Heads and Tales
Neil Citrin
Raul looked from the front entrance of Bernard High School to his father, to the busy street near downtown Los Angeles, and back again to his father. The high school seemed so much bigger than Drew Middle School, where he went most of last year, before getting sent to Mexico. He began to shake.
“I don’t want to go, Papá,” he said. “I’m not ready.”
His father, weary from his just-completed graveyard shift, put one hand on Raul’s shoulder.
“This year you will not run around like you did before with Cousin Julio. I will not allow it.”
Raul’s shaking slowed, and then stopped. The two of them walked into the building. Shadows flickered and, as he passed through the doorway that beckoned with a shark’s smile, Raul suppressed a shudder; he could not, however, quell the fluttering in his stomach. Now he was going to be a freshman in high school, in an area far from his home and his friends. Knowing his father would be taking him to school and picking him up calmed him a little, though.
Three years earlier Raul and his father had performed this ritual when he entered Drew Middle School. The memory of that time hovered around him with the freshness of a just completed nightmare. Now, as they waited in line behind two other people at the attendance office of the high school, Raul fought the fluttering in his stomach.
After what seemed an eternity Raul and his father reached the attendance office counter.
“Yes?”
“I need to enroll my son.”
“Do you speak English?” The woman asked Raul’s father.
Raul’s father held the forefinger and thumb of his right hand a quarter of an inch apart. The woman signaled to her colleague, who stood and walked slowly to the counter. Raul’s father repeated his request.
“You’re putting him in school now?” The second woman’s Spanish, though good, was clearly her second language. “It’s a little late in the fall semester.”
Listen to her, Papá, Raul thought.
“We were out of the country for a family emergency,” his father said, with a brief glance at Raul.
The clerk hesitated a moment, and then nodded and stepped away from the desk.
His mother, Raul knew, had to make similar arrangements yesterday for his two baby sisters, Luisa and Elva, and for his slightly younger brother, Eduardo -- all because his father now worked two jobs and his mother worked long hours cleaning some rich gringo woman’s house. The alternative to school, his father had told him, was working in the store his aunt managed.
It upset him that he had to go to school instead of playing with his friends or watching T.V., but Raul would not argue with his father openly about this. He would not risk a repeat of the beatings he got three years ago when he resisted his father’s effort to enroll him at Drew. He would find some other way to show his anger. Something that didn’t involve behaving like his cousin Julio, who was now in jail.
The clerk returned with the imprisoning papers. Fifteen minutes later they were done. Saying goodbye to his father, Raul followed the clerk out of the attendance office to his new cell. They walked in silence down the hallway. Halfway up a pair of stairs a bell shrilled and Raul covered his ears.
Crazy pendejos, he thought. I forgot about that.
As they reached the top of the stairs the ringing stopped. A moment later kids of all sizes -- mostly black and Spanish with a few whites -- poured out of the various rooms. After a few moments more they walked into a room with “207” above the door. Like our apartment, Raul thought. The room was half full already and a few more kids entered after them. One of the boys in the front row stared at him a moment and smiled.
“Mr. Dorrell,” said the clerk, “this is Raul Gonzalez.” He handed the teacher a small packet.
“Another one?” He took the packet and laid it on the desk. “Okay. Thanks.”
Great, Raul thought as the clerk left. The teacher’s annoyed at me already.
“Stand by me a moment, Raul,” Mr. Dorrell said. “Let me check the seats.”
He pulled out a sheet and studied it as a few more students wandered into the room.
“How is your English?” Mr. Dorrell asked, his voice so soft Raul barely heard him.
Raul paused a moment and responded with equal softness.
“Better than my parents.”
“Good. Take the second seat in the front near the window. Once I’ve finished the roll and a few other things we’ll see what to do with you.”
A roll? Raul thought as he took the seat. I thought you didn’t eat in class. Once Mr. Dorrell started calling names, however, he caught the specific meaning of the word. There would be a lot more of that, he suspected.
Raul sat and waited as the teacher finished what he needed to do and introduced him. Raul stood for a moment and then sat back down. A few students chuckled.
“Knock it off,” Mr. Dorrell said. “Open your text, turn to page fifty and read to page sixty.”
