Indivisible Read online

  Pa picks up his fork again and keeps eating. Ma, Sophie, and I do the same. We all try to pretend that everything is normal, that there is nothing to worry about, but the silence from earlier comes back, and now it’s even heavier than it was before we had this conversation.

  2

  THE NEXT DAY STARTS LIKE EVERY OTHER day.

  I wake up to the sound of my third or fourth alarm. I put on the shirt and pants I picked out last night, eat a bowl of dry cereal next to Sophie and Ma—Pa is already at the bodega—and leave home a little too late. I run across Fourteenth Street toward the nearest subway station, jump on the L train, and then transfer to the packed uptown 1 train. When I get off the subway at Columbus Circle, I rush through the crowds, looking at my phone every few minutes to check the time. Now that spring is here and the air is getting warmer, tourists have flooded the city like they do every year, which adds time to my commute. I make it through the school doors just before nine, sprint up the stairs all the way to the fourth floor, and walk into the classroom right on time for first period.

  This is what school feels like most days—it’s just a blur of running up endless flights of stairs, bumping shoulders with people as I rush through the hallways, a bit of class here and there, and then running up and down the stairs some more.

  My locker is on the ground floor, which means I have to run back down after class is over to grab my books before second period. It is there, staring into the dark interior of my locker, that I finally have a second to breathe. Today has felt normal so far—no different than any other Thursday—but then a sinking feeling invades my stomach, reminding me that something is wrong.

  I think about Pa. What if those men come back to the bodega while he’s there? What will they do to him?

  “Heya,” a voice says from behind the open door of my locker. I swing it shut and find Kimmie standing there, with her black hair in a side ponytail. She keeps switching up the way she does her hair. It’s one of the things she began doing last year, right around the time when she started introducing herself to people as Kimberly and talking about how she didn’t want to blend into the crowd. Another one of her new things: scouring thrift stores for cool clothes. She’s wearing a fluorescent-green jacket that makes her look like she works on the runway at the airport.

  “Hey,” I say, letting out a small smile. No matter what’s going on, seeing Kimmie always has a way of making me a little happier. She and I met in middle school, long before Adam came into the picture, and even though I’d never had many friends, Kimmie latched on to me and refused to let go. I’ve never fully understood why she picked me, of all people, but maybe there’s something about the fact that she’s half Korean and I’m Mexican that makes us see the world similarly—maybe both of us have always felt like outsiders in our own ways. Now I’m so grateful to have found her. She’s been by my side through some of the toughest times—surviving that hellhole of a middle school we went to, and my chicken-legs phase, and Ma’s surgery last year.

  She loops her arm through mine as we join the slow crowd moving down the hallway. “So,” she says, and just like that, I can tell she knows something. Most of the time, the way she’s able to see right through me is a blessing—it means she’s always there when I need her. Today, however, I wish I could put up a wall and not let her see what I’m thinking about. “Adam told me the audition didn’t go so great yesterday.”

  The blow comes unexpectedly. With everything else on my mind, I’d managed to forget about the audition. I think longingly about twenty-four hours ago, when Adam and I were plotting our early escape from school—when I was still so hopeful, when ICE hadn’t yet come looking for my dad.

  “No,” I say. “No, it didn’t.”

  “Well, that’s okay,” she says, shrugging. “There’ll be other auditions. Besides, I got something that’ll cheer you up.”

  She lifts her free hand to show me her phone screen. The words lottery and Hamilton jump out at me.

  “No way.” I stop suddenly, so that the people who were walking behind us nearly bump into me. I take the phone from her just to make sure the email is real, and sure enough—Hamilton, orchestra seats, eight o’clock tomorrow. “How? I mean… how?”

  “We won the lottery!” she yells, making a few people turn to look at us. From the way she’s smiling, they might be thinking we won the actual lottery, but we may as well have. Kimmie, Adam, and I have been trying to get tickets for years. We’ve lost the Hamilton lottery so many times that we agreed to stop talking about it until one of us had good news.

