Flight Season: A Novel Read online

  My mom is in love with him. I think maybe she’s in love with all of them. And, really, what’s not to love? Handsome men bringing succulent meats to your side, gently slicing the tastiest morsels just for you, and doing it all with impeccable manners.

  That’s a formula for success.

  And so, even though we are gently slipping into a meat-induced comatose state, I can’t bring myself to flip that little card to red.

  Finally, while I’m holding my gut and groaning gently, Mom leans forward and flips the card for me.

  Sabrina arrives by my side almost immediately and offers to remove my plate.

  “Dessert?” she asks. “Coffee?”

  I’m so tempted to order one of those Brazilian coffees, but it’s not included in the price of the meal, so I shake my head.

  “Shall we just take a look at the dessert menu?” Mom asks.

  “Mom,” I say under my breath, hoping she will remember our deal.

  She turns to Sabrina. “We’re so full,” she says.

  “Of course,” Sabrina says. “It happens.”

  I watch her walk through the bar area, which by this time of night is filled with gregarious tourists. I look away, feeling nauseous again. I decide instead to focus on the live music, which started around the same time I made my second trip to the salad bar, on a small stage that’s tucked into the corner of the courtyard. The music is lovely and soothing—a guitarist plays while a percussionist gently beats out a soft rhythm on a range of strange handheld instruments, and a woman begins singing in a deep voice.

  “Bossa nova,” my mom says, letting her eyes fall gently shut and leaning back in her chair. “Oh, how I love this place.”

  Sabrina arrives at our table with a plateful of bite-sized sweets and two Brazilian coffees. “On the house,” she says, smiling. She places a coffee in front of me. “This one’s for you,” she tells me. “Extra sugar.”

  And just like that I feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, and I have to press my lips together and let my eyelids flutter shut. Mom and Sabrina are chatting about the different desserts she brought to us, but I can’t pay attention because I’m thinking about how strange it is—how this place that I so dreaded, that I was so desperate to avoid—how tonight, the one place that I thought I’d never be able to return has become, for me, something entirely different.

  I pull in a deep breath, savoring the damp, briny air. I lean back in my chair and sip my perfectly sweetened Brazilian coffee. And I relax.

  Oh my God, I relax.

  I can’t remember the last time I felt this content. And I know that my mom feels the same way. We sit together at the table, soaking in the atmosphere, in absolutely no rush to go anywhere. Sabrina doesn’t even offer to bring us the check, because I think she understands that we have nowhere else to be, except for here.

  Some of the tables around us empty, and the bar fills. The music continues, but the band is playing more lively songs now. Mom tells me the music has shifted to samba, but I wouldn’t know.

  And then the music stops and the handsome host, who I guess is TJ’s uncle, steps onto the stage and takes the microphone.

  “My dear friends…,” he begins, in a booming voice. “The clock has struck midnight.”

  Two of the churrasqueiros step onto the stage, and they start to unfold a piece of cloth.

  “Which means that we have arrived on this most special of days,” TJ’s uncle continues.

  I lean forward in my seat, because I’m realizing that they are stretching a huge American flag across the stage.

  “Independence Day, for this great country that my family now calls home. So please stand and join me in singing our national anthem.”

  Is this guy for real? My mom looks at me and shrugs, and we both stand. The entire staff comes out onto the patio, and the woman who was just singing samba leads us in a rousing rendition of the national anthem. I glance back into the bar to see several drunk patrons who have formed a long swaying line of people, holding on to one another’s shoulders.

  But the staff—they all look dead serious, and they’re all holding their right hands over their hearts.

  When the song ends, the group in the bar claps and cheers and whoops. TJ’s uncle gestures for them to lower their voices, and then he continues with his patriotic monologue.

  “My family came here from Brazil more than twenty years ago. For most of the Carvalho clan, this is our adopted country, but it is ours!”

  The drunks in the bar clap and cheer and whoop some more.

  “This day is also a very special day for our family, because it is the birthday of the very first Carvalho to be born on American soil.” He gestures toward the wait staff. “So please join my family in singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to my nephew Thomas Jefferson Carvalho!”