As most of the students started reading, Mr. Dorrell handed Raul a few sheets of paper. “Fill them out to the best of your ability, take your time and don’t guess. It will help me in teaching you.”
That startled Raul. He thought teachers used one lesson for everyone. He shrugged. Go with it for now, he decided. There will be less trouble.
Raul filled out the papers as he listened to Mr. Dorrell. At the end of the period he handed the finished assignment to the teacher and put the books Mr. Dorrell wanted him to use for the class into his back pack. Out in the hallway he glanced at the map to locate his next class. As he started walking toward the room, someone spoke to him.
“You new, homie?”
Raul glanced up from the map. The thin kid, the one who had smiled at him in the previous class, wore baggie jeans and a t-shirt, and he had a bandana around his head. His clothing reminded Raul of the way his cousin Julio and his gang-banger friends dressed.
“Yes.”
“I’m Pedro Lalas. If you need any help I’m at the center of the quad during nutrition and lunch.”
“Sure.”
Lalas walked away. Raul headed in the opposite direction, feeling a little uneasy. He didn’t like the look of Lalas, or how the boy latched on to him.
Once at his next room Raul checked in with the teacher, Mrs. Ling, and took his assigned seat. No one else, not even the teachers, spoke more than a few words with him the rest of the day as he went through the check-in routines; that didn’t bother him. The more he stayed under the radar here the better.
The final bell sounded.
Raul stuffed the books given to him from the last class into his backpack and walked to the front of the school. He would need to get a larger back pack, he decided. His father waited by the gate, as promised. Lalas and his friends stood nearby. Raul’s father glanced at them and then led the way to their car.
“My work schedule changed again,” his father said. “You will take the bus home starting next Monday.”
“Yes,” Raul said, not knowing what that meant or how to do it.
“That group of kids near the front?” his father said once they were in the car. “Stay away from them. Gangsters.”
Despite what he felt earlier about Lalas, something about that word thrilled him. Raul nodded. “Yes, Papá.”
Raul did not doubt that his father spoke the truth about those boys. He had seen enough while hanging out with Julio and his friends. Even then, Raul’s father had warned him about them.
“Kids like that give our people a bad name,” his father had said back then. “They do drugs and steal and sit around rather than work.”
Raul, too young then to understand what his father meant, sensed the worry under the sternness, but at first found it amusing to prod his father with gang talk overheard from Julio and his friends. That didn’t last long. His father pulled him out of school and sent him to Mexico to work on the farm with his uncles – just a few months before Julio and two of his friends were arrested and convicted of robbery and drug dealing. His father had wanted to put Raul in one of those private or military schools the white folks used, but couldn’t afford it.
Now I’m back in the United States and still in public school, Raul thought as they got into the car and headed for home. They drove in silence for a little while.
“I hope, his father said at last, “that you learned your lesson from before.”
“Yes, Papá,” he said.
Would you pull me out again? Raul wondered as they reached their apartment complex. You can only do that so long, before I turn sixteen and walk away.
Once at their apartment Raul picked up the phone. His father, with his limited English, left it to Raul to call the bus company for route schedules. As he looked over the information he shook his head. This won’t be a lot of fun, he thought, realizing how long the trips to and from school would take.
With that done, Raul organized his school materials and started working on his assignments.
~ ~ ~
Thursday Raul got the rest of his classes, and by the weekend he felt a little more comfortable about being back at school. He decided to avoid Lalas and his group, less from what his father said than his feeling about the boy and his own need for privacy as he got used to his new environment.
The first two days the following week went well enough, though he did get a bit confused the first day going home and arrived an hour later than he had thought. Since no one was home, that worked out fine.
During lunch on Wednesday Raul sat at his usual spot, a bench near the cafeteria.
“Hey new kid.”
Raul looked up to see Pedro Lalas and a couple of his friends.
“Yeah?”
“You ignoring us?”
“No. Why?”
“You don’t come over like I said.”
“No need. I’m fine.”
“No one’s fine unless Pedro Lalas lets it be so,” the boy said. His friends chuckled.
“God didn’t make you my master,” Raul said, the words out before he could stop them.
“I serve God here,” Lalas said, taking a step closer. The boy’s attitude reminded Raul of a rattlesnake about to strike.
