“The system is making this girl crazy, so help me God,” Sophie whispers in the hall.
“The hearing has to work. That’s it. It’s just got to. We can’t let what happened to Moona happen to Gita.” I’m full of self-righteousness and false conviction. Macon will fix everything. The good side will win because we have more heart.
Precy and Esther are already on the couch when I walk into the common room. Then Rateeka and Zeena. Gita is last. I’ve brought maps for class, and I spread the one of Africa out on the floor so we can all circle around it on our knees.
Precy points to Liberia. “My brothers and sisters are going to bed there now. Look how close they are to the war. How close. I am praying they are okay.”
Esther traces the African coast with her finger. “It’s a long way from France to the Congo.” She doesn’t smile. She just stares at the
map. “One day, when the camp was flooded again, my uncle sharpened a piece of wood and took me up to a lake. We caught three fish for dinner, which was good because sometimes my mother would cry when there was no food.”
I unroll a map of Asia and put it down on the rug next to Africa. Rateeka and Zeena and Gita begin talking all at once. We don’t have Moona to translate, though. There’s such a hole where she used to be. Delhi sits close to the center of India, and Pakistan sits on India’s left shoulder. Gita says, “Where is Bombay? Where? Where is it?” I point to the city. “I wonder if Moona can hear us there now? Where is Jaipur?” I point again, and Gita gets quiet. She puts her finger on the Arabian Sea. “That is the ocean? I have always wondered where it was. Our country looks so small here. I thought it was a bigger place than this.”
“Everything is smaller on the map. Here.” I point. “This is Jaipur.”
“Where is the national palace where my baap was working?”
“The map is too big to include the palace.”
“Where is Swam Singa Road, where my house is standing?”
“I will look for it when I’m there.” I stand up. “I’m going to India this summer. I have a book to research there in July.”
“India,” Gita says like she can’t believe it. “You are going to India?”
“I’m going. I’m so lucky to get to see your country.”
“It will be hot in the summer months. Very hot. Watch out for the rickshaw drivers because they will want to take your money. Remember, many of the people do not speak English like you.” She smiles. “You are going to India. I will write you a letter for Moona and a letter for my grandmother. I don’t know if she’s still alive. The last time I saw her she was very sick and sleeping.”
The girls each stand and find seats. “Can you try to tell me one thing you’re afraid of about living in France?” I ask. “Just one sentence. I’ll go first.” I pause for a second. I’m trying to get them used to talking about the stories they carry in their heads. I say, “I am afraid that my brother will not get better.” I wish I could take my words back the minute I say them. The girls have enough fears without adding my brother to their list.
“Brahma has made the universe as it is for a reason,” Gita says slowly. “I know you are sad, Willow, but you should not have fear. Brahma is wishing it to be, and your brother will find peace.”
I’ve bungled class for the night. There’s another awkward silence. Then Precy says, “You have told us something that matters to you. We each need to go now. I will start. I am afraid of men. All men. Beginning with the men that were in the van that took me away from my family. And the man in the kitchen who cooks for us and the man who is the guard here.” She finishes and looks down at the rug.
“Thank you, Precy,” I say.
Gita says, “I am afraid that my family will find me here and take me back with them and I will have to live with Manju again. I must write the letters for Moona and my grandmother.” She pulls a piece of paper from her notebook. “You must go to India and give them my letters.”
Esther says, “I am afraid there is no one to marry me in my lifetime.”
“The army,” Zeena says. She understands more English than she can speak. Rateeka just smiles and moves her hand back and forth in front of her face to signal no. The sky darkens outside on the street.
“Speaking to the judge in the courtroom will be much less scary than the things that happened to you before you got here. But you have to be willing to tell your whole story.” I’ve become fixated on the court testimonials. I want to cram them with as much detail as possible.
When the girls stand to leave, Gita hands me the letters she’s been furiously writing. “Sometimes,” Gita says, “if I closed my eyes in Brady Passage and listened to the Hindi and smelled the chapatis, I was back in Jaipur.”
The lights are on in my apartment when I get home. I’m so grateful for that and for the man sautéing a steak at the stove. I kiss him on his face and make a salad with arugula. “Moona’s gone.”
“Moona who?”
