Return to Sender (11 page)

Today, your feast day, I write you with an urgent petition.

Please help Tío Felipe! He was picked up by
la migra
over a week ago, but there is still no word about where he may be and whether he will be released or sent back home to México.

Mr. and Mrs. Paquette have been calling the sheriff's office, where a friend of Mr. Paquette's brother works. But once Homeland Security is involved, the matter is out of the sheriff's hands, and so neither the sheriff nor anyone at his office has further information about my uncle.

“But people can't just disappear!” Mrs. Paquette says with temper into the phone. She is very upset with her son Ben for being so careless. “You get sent home with a warning. This young man is in prison and his life is ruined!”

Ben just bows his head. “I feel bad enough as it is, Mom.”

“He is not culpable,” my father tells Mrs. Paquette. Who can blame a young man for wanting a little fun? Sure, Tío Felipe should not have accepted the invitation of the farmer's older son, but what kind of life does he have, never going out, working almost every day? For what?

Unlike Tío Armando, who has his wife and children back in México, Tío Felipe has no one but his parents, whom he has been helping since he was just a few years older than me.

Ben and Tío Felipe were returning from a university party that Ben was kind enough to invite Tío Felipe to attend. They were stopped for speeding, and when the police officer shone his flashlight inside the car, he got curious about the Mexican fellow riding in the passenger seat. We heard the whole story from Mrs. Paquette, who heard it from the sheriff's deputy, who said he might just have slapped her son with a ticket for going sixty in a forty- mile zone, but then Tío Felipe made a big mistake. He panicked and opened his door and took off into the night. Before you knew it, the officer had notified Homeland Security, and by dawn, there were roadblocks everywhere and a helicopter combing the countryside on account of now Tío Felipe had become a fugitive.

Meanwhile, Ben had been escorted home by the sheriff, and Mrs. Paquette had come over to let us know what was going on.

“Will they come for us?” Papá asked her.

“I really don't think so,” Mrs. Paquette reassured him. “But you all best lay low. We'll take care of the milking today.”

But Papá was sure it was just a matter of time
before
la migra
came for him and Tío Armando. He stuffed his Mexican passport and some phone cards and cash in his pockets and packed a small bag with a few clothes. Tío Armando did the same. Then Papá told us to pack our most important things into the big suitcase we bought for coming to Vermont.

This did not go over well with my sisters, especially so soon after the disappointing phone call that we thought might be our mother. Then Tío Felipe's capture. Ever since his arrest, Luby has had to sleep with me, which means her little dog has to come, too. After she crawls in, the covers lift again. This time it's Ofie, but not Ofie alone. Wilmita is lonely for Tío Felipe! Three girls, one guitar, and one stuffed dog on a twin bed fighting for the blanket and pillow. I would laugh if it weren't that we're all so afraid and sad.

“But why do we have to pack our stuff?” Ofie protested to Papá. “Where are we going, anyway?”

I could tell Papá didn't know what to say. He was torn between telling my little sisters the truth and not alarming them. Only with me does he unburden himself. Because I am the oldest. Because, he has said, taking my face in his hands, “you are just like your mother.”

“We all have to be ready,” he explained to my sisters. To distract them, he tried to make it into a game. “Let's see how many things you can fit in
this suitcase. Wilmita won't fit,” he added, because Ofie was reaching for Tío Felipe's lonely guitar.

“Where are we to go?” I asked Papá in a low voice. For the moment, my sisters were entertained with their packing.

“You will ask the
patrona
to send you back to México, to Abuelota and Abuelote. You wait for us there.”

“I don't want to go to México,” Ofie declared. She had overheard us talking.

My father's face got a strange, hurt look on it. I think it was the first time he realized what it really means that two of his daughters are American. It isn't just that they are legal in this country. They belong here. This is their home.

“Tyler told us about a place,” I whispered. “It's a cave where we can go and hide.”

My father actually looked tempted. But then he shook his head. “Your uncle ran and now he is in worse trouble. We will just lay down low like the
patrona
said and wait.” And then he took our blankets off the bed and we lay down on them on the floor in case
la migra
looked in the windows.