“As do we all,” Raul said with a smile that hid the surge of terror he had felt only a few times before. “I serve Him in my own way.”
At that moment Mr. Dorrell approached the group.
“We talk again soon,” Lalas said with a glance at Mr. Dorrell.
“Talk is good,” Raul said, not wanting to talk with Lalas ever again.
Pedro and his group stepped away.
“Are they bothering you?” Mr. Dorrell asked.
“No sir. We were talking about God.”
“Okay.”
The teacher glanced at Raul, to the retreating Lalas-ites, and back again.
“You probably don’t trust adults much,” he said at last, “but my door is always open.”
Dorrell left. A few moments later the shrill bell rang without causing Raul to jump. He realized he was getting used to that, and wondered whether that was a good or bad thing. Raul stood and headed for his fifth period class, thinking about what Dorrell had said.
No way can I do that. Can’t show that kind of weakness -- running to an adult, a teacher, for help.
Dorrell’s words remained in his head the rest of the school day, nonetheless. At least I only have to deal with Lalas here at school, Raul thought as he stepped up into the first of two buses. He showed the driver his pass, started to walk toward the back, and then stopped for a split second.
Damn, Raul thought as he slid into a seat near the front, next to an old lady with a shopping bag on her lap and another at her feet. I wouldn’t have taken this route if I had known Lalas would be here.
Sweating suddenly, Raul took a couple of deep breaths and then pulled a book from his bag. He flipped the pages, trying not to focus on the subject of the book too much. Raul didn’t want to miss his stop again. The bus stopped and started through a couple of stops, reminding him of an old donkey, and he felt a little better.
“Afraid to join us in the back, homie?”
Raul glanced up to see Lalas and two of his lunch gang standing by his seat. The old woman glanced at them and pulled her bags closer.
“It’s a good spot near the front.”
“But you usually sit in back.”
“Whatever,” Raul said, wondering how Lalas knew. “I’m here.” How, he thought, can I get off this bus without him knowing where I’m going?
“Your cousin Julio sends greetings.”
“Greetings back to him,” Raul said, hoping his surprise that Lalas knew his cousin didn’t show.
“He looks forward to seeing you when he gets out, and I hope to be there when it happens.”
Lalas smiled, and then headed to the back of the bus with his gang, laughing. Raul did not look back at them, pretending to focus on the book in front of him. After two more stops he glanced up at the streets. With two more stops to go, he put the book away and stood. He waited for the bus to pass the next stop and then pulled the chord to let the driver know he wanted the stop after that. Raul did not see Lalas in the back as he stepped to the middle door of the bus. Lalas and his crew weren’t going to follow him home. This time, at least.
Raul got off the first bus. Waiting ten minutes for the second one, he never stopped glancing around. He continued checking even as he got off the latter bus, doing his best to act casual about it.
No followers, he thought, as he arrived home a bit before four. As he stepped inside the apartment, Aunt Julia, his father’s sister, met him with a look he’d last seen when the police arrested her son, Cousin Julio. Raul swallowed hard.
“The police took your father on his way back from work,” she said. “We think they turned him over to La Migra.”
“Why? He’s a citizen.”
“I’m not sure, but I found his wallet on the counter.”
She said it as if that answered everything, and her look told him to ask no more questions.
Not that he needed to. Without his driver’s license or some of other form of identification, how could Papá prove he belonged here?
“Will he be back in time to take me to school tomorrow?”
Aunt Julia pursed her lips.
“Perhaps you will not be going to school any longer.”
Recently that would have made him happy. It certainly would have solved the problem with Lalas, because Raul knew his aunt wouldn’t let him run around. She would persuade his mother that he needed to work at the store. But he had worked hard enough on the farm in Mexico, he thought, and didn’t want to work that hard for someone else.
“The school won’t allow it,” Raul said, not knowing if that was really true. “They check up on people who don’t show up for school.”
Raul decided not to tell her about Lalas.
“We did it the last time,” she said with a shrug.
“High school is different, and you took me out of the country. I don’t want to leave school now.”
His aunt looked surprised, though Raul wasn’t sure if her look was due to his continued defiance of her, or his wanting to stay where he hadn’t wanted to go before.
