"Domestic Animals" by Vida James
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You met Guapo in AA and he’s been trying to turn you into an activist ever since. Like everyone, you were never comfortable with the higher power stuff, but he says it’s believing in something bigger than yourself, and acting on it. He says doing good is about humility. You tell Guapo you know everything is bigger than your messy, humble self. Still, when he invites you to visit a detention center, you consider it.
This kid just got transferred to New York and doesn’t know anyone, Guapo says in a message. Need Spanish speakers. Pick you up Saturday, early. He’ll borrow a car of questionable repute. He describes it as an adventure. It’ll be good for you to focus on other people, get centered, he says.
You hate New Age language and you almost don’t go, out of spite. But you accept, because you are turning over a new leaf and doing things for the community. The morning of, you realize you know nothing about this kid. You sift through clothes and choose blue slacks, a slash of dark lipstick, and your bright parka with a fake fur hood. Guapo arrives at your door in a battered station wagon. Just before leaving the house, you take out your lip ring and toss it into a fish-shaped saucer. Professional drag.
Guapo rolls down the passenger window and explains that you have to open your door from the inside. The felt ceiling of the car is peeling, and your feet fight for space among old seltzer bottles. It’s bitter weather and the heat is on full blast. Guapo is chewing a bagel and as he hands you half, he reads you all he has from the migrant rights group: the kid’s name is Guillermo Sanchez de la Rosa, alien number A9251-0733. He explains he doesn’t know more, as this is the first time he’s volunteered with this group. Guillermo Sanchez de la Rosa has your mother’s maiden name and you wonder, briefly, if you are related.
The detention center is actually in New Jersey, a state where you have never been. The directions take you over a tall bridge, away from the city, across a broad river deep and green. You can see New Jersey yawning up from the water, all icy cliffs and coniferous trees. Guapo is a little in love with you and you flirt with him for fun, though the last time you were attracted to a man was in middle school, when boy bands were lithe and androgynous. Guapo puts on a Latin station, bachata half-hidden in static. He is in a great mood, tapping the steering wheel along with the beat.
After an hour of driving, you arrive near the address, under a series of highways, away from any signs of neighborhood or culture. The area’s industrial grayness brings to mind apocalypse films. Glinting high fences topped with barbed wire encircle smoke stacks. Guapo loops the car around in a circle, looking for the entrance.
What do you think this town smells like in the summer? he asks.
Cancer, you reply.
Guapo explains that detention centers are often in places like this. He once protested one that was in a complex of office buildings, and private property rights were invoked to break up the demonstration in an empty parking lot. You know of one such place in Sunset Park, an imposing seven-story building nestled among warehouses and artist lofts. From the expressway they all look the same.
It seems you have reached a dead end. A young cat in the road mewls at the car. She is small and thin, a soft ginger with spots of white and an inky nose. You are fantasizing about taking her home when you notice several other cats of varying ages and sizes, meandering around. You want to step out of the car, but Guapo deters you with a story of living in a punk house with a flea infestation. When you finally find the entrance to the detention center, you notice a sign: Please Do Not Abandon Domestic Animals.
Imagine that happening so often they need a sign, Guapo says.
Visitors are to park far from the entrance. Your hands are raw and chapped, and you shove them into your coat pockets, bracing against the wind. You were arrested once, years ago, for disorderly conduct, and spent the night downtown awaiting a judge. It was a warm September but icy in the holding pen. You wonder about Guillermo Sanchez de la Rosa, if he can see his own breath when he exhales.
Guapo, who has been chattering about the election and Ferguson and capitalism, falls silent as you arrive. The double doors are dark tinted glass, like limousine windows. They open onto a beige room with pink-brown lockers. A line of people in bulky winter coats, thumbing their passports and pieces of folded paper, has queued up at a desk. Every single person in the room is Latinx, even the guards. You both get into line without asking a single question.
Ahead of you is a family of three: a middle-aged man with a weary face, a twenty-something son wearing an Adidas tracksuit, and a teenaged girl with hair black and long as water. When they reach the desk the son explains in English who they are visiting and presents identification to the guard. The father smiles the broad smile of a person who doesn’t speak the language.