“Why are we lying down, Papá?” Luby wanted to know.

“Because we're going to tell stories,” Tío Armando said in a calm voice like this was the most normal thing in the world: to throw
blankets on the floor in the middle of the day and have a story hour. He is the most quiet of all of us. “He misses his family so much,” Papá once explained to me. But ever since Tío Felipe's capture, Tío Armando has been trying to keep me and my sisters from worrying too much. “Who wants to start?” He looked over at me, I guess because I am the one who is always writing.

“Tell the story of crossing the desert.” Ofie loves that story. Especially if I throw in a few extra serpents and make the
coyotes
real coyotes.

“Not now,” Papá said sternly, casting a glance at his brother. Instead, he reached over and turned on the television, very low, so you could hardly hear it. But thank goodness it was Dora heading for a fiesta with her friend Boots, an episode we had all seen several times. Still, my sisters lay on their stomachs in front of the screen, soaking up that happy world.

A little while later, there was a tap-tap-tap at the back door. Tap-tap-tap. Like someone who didn't want to be heard. We were all sure it was Tío Felipe, who had snuck back home through the fields. Of course, we wanted him to be safe, but by coming to the trailer he was leading
la migra
straight to our doorstep, and we would all be rounded up. Still, we couldn't just leave him locked out in the cold.

But when we peeked out the little window in
the door, imagine our surprise: it was the grandmother and she was carrying a little suitcase!

“I'm going to ask you a big favor,” she began. And then she looked over our shoulders and saw the blankets strewn all around the living room floor. “What's going on? Are you having a slumber party?”

“No, Grandma,” Ofie blurted out. “The police are looking for our uncle Felipe and we're supposed to lay low so they don't catch us.”

“Oh my goodness.” Grandma put down her little suitcase. “And I thought I had troubles.”

It turned out she had not been told about Ben being stopped by the police and Tío Felipe running off and getting caught. “I'm the last one to know anything in this family,” she said crossly. “They treat me like a total invalid!”

“They do not want to worry you,
señora,
“ my father said kindly after I had translated. “That is why they did not tell you.” He had pulled up a chair for her to sit down. But Grandma waved it off, looking even more annoyed that anyone would think she needed to sit down. She was glancing all around the room now.

“I need a place to hide,” she said straight out. None of us were sure we had heard her right. An old woman hiding from her family! “But why?” Luby asked finally, clutching her little dog as if it
might also decide to hide from her. “Is the police looking for you, too?”

“I wish,” Grandma said, and then her eyes were full of tears, and she began to cry. This time when my father took her by the arm and escorted her to a chair, she accepted and sat down with her little suitcase at her feet.

“What is wrong,
señora
?” Papá asked her. And that is when the grandmother told us the most unbelievable story. How Mr. and Mrs. Paquette and her other children were going to put her in a nursing home if she didn't agree to give up her home and go live with one of them. How they had taken away the keys to her car so she couldn't drive over to her friend's house.

Poor Papá was so shocked. He had been totally fooled by the
patrones
seeming kindness. If they did this to their own mother, what wouldn't they do to us? “We don't believe in treating our old people that way,” Papá told Grandma. “You can stay here for as long as you wish.”

Grandma was shaking her head, like she didn't believe it herself. As for staying with us, she had called her friend Martha from church, who offered to come over that night to pick her up. “Under the cover of darkness,” Grandma explained. “That'll show them. Martha's son tried to do the same to her last year.” Just the thought
of her friend's evil son made her start crying all over again.

So that is how the grandmother came to spend the whole day locked up in the trailer with us. Late that afternoon when Mrs. Paquette came to the door with the news that Tío Felipe had been caught in a whole other county—”To lead
la migra
away from us,” Tío Armando guessed— Papá did not invite her in but spoke to her right at the door. She lingered awhile like she was worried about us.

“Everything all right?” she kept asking. “I mean, I know you must be worried to death about your brother.” The sheriff's office had told her that usually an undocumented person would just have a hearing, then get deported. But because Tío Felipe had broken the law—defying a police officer—he would have to stand trial.