  Before she can say anything else, we hear Adam’s voice coming from behind. “Hey!”

  We turn around to see him swerving his way toward us. He’s incredibly tall, so that his head sticks out above everyone else. He has dirty blond hair and the biggest smile you have ever seen, and when I meet his eyes, his entire face lights up.

  “Did you tell him about the tickets?” he asks Kimmie as soon as he catches up to us. He’s always carried a bright energy everywhere he goes, but today it seems to be shining brighter than ever.

  “I just did!”

  “Wait a second,” I say, remembering something. Whenever we’ve won lottery tickets for a show, we’ve had to make the same tough decision about who gets to go. Whoever wins obviously keeps one of the tickets, but the second has to go to whichever one of us is most excited to see that particular show, or whoever didn’t get to go the previous time. For Hamilton, though, I know this decision is gonna end up being painful. “How are we gonna figure out who goes?”

  “That’s the thing,” Kimmie says, her face falling. “My aunt and uncle are in town for the weekend, so I have this family dinner tomorrow that I can’t miss. The two of you can go.”

  “Are you sure? Kimmie, you—”

  “I’ll just meet you guys after the show. You two are way bigger Hamilton fans than I am anyway.”

  For a moment, I almost argue. I’m about to tell her that there’s something she must be able to do—that she can’t just give up her ticket—but in the end I stop myself, because I want to see Hamilton so freaking bad.

  “So?” Adam asks me, lifting his eyebrows. “Are you coming?”

  I laugh a little. With Kimmie and Adam both beaming at me, it’s easy to let go of the weight I’ve been carrying in my stomach since yesterday. “Of course I am.”

  I look down at my phone and realize I have only a couple of minutes before next period starts. “Gotta run. I have chem on the sixth floor, but I’ll see you guys at lunch.”

  As I rush away from them, sneaking through small gaps in the crowd, I hear Adam’s voice yelling after me, “Hamilton, baby!”

  The run up the stairs to the sixth floor feels faster and easier than usual. I honestly don’t know what I would do without Kimmie and Adam. They make everything better—they always have. I just wish I could tell them about what’s going on at home. I’m sure that if I did, they would help me push all this anxiety aside, but this isn’t just my secret to tell—it’s my entire family’s, so our “be careful” rule also applies to Kimmie and Adam. I’ve never told them that my parents don’t have papers, even though I’ve told them a million other things about my life—that I’m gay, that I’m the biggest telenovela fan, and that before I met them, I’d always felt a little lonely.

  The second I sit down in the chemistry classroom, the heaviness returns to my stomach. It may come and go, but the truth is that I have no way to fully escape from it.

  “Is everything okay?” Ma asks me as soon as I walk into the apartment that night. She’s standing in the tiny kitchen, wearing her glasses and an apron that Sophie gave her last Mother’s Day, and the entire place is filled with the mouthwatering smell of her cooking.

  “Yeah,” I say as I close the door behind me. “Those men didn’t show up at the store today.”

  I spent my entire shift listening for the bell at the door, dreading that it would be followed by the sound of heavy boots. The longer I spent at the
bodega, the more jumpy I became. It got so bad that Erika offered to close the store on her own so I could go home and relax.

  “Have you heard from Pa?” I ask my mom, stepping into the kitchen for a quick hug. Pa spends the afternoons meeting with suppliers, and picking up orders, and running errands for the bodega, but he usually makes it back well before dinner.

  “He called to say he’ll be home soon!” Sophie yells from the dinner table. She’s sitting there with her books spread out in front of her, doing homework.

  I look at Ma, who gives a small nod.

  “Do you need help?” I ask, staring down at the counter. She’s making flautas de pollo, another one of Pa’s favorites.

  “No, mijo. Go start your homework. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to eat.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I turn around to go into my room. Our apartment used to be a two-bedroom, but a couple of years ago Ma and Pa decided to trade rooms with me and Sophie. They moved into the smaller one, and we put up a fake wall to divide the master bedroom so that my sister and I would each have some space of our own.

