Star in the Forest Page 2

  There’s something I didn’t tell you about Papá being deportado. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to think he’s a good person. Because he is. But if I told you right away that the reason the police pulled him over was because he was speeding, then you might think he’s bad.

  Even Mamá thinks he’s bad. Not all the time, but sometimes. He always promised Mamá he wouldn’t drive fast because if he got caught, he’d be deportado. But he went fishing in the mountains and caught the biggest trout in the Poudre River. Maybe even in any river. And on the way home, he was so happy he was singing along with the ranchera music on the radio. He was so happy he didn’t notice the needle going up past thirty-five all the way to fifty. Next thing he knew there were flashing red and blue lights in his rearview. And all his happiness disappeared like that.

  So that’s why Mamá is so mad she won’t take his phone calls from the little phone booth store in Xono, Mexico. That’s why she won’t send him two thousand dollars to pay for the coyote to bring him back across.

  Emma and Morgan and Olivia wouldn’t understand. They would think, Oh my god, your dad is an illegal criminal speeder construction worker immigrant!

  But that’s not who he is.

  He is a man who whispers to me in star language, in the language of an ancient civilization that built pyramids for the sun and the moon and tracked the patterns of stars.

  Papá’s favorite thing in the world is mushroom picking. I don’t remember too much from Xono, but I remember when he took me mushroom hunting. It smelled like rain and mud, and the ground squished beneath our feet, and it was just me and him because Dalia didn’t like walking very far.

  The last time we went mushroom hunting together, I was six. We were deep in the forest, where hardly any people ever go, and he said, “Zitlally, why don’t you look behind that rock there?” I did, and there was a sunset-colored mushroom that I dropped in my bag. I collected little sticks and he found big logs and we built a fire. We drank from a thermos of tea and roasted mushrooms on sticks over the fire. And then, after they cooled, I felt like I was eating little magical pieces of forest.

  Once our bellies were full and happy, he said, “Zitlally, your mamá and I are going to el Norte.”

  I leaped into his lap, held his arm fiercely. “I’m coming, too,” I said. Lots of kids in Xono lived with their grandparents or aunts or uncles because their parents were working in el Norte. My worst nightmare was that Dalia and I would become two of those kids.

  He looked at me for a while and said, “Can you walk for a long, long time, Zitlally?”

  “Yes!”

  “Can you walk through a desert that is hotter than you can imagine in the day?”

  “Yes!”

  “And colder than you can imagine at night?”

  “Yes!”

  “And not complain?”

  “Yes!”

  “Can you walk at night and not be scared?”

  I paused and then said, “I can try.”

  “Can you be quieter than a mouse and if I say suelo can you drop to the ground and shut your eyes tight so la migra can’t see the light shining off them?”

  “Yes, Papá. I’ll do anything! Please take me with you!”

  And he did.

  Now my memories of Xono are broken pieces, like a plate that you dropped and you only saved a few shards and lost the rest. The best pieces, the ones I look at again and again, are the days we went mushroom hunting.

  Now that Papá was back in Xono, he would get to go mushroom hunting. But that wouldn’t happen till summer. He said mushroom hunting was only good during the rainy season. I wondered what he was doing instead. There were hardly any jobs there except teaching elementary school, which he couldn’t do because he never finished elementary school. As a kid, he had to work in cornfields all day. Maybe he was working in the cornfields now. That was one of the only other jobs in Xono.

  Mamá said he was probably sitting in the shade of a tree, fishing, and no way was she going to send her hard-earned money to him. I hoped summer would hurry up and come so he could pick the sunset-colored mushrooms and sell them at the market and make enough money to come home.

  Every day the next week, I ran to the car part forest to see Star. Along the path, the daffodils were all the way opened up, starbursts of bright yellow petals around light yellow ones. Stars everywhere. A good sign. Maybe Papá is coming home soon.