  The entire restaurant launches into “Happy Birthday”—not the Portuguese version that I have heard the churrasqueiros gather around tables to sing several times throughout the night, but the good, old-fashioned American version. I turn to see the other churrasqueiros pushing TJ forward toward the stage.

  TJ. Thomas Jefferson. Somehow I find that both completely cheesy and utterly adorable.

  The other waiters push TJ onto the stage, smiling and laughing as the song continues. An older woman wearing an apron brings flan to him, with tons of candles stuck into the top. The singing stops and she holds the flan in front of his face.

  He stands still in front of the row of candles, and he looks across the courtyard, directly at me. He smiles. A real smile. I can’t help smiling back.

  I’m still sitting perfectly still, feeling my heart beat hard in my chest, still seeing TJ’s smile for me, lit up by birthday candles, wondering what I did to finally earn it.

  Soon Sabrina is back at our table, laughing about how her dad is such a sap, and how poor TJ has to endure that spectacle every year. And my mom is telling her how sweet it all is, and how wonderful it is that the Carvalho family feels such warmth toward this country. I want to join in on the conversation, but I’m still sort of floating, trying to ignore my rational self, which says that the smile was not for me, that TJ probably couldn’t even see me back here in this dark corner.

  But then TJ and his cousin Carlitos are standing at our table too. Carlitos has Rita the macaw perched on his shoulder.

  “Did you meet Rita?” TJ asks. “I mean, uh, I know how into birds you are.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “We met earlier. She’s amazing.”

  “Amazing. Amazing. Amazing,” Rita mimics.

  “Wanna hold her?” Carlitos asks.

  “Sure!” I say. I reach out my arm and Rita hops on as if we’re old friends.

  “Hello again, pretty girl,” I coo.

  “Hello! Hello!” she replies.

  “Hey,” I say, turning to look at TJ. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks.” He shrugs and looks at the ground, suddenly shy.

  TJ. Shy. What is happening?

  “We’re going out to celebrate later,” Sabrina says. “Wanna join?”

  “Me?” I ask, sounding like a total idiot, and to make things worse, I realize that I’m actually pointing at myself—directly at my chest.

  TJ looks up—first at my chest, for a split second, and then at my face.

  “Yeah, you,” Carlitos says. “It’ll be fun.”

  I hand Rita back to Carlitos while imagining a wild party—drunk people taking shots off each other’s belly buttons, upside-down keg stands. In other words, I’m imagining exactly the kind of environment that I want—no, need—to avoid.

  “You should go!” my mom urges, nudging me. “I haven’t had a drop to drink, so I’ll drive myself home. You can take a cab later.”

  A cab requires money. That’s what I want to say to my mom, but I resist.

  “Thanks so much for the invitation,” I say, looking at Sabrina and Carlitos, and at the incredible Rita, looking gorgeous on his shoulder. “But this is about as much party as I can take for o
ne night.” I gesture toward the bar, which is getting more boisterous by the minute. “I’m not really up for—”

  “You think we’re gonna stay here?” Sabrina says. “Not a chance. We’re going out to Guana Reserve—full-moon kayaking.”

  “Have you all ever been out there?” Carlitos asks. He’s looking at my mom.

  She shakes her head.

  “It’s a nature preserve—an estuary. It’s incredible,” he says.

  “And you don’t need to worry, Mrs. Flannigan. It’s not like we will be partying or anything,” Sabrina says. “I mean, we’re not really into all of that.” Sabrina smiles and nudges TJ.

  “We’re the clean-living Carvalho clan,” Carlitos says. “All we need for a good time is some coconut water and a full moon.”

  “Sounds wonderful!” my mom exclaims.

  “We can give her a ride home,” TJ blurts out, and then he bites down hard on his lip and looks away from us both.

  Maybe he’s just trying not to be rude. I don’t know. All I know is that I want another chance to see that smile tonight—the real one.

  “Okay,” I say. “Sounds fun.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ÁNGEL

  OH, I’M SORRY. Did I wake you?

