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

worker but he takes me to a blue-eyed man, a guard or a worker or the government, I don’t know anymore.

You should sign this, says the blue-eyed man with a blue badge and a blue polo shirt. We are sitting on plastic chairs in a room that looks out on another room where a few people meet with family-member visitors but mostly they meet with lawyers and volunteers who visit. Sometimes they move us around, center to center. We all think they are trying to keep us as far away as possible from anyone we know. I am from Florida and I am in Texas. I knew I was going to Texas only when the officer escorted me to the American Airlines gate that said SAN ANTONIO. We are not in San Antonio. We are in some part of Texas where nobody hears us if we scream.

What is it? I say.

If you want to get out as quickly as possible, you should sign it, the blue-eyed man in the blue polo repeats. I look out the window.

In the visiting room there is a woman with a long braid down her back. She is speaking to a teenager across from her who shares her face. I imagine the woman speaking in Spanish and the teenager answering in English. I don’t know if this is true. It’s probably not true. They hold hands. I think of a photo I saw in a magazine on the table at a house I cleaned. Time. I was drawn by the photo on the cover. It was a woman, milk-coffee skin like mine, bars obstructing her face and the chalky yellow desert behind her. Tears ran down her face. She hugged a young girl through the bars. She hugged her daughter on the other side of the fence, on the US side. I wonder what does it feel like to hug someone through bars and do you look at your skin after and see the imprint, stripes down your belly, stripes on your chest? Your body, a fence.

What is it? I ask again. Do you have the form in Spanish?

No. You sign where the line is and you will leave detention faster.

Voluntary Departure, the form reads, and though I know some English, I do not know these words. There are a lot of numbers, a lot of codes. Sections 240A, 245, 248. ICE Form I-210. IJ, BIA, DHS.

What happens if I don’t sign it? I ask.

Oh, the man says. They’ll deport you anyways. You could stay here for who knows how long.

And what about my daughter?

These are questions for a lawyer.

I don’t have one. How do I get one?

The man touches his beard and gives me a soft smile that makes me want to sink into his arms. Help me, I want to say but I don’t.

The government is only required to provide a lawyer for criminal cases, says the man who does not take me in his arms. Unlawful presence of an alien in the United States is a civil issue. You can get a lawyer but you must find this lawyer on your own and pay on your own.

But all the lawyers who come here. I haven’t yet had a chance to—

Look. I like you, Ms. Gloria Ramos, is it. I like you, Ms. Ramos. So I’m going to give you some advice. Sign this form. Do it for your daughter. Get yourselves out of here quickly and on with your lives.

But where do I go if I sign this? Do I go back to El Salvador?

Well, I don’t know. That I don’t know.

Do I see a judge and, you know, plead my case?

The man sighs. His face changes.

Listen, he says. If you want to make this harder for yourself then fine. But this is your last chance. You can sign this form and get out of here in no time or not. Up to you.

The blue-eyed man places the blue pen in front of me. I take it in my hand. Gloria Ramos, I sign. The man smiles again.

There are televisions in the common room, four of them, one in each corner. Two of them are set to children’s channels and two are set to adult channels. Of the adult channels, one is always a Spanish channel. That’s the one I watch every night.

When the news comes on, the guards change the channel, though sometimes we catch snippets. I think the guards don’t like the Spanish news because they are always talking about immigration. They show sad graphs like border crossings down, deportations way up. They show President Obama, who likes to smile a lot. President Obama, who answers questions and some of the people asking the questions smile back and some of them don’t. President Obama, who sometimes looks like he doesn’t like the questions. They interview a lot of experts in fancy offices. It’s bad for morale. That’s what they must think.

We like the telenovelas anyways. We get the news anyways. I get it from the women who get letters from the outside where the Spanish news is not blocked. The telenovela stars are all blond and thin and rich and most of us look like the maids and witch doctors and farm peasants on the shows, but this is as close as we get to the outside, as close as we get to the life we imagined outside these walls. What would it be like? we think. What would it be like if our problem were a fight over a man or an inheritance? If the only violence we knew was killing a nemesis to steal away with her lover? Laughing, laughing. How funny to imagine this alternate universe.

In this alternate universe, maybe I wouldn’t be a mother. If I am being honest, I don’t always want to be a mother. Sometimes I want to be a dancer, at Salsa Rueda on Fridays at my favorite spot, the one by the Miami airport. I was learning. Sometimes I want