Cristina Henriquez - The Book of Unknown Americans

Come Together, Fall Apart

The World in Half

This is a Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Copyright 2014 by Cristina Henrquez

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Bond Street Books, a division of Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House Companies.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Permissions Company, Inc., for permission to reprint an excerpt from Poem After Carlos Drummond de Andrade from Nightworks: Poems 19622000 by Marvin Bell. Copyright 1990 by Marvin Bell. Reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Henrquez, Cristina, 1977

The book of unknown Americans : a novel / Cristina Henrquez. First Edition.

pages cm

This is a Borzoi Book.

ISBN 978-0-385-35084-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-385-35085-3 (eBook)

1. TeenagersFiction. 2. ImmigrantsFiction. 3.

DelawareFiction. I. Title.

PS 3608. E 565 B 66 2014

813.6dc23 2013022215

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jacket painting by Elizabeth Mayville

Jacket design by Kelly Blair

v3.1_r1

For my father, Pantalen Henrquez III

Let us all be from somewhere.

Let us tell each other everything we can.

BOB HICOK , A PRIMER

Back then, all we wanted was the simplest things: to eat good food, to sleep at night, to smile, to laugh, to be well. We felt it was our right, as much as it was anyones, to have those things. Of course, when I think about it now, I see that I was nave. I was blinded by the swell of hope and the promise of possibility. I assumed that everything that would go wrong in our lives already had.

THIRTY HOURS AFTER crossing the border, we arrived, the three of us in the backseat of a red pickup truck that smelled of cigarette smoke and gasoline.

Wake up, I whispered, nudging Maribel as the driver turned into a parking lot.

Hmmm?

Were here, hija.

Where? Maribel asked.

Delaware.

She blinked at me in the dark.

Arturo was sitting on the other side of us. Is she okay? he asked.

Dont worry, I said. Shes fine.

It was just after sunset and darkness bled in from the outer reaches of the sky. A few minutes earlier, wed been on a busy road, driving through four-way intersections, past strip malls and fast-food restaurants, but as we neared the apartment building, all of that had given way. The last thing I saw before we turned onto the long gravel lane that led to the parking lot was an abandoned auto body shop, its hand-painted sign on the ground, propped up against the gray stucco facade.

The driver parked the truck and lit another cigarette. Hed been smoking the whole trip. It gave him something to do with his mouth, I guess, since hed made it clear from the moment he picked us up in Laredo that he wasnt interested in conversation.

Arturo climbed out first, straightened his cowboy hat, and surveyed the building. Two stories, made of cinder blocks and cement, an outdoor walkway that ran the length of the second floor with metal staircases at either end, pieces of broken Styrofoam in the grass, a chain-link fence along the perimeter of the lot, cracks in the asphalt. I had expected it to be nicer. Something with white shutters and red bricks, something with manicured shrubs and flower boxes in the windows. The way American houses looked in movies. This was the only option Arturos new job had given us, though, and I told myself we were lucky to have it.

Silently, in the dim and unfamiliar air, we unloaded our things: plastic trash bags packed with clothes and sheets and towels; cardboard boxes filled with dishes wrapped in newspaper; a cooler crammed with bars of soap, bottles of water, cooking oil, and shampoo. During the drive we had passed a television set on the curb, and when he saw it, the driver braked hard and backed up. You want it? he asked us. Arturo and I looked at each other in confusion. The television? Arturo asked. The driver said, You want it, take it. Arturo said, Its not stealing? The driver snorted. People throw away everything in the United States. Even things that are still perfectly good. Later, when he stopped again and pointed to a discarded kitchen table, and later again at a mattress propped up like a sliding board against someones mailbox, we understood what to do and loaded them into the truck.

After we carried everything up the rusted metal staircase to our apartment, after we found the key the landlord had left for us, taped to the threshold of the door, Arturo went back down to pay the driver. He gave him half the money we had. Gone. Just like that. The driver put the bills in his pocket and flicked his cigarette out the window. Good luck, I heard him say before he drove off.

INSIDE THE APARTMENT , Arturo flipped the light switch on the wall and a bare bulb in the ceiling flashed on. The linoleum floors were dingy and worn. Every wall was painted a dark mustard yellow. There were two windowsa large one at the front and a smaller one at the back in the only bedroomboth covered by plastic sheets held in place with tape, the wood casings warped and splintered. Across the hall from the bedroom was a bathroom with a baby blue sink, a toilet ringed with rust, and an upright shower stall with neither a door nor a curtain. At first glance, the kitchen was betterit was bigger, at leastthough the stove burners were wrapped in aluminum foil and bedsheets had been stapled over the lower cabinets in place of doors. An old refrigerator stood in the corner, its doors wide open. Arturo walked over to it and poked his head inside.

Is this what smells? he asked. Hucala!

The whole place reeked of mildew and, faintly, of fish.

Ill clean it in the morning, I said, as Arturo closed the doors.

I glanced at Maribel standing next to me. She was expressionless, as usual, clutching her notebook to her chest. What did she make of all this? I wondered. Did she understand where we were?

We didnt have the energy to unpack or brush our teeth or even to change our clothes, so after we looked around we slapped our newly acquired mattress on the floor in the bedroom, crawled on top of it, and closed our eyes.

For nearly an hour, maybe more, I lay there listening to the soft chorus of Maribels and Arturos long, even breaths. In and out. In and out. The surge of possibility. The tug of doubt. Had we done the right thing, coming here? Of course, I knew the answer. We had done what we had to do. We had done what the doctors told us. I stacked my hands on top of my stomach and told myself to breathe. I relaxed the muscles in my face, slackened my jaw. But we were so far from anything familiar. Everything herethe sour air, the muffled noises, the depth of the darknesswas different. We had bundled up our old life and left it behind, and then hurtled into a new one with only a few of our things, each other, and hope. Would that be enough? Well be fine, I told myself. Well be fine. I repeated it like a prayer until finally I fell asleep, too.