“If we cannot get your father back soon,” she said, her tone a little softer, “we all may have to leave.”
“You know how hard it is to cross the border, even if we’re legal.”
“Go up to your room and finish your homework,” his aunt said with a sigh.
A small victory, Raul thought as he closed the door to his room behind him. Possibly a temporary victory, but a victory all the same.
Raul got up extra early the next morning and made it to school with half an hour to spare. He concentrated on his work, and was grateful that Lalas and his crew ignored him, but he worried about his father. When he arrived home his aunt and mother had no further news.
Over the next few days Raul settled into a routine. He got to school, went to class and then returned home. It helped that Lalas and company stayed away, and the last two days Raul didn’t notice them at all. At night the family discussed the latest efforts to locate his father; fearful that they, too, would be disappeared, neither his mother nor his aunt wanted to go to the police. Instead, they talked to friends of friends of friends in hopes of learning what happened. His mother even asked her brother, who ran the farm where Raul had worked, to check with his contacts in Tijuana. So far they had turned up nothing, and Raul feared the worst.
Mr. Dorrell approached him Friday at the end of his class that morning.
“You’re doing a great job picking things up, Raul,” he said. “Next year you might get into regular classes instead of our ESL section.”
Raul nodded but said nothing.
“Don’t worry about Pedro Lalas and his friends. They were picked up by police and won’t be coming back any time soon.”
One problem of many solved, Raul knew, and possibly only a temporary solution. There was no way to know how long Lalas would be away, or if he had the connections to get out of wherever the police had him. Raul certainly had no reason to tell Mr. Dorrell about Lalas’s connection to his cousin, or the trouble at home. The police were involved in that, too, though his father was guilty of nothing.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t have been a problem,” Raul said at last.
Mr. Dorrell glanced at the clock, scribbled on a sheet of paper and handed it to Raul.
“For Mrs. Ling, should you be late.” He paused a moment. “I’d like you to think about using the story writing option for your final project here. You have a good flair for storytelling.”
“Thanks.”
Raul put the piece of paper in his shirt and left the room. He didn’t know if he would see his father again, but the words of Mr. Dorrell made him smile. Someone outside his family, not a part of his community, saw value in him and offered encouragement. He decided that would have to be enough for now.
When he returned home Raul found his sisters and brother, along with his mother, in the apartment. Everyone looked somber, but Raul didn’t see any tears. His mother, short and stocky, with a calm demeanor that masked her occasional bursts of temper, turned to him.
“Two pieces of news,” she said. “First, we found your father in a Tijuana hospital. Mr. Sullivan helped.”
Sullivan? The gringo family she worked for, he realized. She hadn’t told him she had talked with them about his father’s situation.
“Is he okay?”
“We are not sure. I will drive down first thing in the morning with his wallet and some extra clothes. You will join me.”
“How long will we be gone?”
“I do not know.”
Worry over the possibility of missing school tempered Raul’s joy at finding his father.
“The other thing is that your cousin, Julio, has been released for good behavior.”
“Good,” Raul said, not sure if it was good or if it was something he wanted right now. “Will he be staying here?”
“Aunt Julia went to pick him up and bring him back to her place. He will stay there for the time being.”
“What about Eduardo, Luisa and Elva?”
“Cousin Claudia will stay here until we get back.”
“Put your school things away,” his mother said. “We will eat and go to bed early.”
Raul nodded and walked up the stairs to his bedroom. The possibility, once Julio came home, of seeing Pedro Lalas here -- and how that would affect his family -- worried Raul. Mr. Dorrell said Lalas would be away for a while, he recalled. He hoped that was true, so he had time to bring that up with his mother later if he needed to. She, at least, would not use that as a reason to pull him out of school.
Feeling a little better, Raul arranged his books and left his room for dinner. Later, before going to bed, he organized the schoolwork he needed for Monday. He didn’t want to fall behind, to lose the progress he had made in such a short time.
As he drifted off to sleep Raul thought about Mr. Dorrell’s suggestion for his final project in that class. Maybe I can talk with him and get some ideas for that, he decided. Perhaps he will let me write about my own culture, what we experience here in North America.