  I don’t sleep much these days. The nighttime is the worst. It’s so quiet in here. You wouldn’t think a hospital could be quiet, would you? Yeah, the machines are still beeping and sighing, but still, it’s quiet.

  Too quiet. Too calm.

  And it must be a full moon, because there’s lots of light coming in through the slats in the window blinds. If I could get up, I’d go over there and twist that plastic stick to make the blinds close, but I can’t get up. And I don’t want to call Bertrand.

  He’ll come in to close them, but then he’ll leave without saying anything. And I’ll feel even more lonely.

  The night nurses tiptoe around, trying really hard not to wake us up, but I’m not asleep. It seems like I’m never asleep anymore. I need somebody to talk to. I need some way to get out of my head, because it feels like it’s about to explode.

  I guess I’m gonna have to talk to you people.

  Sometimes, at night, when I can’t sleep because I’m too busy pushing away the thoughts, or I’m listening to my heart and stressing about why it’s beating so loud or so fast or not loud enough or not fast enough—sometimes I look up at the ceiling tiles and I imagine that I’m back at that place in Texas. It had ceiling tiles just like this. Before I got there, I had never seen a ceiling pieced together with big white rectangles. Most of the ceilings back where I’m from are made of thatch—a bunch of leaves woven together. And I guess, technically, they’re roofs. Because they’re the only thing separating a kid who’s trying to sleep from the wide-open sky.

  So when I got to that shelter in Texas, that ceiling looked so solid to me.

  It only took me three weeks to get to the border. I had to sneak into Mexico from Guatemala, and then I had to walk and catch rides all the way through Mexico. It wasn’t that bad, but I slept outside the whole time, on the ground, with a bunch of strangers who were also trying to get to the U.S.

  When I got to the border, I was really scared, but I did what everyone I met along the way told me I should do. I walked past all the cars lined up to get into the Estados Unidos. And I went to the man sitting at that little window, and I told him this:

  I am fifteen. I am from Guatemala. I am an orphan.

  He called another man over to the little booth, and that man took me to a room where a woman asked me questions. She didn’t speak Mam, but she called somebody on a telephone, and that person did. I took the phone, my hand shaking, and I held it to my ear.

  “Je’k, a nbiye’ Leslie. Ti tb’iya?”

  She told me her name was Leslie, which I had to ask her to repeat a bunch of times. I’d never heard the name Leslie before. Once I got her name, I told her mine.

  She asked a lot of questions, and I answered them. Then another man came, and he put me into a police car.

  When that happened, I got really scared. Because when I was in Mexico, I met people who said they sometimes take you to jail. But he didn’t take me to any jail. He took me to a nice complex of sturdy buildings made out of brick. It had flowers planted by the front door and trees in the garden and a pretty courtyard. A woman named Mrs. Richmond, who I later learned was the director of the children’s home, took me to a room with two beds, and she said one of them was mine. Then she gave me some soap and some clean clothes, and she told me to take a shower.

  So here’s the thing: where I’m from, we don’t have showers. When we want to get clean, we take a bucket of (cold) water and estropaj, which is a plant that’s kind of like a sponge. We put some soap, called q’e’q, on the spongy thing, and then we scrub down and freeze our asses off.

  You have no idea how incredible that first hot shower felt. I love showers, and hot-water heaters. Hot-water heaters are the absolute best.

  And now I’m gonna be real with you, because it’s the middle of the night, and what do I have to lose?

  Lying in that bed in Texas, all clean and smelling like soap, covered with a cotton sheet (I’d never seen one of those before) and a soft brown blanket and another blanket that had bright red stripes on it, my head resting on not one but two fluffy pillows (I love pillows!), and looking up at that ceiling, I felt safe. For the first time in weeks—okay, maybe years or maybe for the first time in my entire stupid life—I felt like it was okay to sleep, because nobody would mess with me there.

  Oh, how I slept. For sixty-three nights I slept. I woke up bright-eyed every morning, and I almost skipped to the kitchen for those eggs and bacon.

  Eggs and bacon and toasted bread with as much butter as we wanted.

  Every. Single. Morning.

