I’M LATE. I enter the waiting room and head over to the receptionist. She shakes her head at me like she’s seen this before. Everyone here has seen everything before, and they don’t really care that it’s all new to you.
“You’ll have to call the main USCIS line and make a new appointment.”
“I don’t have time for that,” I say. I explain about the guard, Irene, and her strangeness. I say it quietly and reasonably. She shrugs and looks down. I am dismissed. On any other day, I would be compliant.
“Please call her. Call Karen Whitney. She told me to come back.”
“Your appointment was for 8 a.m. It is now 8:05 a.m. She’s seeing another applicant.”
“Please. It’s not my fault I’m late. She told me—”
Her face hardens. No matter what I say, she will not be moved. “Ms. Whitney is already with another applicant.” She says it like English is not my first language.
“Call her,” I demand. My voice is loud and I sound hysterical. All the other applicants, even the ones who don’t speak English, are staring at me. Desperation translates into every language.
The receptionist nods at a security guard standing by the door. Before he can reach me, the door that leads to the meeting rooms opens up. A very tall and thin man with dark brown skin beckons me. He nods to the receptionist. “It’s all right, Mary. I’ll take her.”
I walk through the door quickly before he changes his mind. He doesn’t look at me, just turns and starts down a series of hallways. I follow silently until he stops in front of Karen Whitney’s office.
“Wait here,” he says to me. He’s only gone for a few seconds, but when he returns he’s holding a red folder—my file.
We walk down another hallway until we finally come to his office. “My name is Lester Barnes,” he says. “Have a seat.”
“I’ve been—”
He holds up a hand to silence me.
“Everything I need to know is in this file.” He pinches the corner of the folder and shakes it at me. “Do yourself a favor and stay quiet while I read it.”
His desk is so neat you can tell he prides himself on it. He’s got a matching set of silver-colored desk accessories—a pen holder, trays for incoming and outgoing mail, and even a business card holder with LRB engraved on it. Who even uses business cards anymore? I reach forward, take one, and slip it into my pocket.
The tall cabinet behind him is a landscape of color-coded stacks of files. Each file holds someone’s life. Are the colors of the files as obvious as I think they are? My file is Rejection Red.
After a few minutes he looks up at me. “Why are you here?”
“Karen—Ms. Whitney—told me to come back. She’s been kind to me. She said maybe there was something.”
“Karen’s new.” He says it like he’s explaining something to me, but I don’t know what it is.
“Your family’s last appeal was rejected. The deportation stands, Ms. Kingsley. You and your family will have to leave tonight at ten p.m.”
He closes the file and pushes a box of tissues toward me in anticipation of my tears. But I’m not a cryer.
I didn’t cry when my father first told us about the deportation orders, or when any of the appeals were rejected.
I didn’t cry last winter when I found out my ex-boyfriend Rob was cheating on me.
I didn’t even cry yesterday when Bev and I said our official goodbye. We’d both known for months that this was coming. I didn’t cry, but still—it wasn’t easy. She would’ve come with me today, but she’s in California with her family, touring Berkeley and a couple of other state schools.
“Maybe you’ll still be here when I get back,” she insisted after our seventeenth hug. “Maybe everything will work out.”
Bev’s always been relentlessly optimistic, even in the face of dire odds. She’s the kind of girl who buys lottery tickets. I’m the kind of girl who makes fun of people who buy lottery tickets.
So. I’m definitely not going to start crying now. I stand up and gather my things and head toward the door. It takes all my energy to continue not being a cryer. In my head I hear my mother’s voice.
Don’t let you pride get the better of you, Tasha.
I turn around. “So there’s really nothing you can do to help me? I’m really going to have to leave?” I say it in such a small voice that I barely hear myself. Mr. Barnes doesn’t have any trouble hearing. Listening to quiet, miserable voices is in his job description.
He taps the closed file with his fingers. “Your dad’s DUI—”
“Is his problem. Why do I have to pay for his mistake?”
My father. His one night of fame led to a DUI led to us being discovered led to me losing the only place I call home.
“You’re still here illegally,” he says, but his voice is not as hard as it was before.
I nod but don’t say anything, because now I really will cry. I put my headphones on and head for the door again.
“I’ve been to your country. I’ve been to Jamaica,” he says. He’s smiling at the memory of his trip. “I had a nice time. Everything is irie there, man. You’ll be all right.”
Psychiatrists tell you not to bottle up your feelings because they’ll eventually explode. They’re not wrong. I’ve been angry for months. It feels like I’ve been angry since the beginning of time. Angry at my father. Angry at Rob, who told me just last week that we should be able to be friends despite “everything,” i.e. the fact that he cheated on me.
Not even Bev has escaped my anger. All fall she’s been worrying about where to apply to college based on where her boyfriend—Derrick—is applying. She regularly checks the time difference between different college locations. Do long-distance relationships work? she asks every few days. The last time she asked I told her maybe she shouldn’t base her entire future on her current high school boyfriend. She did not take it well. Bev thinks they’ll last forever. I think they’ll last through graduation. Maybe into the summer. It took me doing her physics homework for weeks to make it up to her.
And now a man who has probably spent no more than a week in Jamaica is telling me that everything will be irie.
I take my headphones off. “Where did you go?” I ask.
“Negril,” he says. “Very nice place.”
“Did you leave the hotel grounds?”
“I wanted to, but my—”
“But your wife didn’t want to because she was scared, right? The guidebook said it was best to stay on the resort grounds.” I sit down again.
He rests his chin on the back of his clasped hands. For the first time since this conversation began, he’s not in charge of it.
“Was she concerned about her safety?” I put air quotes around safety, as if it weren’t really a thing to be concerned about. “Or maybe she just didn’t want to ruin her vacation mood by seeing how poor everyone really is.” The anger I’ve suppressed rises from my belly and into my throat.
“You listened to Bob Marley, and a bartender got you some pot, and someone told you what irie means, and you think you know something. You saw a tiki bar and a beach and your hotel room. That is not a country. That is a resort.”
He holds up his hands like he’s defending himself, like he’s trying to push the words in the air back into me.
Yes, I’m being awful.
No, I don’t care.
“Don’t tell me I’ll be all right. I don’t know that place. I’ve been here since I was eight years old. I don’t know anyone in Jamaica. I don’t have an accent. I don’t know my family there, not the way you’re supposed to know family. It’s my senior year. What about prom and graduation and my friends?” I want to be worrying about the same dumb things they’re worrying about. I even just started getting my application together for Brooklyn College. My mom saved for two years so she could travel to Florida and buy me a “good” social security card. A “good” card is one with actual stolen numbers printed on it instead of fake ones. The man who sold it to her said that the less expensive ones with bogus numbers wouldn’t get past background checks and college applications. With the card, I can apply for financial aid. If I can get a scholarship along with the aid, I might even be able to afford SUNY Binghamton and other in-state schools.
“What about college?” I ask, crying now. My tears are unstoppable. They’ve been waiting for a long time to come out.
Mr. Barnes slides the tissue box even closer to me. I take six or seven and use them and then take six or seven more. I gather my things again. “Do you have any idea what it’s like not to fit in anywhere?” Again I say it too quietly to be heard, and again he hears me.
I’m all the way to the door, my hand on the knob, when he says, “Ms. Kingsley. Wait.”