Of Women and Salt, Gabriela Garcia [100 best novels of all time .txt] 📗

the Hot Pocket in two. She places a paper plate before Ana and says, “It’s hot.” The television announces a sale on brand-name mattresses of every kind. Prices slashed. Unbelievable savings. One-time event. Jeanette pieces together her own made-up stories: Immigration agents busted the mom for a fake social security number, some other harmless action born of necessity. The mother is desperately trying to explain that she had a daughter coming home from—

“Where were you again last night?”

Ana blows into the opening of the Hot Pocket while holding it with a paper towel. She pauses, places the pastry down.

“Jesse’s.”

“You slept over? Why?”

Ana regards Jeanette in a manner that makes her suddenly self-conscious. As if Ana knows something isn’t right. As if Ana thinks Jeanette knows more than she’s giving away. As if Ana can see right through her.

“Sometimes I sleep at Jesse’s.”

“Who is Jesse?”

“My babysitter.”

“Will she come for you again?”

“When my mom calls and tells her to pick me up at school.”

“Will she pick you up from school on Monday?”

“If my mom calls her.”

Alternatively, the mother committed some kind of crime and Immigration picked her up. The mom caught a whiff that something was up and left her daughter at the babysitter’s overnight. She’s calling a relative or a friend right this moment to collect her. Someone will show up any minute now. Jeanette is embarrassed by her own problematic thoughts. Good immigrant, bad immigrant? She should know better.

“Did you say all your relatives are in El Salvador?”

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

Ana takes a bite. She chews. She swallows.

“Yes,” she says. “Can I have some juice or water, please?”

Jeanette opens her fridge. A moldy cube of cream cheese. Shredded Monterey Jack. White Cuban bread. She pours Ana a glass of tap water. Feels shame at where her own thoughts go. Does it even matter why ICE picked up her mom? Still, a child at her kitchen table. Still, awful that she never even asked her neighbor’s name. She hands Ana the glass of water.

“I’ll be right back. Just sit tight.”

Jeanette closes the door to her bedroom. She lies back on the bed and balances her laptop on her stomach. Google searches: What happens to children if their parents are deported? A link to Child Protective Services. A link to family detention centers in the region. To lawyer after lawyer after lawyer. Another search: How to find someone detained. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement database that requires an Alien Registration Number for the detainee. No phone number she can find. Lawyer after lawyer after lawyer. A light knock on the door. Ana has to pee. Jeanette shows her the bathroom and makes up her mind that Ana will spend the night.

In bed, Jeanette wakes, gasps, holds her breath. A sharp pain in her chest. Almost like loving Mario, wanting to run to Mario. She holds the feeling like a single bullet. No, she’s gotten too far to break. Outside, a thunderstorm clicks raindrops over dying, sick banana leaves. Some nights like this—she isn’t even aware of it, how her fingers find their way to her nightstand, how they search for the bottle, a healing rattle. She curls an empty fist beside her and tucks it beneath her head. Ana sleeps in the small room next to her own. Jeanette strains to listen but hears nothing.

Mario. His beard never grew in right, but he insisted on letting it grow. Red highlights streaked through his chin even though his hair had no red at all. Mario. A scar on his abdomen from a bout with appendicitis she liked to trace with her fingers. He was more organized than she but had annoying habits like forgetting wet clothes in the washing machine. He was afraid of heights.

When his parents split up, his dad went back to Argentina, started a new family in Argentina. Mario had adored him, but his dad had never called. His mother remarried, and Mario hated his stepfather, said his stepfather constantly disrespected him, and once, they’d come to blows. Mario always worried about “disrespect.” He spent so much time angry over perceived “disrespect.” After a fight, they liked to drive in silence to the beach, way up north, way past the tourists, to the quietest stretches of sand. Just to sit, sometimes hold hands. Mario most feared everyone in his life leaving him.

Jeanette curls on her side and places a hand to the wall as if it will pulse with an answer: what to do tomorrow, what to do every day from here on out. What color paint is this? Wonders if Ana also can’t sleep.

“But how could you do that?” Jeanette’s mother whispers across the kitchen table. The sun illuminates her face through the window, illuminates the particles of powder at her hairline. Ana watches the Disney Channel in the next room. Old Miley Cyrus bossing around a band of preteens. Laugh track. “How could you just keep someone’s child overnight? Someone who you don’t even know!”

Ana has been with Jeanette all morning, watching TV shows, following her around, doodling in a notebook on her belly in the spare room where she slept. Jeanette’s mother got here an hour ago. She visits on Saturdays. Since leaving Mario, since detox, since rehab. She has never missed a weekend.

Jeanette’s mother runs a finger over the containers before her. One holds rice and beans, the other Jeanette’s favorite dessert, arroz con leche. Her mother never shows up without food she has made the night before, claiming she has made too much, that she doesn’t want a refrigerator full of leftovers.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jeanette whispers. “I watched Immigration officers take her mother in the middle of the night. Am I supposed to just call the cops? Will they take her to her mother? Will she go into the system?”

“It’s not your responsibility.”

“How can you say that?” she says. “You’re an immigrant.”

Her mother runs her tongue over her teeth and stares.

“What?” Jeanette says. “Do you ever think about how Cubans get