  Now Star wagged not just his tail but his whole butt when he saw me. Sometimes I brought him some slices of ham and bread, or tortillas spread with refried beans, or whatever I found in the fridge.

  One day I brought him a chicken drumstick. That was the day I first touched him.

  He finished the drumstick, even the bones, and then drank fresh water from a bowl I’d brought him. He looked so happy and kept pulling on his chain to come near me, sticking out his pink tongue like he wanted to lick me more than anything.

  I took a deep breath and stretched out my hand. He licked and licked and licked. At first he probably wanted to lick off every last trace of chicken grease. But then he just kept on licking, like all the love he had for me was stored up in those licks. I let him lick my hand and then moved closer and he licked up to my elbow.

  I laughed. I laughed and it was a strange sound in the forest of car scraps.

  The next day, I stuck out my hand and let it rest on the fur on his back. I moved my hand around in his fur. He took a deep breath and put his head on his paws and sighed like he was in heaven.

  The day after that, I hugged him. First I leaned against him. Then I put my face in his fur. It didn’t matter that he was dirty. He had the most perfect dog smell. And for some reason, the tears came, even though they’d been hiding for a while. They came and he licked them from my face and I laughed.

  I wanted to untie him, let him run free. I started to unhook the chain, then I stopped. What if he ran away and didn’t come back? What if I got in trouble? What if his owner called the cops and they came to our trailer and asked for our papers?

  I took my hand off Star’s chain and scratched his ears. He smiled and leaned into my hand. What was Star doing in the forest anyway? Was someone in Forest View Mobile Home Park his owner? Then why wouldn’t they keep Star on their property? Maybe they weren’t allowed to have dogs? But if they wanted one so badly, wouldn’t they take better care of him? Or maybe this was their property? Maybe I was a trespasser?

  On Sunday afternoon, I was hugging Star when I heard a noise. Footsteps. Someone was coming down the path.

  I froze.

  Star’s owner! I thought. Then I thought, Or one of the gang guys! But they usually stayed in the broken-glass playground. Unless, this time, they saw me come here and followed me.

  I wondered if Star could protect me. He was probably strong now from all the cake and ham and chicken I gave him. He would defend me.

  PART TWO

  Crystal

  Through the metal scraps, a figure appeared. A girl. A scrappy, skinny girl with dirty-blond hair flying around her face.

  Crystal.

  “Hey, Zitlally,” she said.

  I stared. It felt like she’d snuck up on me in my own room, like she was trespassing on my territory.

  “I know you never talk anymore,” she said. “But that’s okay because I can talk enough for both of us. Whose dog is that?”

  I shrugged.

  “It needs a bath pretty bad.”

  “He.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a he. See?”

  “Oh, right.” And she went up to him and scratched him behind the ears. Just like that.

  Star half closed his eyes like he was in ecstasy. I was a little jealous.

  “Hey, doggers,” she said. “What’s your name? Diggety? Doggety?”

  “He’s Star,” I said. I kind of wished she would leave because what if Star liked her better? And worse, what if the tears started coming again? I kept my arms around Star.

  Crystal kept
scratching his neck. “Star’s cool. But isn’t it kind of a girl’s name? Isn’t that what your name means?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Remember? Fourth-grade name project last year? We made those posters?”

  “Oh, right.”

  She put her finger against her lips, thinking. “I bet in humans, Star’s a girl’s name, but in dogs, it’s a boy’s name.”

  I shrugged.

  She kept petting Star and talking. “I saw you come down here and I wondered what you were up to. My mom’s boyfriend’s out of work now and he’s always in a crabby mood. He used to be a dictator of some island way out in the middle of nowhere. Out past Hawaii. He was so evil they overthrew him and excommunicated him. And he has so many enemies that are always trying to assassinate him that he had to go into hiding in this Forest View craphole.”

  She talked and talked and sometimes a bee buzzed between us and a bird flew around here and there. The air was honey sweet and filled with spring and I didn’t even need a sweater. I was warm enough hugging Star. Little by little, I stopped worrying Star would like her better. After all, who saved him from starvation?

