The air was different on the roof, freer and more open than it was down below, where a cinder block wall surrounded the house on all sides. Brenda was scared as she looked around, having no idea what she would find, but her fear melted away because she saw that it was him.
Jairo. He sat at the edge of the roof, facing away from her, with his legs dangling over the side. He was holding something in his lap. The source of the sound. As Brenda got closer, she saw that it wasn’t a mechanical bird but an old typewriter making all that noise. His fingers flew across the keys.
Jairo waited until everyone slept, then brought his typewriter to the roof, where the sound wouldn’t wake anyone. Or so he had thought.
He apologized to Brenda for waking her, but she didn’t mind. She stayed, and they talked until the stars faded and the sun rose, and after that, she took to joining him several nights a week up there. This was how they fell in love. On the roof of a house in Guatemala City, looking out over a wall topped with barbed wire. They talked about all kinds of things, and everyone complimented Brenda on how much her Spanish had improved.
No one knew about them yet, but they planned to tell his family soon. They wanted to be together and would have gotten engaged if Jairo hadn’t been killed three weeks after Brenda found him writing on the roof.
Brenda didn’t know that she was pregnant when she packed up her belongings and bid her host family a teary goodbye. It wasn’t until three weeks later, when she found herself vomiting every morning, that she knew.
She had always wanted children, but this wasn’t what she’d pictured. She knew it would be hard to raise a child on her own, not to mention that it would be years before her Catholic parents forgave her, but there was never any question that she would have the child. The story ended with what her mom called the happiest day of her life. The day Maya was born.
I can see why that book is so important to you, Frank had said.
He had seemed like such a good listener, but now Maya understood that he just knew the value of a person’s stories. The ones that tell us about who we are and where we’re from. Our personal creation myths, the ones we blow out candles for every year. Maya might as well have handed Frank a key to her head and her heart the day she told him the story of her dead father.
She saw this in the clear light of morning as she paused in her pacing to drink water at the kitchen sink. She told herself she needed to stay focused. She had hoped that reading the book would jostle something loose, some memory—and it had, but it was faint. She set down her glass, closed her eyes, and pressed her palms into the sockets. She could summon the smell of a cozy fire and the sound of a stream, but when she tried to recall what it was that she actually saw that night—what it was that happened after she went looking for the cabin—the only image her brain coughed up was that of Frank’s key.
TWENTY-SIX
You don’t get it, do you?
Aubrey’s words simmer in Maya’s head as she walks home. She’s so distracted that she steps in front of a car as it pulls out of a gas station. The driver honks. The air smells like gasoline. Her plan had been to smooth things over with Frank, but instead the opposite had happened. He was upset with her when he left Dunkin’ Donuts—but he was the one who’d made a point of seeing Aubrey again.
Why?
Her mom looks up as Maya walks in the front door. She’s on the couch, feet on the coffee table, painting her toenails yellow. A nature documentary plays on TV. “What is it?” she asks.
“Nothing.” Maya doesn’t want to hear again about how Frank won’t matter once she gets to BU. She goes to her room.
Her mom knocks gently on the door. “Hey.” She peeks her head in. “Is this about Frank?”
Maya starts to cry. She’s never been good at keeping things inside. She tells her mom that she caught Aubrey with Frank at Dunkin’ Donuts.
“This is Aubrey you’re talking about,” her mom says. “Since when do the two of you fight over some guy?”
The words burn because Maya knows they’re true.
“You’ve known him—what? Two weeks?”
“So?” Maya asks even as she sees her mom’s point. “So what?”
“Do you think you might be a little too into him? When’s the last time you looked at your father’s book?”
Maya can’t argue, so she doesn’t, and her mom gives up and goes back to the living room and her nature documentary.
It’s a good thing she doesn’t know, Maya thinks, about her potential deferral at BU, as she would hate for her mom to share her awful uncertainty about the future. She has never been one of those teenagers who can’t wait to get away from her family. Maybe it’s because hers feels so small: her mom is often at odds with her parents, who continue to find reasons to be disappointed in her even now that they’ve forgiven her for having Maya. It’s always been her and her mom against the world. These last few nights living at home would have been emotional under any circumstance, but instead of trying to cherish this time that she spends preparing and eating dinner with her mom, Maya thinks only of Frank. She hardly tastes the fresh basil in the eggplant stir-fry, or the coconut milk in the rice.
Instead she replays the smile she caught Frank giving Aubrey, like he was her getaway driver in some romantic heist. Maya used to think that smile was just for her; now she doesn’t know what to think. Frank had been so vulnerable with her the night before last, telling her painful things about his childhood, and had seemed so sincere when he confessed his feelings for her. I spend all this time with you because there’s no one else I’d rather be with. She’d memorized the words as soon as they left his mouth. But had he meant them?
You don’t get it, do you? Aubrey had said, and she was right. Maya doesn’t have a clue. But after dwelling on it all throughout dinner with her mom in the garden at sunset, Maya decides she needs an answer. Because if Frank thinks he can kiss her and discard her for her （prettier） friend, he’s going to have to tell her to her face. Maya won’t leave town without knowing. If the library were going to be open tomorrow, she’d wait until then, but since it will be closed, she’ll just have to go over to Frank’s house and ask him.
She knows generally where that is （at the edge of the forest） and can probably find the exact address in the phone book. The only problem is getting there. It’s too far to bike. She’ll have to borrow her mom’s car—but will her mom lend it to her knowing her plans?
“Did you feel that?” her mom asks.
“Feel what?”
A raindrop on her cheek. Maya looks up at the sky. It’s lightly cloudy. “Should we go in?”
They wait. No more drops. They have brought out a folding table and a pitcher of limeade and cups. “I think we’re fine,” says her mom.
Maya has an idea. “Hey, could I drop you off at work tonight and borrow the car?”
Her mom looks over at her.
“You know,” Maya says, “since it seems like it could rain. I was thinking I might go over to Aubrey’s tonight.”
“Sure,” her mom says, unsuspecting.
Another raindrop lands on Maya’s shoulder. She feels her face getting hot.