In the Midst of Winter

  The recent economic crisis had stirred up old resentments against Latinos in the United States. Thousands of Americans, swindled by finance companies and banks, lost their houses or jobs and made immigrants their scapegoats. “I’d like to see an American of whatever color work for the little they pay us,” Miriam used to say. She earned less than the legal minimum wage and had increased her hours to cover her household expenses, because prices always rose while wages stayed the same. At night, Evelyn went with her and two other women to clean offices. A formidable team, they would arrive in a Honda Accord with their cleaning equipment and a transistor radio to listen to evangelical preachers and Mexican songs. They made a point of working together to protect themselves from any nocturnal danger: attacks in the street or sexual harassment in the locked buildings. They earned themselves a reputation as Amazons one night when they used their brooms and buckets to give a hiding to an office worker who had stayed on late and tried to take advantage of Evelyn in a restroom. The security guard, another Latino, turned a deaf ear to the noises for a while, and by the time he eventually intervened, the Don Juan looked as if he had been hit by a truck. Even so, he did not report his assailants to the police, preferring to accept his humiliation in silence.

  Miriam and Evelyn worked side by side. They shared the domestic chores, the rearing of the smaller children, looking after the parrot and the dog, doing the shopping and the rest of the daily tasks, and yet they lacked the easy intimacy of mother and daughter; they seemed always to be on a visit with each other. Miriam did not know how to treat her silent daughter oscillating between ignoring her and showing her affection through gifts. Evelyn was a lonely soul and had made no friends either at school or in church. Miriam thought no boy would be interested in her, because she still looked like an underfed urchin. Many immigrants arrived with their bones poking out but within a few months that changed due to a diet of mainly fast food. Evelyn though was uninterested in food by nature. She detested fat and sugar, and missed her grandmother’s beans. Miriam was unaware that Evelyn froze whenever anyone came within a yard of her; the trauma of her rape was seared in her memory and body. She associated physical contact with violence, blood, and above all with her brother Andres and his slit throat. Her mother knew what had happened, but no one had told her the full details and Evelyn could never bring herself to talk about it. She was content to be left alone, because it saved her the effort of speaking.

  Miriam had no complaints: her daughter fulfilled her duties on time and never stood around idle. In this she was following the example of her grandmother, for whom laziness was the mother of all vices. Evelyn only relaxed when she was with her two siblings and the children at the church, who did not judge her. While her parents attended the service, she minded a group of twenty children in an adjoining room. This saved her from having to listen to the lengthy sermons given by the pastor, a fervent Mexican who succeeded in whipping up the congregation to the point of hysteria. Evelyn invented games to keep the children amused. She sang to them, got them to dance with the aid of a tambourine, and was able to tell them stories without too much of a stutter, provided no adults were around. The pastor suggested she should study to become an elementary school teacher; it was obvious the Lord had given her that talent, and to waste it would be spitting in the face of heaven. He promised to help her get residence papers, but although he had such a powerful influence in celestial affairs, these counted for nothing in the arid offices of the immigration service.

  Evelyn’s court hearing would have been postponed indefinitely had it not been for Doreen. For the past few years, Galileo Leon’s daughter had been going downhill until little was left of her former arrogance, and yet her rage was undiminished. She usually turned up covered in bruises that bore witness to her ferocious character: the slightest provocation was an excuse to start a fight. She had a pirate’s scar on her back that was the result of a knife attack. She showed it to the children as a badge of honor, boasting that she had been left for dead, bleeding on the ground among garbage cans in an alleyway. Evelyn only seldom had to face her, because her strategy of flight normally succeeded. If she was on her own with the younger children she would rush them away with her as soon as the dog began to howl. On this particular day however her plan failed, because the two children had scarlet fever. Their illness had begun three days earlier with sore throats, and now they were covered in a rash. It was impossible to force them out of bed on a cold day in early October. Doreen entered kicking the door and threatening to poison the goddamned dog. Evelyn prepared herself for the string of insults that would rain down on her as soon as Doreen found out her father was not in and there was no money in the house.