  Anyway, a star belongs with a star.

  Crystal and I walked back together. Emma was wrong. Crystal didn’t have chronic halitosis. Her breath smelled like Coke and Fritos, in a good way. She might shop at garage sales, though, judging by her outfit—jeans that were too short and too blue and had a flower patch on the knee (not the cool kind that came with the pants, but the kind that someone sewed over a hole). Her sweater had sparkly silver threads woven through, which made it look like sunshine on tiny waves of a river. Up close, though, you could see how it was old and nubby, and worn at the elbows, and stained with something yellow near the neckline.

  In front of our trailers, you could hear the dictator boyfriend yelling. The TV was blaring Animal Planet, a show about penguins—you could hear it all the way outside between his cussing. I said goodbye to Crystal and went inside my trailer. Even from inside, with the door closed, you could still hear the dictator yelling. It made me dig my fingernails into my palms.

  The drywaller guys had come home early from work since it was Sunday. They were camped out on the sofa, all covered in white dust, as though someone had dumped powdered sugar over them. They didn’t smell like donuts, though. They smelled like sweaty socks and beer. They ignored me as I got a snack in the kitchen and went into the bedroom to turn on Animal Planet. Penguins were waddling and the announcer was saying that Antarctica was the harshest place to live on earth.

  And I thought, I’m not so sure about that. Compared to Crystal’s trailer, Antarctica looked pretty peaceful, all still and dazzling white, like fresh icing on a tres leches cake.

  I had to start doing a good job on my homework because Mr. Martin had called Mamá. I don’t know exactly what he told her, but his Spanish was good, so I knew she understood. Afterward she said in a cold Antarctic voice, “Zitlally, if your grades don’t improve and if you don’t start talking more at school I’m sending you back to Mexico with your father.”

  Part of me thought of Star in the forest and how sad he would be if I left. And how I would miss Dalia and Reina even though I didn’t like them too much.

  But part of me thought, Good! Then Papá and I can go mushroom hunting together and he can star whisper.

  Then Mamá said, “And you’d have to stop going to school in three years because there’s no high school in our pueblo. You’d have to be a maid and wash clothes by hand for two dollars a day.”

  I decided to do better in school.

  On Monday, I forced myself to talk more. I raised my hand and answered questions and when Mr. Martin was around I looked for Crystal and let her start talking to me so it looked like I had friends so he wouldn’t call Mamá back.

  Crystal was there, scratching Star’s ears, when I got to the forest. She started talking and talking about how her dad was on an Antarctic expedition studying penguins and there was a giant ice storm and their lines of communication broke and she suspected he was floating on a piece of a glacier in the middle of the sea. I knew she ripped it off Animal Planet, but it was a good story, so I listened and said, “Wow.”

  When Star saw me, he wiggled out of her grasp and pulled on his chain toward me. I ran to him and he licked me all up and down my arms. I gave him a big chunk of cheese and hugged him. Now I didn’t feel jealous at all, just warm inside because it was obvious he liked me better.

  He liked me so much he probably would have kept licking me if I’d unhooked his chain. But even thinking about him running away and forgetting about me and never coming back made me want to cry. No. He had to stay on the chain. For his own good.

  “I’m glad we’re best friends,” Crystal said.

  “Best friends?”

  “I mean, coming here with you and talking with you at school and everything. The other girls are really stuck-up, you know? Like those girls you used to hang with—Morgan and Emma and all. They’re boring, you know?” She pretended to yawn.

  Then she said, “I used to think they just liked you ’cause you’re pretty.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  But she kept talking. “Now I know it’s ’cause you’re nice. And you listen good.” She smiled, and said again, “Yep, I sure am glad we’re best friends.” Like if she said it enough it might become true.

  It was a little nice that she was happy being my best friend, even though she wasn’t, really. She pretended she was, though. It was another one of her lies. I decided to just go along with it.

