Page 42 of Exiled

I hear their voices, feel the sun. I’m floating.

Dizzy.

Something sparks, tumbles in my mind.

Clicks.

Mama is on my right, Papa to my left. We are up on the very top of the boat, sitting as far forward as we can. I am excited, flush with exuberance, but I am trying to keep it in, to be more like Mama, who has her hands folded on her lap and her ankles crossed beneath her, under the bench. She is calm, quiet, watching the buildings of Manhattan float past us.

We are really in New York! I am as excited as I am frightened. I know no one. I have no friends. We have no family. Papa speaks the best English of any of us, and mine is a close second to his, but Mama speaks barely any at all. I think it is okay for her, though, since because she is so very beautiful most men will do whatever she asks, even if she is asking it in Spanish, and they speak not a word. They’ll trip over themselves just to get a smile from her. I’ve seen it happen. She wanted a bottle of water but couldn’t figure out the money. The paper bills were all too big and they all looked the same, but the coins were too small and all looked different, and she was worried about getting cheated. The man trying to sell us the water didn’t speak any more English than we did, but he was a man, and a man with eyes for a beautiful woman. So when Mama let out a frustrated sigh, smiled that smile of hers, and held out the money to the man, he made the correct change for her. I am good at math, so I counted it, because really it’s very simple, and tried to tell this to Mama, but she just shushedme. But she got the bottle of water, and the correct change, and all she had to do was smile.

That’s Mama.

Papa is more trusting. He would have given the man the money and trusted him to make the right change, and wouldn’t have realized he’d been cheated until much later, when it was too late. But Papa knows this, which is why he let Mama buy the water. Because he is smart about being stupid.

That is most men, I think.

Or so I have observed.

We have only been here two days, Mama and I. Papa came first, a month ago, and found us an apartment to live in near where both he and Mama worked, registered me for school, and signed us up for our citizenship classes. He’d even managed to get a few days of work in but hadn’t had a chance to see anything fun. So the moment Mama and I arrived in the baggage claim area, Papa piled our suitcases onto a trolley and led the way to our car. It’s not a new car, and not a very nice one. It has rust on it, and there is a crack in the windshield, but Papa said it was a cheap rental just for the day, because taxis cost too much money and the subways are very confusing, the roads only marginally less so.

Papa was very excited, babbling a mile a minute, talking about how our new apartment is nice, very nice, but of course not so nice as our home back in Barcelona, but still nice.

Even now, despite the fact that there is a tour guide, Papa is talking, talking, talking, pointing out buildings he recognizes, laughing at what I assume was a joke the tour guide made that I did not quite understand.

Eventually, as she always does, Mama quiets him. “Luis. You are babbling, my love. Hush, please, and let the tour guide be the tour guide.”

Papa pretends to be grumpy and embarrassed, but he reaches his arm behind me and Mama reaches up, holds on to his fingers with her own. I roll my eyes at their display and get up, move to the front of the boat.

“Isabel, please be careful,” Mama says.

“I will,” I say, stuffing down the impulse to say something rude and childish about how I’m not a child that I need a reminder to be careful.

As soon as I am up, Papa takes my seat and Mama leans into him, tucks her head against his shoulder. I sigh and look away, turn my attention forward, hoping to see the statue. There is nothing to see yet, though, but the island on our left and the place called New Jersey on our right, and water between. I like the wind in my hair, because it reminds me of home—of Spain.

This is home now.

I feel a pang in my chest at that. This is home.

I’ll never see Maria or Consuela again, my best friends since I was a baby. I told them I would write letters, but in my heart I know I probably won’t. I’ll be busy with school, and trying to make new friends, and learning to speak English. Maria and Consuela were jealous of me for getting to move to America, but I think maybe it isn’t going to be as fun and exciting as everyone thinks.

It is scary. This is a huge place, this New York. Everything is so tall, so wide, so fast, so new. There are millions of cars, taxis, buses, trucks, and there is the rumbling of trains underfoot and the crush of people, so many people.

And they are all so rude, so unfriendly. As if they cannot be bothered to even look at me, because their lives are so important, so much to do. At home—back in Spain—people would smile at you as you passed them. You might see someone while you’re sitting at lunch in a café, not even someone youknow, but you could become friends with them, talk to them. Smile at them, at least. And no one was in as much of a hurry as they are here. You take too long ordering food or even walk on the sidewalk too slowly, people get so irritated, push past you, yell at you to hurry up. I do not understand why everyone is in such a rush here.

I am not all sure I like it, really.

Even though Iama little excited to see the Statue of Liberty in person. I’ve seen it in American movies a thousand times, but now I’m about to see it for real, right in front of me.

And then it happens, the tour guide tells us we’ll see it on our left first if we’re on that side, but no matter which side we’re sitting on, everyone will get a good look. I am in front, in the best spot to see it as we approach. There it is! Huge, so big, so much larger than it seems even in the movies, soaring so high into the sky, impossibly vast. It strikes something deep inside me, the statue. It is just a big green woman with a torch and a book, but itmeanssomething. It inspires something in you, something beyond being the symbol of America, the symbol of so-called freedom. I don’t know the words to capture my own emotions, but I am full of thoughts and words and pictures and hope, so full my chest hurts as if they’re all trying to rupture out at once.

I forget myself, that I am fourteen and not a little girl anymore. “Mama! Papa! Do you see it!”

She smiles, that soft bright smile she gives only to me. “Yes,mija, I see it. It is very big, isn’t it?”

Papa just smiles, and watches Mama and then me, as if capturing the moment in some internal, mental camera. Remembering. But not the statue, not the trip...us, Mama and me.

“We came here,” I say, when the memory breaks and I am once again myself, an adult, here and now, with Logan. “My mama and papa and I. On this tour.”