  From the small children’s bedroom Evelyn could not make out what Doreen was up to but could hear her rummaging and cursing impatiently. Fearing her reaction if she did not find what she was looking for, Evelyn plucked up courage and went into the kitchen to intercept her before she burst in on the children. To disguise her intention, she started making a sandwich, but Doreen did not give her time. She charged like a fighting bull and, before Evelyn could even see what was going on, grabbed her by the throat, shaking her with all the strength of an addict. “Where’s the money? Tell me, you retard, or I’ll kill you!” Evelyn struggled helplessly to free herself from her fierce claws. When they heard Doreen shouting, the terrified little ones came running. They burst into tears at the very moment that the dog, who rarely came into the trailer, seized the attacker by the jacket and began to growl and tug at it. Doreen pushed Evelyn away and turned to kick the animal. Evelyn slipped and fell backward, hitting her head on the corner of the kitchen table. Doreen kicked out at her and the dog, but in the midst of her fury she had a flash of lucidity and, realizing what she had done, ran out of the house, still cursing. Drawn by the commotion, a woman neighbor came in to find Evelyn on the floor and the two children weeping inconsolably. She called Miriam, Galileo, and the police, in that order.

  Galileo Leon arrived minutes after the police and found ­Evelyn trying to stand, helped by a woman in uniform. The world was whirling round. She could hardly see because of black streaks clouding her eyes, and her skull was throbbing so much she found it hard to explain what had happened. However, as they sniveled and sobbed, the younger children kept repeating the name Doreen. Galileo could not prevent them from taking Evelyn to the hospital in an ambulance and the police from writing a report.

  In the emergency room they put several stitches in Evelyn’s scalp, kept her in for observation for a few hours, then sent her home with a bottle of analgesics and the recommendation to rest. Unfortunately, because of the police report, that was not the end of the matter. The following day, the police came looking for her, and questioned Evelyn for two hours about her relationship with Doreen. They returned a couple of days later and took her away again, but this time the questions were about her entry into the United States and her reasons for leaving her own country. Terrified and hesitant, Evelyn tried to explain what had happened to her family but made little sense, and so the police officers began to lose patience. In a corner of the room was a man in civilian clothes who took notes but did not open his mouth even to say his name.

  Because Doreen had a police record for drugs and other offenses, three policemen came to the trailer with a sniffer dog and searched every corner without finding anything of interest. Since Galileo Leon managed to make himself scarce, Miriam was left to endure the shame of watching the police tear up the linoleum from the floor and rip open her mattresses in search of drugs. Several neighbors gathered to get a good look, and after the police left they stayed around waiting for the second act in the drama. As expected, when Galileo reappeared, his wife launched into a furious tirade. It was all his fault and his whore daughter’s. How many times had she told him she didn’t want to see her in her house? He was a poor good-for-nothing with no backbone and of course no one had the slightest respect for him. On and on she went with her epic litany
, which began in the house, continued in the yard and then the street, and ended up in the church, where the couple was escorted by a crowd of witnesses to ask the pastor’s advice. Within a few hours Miriam had run out of steam. Her anger subsided once Galileo timidly promised he would keep his daughter well away from the house.

  THAT SAME DAY, at about eight o’clock in the evening, when Miriam was still red in the face from her outburst, there was a knock on the trailer door. It was the man who had been taking notes at the police station. He presented himself as coming from the immigration service. The atmosphere froze, but they could not prevent him from entering. Accustomed to the effect he caused, the official tried to lessen the tension by speaking in Spanish. He said he had been brought up by Mexican grandparents, that he was proud of his origins and navigated easily between the two cultures. They listened to him stupefied, because he was whiter than white, had blue fish eyes, and mercilessly mangled the Spanish language. When he saw that none of them appreciated his attempt to win them over, he came to the real point of his visit. He knew that Miriam and Galileo had residency in the United States, but Evelyn Ortega’s situation was not so clear. He had the detention center file with the date of her arrest at the border, and since she had no birth certificate he concluded she was eighteen and therefore eligible for deportation.