Neil Citrin
Raul looked from the front entrance of Bernard High School to his father, to the busy street near downtown Los Angeles, and back again to his father. The high school seemed so much bigger than Drew Middle School, where he went most of last year, before getting sent to Mexico. He began to shake.
“I don’t want to go, Papá,” he said. “I’m not ready.”
His father, weary from his just-completed graveyard shift, put one hand on Raul’s shoulder.
“This year you will not run around like you did before with Cousin Julio. I will not allow it.”
Raul’s shaking slowed, and then stopped. The two of them walked into the building. Shadows flickered and, as he passed through the doorway that beckoned with a shark’s smile, Raul suppressed a shudder; he could not, however, quell the fluttering in his stomach. Now he was going to be a freshman in high school, in an area far from his home and his friends. Knowing his father would be taking him to school and picking him up calmed him a little, though.
Three years earlier Raul and his father had performed this ritual when he entered Drew Middle School. The memory of that time hovered around him with the freshness of a just completed nightmare. Now, as they waited in line behind two other people at the attendance office of the high school, Raul fought the fluttering in his stomach.
After what seemed an eternity Raul and his father reached the attendance office counter.
“Yes?”
“I need to enroll my son.”
“Do you speak English?” The woman asked Raul’s father.
Raul’s father held the forefinger and thumb of his right hand a quarter of an inch apart. The woman signaled to her colleague, who stood and walked slowly to the counter. Raul’s father repeated his request.
“You’re putting him in school now?” The second woman’s Spanish, though good, was clearly her second language. “It’s a little late in the fall semester.”
Listen to her, Papá, Raul thought.
“We were out of the country for a family emergency,” his father said, with a brief glance at Raul.
The clerk hesitated a moment, and then nodded and stepped away from the desk.
His mother, Raul knew, had to make similar arrangements yesterday for his two baby sisters, Luisa and Elva, and for his slightly younger brother, Eduardo -- all because his father now worked two jobs and his mother worked long hours cleaning some rich gringo woman’s house. The alternative to school, his father had told him, was working in the store his aunt managed.
It upset him that he had to go to school instead of playing with his friends or watching T.V., but Raul would not argue with his father openly about this. He would not risk a repeat of the beatings he got three years ago when he resisted his father’s effort to enroll him at Drew. He would find some other way to show his anger. Something that didn’t involve behaving like his cousin Julio, who was now in jail.
The clerk returned with the imprisoning papers. Fifteen minutes later they were done. Saying goodbye to his father, Raul followed the clerk out of the attendance office to his new cell. They walked in silence down the hallway. Halfway up a pair of stairs a bell shrilled and Raul covered his ears.
Crazy pendejos, he thought. I forgot about that.
As they reached the top of the stairs the ringing stopped. A moment later kids of all sizes -- mostly black and Spanish with a few whites -- poured out of the various rooms. After a few moments more they walked into a room with “207” above the door. Like our apartment, Raul thought. The room was half full already and a few more kids entered after them. One of the boys in the front row stared at him a moment and smiled.
“Mr. Dorrell,” said the clerk, “this is Raul Gonzalez.” He handed the teacher a small packet.
“Another one?” He took the packet and laid it on the desk. “Okay. Thanks.”
Great, Raul thought as the clerk left. The teacher’s annoyed at me already.
“Stand by me a moment, Raul,” Mr. Dorrell said. “Let me check the seats.”
He pulled out a sheet and studied it as a few more students wandered into the room.
“How is your English?” Mr. Dorrell asked, his voice so soft Raul barely heard him.
Raul paused a moment and responded with equal softness.
“Better than my parents.”
“Good. Take the second seat in the front near the window. Once I’ve finished the roll and a few other things we’ll see what to do with you.”
A roll? Raul thought as he took the seat. I thought you didn’t eat in class. Once Mr. Dorrell started calling names, however, he caught the specific meaning of the word. There would be a lot more of that, he suspected.
Raul sat and waited as the teacher finished what he needed to do and introduced him. Raul stood for a moment and then sat back down. A few students chuckled.
“Knock it off,” Mr. Dorrell said. “Open your text, turn to page fifty and read to page sixty.”