  I can’t fit much in here, except for my twin bed and a small desk that is crammed against the wall. I have to keep my clothes and everything I own in storage boxes under the bed, and the fake wall divides the window in half, so it’s pretty dark in here most of the time. I turn on a light, throw my backpack in the corner, and kneel down to pull a box out from underneath the bed.

  I keep my money in the back pocket of an old pair of jeans. I don’t get a wage for working at the bodega—I mostly just do it to help out my parents. Instead, they give me a small allowance every week, which I usually spend on Broadway shows, whenever my friends and I can get our hands on cheap tickets.

  I grab a ten-dollar bill to pay Kimmie back for my Hamilton ticket, and then I start doing homework. I try to hurry up, hoping to sneak in a quick acting tutorial before dinner, but Pa comes home before I can get much done, and then Ma calls out my name.

  “Mateo, ¡la cena está lista!”

  When I don’t answer after a few seconds, Sophie peeps into my room. “Are you coming?”

  “Sí, Sophie. I’m coming.”

  I follow her to the dinner table, and we all sit down to eat. The air feels both similar and different from yesterday. Similar because the apartment is quiet except for the noise of four people eating, but different because we’re all a little more relaxed. It’s almost like the past day has been a test, and now that we know the ICE agents didn’t come back to the bodega, it feels as though we’ve passed it.

  “How was your day, mijo?” Ma asks me suddenly. I notice how she chooses to ask me and not Sophie or Pa. They usually don’t need an excuse to speak up.

  “It was good,” I say, putting more rice on my plate. “Kimmie won the ticket lottery for a show. I’m going to the theater tomorrow night.”

  “Can I come?” Sophie asks, even though she already knows the answer.

  “What show are you seeing?” Pa asks, and that’s all it takes for me to start talking my heart out.

  When I first started dreaming of Broadway a couple of years ago, I was a little scared to tell my parents about it. For months, I listened to Adam talk about his acting classes, trying to memorize every word he said, feeling a small glimmer of hope as I started believing that maybe I could also be on a stage one day. When I finally told my parents that I wanted to get into Tisch and become an actor, I thought they were gonna tell me I was crazy. I feared they were gonna be mad that I didn’t want to take over the bodega, that I wasn’t interested in looking after the business they’ve worked so hard to build, but that’s not what happened.

  “There’s a reason your ma and I work as hard as we do, Mateo,” Pa said to me that day. “Do you know what it is?”

  “So we can pay rent?”

  He laughed a little. “Well, yes. But there’s an even bigger reason than that. You. We work hard so you and your sister can have a better life—a life that you choose for yourselves.”

  Since then, they’ve always been willing to listen to me when I talk about Broadway, even though they don’t have an artistic bone in their bodies, and they’ve never even seen a show themselves.

  “Is that the one with all the diverse actors?” Ma asks when I mention Hamilton. She may not be able to keep track of everything I say, but at least she tries.

  I nod, and as I begin to ramble about what a genius Lin-Manuel Miranda is, this starts to feel like a regular night. After a few minutes, Sophie interrupts me to tell us how Leslie, her best friend, got a nail polish set for her birthday, and she promised to bring it to school tomorrow so she can paint both of their nails during recess. Then Ma tells yet another crazy story from work. A couple of years ago, right around the time a 7-Eleven opened in the neighborhood and the bodega started struggling, she took up a few shifts as a housekeeper at a hotel in Midtown to earn some extra cash, so now she splits her time between the hotel and the bodega. She tells us how today, right in the middle of her shift, she knocked on the door of a room and there was no answer, so she used her key to enter. She started doing her work: changed the sheets, emptied the trash cans, swept the carpet.

  “And the second I walk into the bathroom, I find an older couple in the bathtub.”

  My mouth falls open. “What did you do?”

  Ma’s face turns a bit red. “I ran,” she says, covering her mouth with one hand. “I ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life.” She tries to say something else, but then she starts laughing and her words are impossible to make out.