  Or, if we weren’t in the mood for eggs and bacon, they gave us cereal with milk from a big silver machine. All I had to do was put my cup against a lever under that machine and push, and the milk came flowing out. It never stopped. Not ever.

  I had tasted milk before, but I mostly drank q’o’tj, which is like a mash of corn, and also is way less creamy and delicious than milk.

  The kids from the cities—from San Pedro Sula and San Salvador, from Tegucigalpa and la Ciudad de Guatemala—they just filled their cups with milk and went to the table, like it was nothing. That’s how I knew which ones of those kids came from the aldea, like me.

  Because, I’m telling you, we stood there like idiots, staring at that silver milk machine. And I know what they were all thinking, because I was thinking the same thing.

  Do you know how long it takes to coax a cup of milk from a hungry cow? Or how many scrawny chickens you’ve got to have to gather a dozen eggs for breakfast? And bacon—I’d never even seen it until I got to Texas. Because: Who has a pig? And if you do have a pig, you’re not gonna kill it so you can have a few strips of bacon on a Tuesday morning, are you? Nope. At least, I don’t think you are, but I’ve never had a pig, so I wouldn’t really know for sure.

  I spent two near-perfect months in that place, where the milk came from silver machines, and where every night I slept like a baby under cotton sheets and a pile of blankets, my head on a couple of soft pillows. And five days a week, after that miracle of a breakfast, I went across the grassy courtyard with the other kids, and we sat at desks, in classrooms with whiteboards and markers in four colors. And a nice woman named Mrs. Jiménez, who spoke Spanish but with a funny accent, taught me English and math and other stuff too—like what to do with deodorant and how to brush my teeth with toothpaste.

  You probably think that’s bad, that Mrs. Jiménez taught me about toothpaste. You probably think maybe I should feel offended, like that means she thought I was uneducated or something. But you’re wrong. Because I love toothpaste. I’m obsessed with toothpaste. I love the way it makes my mouth tingle and how smooth my teeth feel when I run my tongue across them. And deodorant’s pretty cool too. And, it might seem weird to y
ou, but I needed for Mrs. Jiménez to explain them to me, because I didn’t use them before. But now I do. Twice a day, every day.

  And on the weekends, we did a few chores, but they were easy—sweeping the kitchen or pulling weeds from the grassy courtyard. And then we got to hang out. We went into the living room and watched movies, or we kicked a ball around the courtyard.

  There was this bulletin board down the hall from my bedroom. I learned those words when I got to the shelter: bulletin board. Mrs. Richmond would cover it every week with a new brightly colored paper, and she decorated it with these strips of cardboard—sometimes curvy, sometimes straight. And if there was a holiday, like Easter or something, she put little decorations on that bulletin board, brightly painted eggs and rabbits with big ears and stuff. And every week she put information up there about special “activities” and sometimes “outings.”

  I’m telling you, we all ate that stuff up. We loved it. Even the toughest kids from San Pedro Sula—the murder capital of the world—even those kids were all about hunting around the place for plastic eggs filled with candy, or playing that game called Pictionary. We played games after dinner—a big dinner, every night at the same time, always with meat and a vegetable. It was like we were living in some alternate universe, some fantasy life where we didn’t have to eat the same steamed corn mash every night, where we got to pretend that we hadn’t watched our father and our brother get shot in the chest, point-blank. We hadn’t climbed over the still-bleeding bodies of our parents to run away. We got to forget about all that stuff. Except when we went into that one room, with Mrs. Ramirez.

  She made us sit down on a yellow sofa and talk about it all. When I went in there, she even had a nice gringa named Julie with her. Julie spoke Mam. I still don’t really get why. She said she lived in Huehuetenango for a couple of years. She worked for something called the Peace Corps. That’s what she told me. I don’t know what the Peace Corps is, but I liked Julie, and her Mam wasn’t bad. She’s still the only gringa I’ve ever met who knows how to speak Mam. And yeah, in there, Mrs. Ramirez made me talk about what happened. But it was all like a dream, like I was telling her about a nightmare I once had a long time ago, and then I woke up with my head on those fluffy pillows.