The guard holds something up. What is this? Her round dark eyes are dulled by boredom. The son explains that it is the girl’s school identification. The guard replies in a flat voice that they take federal documentation only. The father pats the girl’s head while she puts the card back into a plastic purse. She smiles weakly. She won’t be allowed inside.
Then it is your turn. The guard asks for the alien number, and out of your pocket you fish a slip of paper that feels precious and fragile, like gold leaf. The guard takes your passports and types into the computer without looking up. She eventually says, Fifteen-fifteen, and waves you away with a snap of her wrist. You are walking away when Guapo turns back and asks, his voice high and polite,
What is fifteen-fifteen?
The guard, still not looking up, responds, Fifteen minutes each. Split visit.
Thank you, thank you, Guapo says, obsequious and smiling.
Everyone in the waiting room is smiling. Smiling as you put your things in the locker. Smiling as you sit on a metal chair bolted to the floor. Smiling as you avoid eye contact. Smiling as you remove your earrings and watch, and empty your pockets. Smiling still when you watch others break down in sadness, their masks cracking under the strain.
A woman is there to see her husband. She is wearing a camel-colored sweater dress, her hair brushed to a shine. She has knee-high boots on, which are setting off the metal detector. She takes them off and walks through in stocking feet. The guards mock her, joking that she has dressed up for her man, that she is trying to look cute for these illegals. The woman smiles, tight and bewildered, and softly says she came from church.
An elderly woman is there to see her son. She is wearing thick sneakers and two layers of nude stockings. She has taken a subway to a train to a bus. Her journey lasted over two hours. After waiting her turn in line, she is told her son was in a fight and can’t have visitors. You hear her relate this injustice to someone sitting next to you, a stranger to you both. She begins to cry and decides to leave. Soon after she’s gone, a guard comes out asking for her, saying her son can be seen after all. The stranger who heard her story runs out of the detention center into the cold. After twenty minutes they both come back, the stranger having found her at the bus stop down the road. She has ten minutes left to visit her son.
Regarding Guillermo Sanchez de la Rosa, you both decide Guapo will visit first, as he has experience. He is wearing his uniform: black, head to toe, a curated balance of thriftstore chic and anarchist confrontation. As he goes through the metal detector, it yells in a tinny voice, Warning-warning. He will need to remove his steel-toed shoes. The guard tells Guapo to estimate fifteen minutes, because there are no clocks inside. For psychological reasons, the guard explains with a grin. Guapo blinks and smiles back in a placid way before disappearing behind a pair of doors.
In the waiting room the television plays talk shows you haven’t seen since the 1990s. You decide to put money in Guillermo’s commissary via a touchscreen kiosk. There are options for both credit and cash. The credit doesn’t work, however, and you only have a twenty. The corporation running the commissary takes a five dollar cut of each transaction, and you think the fifteen dollars Guillermo Sanchez de la Rosa would have left would not buy much more than some instant ramen noodles. Still, you feed your twenty in, and through this process you learn his birthdate: August 21, 2001. He is eighteen years old. You wonder if this information is correct.
Because you put your watch away, it is impossible to know how long Guapo has been gone. On the TV women whip off their wigs and shoes, to the delight of the audience. Eventually you are startled by Guapo standing next to you, telling you it is your turn. You move, robotic, toward the metal detector.
What does he look like? you ask.
Sitting in the back on the right with long hair, Guapo yells across the room. You are aware that no one else here is visiting a stranger. You are aware of the unbelonging you have always felt as a first-generation American.
You pass through the metal detector holding your breath. You are waved through and reach the first set of heavy doors. The guard buzzes you, but just as you reach for the handle she stops, and you are pulling on a locked door. You look at the guard and she buzzes again, but stops when you reach the handle. Then a third time. And a fourth. You make eye contact with the guard and the air between you crystallizes into sharp edges. You are saying without speaking that she is stupid and petty and you know why they call cops pigs. With her small hard face she is saying that that she knows what you are, with your dyke haircut, and she hates you. Just as you open your mouth to speak, she buzzes you in.
