solemnly that she was an indocumentada. This predicament didn’t match, somehow, with the thin silver bracelets on her wrist, her slender and confident bearing, her gentle, even voice of the academically inclined. Nor did it match with her puckish party outfit, a billowing spinach-green dress with forest-green leggings and elfin slippers, all of which suggested an actress fresh off the set of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Pero eres gringa,” Araceli said.
“No I’m not. I’m mexicana.”
“¿De veras?” Araceli insisted. “Pero ni hablas bien el español.”
“I could speak Spanish a little better, yes,” Griselda said calmly, and suddenly she radiated a youthful, black-haired confidence and inescapable meekness all at once. “But I’ve never really lived in Mexico, so it’s understandable.” After a pause to consider the paradox of her status, Griselda lowered her voice and said, “I came when I was two. And I’ve never been back, because I can’t go back. Brown was going to let me in anyway, but they couldn’t give me any financial aid.”
This was a shock to Araceli. Griselda had been an indocumentada when she was still in diapers; it seemed a country would have to be excessively cruel and cold to place such a label on a baby girl, and keep it on her even as she grew into an English-speaking woman.
Lucía placed a hand on Griselda’s shoulder. “You should leave, then. When the boy calls, leave right away.” She turned to Araceli, and spoke with a sternness that she would later regret. “And maybe you should go too.”
“¿Qué?”
“¿Tienes documentos?” Griselda asked, and quickly discerned the answer in Araceli’s sudden silence and discomfort. Griselda knew that wordlessness too; it came from carrying a secret so long you forgot you were carrying it, until someone or something reminded you of its existence and you felt the pressure of the words against your skin, and you realized the words were always there.
“Hi, Dad,” Brandon said into the phone. “We’re here.” He paused to listen to his father’s voice. “Yeah, we just saw ourselves on TV. But I’m not missing. I’m right here.” Now an excited shouting could be heard, miniature adults celebrating inside the earpiece, clapping, screaming in joy. “We ate tacos last night,” Brandon continued. “They cooked a pig. With a fire in the ground. But I don’t think it’s burning anymore … What? The address?”
“It’s 2626 Rugby Street,” Lucía said, and looked at Griselda. “In Huntington Park.”
Brandon repeated the address to his father. “Yeah, Araceli is here with us. She’s been taking care of us. We rode on a train, and on some buses too. We saw a river, but it didn’t have water in it.” Suddenly he narrowed his eyes to a look of irritation. “And where did you go? Is Mommy there?” He listened to the answer, and turned to Keenan. “He says Mommy can’t talk right now, but she’s okay.”
Keenan took the phone and announced flatly to his father that he was okay too. “I love you too,” he said, and immediately hung up, because he thought of a phone I-love-you as meaning more or less the same as goodbye.
The clatter of the phone on the receiver was the cue for Griselda to reach over and give Lucía a kiss on the cheek. Without any more drama Griselda moved calmly to the front door, turned, and smiled and waved to the boys and to Araceli, mouthing the Spanish word for luck as she did so. Suerte. The screen door closed behind Griselda with a slap and Araceli watched through the living room window as she walked across the lawn, onto the sidewalk, gliding in her slippers and wide dress past parked cars and other lawns, a green fairy indocumentada walking without worry, her unhurried air causing her to melt into the surroundings, another Mexican-American, another mexicana on these streets with so many other people with stories and faces like hers. That’s how you did it. You acted as if the city belonged to you. You walked with the pace of a limber woman taking her daily stroll. I can do that too, and slip back across the city, and maybe back to Mexico, with a little stop at the bank to get my money. Araceli liked the idea of thumbing her nose at the police and the immigration authorities with the simple fact of her absence, her unwillingness to answer questions or offer explanations, even though she had no reason to run away, no reason to hide from anything, except for the inconvenient matter