As most of the students started reading, Mr. Dorrell handed Raul a few sheets of paper. “Fill them out to the best of your ability, take your time and don’t guess. It will help me in teaching you.”
That startled Raul. He thought teachers used one lesson for everyone. He shrugged. Go with it for now, he decided. There will be less trouble.
Raul filled out the papers as he listened to Mr. Dorrell. At the end of the period he handed the finished assignment to the teacher and put the books Mr. Dorrell wanted him to use for the class into his back pack. Out in the hallway he glanced at the map to locate his next class. As he started walking toward the room, someone spoke to him.
“You new, homie?”
Raul glanced up from the map. The thin kid, the one who had smiled at him in the previous class, wore baggie jeans and a t-shirt, and he had a bandana around his head. His clothing reminded Raul of the way his cousin Julio and his gang-banger friends dressed.
“Yes.”
“I’m Pedro Lalas. If you need any help I’m at the center of the quad during nutrition and lunch.”
“Sure.”
Lalas walked away. Raul headed in the opposite direction, feeling a little uneasy. He didn’t like the look of Lalas, or how the boy latched on to him.
Once at his next room Raul checked in with the teacher, Mrs. Ling, and took his assigned seat. No one else, not even the teachers, spoke more than a few words with him the rest of the day as he went through the check-in routines; that didn’t bother him. The more he stayed under the radar here the better.
The final bell sounded.
Raul stuffed the books given to him from the last class into his backpack and walked to the front of the school. He would need to get a larger back pack, he decided. His father waited by the gate, as promised. Lalas and his friends stood nearby. Raul’s father glanced at them and then led the way to their car.
“My work schedule changed again,” his father said. “You will take the bus home starting next Monday.”
“Yes,” Raul said, not knowing what that meant or how to do it.
“That group of kids near the front?” his father said once they were in the car. “Stay away from them. Gangsters.”
Despite what he felt earlier about Lalas, something about that word thrilled him. Raul nodded. “Yes, Papá.”
Raul did not doubt that his father spoke the truth about those boys. He had seen enough while hanging out with Julio and his friends. Even then, Raul’s father had warned him about them.
“Kids like that give our people a bad name,” his father had said back then. “They do drugs and steal and sit around rather than work.”
Raul, too young then to understand what his father meant, sensed the worry under the sternness, but at first found it amusing to prod his father with gang talk overheard from Julio and his friends. That didn’t last long. His father pulled him out of school and sent him to Mexico to work on the farm with his uncles – just a few months before Julio and two of his friends were arrested and convicted of robbery and drug dealing. His father had wanted to put Raul in one of those private or military schools the white folks used, but couldn’t afford it.
Now I’m back in the United States and still in public school, Raul thought as they got into the car and headed for home. They drove in silence for a little while.
“I hope, his father said at last, “that you learned your lesson from before.”
“Yes, Papá,” he said.
Would you pull me out again? Raul wondered as they reached their apartment complex. You can only do that so long, before I turn sixteen and walk away.
Once at their apartment Raul picked up the phone. His father, with his limited English, left it to Raul to call the bus company for route schedules. As he looked over the information he shook his head. This won’t be a lot of fun, he thought, realizing how long the trips to and from school would take.
With that done, Raul organized his school materials and started working on his assignments.
~ ~ ~
Thursday Raul got the rest of his classes, and by the weekend he felt a little more comfortable about being back at school. He decided to avoid Lalas and his group, less from what his father said than his feeling about the boy and his own need for privacy as he got used to his new environment.
The first two days the following week went well enough, though he did get a bit confused the first day going home and arrived an hour later than he had thought. Since no one was home, that worked out fine.
During lunch on Wednesday Raul sat at his usual spot, a bench near the cafeteria.
“Hey new kid.”
Raul looked up to see Pedro Lalas and a couple of his friends.
“Yeah?”
“You ignoring us?”
“No. Why?”
“You don’t come over like I said.”
“No need. I’m fine.”
“No one’s fine unless Pedro Lalas lets it be so,” the boy said. His friends chuckled.
“God didn’t make you my master,” Raul said, the words out before he could stop them.
“I serve God here,” Lalas said, taking a step closer. The boy’s attitude reminded Raul of a rattlesnake about to strike.
