I was appalled, though I didn’t want to say so. What kind of place required a man to work all day without being allowed to eat or drink? There had to be rules, didn’t there? This was America, after all. I couldn’t help but think of how in Pátzcuaro Arturo used to come home at midday and sit at the kitchen table, eating the lunch I had spent much of the morning preparing for him. Soft tortillas that I had ground from nixtamal, wrapped in a dish towel to keep them warm, a plate of shredded chicken or pork, bowls of cubed papaya and mango topped with coconut juice or cotija cheese. On Fridays, we would eat vanilla ice cream that I spooned into dishes the size of small, cupped hands or pan dulce that I baked. The sunlight melting through the windows. The smell of wood and warm air. And now this? This was where I had brought him? To a windowless building where he stood in one place all day sifting through dirt without eating or drinking or seeing the sun? The thought of it cut through me. And guilt once again reared its head.
“I’ll make you something to eat,” I said.
At my back, while I unwrapped a hot dog from its plastic package, Arturo asked, “How was she today? Did you hear from the school?”
“They didn’t call,” I said. I didn’t need to look at him to know he was disappointed.
Both of us were waiting. We had done all the required things—submitted immunization reports, showed proof of residence, filled out forms—and now we were ready for the next step, word that Maribel had been approved to start school.
I dropped the hot dog into a pot of water. I could hear Arturo behind me, working through his thoughts, trying to box in his frustration. After all these years, I could interpret his various silences. I knew he didn’t want to say any more about it. I didn’t want him to, either.
Finally, “She’s in the bedroom?” he asked.
“She’s resting,” I said. “The hot dog will be ready soon,” I added, as if it were some sort of consolation.
But when Arturo didn’t say anything, I felt acutely the meagerness of it, the insufficiency. We wanted more. We wanted what we had come here for.
AND THEN, five days later, it seemed like we would get it.
“I’m sorry it’s taken us so long to get her enrolled,” the translator from the district said when she called. Her name was Phyllis, but when I tried to repeat it, it came out, “Felix?”
“Phyllis,” she said.
“Phyllis,” I tried again, though the coordination between my tongue and teeth and lips felt clumsy and strange.
“Do you speak English?” she asked, and when I confessed with some embarrassment that I didn’t, she went on in Spanish. “It’s okay. That’s the case with the majority of the families I work with. Which is why you get me. Think of me as your conduit to the school. Anytime you need to communicate with them, call me, and I’ll get them the message, and if they need to communicate something to you, it’s the same thing. I’ll get you the message.”
So this is the doorway, I thought, between us and the rest of this country. I was grateful to have it, but of course the limitations were clear: We couldn’t walk through the door without someone to guide us to the other side.
Phyllis went on, explaining how A. I. duPont had a terrific bilingual school psychologist, Adira Suarez, who would be calling us soon, too, but that she— “Excuse me,” I said. “What is A. I. duPont?”
“The school your daughter will be going to.”
“She’s supposed to go to the Evers School.”
“Does she have an IEP?”
“A what?”
“An Individualized Education Plan. She needs one before she can be placed in a school like Evers. So first she’ll go to A. I. duPont, where she’ll be in an ELL program—”
“A what?”
“English Language Learners. Or does she already know English?”
“No.”
“So we need to get her in that program to start. While she’s there, they’ll evaluate her to see if she’s eligible for special education services.”
“Eligible? But we have a letter from the doctor. We came all the way here so she could go to Evers.”
“If they determine that she needs to be at Evers, that’s where she’ll go. Just not right away. They have to do an evaluation first.”
Disappointment gathered around me like storm clouds. “How long will it take?” I asked.
“It usually takes one to two months.”
“Two months!” I said.
“We’ll try to get her situated as quickly as we can,” Phyllis said. “I promise.”
And what else could I do but say okay and wait, again?
ARTURO WASN’T HAPPY—neither of us was—but he was an optimist, and at least, he said, we were one step closer. At least, he said with his hands on my shoulders, the process was under way.
So on Maribel’s first day of school in the United States, Arturo and I woke up early, filled with impossible expectation, and roused Maribel, watching her push her hair off her face.
Arturo said, “Today’s the day, hija. You’re starting school.”
He had switched shifts at work to be able to stay home for the big send-off.
“What school?” she asked.
“A new school. Here in Delaware.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Where is my old school?”
“Your old school is in Pátzcuaro.”
“I want to go there.”
Arturo shot me a pained look.
“You’re going to this new school now,” I said.
“Where?”
“It’s here in Delaware.”
“What is?”
“Your new school, hija.”
She stared at us, and I waited for some sign either that she had absorbed the information or that she was still confused. It was impossible to tell. Her expression never gave anything away anymore.
“Come on,” I said, trying to mask my impatience. “The bus will be here soon. You need to get up and get dressed.”
Maribel rose to her feet, like a filly finding her legs, and stretched. She chose a sweatshirt and jeans from the piles of clothes I had folded and placed on the floor along the wall.
“I can wear this,” she said, holding up the top.
“You can wear whatever you want,” Arturo said.
She slid the jeans up her legs and, when they were over her hips, I raised the zipper and snapped the button for her. She wrestled herself into the sweatshirt after that, pulling it on backwards, and though usually neither Arturo nor I would have pointed it out—we tried to make her feel capable when we could—I wanted her to look nice on her first day, so I started pulling her arms back through the sleeves to turn it around.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m fixing your shirt.”
“I liked it how it was,” she said.
“But it was backwards.”
“I liked it how it was.”
So I left it alone. I didn’t comb her hair either, because any time I tried to, she complained that it hurt, that it pulled at the scar across her scalp. When Maribel was little, she used to get up early in the morning so I could plait her hair in two long braids down her back. She inspected them when I was finished, and if the braids weren’t tight enough, she would undo them and make me start again. So stubborn. So sure of what she wanted. One thing that hadn’t changed.
We ate eggs in the kitchen, and when it was time to go, I handed Maribel a backpack—the same one she had used in México—that I had packed with a pencil, her green notebook, a ruler that was part of a sewing kit my mother had given me for my quincea?era, a small wooden box filled with medicine tablets, a note for the nurse, and a tag with her name, address, and phone number written on it.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“For what?”
“Maribel, you’re starting school today. Remember?”
“What school?”
She stared at us with those wide, beautiful eyes. The way she used to stare at us when she was a baby. It had taken us so long to have her, so many years of trying and failing. So many doctors, so many prayers. But then I had gotten pregnant. At last. Our miracle de Dios. And after she had arrived, Our Everything.
“It’s a new school,” Arturo said. “I think you’ll like it there.”
Maribel studied his face. Arturo and I waited. So much of our life with her now was about waiting, something I wasn’t very good at.
“Okay,” she said.