  Sophie and I start laughing with her, and when I turn toward Pa, he’s chuckling as well. The lines around his eyes deepen, but he looks younger somehow. That’s what makes me realize he hasn’t smiled this way in a long time.

  When we all stop laughing and go back to eating, a feeling of peace settles around us. Even though we don’t say much for the rest of dinner, the silence that surrounds the table isn’t as heavy as it was last night. We can hear the warm spring air whistling as it sneaks in through an open window in my parents’ bedroom, and the sound of our fridge, and Pa humming softly to himself every time he bites into his flautas de pollo. There’s something else, too—something that we can’t hear as much as feel. Staring at the half smiles that are still on Ma’s and Sophie’s faces, I truly believe that everything is going to be okay.

  “Mateo, hurry up! It’s starting!”

  Every night at ten, Ma and I sit down on the couch to watch Pasiones de tu Corazón—or The Passions of Your Heart. The title is completely meaningless, of course, but at least it has dramatic effect. It started as a telenovela about a guy who was trapped on a deserted island after a plane crash. Since then, he has gotten rescued, fallen in love, had his heart broken, fallen in love again, had a baby, found out the baby wasn’t his, met his lost twin brother, and discovered that the plane crash was a plot to murder him.

  I walk into the living room just as the theme song starts playing and sit down close to Ma. This is our thing. Watching the telenovela with her is one of my favorite parts of each day.

  “Wait, who’s that guy?” she asks me.

  “He’s Amara’s sister’s ex-lover.”

  “Oh, right,” Ma says. “What is he doing?”

  “I don’t know, Ma.”

  The telenovela is always accompanied by extensive commentary and questions from my mom, which is another reason I love watching it with her.

  There’s something else about this show—a reason it means so much to me. Halfway through the second season, the main character’s former-enemy-turned-best-friend came out as gay. It was a few episodes later, on a night a lot like this, that I finally found the courage to turn toward my mom and say, “You know Roberto? How he’s into other men?”

  Ma nodded quickly.

  “Well, it’s just that, sometimes… I feel the same way as he does.”

  Coming out to Ma was faster and easier than I ever imagined it would be. I don’t know how
much Pasiones de tu Corazón had to do with that, but I think it may have made it a little easier for Ma to understand how I felt. And seeing someone fall in love with another man on-screen somehow made me feel less alone.

  “Why is he putting all that money into the bag?” Sophie asks from behind the couch.

  “Sophie, go to your room!” Ma says without taking her eyes off the TV.

  Sophie turns around reluctantly, but she leaves her bedroom door open. She knows she’s not supposed to watch Pasiones—Ma says it’s too grown-up for her—but she finds ways to keep up to speed with the story without us realizing.

  We’re holding our breath, watching as the guy on the screen swings the bag of money across his chest, when something happens. There’s a knock on the door. Our door.

  Ma and I turn to look at each other. Her expression quickly shifts from shock to fear. No one ever comes knocking at this time.

  Pa walks out of his room. He’s wearing his pajamas, and he looks just as scared as we feel. I know we’re all thinking the same thing. We’re imagining ICE agents out in the hallway, here to take my dad away.

  Another knock comes, more desperate than the first.

  My whole body feels paralyzed. I don’t move. I can’t even breathe. I don’t know how Pa finds the strength to move his legs, one small step at a time, toward the door. Slowly, he leans forward to look through the peephole.

  He sighs so loudly that the sound of his lungs deflating fills the entire apartment. “Es la Señora Solís,” he says, undoing the latch.

  He opens the door, and sure enough, Mrs. Solís, the neighbor from down the hall, is standing there. “Ernesto,” she says. She’s wearing a white nightgown and has rollers in her hair. “Qué bueno que sigues despierto. Mi tele no sirve, y estoy tratando de ver Pasiones.”

  She always comes to my dad whenever one of her electronics isn’t working—her microwave, her iron, her stove. Tonight, it’s her TV, and she needs it to work so she can watch the telenovela.