“As do we all,” Raul said with a smile that hid the surge of terror he had felt only a few times before. “I serve Him in my own way.”
At that moment Mr. Dorrell approached the group.
“We talk again soon,” Lalas said with a glance at Mr. Dorrell.
“Talk is good,” Raul said, not wanting to talk with Lalas ever again.
Pedro and his group stepped away.
“Are they bothering you?” Mr. Dorrell asked.
“No sir. We were talking about God.”
“Okay.”
The teacher glanced at Raul, to the retreating Lalas-ites, and back again.
“You probably don’t trust adults much,” he said at last, “but my door is always open.”
Dorrell left. A few moments later the shrill bell rang without causing Raul to jump. He realized he was getting used to that, and wondered whether that was a good or bad thing. Raul stood and headed for his fifth period class, thinking about what Dorrell had said.
No way can I do that. Can’t show that kind of weakness -- running to an adult, a teacher, for help.
Dorrell’s words remained in his head the rest of the school day, nonetheless. At least I only have to deal with Lalas here at school, Raul thought as he stepped up into the first of two buses. He showed the driver his pass, started to walk toward the back, and then stopped for a split second.
Damn, Raul thought as he slid into a seat near the front, next to an old lady with a shopping bag on her lap and another at her feet. I wouldn’t have taken this route if I had known Lalas would be here.
Sweating suddenly, Raul took a couple of deep breaths and then pulled a book from his bag. He flipped the pages, trying not to focus on the subject of the book too much. Raul didn’t want to miss his stop again. The bus stopped and started through a couple of stops, reminding him of an old donkey, and he felt a little better.
“Afraid to join us in the back, homie?”
Raul glanced up to see Lalas and two of his lunch gang standing by his seat. The old woman glanced at them and pulled her bags closer.
“It’s a good spot near the front.”
“But you usually sit in back.”
“Whatever,” Raul said, wondering how Lalas knew. “I’m here.” How, he thought, can I get off this bus without him knowing where I’m going?
“Your cousin Julio sends greetings.”
“Greetings back to him,” Raul said, hoping his surprise that Lalas knew his cousin didn’t show.
“He looks forward to seeing you when he gets out, and I hope to be there when it happens.”
Lalas smiled, and then headed to the back of the bus with his gang, laughing. Raul did not look back at them, pretending to focus on the book in front of him. After two more stops he glanced up at the streets. With two more stops to go, he put the book away and stood. He waited for the bus to pass the next stop and then pulled the chord to let the driver know he wanted the stop after that. Raul did not see Lalas in the back as he stepped to the middle door of the bus. Lalas and his crew weren’t going to follow him home. This time, at least.
Raul got off the first bus. Waiting ten minutes for the second one, he never stopped glancing around. He continued checking even as he got off the latter bus, doing his best to act casual about it.
No followers, he thought, as he arrived home a bit before four. As he stepped inside the apartment, Aunt Julia, his father’s sister, met him with a look he’d last seen when the police arrested her son, Cousin Julio. Raul swallowed hard.
“The police took your father on his way back from work,” she said. “We think they turned him over to La Migra.”
“Why? He’s a citizen.”
“I’m not sure, but I found his wallet on the counter.”
She said it as if that answered everything, and her look told him to ask no more questions.
Not that he needed to. Without his driver’s license or some of other form of identification, how could Papá prove he belonged here?
“Will he be back in time to take me to school tomorrow?”
Aunt Julia pursed her lips.
“Perhaps you will not be going to school any longer.”
Recently that would have made him happy. It certainly would have solved the problem with Lalas, because Raul knew his aunt wouldn’t let him run around. She would persuade his mother that he needed to work at the store. But he had worked hard enough on the farm in Mexico, he thought, and didn’t want to work that hard for someone else.
“The school won’t allow it,” Raul said, not knowing if that was really true. “They check up on people who don’t show up for school.”
Raul decided not to tell her about Lalas.
“We did it the last time,” she said with a shrug.
“High school is different, and you took me out of the country. I don’t want to leave school now.”
His aunt looked surprised, though Raul wasn’t sure if her look was due to his continued defiance of her, or his wanting to stay where he hadn’t wanted to go before.