“Moona on Rue de Metz. My student. Gita’s friend. They came and deported her yesterday with no warning.”
“Oh, God.”
“How can they do that? How can they just take her? I can’t believe the system works like this.”
“Did she miss her hearing?”
“Apparently.”
“They do that. They change the dates and catch you on the mistake.”
“God, it’s a cruel system.” Then I tell him about the letters Gita wrote in class today.
“Well, now we know that the grandmother is alive. We know that Gita’s got family in Jaipur.”
“We’re not sure she’s really alive, are we? She was an old woman. Gita thinks she’s probably dead. So the fact that I just told you Gita wrote a letter to her grandmother will hurt her case?”
“The court always wants reunification with family, Willie. The girl is only fifteen.”
“But you said you’d make me her guardian.”
“For the courts. You guide her through the preparation for the hearing, along with me. But the only way she gets to stay here alone is in foster care, and it’s very unlikely. Here.” He passes me a plate. “The steak is done.”
“I don’t want to lose this appeal.” I stand in the kitchen holding the plate and stare at him.
He considers me for a moment. Then he takes the plate back and puts it on the counter and pulls me toward him. “I’m on your side. I’m her lawyer, remember? I’m the one working for her. Me.”
“You?”
“Yes. Me.” He kisses me on the forehead and on each cheek. “Do you understand now?”
“I’m too wrapped up in it.”
“Yeah, you’re wrapped up.” We sit side by side at the table, and I pour red wine. The candles burn down while we eat.
I call Sara after we’re finished. “What is the news on Luke’s lab report?”
“It’s Thursday,” she says. “We took the blood Monday. We won’t
hear anything until tomorrow at the earliest. But plan on next Monday. Things work even more slowly in the lab on the weekends.”
“This is cruel.”
“This isn’t cruel. It’s science.”
“It’s France is what it is. Painfully slow. What are we looking for? Are we looking for mono? Hepatitis?”
“You can’t think about these things now. It’s late. Go to bed.”
“Sara, you’re the one who must be exhausted. How do you feel?”
“Bigger than a truck and lobotomized. I can’t remember anything and I weep constantly. Yesterday I forgot where I parked the car. Today I forgot where I put my keys. Rajiv found me tonight crying in the kitchen, but I’d forgotten who he was. The love of my life—can you imagine? But other than that, I’m doing well.”
“You’re going to be the most incredible mother ever. I love you. Go to sleep.”
“To sleep.”
“Right to sleep.” Then I hang up.
On Friday Delphine gives in and allows Pablo to sleep at my apartment. It’s taken her most of the spring to agree. June and the horse chestnuts on my street are in their glory, with shiny leaves and white flowers that have begun to drop on the streets and turn yellow. There’s a boy I know walking toward me hand in hand with his father. I run and pick Pablo up. “I’ve missed this boy!” I give him a kiss on the face and he laughs.
We head to the market on Rue Gracieuse to buy things Pablo will eat for dinner—potatoes that I’m going to mash with butter, carrots, white onions, beef in wax paper, and peaches and ice cream. We appear to be a small family. A simple construct. But no family is simple. Not mine. Not Macon’s. We’re always more complicated than we look. Our history complicates us. Our longing. Macon holds on to Pablo’s hand, and every few minutes Pablo reaches for me and asks us both in French to lift him off the ground.
When we get back to my apartment, he circles the living room twice and stares at the furniture. Then he looks over at his father, who stands in the kitchen doorway watching. I’ve made the couch up with blue sheets and bought two Matchbox cars and a plastic bag of Legos and left it all on the trunk by the couch. Pablo picks up the cars first and drives them over the trunk and drops them off the edge. “There
is a roof,” Macon says and sits on the floor with him and puts the cars through a series of races. “There is a roof and a ladder that we can climb up to see the city.”
“Where will I sleep?” Pablo’s mind must be working hard to fit these new pieces together.
I stand next to the couch. “Here is your bed, Pablo. Your very own bed.”
I can’t tell if he approves. He says, “Where is the roof, Daddy? Let’s go up there now.”
