At the toll plaza for the 133 North, Robbie turned on the dome light in the Corolla and fumbled in his pocket for the exact change. As he inspected a handful of coins, he looked down at his gut and let out a half-laugh, half-howl. You forget who you are, you forget what you believe in, but you still remember to pay your toll! Reaching up, he flicked off the dome light and sat there, breathing slowly, deliberately, trying to ignore the wet, hot black that used to be his midsection. Rolling down the window, he leaned out and flung the handful of change toward the collection bin. It was an awkward toss. The coins clattered to the pavement and his elbow banged against the windowsill. The effort was too much. Robbie leaned back. He wanted his eyes to work, to keep on working. But they were letting him down. The last thing he remembered was reaching over to turn off the Corolla’s ignition. The old car was grateful for the rest.
2:45 Out of Santa Ana
by Mary Castillo
Santa Ana
Today, 11:45 a.m.
She could be anywhere by now. She could be standing at the next bus stop, or long gone out of my life.
I should listen to Nana and head back to work. But instead I drive around Santa Ana looking for a little girl in the rain. The few who are out in this weather are huddled under bus stops next to their mothers or grandmothers, looking like pink and purple marshmallows in their puffy rain jackets.
Go back to work. Even though I’ll put another month on these boots, I need every cent of my pathetic paycheck as a news assistant with the Orange County Tribune.
But I keep driving down East 1st Street toward the freeway as the rain and wind batter my car. Maybe the woman who took Pricila is her aunt and they’re on a grand adventure to visit relatives in Mexico. Or Pricila is locked in the cold terror that she’ll never see her own nana or mom again.
A few minutes later, I’m dripping water at the front desk of Santa Ana PD.
“How may I help you?” a clerk asks without getting up from her desk.
“I need to report a missing child.”
I’m taken behind the counter with Officer Darrin Kravetz into an interview room. His gray eyes are so kind that I can’t picture him cornering a suspect in an alley with his gun drawn.
We do fine until he asks for my name.
“Danielle Dawson.”
He looks up. “How are you related to the Pricila Ruiz?”
“I’m not. I’m a reporter, I mean news assistant, and Pricila and her grandmother—” I stop myself from saying hid with us. Clearing my throat, I say, “They stayed with us last night when ICE raided their home.”
“Why didn’t her grandmother come in with you?”
“She was arrested an hour ago. Pricila’s mother is in jail awaiting her arraignment.”
“How do you know Pricila isn’t with family or friends?”
“My na — My grandma saw her leave with a woman who was paid to take her away.”
He puts down his pen and gives me that look like I’m the kind of person who has left a shopping cart full of her worldly belongings out in front of the station.
“I’m not making this up,” I say. “I just want to help a little girl.”
“Why?”
Because even at thirty-two, I’ll never forget the helplessness of waiting for someone to pick me up from school or feed me dinner. Because my mother left me when the sheriffs came with her eviction notice and the court gave me to my nana and grandpa. Because I might have had a little girl Pricila’s age if things had been different.
Officer Kravetz leans back in his seat. “I’m having a hard time following you. Who’s the dad? You talk to him?”
“Not really.”
Officer Kravetz doesn’t like where this is going. “Got a name?”
“Jim Westfall. He’s with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.”
The cop’s eyebrows arch up and he shakes his head. “You really want me to call an ICE agent and ask about a little girl who an unauthorized immigrant claims is his?”
“He’s the dad. Says so on Pricila’s birth certificate.” Now I’m beginning to wish I’d gone back to work.
“All right.” Officer Kravetz says it like I’ve just sealed a very nasty fate. “Let me call this guy and get to the bottom of it, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Want anything to drink? Coffee or some water?”
“No thank you.”
“Be right back.”
He leaves me in the room with the buzzing fluorescent light.
I sit back in my chair. My feet ache with cold and I should’ve eaten something before I got myself into this. Six months ago, my biggest dilemma was which floor plan to pick for my new town home in Newport Beach. Now I’m sitting in a police station, my boss has been calling my cell nonstop, and I live with my grandmother.
I can’t hear anything outside these walls; it’s completely soundproof.
Last night, 8:30 p.m.
In Santa Ana there are two types of neighborhoods: the historically significant neighborhoods with names like French Park and Floral Park, and the other neighborhoods. My grandma lives in one of the others.
I turn off North Bristol onto West 3rd and then make a right on Hesperian. Except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter at Nana’s house, the farthest I’d head up on Bristol was the northernmost tip of Nordstrom at South Coast Plaza. Now this is home. Again.
Nana’s two-story bungalow stands on the corner. The skeleton of last spring’s sweet peas cling to her chain-link fence, and even though she has the space, she still grows her roses and calla lilies in buckets.
As a kid, I used to hide in the avocado tree from my cousins. When you’re the only blond, half-white kid in a family of small, brown Mexicans from Jalisco, you know you’re a grown-up the moment a white-person joke doesn’t punch your flight-or-fight button.
Nana walks out of the kitchen. She’s still dressed in her suit but she must have stopped for a pedicure after work. Her toenails are now purple. When she sees it’s me, she asks, “Where you been?”
I open my mouth to begin a litany of grievances against my boss when a sharp report shakes the floor. White light bursts through the windows — the kind you see in alien invasion movies — and where there was a quiet street of parked cars and dim porch lights, SUVs and cop cruisers now block us in.
“Did you hear that?” Chachi shouts. My cousins run out of the house to the yard.
Nana shouts at them to come back inside. “Do you want to get shot?”
As a reporter, I should dash out with my press pass, cell phone, and notepad. But the paper doesn’t pay me enough and the walls of Nana’s aren’t even half as thick as the last Harry Potter book. I follow my nose into the kitchen where a vat of posole simmers on the stove. I make myself a bowl, heavy on the hominy. The oily broth scalds my hand. I’ve been here almost a year and I’m still not accustomed to the almost nightly visits from law enforcement that remind us we live in the “bad” part of town.
Someone bangs on the back door. I turn, about to call Chachi an asshole for scaring me. But a woman stares back at me through the window. Her eyes are almost white with terror and then I see the little girl standing next to her.