles, a few pens.
“Tell her,” Ben said, “that I know Coach Wakeland let her use his condo address so the kids could go to school. I know Lucero cleaned it, mowed the lawn.”
Esperanza listened and then she spoke for a while, gesturing with her hands, speaking rapidly and with passion. “She says that Mr. Wakeland helped them a lot, that he is a saint. Without him, Lucero wouldn’t have gone to school. Without him, Lucero wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go to college and become an American. Without Wakeland, Lucero would have been working in the fields, picking diseased fruit for gringos to eat.”
“Without him,” Ben said, “your daughters won’t be able to go to school, either.”
She flashed her eyes at him when he said it.
“Wakeland came here one day to tell you what an amazing swimmer Lucero was, sí?”
“Sí,” she said. Before they came here, she explained, when Lucero was seven, he used to go swimming in the river.
“In Chiapas?”
“Sí.”
He could dive underwater and hold his breath for a minute, maybe more. She would stand on the banks of the river and watch it swallow him up and hold her breath with him until she couldn’t hold it anymore, waiting for his head to break the surface. When they first got here, her husband took an address from a phone book at a pay phone and registered Lucero in elementary school. They were frightened every day that the false address would be found out. They did this for junior high school, too. Then one week during his first year in high school, Lucero went swimming in physical-education class. Lucero hadn’t gone swimming for four years, and he came home bragging about it. About the big pool, about the diving board. He had never been in a swimming pool. Esperanza had never seen him smile the way he did that day, and he made his parents walk to the school in the dark to look at the water, lit up with floodlights.
Esperanza smiled when she described this. Then one day, she said, Lucero showed up at the house with this man. Her husband was angry. He told Lucero to get inside, and he stayed outside and talked to the man.
“Wakeland?”
“Sí.”
When he came back inside, her husband told her that Mr. Wakeland wanted Lucero to join the swim team. He said that Lucero was very talented. Her husband told her that Wakeland had looked up their address so he could find them. He had driven to the house, and when an elderly white man opened the door, he understood their secret. He said he’d let them use the address of his condominium, which he rented out, for Lucero and the girls. It was sitting empty now and no one would check. They were frightened at first, but Mr. Wakeland did everything he said he would do, and, besides, what choice did they have? Lucero didn’t need to be bent over rows of strawberries for the rest of his life. That’s not why they came here.
“Did Lucero take any trips with Wakeland?”
“Yes,” Santiago said. “To Los Angeles, to swim for some college coaches.”
Esperanza said something to Santiago. “He was going to go to the university,” Santiago said, translating as Esperanza talked. “She was very proud. The college was going to pay for it.”
“Did he get a letter from the college?”
“Not yet,” Santiago said. “It was being sent to Mr. Wakeland’s office.”
Of course.
Did Lucero ever come home upset? No. Did he ever lose his appetite, suddenly stop eating? No, he was always hungry. Did he ever have trouble sleeping? No. Did he ever yell at you? Sí, but he was a boy and life here is difficult. Did he ever tell you he was uncomfortable around Wakeland? No, he loved Mr. Wakeland. Ben took a deep breath before this question. Did he ever come home without some of his clothes?
Esperanza hesitated. Then she shook her head no.
“Why did she hesitate?” Ben said.
Santiago asked her, and she spoke to him for a few moments.
“She says sometimes when she washed his clothes he seemed to be missing underwear. But that happened a long time ago, and he was changing his clothes in the locker room at school, and he probably left them there. Sometimes he had a sensitive stomach. It embarrassed him.”
Ben felt dizzy: the dryness of the air, the stench of the rotting oranges outside, something starchy and thick, cornmeal burning on a propane stove. He rubbed his palm across his forehead and wiped the sweat on the thigh of his pants.
“Has Wakeland visited since…” Ben hesitated. “Since it happened?”
She was quiet for a moment, then she shook her head no.
“If Wakeland loved Lucero and your family,” Ben said, “why not let you all live at his empty apartment? If the school district wanted to confirm the address, they’d find you living there and everything would be safe.”
“Because the man could go to jail for helping illegals,” Santiago said without translating for Esperanza.
Ben let that go, but a frustration was taking hold of his tongue. All things could be explained away when you were frightened of the truth.
“I think I know what happened to your son.”
Santiago narrowed his eyes at him.