  There was a deathly silence while Miriam tried to calculate whether the man had come simply to uphold the law or was fishing for a bribe. All of a sudden the normally reticent Galileo spoke out in a firm voice none of them had heard from him before.

  “This girl is a refugee. No one is illegal in this life, we all have the right to live in this world. Money and crime do not respect borders. I ask you, sir, why we human beings should do so?”

  “I don’t make the laws. My job is to see that they are followed,” replied the other man, taken aback.

  “Take a good look at her. How old do you think she is?” said Galileo, pointing to Evelyn.

  “She looks very young, but I need the birth certificate to prove it. In her file it says the water swept away all her documents when she was crossing the river. That was three years ago: you could have obtained a copy by now.”

  “Who was going to do that? My mother is an illiterate old woman, and in Guatemala that kind of thing takes a long time and costs money,” said Miriam, once she had recovered from her shock at her husband arguing like a legal expert.

  “What the girl says about gangs and her murdered brothers is common, I’ve heard it many times. There are lots of similar stories from immigrants. The judges have heard them as well. Some of them believe them, others don’t. Asylum or deportation will depend on which judge you get,” was the man’s parting shot.

  Reverting to his usual docile attitude, Galileo Leon favored waiting for the law to run its course: it may be slow, but it gets there, he said. Miriam, however, was of the opinion that if the law does get there, it never favors the weakest, and so immediately launched a campaign to have her daughter disappear. She did not ask Evelyn’s opinion when she contacted her acquaintances in the subterranean network of undocumented immigrants or when she agreed to send her to work in the house of some people in Brooklyn. She had been tipped off by another woman member of the church, whose sister knew someone who had been a maid with that family and said they did not care about papers or any other details of that kind. As long as the girl performed her duties, no one was going to inquire about her legal status. When Evelyn wanted to know what those duties would be, she was told she would have to look after a sick child, nothing more.

  Miriam showed her daughter New York on a map, helped her pack her belongings in a small suitcase, gave her an address in Manhattan, and put her on a Greyhound bus. Nineteen hours later, Evelyn presented herself at the Latin American Pentecostal Church, a two-story building that from outside had little of the dignity of a temple. She was received by a volunteer from the congregation, who read the letter of introduction from the Chicago pastor, offered to put her up for a night in her own apartment, and the next day explained how she could travel by subway to the Church of the Tabernacle of the New Life in Brooklyn. There another woman almost identical to the first gave her a soft drink and a leaflet outlining the church’s religious services and social activities, as well as instructions on how to reach her new employers’ address.

  At three in the afternoon on an autumn day in 2011, when the trees were starting to grow bare and the street was strewn with a rustling, short-lived covering of fallen leaves, Evelyn Ortega rang the bell of a three-story corner house with a garden full of broken statues of Greek heroes. And that was where she ended up working peacefully for the following years with her fake documents.

  Lucia, Richard, Evelyn

  Upstate New York

  Lucia

  Chile, 2007–2008

  Richard’s guts felt better, but he fell asleep immediately, overcome by fatigue after this long, drawn-out day, and perturbed by the combination of uncertainty and newly discovered love gnawing away at him. Meanwhile, Lucia and Evelyn cut a towel into strips and went outside to get the fingerprints off the Lexus. According to the Internet instructions Lucia had obtained earlier on her cell phone, it was enough to wipe them with a cloth, but she had insisted on using alcohol just to be on the safe side, as they could still be identified even if the vehicle was at the bottom of a lake. “How do you know?” Richard had asked her before he fell asleep. As usual she replied, “Don’t ask.” In the blue-tinged light of the snow they systematically rubbed the visible parts of the car inside and out, except for the trunk’s interior. Then they went back inside the cabin to warm up with a cup of tea and to chat, while Richard rested. They had three hours before it grew dark.