You are let into a small room full of families. No one is looking at each other, no one is speaking, and there is no information. After a moment you wander over to a large locked door at the back of the room, and see through thick glass a row of seated men. You tap on the glass, aware that your fifteen minutes with Guillermo are ticking by. A guard saunters over and asks in a monotone if you’d like to go in.
Yes, you say, attempting to keep the desperation out of your voice.
The door opens with a metallic zap. In contrast, this room is loud. Facing each other are two rows of soft gray chairs, connected at the edges. In each seat in the row on the right is a man in an orange jumpsuit, leaning and murmuring to the person in front of him in the row on the left, which is mostly women. Your eyes glide over each orange figure as you look for Guillermo. A young man, right in the middle of the line, is looking at you with velvet eyes.
Guillermo? You ask, and he nods. You make your way to the seat across from him and ask if you can give him a hug. He says yes, of course. You embrace him for a long time. You want to replace every moment of human contact he has lost.
You sit across from him and look into his face. He is very much eighteen, small and thin with smooth, tan skin. His hair is heavy, deep black, and pulled into a ponytail. He has a long, Roman nose and plump, pink, chapped lips. He is beautiful.
At first you are at a loss for words. You regret not planning what to talk about while you were waiting for Guapo. Guillermo is looking at you, searching, smiling.
How are you doing? The words sound insipid and rude as soon as they leave your mouth.
Guillermo shrugs by way of answer.
How are they treating you here? You ask.
They are hard on me, he says. It’s hard. His voice is high, with a birdlike lilt.
How long have you been here?
I’ve been in New Jersey one month. Guillermo explains that he was detained in Arizona and recently moved, as being in the Northeast improves his chances for asylum. You ask where he is from and he says Honduras.
I’ve been to Honduras! you exclaim. Guillermo smiles wide as you fumble for the name of the place. He helps you remember San Pedro Sula. You were there a decade ago, ostensibly to scuba dive but actually to drink on the beach. You remember the ease with which you traveled, spending money into air, diving with speckled turtles off of a neon reef, drinking watery beer at sunset. Your mild complaints about the lack of vegan options and non-Christian bookstores. How your accent felt like that of a gringada.
You ask, Are you able to sleep? Are you eating ok?
Guillermo says that the food is terrible, that he eats once a day. He says they are all in the same open room, and so he never sleeps because the others are up until 3 AM. He says they are treated like everyone else in jail. Like common criminals.
The conversation moves toward Guillermo’s case, and from his apprehension it becomes clear that this is what he wants to discuss. He explains his past trips to court, the bored judges, the proceedings he has struggled to follow. I never see my lawyer, he says. She has come to visit me just once. I don’t know anything.
What organization is your lawyer from? You wonder if Guapo has some connection.
Guillermo drops his voice and leans toward you. Transgender, he whispers.
You find yourself looking at his long hair, his full lips, and worrying you’ve been using the wrong gender suffix for this entire conversation. You begin to understand what he meant when he said the others were hard on him. You look, briefly, for signs of visible injuries. You notice a small green bruise under one eye. Realizing you’ve been holding your breath, you exhale loudly.
Is there another name you use, not Guillermo? you ask.
Lola, she says, her voice low and shy. She looks at her hands. They are rough and calloused. She tells you that she was picked up in the desert purposefully, that this was her plan, that she wanted asylum. She says she’s been detained for ten months now. A year, gone, she says. I’m not a criminal. She says her lawyer knows a family who has agreed to sponsor her, and believes she will be granted asylum. She says in Arizona she had lots of friends visit but she has had no visitors here. I feel abandoned, she says. I am alone.
Well, now you know two people, you reply. Guapo and I will find out if we can get in touch with your lawyer. If we can get in touch with your sponsors.
Lola looks down and you struggle to hear her quiet voice. Every person in the room is having an intense conversation and you are sitting so close to the visitors on either side of you that you are almost touching them. The woman to your left has brought a little girl in a ruffled pink dress and white tights. The girl is crawling all over the detainee next to Lola. He is speaking in a low and insistent voice, his face steely and melancholy, as he swings the girl in his arms, puts her on his shoulders, ruffles her hair.