  One day, after a week of coming to the forest with me, Crystal rubbed Star’s belly and sighed, “Your dog is so great. I wish I had a dog like him.”

  Your dog. That’s what she said. Your dog. And it’s true, Star was my dog, even though I had no idea how he got there, under the rusty truck hood. There was someone else out there, someone like an evil dictator, who thought Star was his dog. Who had a different name for Star, a wrong name.

  “Let’s take Star off the chain,” Crystal said.

  My insides twisted up. “What if he runs away?”

  “He won’t.”

  “What if we get in trouble?”

  “Who cares?”

  I didn’t feel brave enough. “I don’t feel like it now,” I said. “Another day, maybe.”

  Crystal didn’t argue with me because Star was mine.

  At dinnertime, Crystal said, “See ya, Zit!” and I didn’t mind. I just pouted out my lips like a beautiful model hiding a tragic secret and said, “Bye.”

  On Saturday, I got to the forest and Crystal wasn’t there.

  I hugged Star and fed him and he gave me kisses all over my face. I whispered to him in star language and he liked it but he kept looking around, looking for Crystal.

  I felt myself looking around, too. The air felt empty, like some of the springtime had been sucked out of it. I think Star noticed it, too.

  Crystal was not at the bus stop or in school on Monday. I wondered if she was sick. Their beat-up, junk-filled car wasn’t parked in front of their trailer.

  That afternoon, Star and I hung out alone again.

  That night, no lights or Animal Planet sounds came from Crystal’s windows. There was a terrible storm, the kind with thunder that makes you jump right out of bed. I stayed awake, long after Mamá and Dalia and Reina were asleep, all their raspy breaths overlapping each other.

  I thought about Star in the storm and I hoped he was curled up under the rusty hood and wasn’t too scared and lonely.

  I wondered where Crystal had gone and if she’d come back and if there was a storm where she was.

  I wondered if there was a storm in Xono, too. Rainy season would start in June, around when school ended. I remembered the storms in rainy season. I remembered being in the kitchen, which was a bamboo shack with slits of light coming through, and woodsmoke filling the space, and the room flashing with lightning, and Papá setting me on his lap a
nd wrapping himself around me so I wouldn’t feel scared.

  Papá was good at making me not scared.

  After the dog bit me in Xono when I was five, two things happened. I got scared of the dark. And I started waking up in the middle of the night, having to pee really bad.

  That was a big problem because to get to our outhouse, you had to walk through a creepy patch of woods. Dalia went with me at first and complained the whole time. “Zitlally! It takes a hundred years for your pee to come out.”

  That was another problem. I was so scared in that outhouse, I couldn’t pee. I sat there and held the flashlight and shivered at the giant bug shadows. No pee came out. Dalia yelled at me from outside. “Come on, Zitlally! I’m freezing!” She threw back the curtain and glared. “I thought you had to pee!”

  After Dalia wouldn’t take me anymore, Papá did. With his eyes half open, he picked up the flashlight and held my hand and creaked, “Let’s go, m’hija.”

  At the edge of the patch of woods, I stopped and listened to the howls and moans of hidden creatures. I squeezed his hand. “What if there’s a mean dog in there?”

  Instead of rolling his eyes and pushing me and snapping “Go!” like Dalia did, he bent down and picked up a stick. It was as long as my arm, with some pointy nubs. “If a mean dog comes, m’hija, then hold up this magic stick. He’ll run away with his tail between his legs.”

  I gripped the stick tight. Just holding it made the howls and moans disappear. And with the howls and moans gone, I could hear the cricket chirps, and a softer sound between them. Stars whispering. Now that I didn’t have to look for mean dog shadows in the woods, I could watch the moon shadows stretching in front of me and Papá. Big, tall, strong shadows.

  Inside the outhouse, I sat on the wooden seat, holding my magic stick. Outside the curtain, Papá was whistling a low, starry tune just loud enough that I knew he was there. The pee flowed right out.