Macon puts him on the third rung of the ladder and climbs behind him, lifting him in his right arm rung by rung. I stay in the kitchen and finish the pot roast my father used to make, with the white pearl onions and potatoes and little slices of carrots in a brown sauce with the meat. During dinner we run out of milk. Macon says, “Pablo is a muesli man in the morning. Muesli and bananas. I should go to the store.” He runs down to the street.
“You are doing such a good job of eating, Pablo,” I say in French. I hope he won’t cry while his father’s gone. But it’s entirely possible that he will, and I’m ready for it.
“Thank you, Willie,” he says in English and smiles. Has Delphine coached him to speak only English with me? Does she know I can speak French? “I am eating to get strong.”
“What is your favorite food, Pablo?” I say in English. “I want to cook that for you tomorrow night. What do you like the very best?”
“Jell-O. Orange Jell-O is best.”
I’ve been expecting a child—someone to tend to—but he’s a sweet little person. Macon walks in and does a small kick in the air with the milk jug in his hand. Then he goes to the kitchen to pour Pablo a glass. Pablo eats everything and starts to rub his eyes at the table. I get the dishes in the sink while Macon carries Pablo to the couch and pulls the blankets up under his chin.
Then I kneel next to them on the floor. “Good night, Pablo,” I say. I imagine Macon and Delphine tucking him into his bed in Chantilly all those other nights, and another wave of jealousy comes over me. Macon kisses his son ten times on the cheek.
“What should I dream about?”
“Flying horses.” Macon smiles. “And red kites.”
“Where will you be, Daddy, if I need you? Where will you sleep?”
Macon rises and stands in the door of our bedroom, just behind the couch. Pablo can see him without turning his head. And he can see our bed inside the doorway. “Right here,” Macon says. “I will be sleeping so close to you. I can hear anything you say.”
“Leave the door open,” Pablo says. “And my covers on. Half of my body always has to be covered up. Then the bad guys can’t see me.”
“I won’t ever shut the door. But there are no bad guys here. Only Willie and me. Sweet dreams, Pablo. See you in the morning.”
I follow Macon into the bedroom. “I hope I can learn to speak the language of four-year-olds,” I whisper, taking off my shirt and jeans. “It’s so good to have him here.”
“He is away from Delphine for the first overnight. You have to understand how close he and his mother are.”
“Tell me what you mean.”
“She’s getting better. It helped when I told her that if she didn’t let him come, I’d go back to the judge and bring Pablo here on weekends without asking. I didn’t want to have to do that. She’s been good about this trip. There has been very little yelling.”
“She used to yell?”
“I would like us to not ever yell. Do you think that’s possible?”
“I think anything is possible. You are here in my bed, and Pablo is sleeping out there on the couch. I didn’t even know you four months ago.” We lie in bed holding hands and I try to listen for the sound of Pablo sleeping, but it melds with the sound of his father sleeping next to me.
I
N THE MORNING
Pablo crawls into bed with us, and it’s so surprising—so thrilling—that I lie very still under the sheets while he climbs up on my back. “I’m hungry, guys.” Then he crawls over to Macon’s back. “When are we having breakfast? When are we eating?”
“There’s only one rule in Willie’s house,” Macon says. “It’s serious.
It’s called the Don’t Laugh Rule. I’ll explain it to you, and it’s important you follow along. Do you understand?”
“Do it! Do it!” Pablo yells.
“But do you understand? The rule is, you must not laugh.”
“I’m ready. I won’t laugh!”
Macon tickles Pablo under his chin and down the sides of his stomach until he screams and laughs and can’t stop.
The two of them go out for croissants once the sun is up. I sit at the kitchen counter with my coffee and call Sara. “It’s been more than three days. Where’s the lab report?”
“It’s Saturday at nine o’clock in the morning, and I told you to plan on Monday.”
“Monday is a horrible idea. Pablo’s here, and he’s terrific. Macon’s taken him out to get chocolate croissants. What if Luke is really sick?” The idea of waiting until Monday exhausts me.
“You’ve got to stop thinking like that. We’re going to make this okay. We don’t know anything yet. It’s fantastic that Pablo’s actually getting to stay with you.”
“Pablo is sweet. Very sweet.”
“He’ll love you. Just make sure you’re fun, Will.”
“When am I not fun?” I yell into the phone.