You don’t know what else to say, so you ask about simple things, like what her favorite commissary snacks are, and if you can send coloring books through the corrections postal service. She describes love for an individually wrapped food so exotic that she can’t find a name for it in Spanish. You both laugh when you realize she is describing spicy pickles. You promise to buy her the fanciest Brooklyn pickles when she is out.
Where did you learn Spanish, she asks. You have a Latin face.
You have a script you follow for these types of questions. In this script your grammar is perfect because you’ve repeated it many times. The script explains your parents emigrated here as babies and that your grandparents didn’t teach them Spanish so they would have better opportunities. The script jokes about having learned Spanish in high school and why you have a funny accent. Looking at Lola, in this place, you tell her a more honest version.
I am Latina but my family didn’t teach me Spanish. It hurts all the time that I never learned at home. Most of my friends are Latinx and I’m embarassed to speak Spanish in front of them. I hate my accent.
But your Spanish is very good, Lola says, it’s bastante. Don’t worry so much.
This role reversal is unbearable to you, but you feel a shift in the air. Something has broken open.
Lola takes a deep breath. I cannot return to Honduras. My stepfather, she says with a strained voice, and breaks off without elaborating. There is silence you don’t attempt to fill. You look at each other, not speaking.
Then some short turquoise papers are passed down the line. Lola is handed three, and she looks at them, darting.
Find yours, the man to her left explains.
The man to her right repeats, find your name.
Lola looks at you and shrugs. I don’t know how to read.
You gently point out Guillermo Sanchez de la Rosa on a slip. Lola explains this means your time is almost up.
Suddenly you’re rushing to say many things. You say you’ll come visit again, you and Guapo both. You’ll send her some mail, some art supplies, and you’ll put money in the commissary, and you’ll be in touch with her lawyer, and you’ll find out about her sponsor family, and you’ll find her a new family if they don’t work out.
The truth is you will not visit Lola again. You will return home and settle back into a routine of endless appointments and work. You will keep meaning to visit her when you’re less busy and you will say so to others, asking them to hold you accountable. Guapo will keep you updated at first, but he will stop mentioning her case when he sees it makes you feel shame. Eventually her asylum plea will be denied for lack of evidence, and when he finally tells you this, months later, you will not understand what she was expected to prove. Lola will be deported, transferred around the country before eventually being put on a plane to Mexico. Occasionally, with a sharp cold feeling in your stomach, you will wonder what happened to her. You will question whether you are a good person, whether you have hurt more than helped by meeting her. And you will tell yourself in these moments that there was nothing you could do, that the system we live in is bigger than ourselves. And you will imagine that she tried again, that she made it through the desert, that she lives someplace peaceful and green, like in a house by a lake.
But that will all come later. For now you feel Lola slipping away, out of your grasp, into the shadows.
The guard snaps in English: Gentlemen! Time to go. The little girl next to you waves and repeats, Bye Daddy, bye Daddy, bye Daddy, as she is scooped up, away from his arms. Lola stands and you hug her again, another squeeze, a bear hug. You imagine yourself growing, your arms filling the room, filling the whole detention center, and Lola shrinking, tiny, laying her head on your chest. You both begin to walk out of the room, in separate directions. You keep turning around to smile at her and wave. She is smiling and waving and you are smiling and waving. You are sure you look foolish but every time you turn your back to her, you turn again to smile and wave. Then you are out, and you imagine she is walking down a pale hallway to a wide cold room filled with beds and lonely people.
You find Guapo and he hands you your coat. It feels weighted and flashy, with its fake fur and metal accents. You do not want to cry in front of the others. You feel like doing so would be dangerous, and anyway you have less to mourn than most people here. You keep your head down and walk out with a long stride. As you sit in silence waiting for the car to heat up, you take off your knit hat, stuff it into your mouth, and bite down.
Where to? Guapo asks.
Vida James is from Brooklyn, NY, where she was a social worker with immigrant and homeless youth. She is currently a Delaney Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets & Writers. A VONA/Voices alumna, she is currently working on a novel about the AIDS crisis in New York City.