“Ridiculous, I know.” Mrs. Paquette sighed. “But anyhow, you can rest easy as they won't be coming around to search for him here now that they've found him. So you can start back with the evening milking.” She went on to mention a couple of cows that she thought might be in heat, and another whose milk shouldn't be sent to the tank because one teat looked infected.

As she talked, Papá stood at the door, not inviting her in out of the cold and risking the grandmother being discovered. Finally, Mrs.

Paquette turned to go. “Anything you need,” she said so nicely that it really was difficult to believe that she would force an old woman out of her home and lock her up with strangers.

“Thank you,” my father said, the door already half closed. Then he lifted the curtain to check and see that Mrs. Paquette was really gone.

“I think she is on her way to visit you,” he said over his shoulder to Grandma. We all rushed to the window, and there was Mrs. Paquette headed up the hill to her mother-in-law's house. We watched as she knocked and knocked, then tried the knob and let herself inside the house. A little while later, out she came, her steps hurried, her arms swinging like a person on a mission. When I looked up at Grandma, there was a small triumphant smile on her face.

By evening there had been several trips up to the grandmother's house, Mr. Paquette with his limp, and Ben and Sara. I don't know where Tyler was, but he hadn't joined them, which was odd, as I knew he was home. I had seen him go into the barn to join my uncle and Papá for the evening milking.

Meanwhile, Grandma was worried that her friend might show up at the trailer and give away her hiding place. “I didn't think of that when I told her to pick me up here!” She tried calling but there was no answer. “Martha's probably on her
way already. She drives like she's training for a funeral home. I like a little speed myself.”

For the first time that day, Grandma laughed. Not a revenge smile, not a nervous hiccup of a giggle. She laughed. And for some reason, it was such a relief to hear laughter in that room that although I didn't really know what I was laughing at and my sisters didn't either, we just laughed along with her, until it was impossible to stop. But finally we did.

“I'm going to miss you girls so much!” Grandma said fervently.

“Can't we visit you anymore?” Luby wanted to know, her bottom lip quivering. She looked like she was going to cry.

“I don't see how,” Grandma said. And just as suddenly as she had been laughing, Grandma began to cry. Again, we were infected by her mood, and soon we were all blubbering. I admit I was also crying about Mamá, how she might have been calling us next door, but now that Sara had mentioned the police, Mamá would never try that number again. Most of all, I was crying for Tío Felipe, imagining him locked up and looking out, his hands clutching the bars like prisoners do on television. We couldn't go visit him or we would be caught. Would they hurt him or torture him? What would happen to him?

“Maybe I should move to México,” Grandma
was saying. “Only problem is I don't know any Spanish.”

Soon we had all dreamed up a wonderful plan. Virgen de Guadalupe, may it someday come true! We would all move to México, and Grandma would build a house with a swimming pool and many, many bedrooms and we would all live together. “They want me to move out, I'll move out! Sell the house, use the money to suit myself.”

At the front door, the bell was ringing. Grandma's friend Martha had finally come for her.

The next day, Papá did not want us to go to school. He was still worried that
la migra
would raid the farm and we would come home to an empty trailer. That morning—something that never happens as Tyler is usually running out at the last minute with his toast in his hand—he swung by so we could all walk together down the driveway to wait for the bus. Papá and Tío Armando were already at the barn, milking. “We're not going to school today,” I explained to Tyler.

“On account of your uncle?” he wanted to know.

I nodded. The less said the better. All I could think as he stood there was this was a boy who would turn against his own grandmother.

As if he could overhear my thoughts, he
brought her up himself. He lowered his voice. “Grandma's gone. We're afraid maybe she just walked off and drowned herself in the creek.” Tyler could be so dramatic. I almost blurted out: She'd do no such thing. Then he said something that made me realize he was against his parents’ evil plan. “That's what they get for trying to force her to move. I just wish she'd told me,” he added. “I'd have run off with her. It's awful at my house,” he went on. “Ben's grounded for the whole Christmas break, and now Sara isn't allowed to ride around with her new boyfriend, Hal, ‘cause he might do what Ben did. Everybody's in a really bad mood. And on top of it all, Grandma could be dead!”