“If we cannot get your father back soon,” she said, her tone a little softer, “we all may have to leave.”
“You know how hard it is to cross the border, even if we’re legal.”
“Go up to your room and finish your homework,” his aunt said with a sigh.
A small victory, Raul thought as he closed the door to his room behind him. Possibly a temporary victory, but a victory all the same.
Raul got up extra early the next morning and made it to school with half an hour to spare. He concentrated on his work, and was grateful that Lalas and his crew ignored him, but he worried about his father. When he arrived home his aunt and mother had no further news.
Over the next few days Raul settled into a routine. He got to school, went to class and then returned home. It helped that Lalas and company stayed away, and the last two days Raul didn’t notice them at all. At night the family discussed the latest efforts to locate his father; fearful that they, too, would be disappeared, neither his mother nor his aunt wanted to go to the police. Instead, they talked to friends of friends of friends in hopes of learning what happened. His mother even asked her brother, who ran the farm where Raul had worked, to check with his contacts in Tijuana. So far they had turned up nothing, and Raul feared the worst.
Mr. Dorrell approached him Friday at the end of his class that morning.
“You’re doing a great job picking things up, Raul,” he said. “Next year you might get into regular classes instead of our ESL section.”
Raul nodded but said nothing.
“Don’t worry about Pedro Lalas and his friends. They were picked up by police and won’t be coming back any time soon.”
One problem of many solved, Raul knew, and possibly only a temporary solution. There was no way to know how long Lalas would be away, or if he had the connections to get out of wherever the police had him. Raul certainly had no reason to tell Mr. Dorrell about Lalas’s connection to his cousin, or the trouble at home. The police were involved in that, too, though his father was guilty of nothing.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t have been a problem,” Raul said at last.
Mr. Dorrell glanced at the clock, scribbled on a sheet of paper and handed it to Raul.
“For Mrs. Ling, should you be late.” He paused a moment. “I’d like you to think about using the story writing option for your final project here. You have a good flair for storytelling.”
“Thanks.”
Raul put the piece of paper in his shirt and left the room. He didn’t know if he would see his father again, but the words of Mr. Dorrell made him smile. Someone outside his family, not a part of his community, saw value in him and offered encouragement. He decided that would have to be enough for now.
When he returned home Raul found his sisters and brother, along with his mother, in the apartment. Everyone looked somber, but Raul didn’t see any tears. His mother, short and stocky, with a calm demeanor that masked her occasional bursts of temper, turned to him.
“Two pieces of news,” she said. “First, we found your father in a Tijuana hospital. Mr. Sullivan helped.”
Sullivan? The gringo family she worked for, he realized. She hadn’t told him she had talked with them about his father’s situation.
“Is he okay?”
“We are not sure. I will drive down first thing in the morning with his wallet and some extra clothes. You will join me.”
“How long will we be gone?”
“I do not know.”
Worry over the possibility of missing school tempered Raul’s joy at finding his father.
“The other thing is that your cousin, Julio, has been released for good behavior.”
“Good,” Raul said, not sure if it was good or if it was something he wanted right now. “Will he be staying here?”
“Aunt Julia went to pick him up and bring him back to her place. He will stay there for the time being.”
“What about Eduardo, Luisa and Elva?”
“Cousin Claudia will stay here until we get back.”
“Put your school things away,” his mother said. “We will eat and go to bed early.”
Raul nodded and walked up the stairs to his bedroom. The possibility, once Julio came home, of seeing Pedro Lalas here -- and how that would affect his family -- worried Raul. Mr. Dorrell said Lalas would be away for a while, he recalled. He hoped that was true, so he had time to bring that up with his mother later if he needed to. She, at least, would not use that as a reason to pull him out of school.
Feeling a little better, Raul arranged his books and left his room for dinner. Later, before going to bed, he organized the schoolwork he needed for Monday. He didn’t want to fall behind, to lose the progress he had made in such a short time.
As he drifted off to sleep Raul thought about Mr. Dorrell’s suggestion for his final project in that class. Maybe I can talk with him and get some ideas for that, he decided. Perhaps he will let me write about my own culture, what we experience here in North America.
