mouse move—because at the same time he’s releasing her, he is bending down to peer inside. His face is so close, Antonia can smell milk on his breath, his former farm-boy breakfast habits still intact. His skin is so pale, she can see the tiny capillaries just below the surface. A phrase, too pedestrian to be anyone’s famous words, runs through her head: his mother’s son. Unaccountably, Antonia’s heart floods with tenderness at this untimely moment, just as in her long-ago hormonal youth, she’d feel herself inconveniently getting turned on at an inappropriate time, during a final exam, a job interview, on the checkout line at a store.
So, can we go now? Antonia asks far too tentatively.
The young officer hesitates, his eyes scanning the inside of the car, a brown male passenger in front, a brown girl cowering in the backseat, hugging a tiny doll—or is it a baby?—dressed in a frilly outfit. His face tightens with authority. One hand on his holster, perhaps anticipating trouble. What about your passengers? he asks Antonia.
What about them? Antonia smiles prettily. The girl who could get out of a scrape using her wiles has long disappeared from her old woman’s face. Oh, them? I’m taking them to the consulate in Boston and then the airport. They’re going back to Mexico. She cannot offer to show the officer their airline tickets as proof because she purchased them online. But they’ll soon be over the mountain and through the woods and into the air, headed for home, beyond his jurisdiction.
Do you have any identification? the officer asks Mario, who looks to Antonia to translate.
He has his passport, Antonia explains. Will that do, officer? Of course, she knows it will only do if there is a USA visa stamped inside, which she is sure there isn’t. But perhaps the officer won’t notice; perhaps he missed the training session when ICE came and informed local law enforcement on the finer points of the customs and immigration laws.
Let me see what he has. The officer pauses. They’re related? Husband and wife?
Soon to be, Antonia offers. The more she can make them sound like a family, the better she believes it will go for them all.
And the baby, theirs? the officer adds, pointing to Mario.
Soon to be, Antonia replies, before realizing how that must sound. I mean, soon as they get married, it will be official. She hands over Mario’s passport, hoping the officer won’t ask what he asks for next.
Hers, too.
Estela has no passport yet. She has a consular ID and the receipt from when the Mexican consulate came up from Boston with its mobile unit last month, and Estela applied for her passport. Rather than take a chance of it not arriving on time for her travel, they opted for going to pick it up at the consulate before the flight later today. Antonia explains all this to the officer, availing herself of only one teensy lie. Estela lost her passport and the replacement is waiting for them in Boston.
She can tell the officer is not happy about this—the capillaries on his cheeks flood with blood, two pink patches, a blushing look that in a different context Antonia would find endearing. He collects the proffered documents and heads back to his cruiser. Estela is again sobbing, this time so hard she is gasping for breath, and sensing her mother’s fear, Marianela has begun to wail as well.
You have to stay calm for your baby’s sake, Antonia admonishes.
Ay, pero, do?ita, ?Y si se la llevan?
No one is taking Mari, Antonia asserts. She decides not to add “over my dead body.” It’s not a Spanish idiom anyhow.
Would ICE really separate Estela from her baby? How can they? Estela is herself a minor. More likely, Mario will be deported, and perhaps precede mother and child to Mexico. What ICE will do to her, Antonia is not sure. Transporting aliens—there was an article in the local newspaper about a farmer and his wife being stopped with Lourdes Morales in the car. Lulu! Antonia doesn’t know what happened to the couple, but Lulu ended up briefly in the local jail, under the purview of Sheriff Boyer, before ICE came to collect her and transport her to a detention center in Boston. In the interim, Sheriff Boyer asked Antonia if she would come in and translate for him.
Tell her not to worry; no one’s gonna hurt her.
Ask her if she’s got her paperwork in order.
Ask her if I can pick up some special