  Evelyn had been silent since the previous night, doing whatever she was asked to do as distantly as if she were sleepwalking. Lucia guessed she was immersed in her past, reliving the tragedy of her short life. Understanding that the situation was much more nerve-racking for Evelyn than for her or Richard, she had given up any attempt to distract or console her. Evelyn was paralyzed with terror. The threat from Frank Leroy hung over her, and that was even worse than being arrested or deported. And yet there was another reason, which Lucia had sensed since they had left Brooklyn.

  “You told us how your brothers died in Guatemala, Evelyn. Kathryn died a violent death as well. I imagine that must bring back dreadful memories.”

  Without raising her eyes from the steaming cup, the young girl nodded.

  “My brother was killed too,” said Lucia. “I loved him a great deal. We think he was arrested, but we heard nothing more about him. We weren’t able to bury him, because they did not hand over his remains.”

  “Is . . . is . . . is it certain he died?” asked Evelyn.

  “Yes, Evelyn. I spent years investigating the fate of those who were arrested and never appeared again, like Enrique. I wrote two books about it. They died from torture or were executed. Their bodies were blown up or thrown into the sea. A few mass graves have been found, though not many.”

  With great difficulty, stumbling over the words, Evelyn managed to say that at least they had buried her brothers, Gregorio and Andres, with proper respect, even though few of their neighbors had attended the funeral due to fear of the gangs. They had lit candles and burned aromatic herbs in her grandmother’s house. They sang and wept for the boys, drank to them with rum, and buried them with some of their possessions so they would not miss them in their other life. As was the custom, they prayed a novena for them, since children spend nine months in their mother’s womb before they are born, and because the deceased take nine days to be reborn in heaven. Her brothers had graves in consecrated ground, where her grandmother went to lay flowers on Sundays and take them food on the Day of the Dead.

  “Like my brother Enrique, Kathryn will have none of that . . . ,” murmured Lucia, moved by the thought.

  “Souls who have not found rest come b
ack to frighten the living,” said Evelyn in one long rush.

  “I know. They come to visit us in our dreams. Kathryn has already appeared to you, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes, last night.”

  “I’m truly sorry we can’t say farewell to Kathryn with the rites of your people, Evelyn. But I’m going to have masses said for her for nine days. I promise.”

  “Did . . . your mo . . . mother p-p-pray for you . . . your brother?”

  “She prayed for him up to the last day of her life, Evelyn.”

  LENA MARAZ BEGAN TO SAY GOODBYE to the world in 2007, more out of weariness than any illness or due to old age. She had been searching for her son, Enrique, for almost thirty-five years. Lucia would never forgive herself for not realizing how depressed her mother was. She thought that if she had stepped in much sooner, she might have been able to help her. She only became aware of this toward the end, because Lena did her best to hide the fact and Lucia, caught up in her own affairs, did not spot the symptoms. In the final months, when Lena could no longer pretend that life interested her, she consumed only a little clear soup and mashed vegetables. Reduced to mere skin and bone, she lay in bed utterly worn out, indifferent to everything apart from Lucia and her granddaughter, Daniela. She was preparing to starve to death, to depart in the most natural way, according to her faith and beliefs. She asked God not to be long in taking her, and to please allow her to preserve her dignity to the end. While her vital organs began slowly to shut down, her mind had never been so clear or more open, sensitive, and alert. She accepted the progressive weakening of her body with grace and good humor until there came a point when she lost control of some of the functions that to her were absolutely private. It was then that she wept for the first time. Daniela was the one who succeeded in convincing her that the diapers and more intimate care she received from Lucia, herself, and a male nurse who came once a week were not a punishment for sins of the past but an opportunity to reach heaven. “You can’t go to heaven with that arrogance of yours still intact, Grandma. You have to practice a little humility,” she would say in a tone of friendly reproach. This seemed reasonable to Lena, who resigned herself to not trying to fight her condition. However, soon there was no way to get her to swallow more than a few spoonfuls of yogurt and some sips of chamomile tea. When the nurse mentioned the possibility of feeding her through a tube, both daughter and granddaughter refused to submit her to such an outrage. They had to respect Lena’s irrevocable decision.