“It’s not that.…” My dad sighed. “Sometimes I just feel a little guilty about what we have, compared to some of the other immigrants.…”
I thought about the aunties and uncles from Mexico who came the other day for Mrs. Q’s class, the ones who had just crossed over.
“I know,” I said.
My dad put down his long leaf net and sat on one of the pool chairs. I took a seat beside him, and we looked out at the sky, stained red and orange. Softly, my dad told me about a guy he’d met the other day who worked as a window washer and nearly died when their scaffolding collapsed.
“Things are hard for a lot of people.” He sighed, resting his chin in his hands. “Sometimes I just get a little sad.”
I nodded, understanding fully. “But Dad, that’s no reason not to go forward,” I pointed out. “We’ve got to get medical insurance.”
My dad patted my hand. “You’re right. And you know what else we’re going to get? Some shaved ice.” He held up a finger. “Uncle Zhang told me about a good spot in Monterey Park. What do you say this weekend, we go together?”
I smiled and said sure, though to be honest, I didn’t really know what he was talking about. I figured shaved ice was another Chinese concoction, one I’d hopefully remember when I tasted it.
The next day at school, I told Lupe the great news about Hank and qualifying for insurance.
“Isn’t that amazing? We finally have six full-time employees!” I cheered, counting off as I flew high on the swings.
But Lupe stopped swinging and dragged her feet on the sand. “You’re going to have to find two more people,” she said. “Me and my dad don’t count.”
“What do you mean?”
Lupe kept her eyes on the sand.
“Lupe, what’s wrong?” I asked her, swinging into her slightly.
“Nothing. I’m okay. Just … give me a second.” She held one shirt sleeve to her face. Was she crying? I got off my swing and knelt down in front of her. Lupe lifted her eyes and looked into mine. In the smallest of whispers, she let out, “We’re illegal.”
I wasn’t sure if I heard her right. Lupe? My best friend, who knew this country better than anyone?
“I didn’t want to tell you,” she went on, blinking back tears. “We’ve been trying to get papers. We thought that maybe by investing in a motel, we could get an investment visa, but …” She shook her head. “The guy said we needed to have invested a lot more.”
“What guy? And how much more?” I asked. Lupe and her family had already put in $10,000, which was more than my own parents had. More than even some of the paper investors!
“You don’t want to know,” she groaned. “Anyway, we can’t apply for the medical insurance. We wouldn’t qualify.”
I dug my feet into the hot sand, shaking my head. “You don’t know that. We can try—”
“We’re not trying.” Lupe put both hands on my arms and looked at me hard. “No one can know about this.” There was an urgency in her voice I’d never heard before. “No one can ever know. Not with all the stuff going on.”
Our foreheads touched, and I whispered, “Okay. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
The recess bell rang and we walked back to class. For the rest of the day, I sat at my desk, my mind racing over what Lupe had said and what it meant. Because if Lupe was undocumented and the new law passed …
It meant she couldn’t go to school anymore.
Hank and my mom came to pick me up after school to go to the mall. They were in high spirits, chatting about Hank’s new job title—Director of Marketing—and our new medical insurance plan. It had been years since any of us had been to the doctor for a real checkup. I sat quietly in the back of the car. I didn’t have the heart to tell them we weren’t getting the insurance. Not yet.
At the mall, Hank headed into Ross while my mom and I hit JCPenney. It was not my first time in JCPenney, but it was my first time as an actual customer. We had money to spend. We weren’t just there to go to the bathroom!
As usual, my mother went up to the perfume counter and started spraying herself with the sample bottles. You were only supposed to try one or two on your wrist, but she tried them all on, squirting generously all over her whole body.
A salesclerk came rushing over to her. “Here, use these,” she said, and held out little white strips of paper, like the pH strips we used to test the Calivista pool.
My mom shook her head. “No, thank you.”
The salesclerk’s smile was wearing thin. “But you’re supposed to use these,” she said.
Gently, I tugged on my mom’s shirt.
“Fine,” my mom said, taking the strips from the lady. She took a whole bunch and stuffed them in her purse, whispering to me, “I can use them later for a math game.” The saleslady shook her head at us as we walked away.
We were poking around in the clothing clearance racks when we bumped into a trio of Chinese ladies.
“Will you look at this?” one of them said in Chinese. “This shirt has a lipstick stain on it.”
“Pity, because it’s so nice,” her friend lamented. She glanced down at the tag and added, “And cheap too.”
The three ladies huddled around the shirt and carefully studied it. “You can’t get that out. It’s silk,” they decided, frowning.
My mom looked over. “Actually, you could probably get it out with some tape and talcum powder,” she suggested. When it came to getting out laundry stains, my mom was a wizard. You wouldn’t believe the makeup stains some of our customers left on the pillowcases. Still, they were no match for Mom’s cleaning tricks.
The three Chinese ladies turned to my mom and gawked. “Tape?” they asked.
She nodded. “Transparent tape. Lay it over the stain, smooth it down, then quickly rip it off.” She glanced quickly at me. Should we tell them? Her eyes twinkled. “We … uh … we own a motel.”
The three ladies raised their eyebrows, impressed.
“I’m Zhou Tai Tai,” one of them said, using the Chinese words for Mrs. She extended a hand. She had long, slender fingers adorned with various rings, unlike my mom’s dry, bare ones.
“I’m Tang Tai Tai,” my mom introduced herself in Chinese. “This is my daughter, Mia.”
“Hi,” I said.
That afternoon, Zhou Tai Tai, Fang Tai Tai, Li Tai Tai, and my mom searched through the clearance section with the intensity of hunters on a safari. They spoke in Mandarin to one another, but every time one of them spotted something really nice, they would exclaim in English, “Look at!” And the others would immediately come running over. After they searched through every last thing on sale, Mrs. Zhou and Mrs. Fang moved over to the regularly priced items section, and I looked nervously over at my mom. The regularly priced items section was a serious no-no, a high-stakes poker table you can walk by—but you do not sit down.
Well, my mother sat down. And the first thing she picked up was so beautiful that all the other Chinese ladies flocked around her. It was a deep red satin dress that went all the way to the floor. As the ladies oohed and aahed over how gorgeous it was and how nice it would go with a pair of heels and an evening clutch, none of which my mom had, I reached for the price tag. My fingers froze. It was $187.99!