"Refugee" by Zephaniah Sole

Carlos liked feeling the rubber-tipped legs of the metal folding chair thump against the floor. It reminded him there was still ground beneath. It kept him from drowning in the crowd of syllables. Pushing into the heels of his high tops gently he leaned back, back, but not too far, lifted his feet, then softly crashed down again. Two officers glanced in his direction. They peered at a plastic card one held and spoke. Knowing he was the central topic of their exchange, Carlos focused his eyes on the slant of the low ceiling and strained his ears to hear the pair through the murmurings of the others in the facility:

“Ease toyunbee shopping.”

“Less may core en way.”

Carlos leaned back, back, but not too far. Back home he had just acclimated to the retorts of the regular shootouts that echoed across the lots and yards and reached his ears in the living room of his mother’s small, single-story house, sometimes from the east, past the grocery store, others from the west, past the concrete home converted to a church. But upon walking home from the east one day, as the sun walked west and the wind blew south, relatively tame, as the chips he’d bought crackled and dusted the now long fingers of his now long frame, Carlos was finally noticed. He had just had a growth spurt. He could no longer hide in the smallness of his youth. So after the surrounding dealers politely advised that effective next noon his new routine would comprise meeting by the store to assist in dispensing their commodity, Carlos dropped his chips and ran home. There, he uprighted himself to natural stature with the sadness of manhood too quickly grown. And he told his mother it was time for him to leave.

“Half you’ll ready made acclaim four a sigh limb?”

Carlos snapped back to attention and squinted at the officer who scuffed a chair on the soft linoleum and sat before him while her partner stood by. She spoke again, her partner adding his own addendum:

“Have you already made a claim for asylum anywhere else?” “Ha hecho una solicitud de asilo en otro pais?”

Carlos shook his head. The officer held out the plastic card with a hand covered by a baby blue disposable glove. She and her partner spoke.

“This really isn’t sufficient.” “Esto no es suficiente.” “Do you have any other form of identification?” “Tienes alguna otra identificacion?” “Passport?” “Pasaporte?” “Birth certificate?” “Certificado de nacimiento?”

Carlos looked down at the black boots of the officers. On the morning of his departure, his mother frantically declared that she could not find his birth certificate. It would be best, she said, to wait until she could locate it or acquire a replacement. Already well versed in the tedium of municipal bureaucracy and suspecting this was a maternal tactic for delay, Carlos wiped away his mother’s tears and rolled his dented plastic suitcase past the threshold of her door. It took two days to reach this part of the border. Two days of three crowded bus rides east then north through lonely landscapes spent in avoidance of all conversation. Then the luck of meeting a family of four who needed a fifth to make the last leg of the trek more cost-effective. When their hired driver pulled over on the tar road after only a half-hour and told them they needed to walk the rest of the way, Carlos traded a concerned look with the father of the family. The road ahead looked nothing like what they thought they were traveling toward. The road ahead looked nothing like safety. The driver read the tension in the car – he was used to it. He pointed through the windshield. “Listen, it only looks like a dead-end up there. You have to keep going, keep walking through it.” Carlos pooled his funds with the family. They paid the driver. They left the car.

“What is your country of origin?” “Cual es tu pais de origen?”

Carlos looked up from the dark boots to the dark khakis held by the dark belts with holstered guns. He read the letters emblazoned on their ballistic vests and baseball caps and shoulder patches and reminded his lurching gut what he had been told back home, that the cops in this country were different. Up here he no longer needed to hide his voice.

“I don’t know Spanish.”

The officer looked at the plastic card she still held. “Sorry, we weren’t sure. We saw you walk in with that family, but you don’t look…. Where are you from?”

Carlos pointed to the card. “That’s where I’m from.

She traded a glance with her partner then looked at the small photo on the card. The lighting was wan when the photo was taken and Carlos’ face had fused with the backdrop – all she could truly discern were his big glasses and his bigger smile. “Mr. Brown, where are you from, originally?”

Carlos squinted again, confused by her choice of words. He looked at the shoulder patch of her silent partner and the acronym it announced: RCMP. He pointed to the Chicago Public Schools Identification Card once more.

“That’s where I’m from.”

---

Zephaniah Sole is a multicultural entity writing from the Pacific Northwest. His writing is published or forthcoming in Collateral Journal and Gargoyle Magazine.