She made her way to what would have been her neighbor’s door, walking past streetlights and feral cats, people walking dogs. It was April, but one patio was still strewn with Christmas lights. Little barbecues. Bougainvillea, birds-of-paradise. Many windows had the X-marks of masking tape. She remembered her mother doing this to prevent flying glass if a hurricane blew the windows. She knew hurricanes wouldn’t arrive for months.
An older woman answered the door. She had bleached-blond hair pulled back into a severe bun. A hollowed look, dark rings under her eyes.
“I’m so sorry to bother,” Ana said, hearing the accent she’d acquired after so many years in Mexico. “I’m looking for someone who used to live here. Years ago. It’s possible she doesn’t live here anymore?”
The woman towered over her. She looked down and then beyond Ana, as if distracted. “Are you looking for Jeanette?” she said in a small voice that didn’t fit her.
Ana was taken aback. She’d already settled for disappointment. She’d already wondered what bus bench she’d sleep on, where she’d find a job when she didn’t find this J-person. It’d been an impractical plan, she could admit it to herself.
“Yes,” she said, hearing the anticipation and hope in her own voice. “Does she still live here?”
The woman didn’t meet her eyes. She brought a hand to her collar. Beyond her, Ana could see the town house was near empty, just a few pieces of furniture. “Who did you say you were?”
It was a simple enough question, but Ana fumbled to answer. She said something about a night at her neighbor’s house and a missing mother. She said something about years in Mexico and a grandmother in El Salvador.
The woman’s eyes darted back to her. “I know you!” she gasped. The woman fumbled excitedly, or tensely, Ana couldn’t tell. She didn’t wait for Ana to say anything else, just led her into the house and began to brush crumbs off a kitchen table and rifle through cabinets to set a plate of food with a nervous energy that put Ana on edge.
But Ana was relieved to sit in the air-conditioning, to eat Cuban croquetas. She hadn’t seen those in years.
The woman sat across from her, stared. Ana couldn’t remember what this house had looked like so many years ago, but she was sure the table was the same. The woman picked at her nails and stared out the window at the empty unkempt lawn, at the cars parked in their designated lots.
“You said you knew me?” Ana was so hungry and couldn’t take a bite.
The woman asked Ana why she was there, grew wide-eyed when Ana told her the story of where she’d been just days before. Ana hesitated when she said she wasn’t sure where she would spend the night, but the woman interrupted right away.
“You can spend the night here,” she said. “You can stay as long as you need to.”
Ana thanked her profusely, this woman she did not even know, but she was suspicious at the way she darted questions, at times couldn’t sit still and at others would quiet suddenly, seemed to disappear into her own mind, couldn’t even tell her how she knew her.
As the woman took the empty plate before Ana to the sink and rinsed the crumbs, she finally introduced herself as Carmen. “I am Jeanette’s mother,” she said, back to Ana. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Ana, but Jeanette died.” Carmen shut off the faucet and turned to face her. A cat Ana hadn’t noticed hopped off the windowsill and extended into a stretch.
Ana swallowed. “Died?” The cat darted off.
Carmen had tears in her eyes. Her bottom lip trembled.
Ana looked down at the table. She hadn’t known Jeanette, not at all, but for so many months, she’d harbored this silly fantasy of a distant friend in her childhood world. She searched for words. “I’m so—”
“Overdose,” Carmen said, and shut off the water. She gripped the edge of the counter and bent her head.
Ana tried to conjure an image of Jeanette, tried to form a story about her life in all the years she hadn’t seen her. She realized addiction wouldn’t have figured into her story. “I’m—” She wanted so badly to sleep, to will away the last few months, to have her mother again. “I’m so sorry,” she said, angry at her own mechanical language.
“There is something else,” Carmen said. Her mascara ran now, splotches down her cheeks. “It was me,” Carmen said, “who encouraged her to call the police on you. I think it is my fault you were deported.”
Ana lifted her head. Beyond the kitchen, she could see the empty living room through the pass-through. Just a couch and a sliding glass door. The cat pawing at the door.
“What? The police? She told them to take me?”
“It was so long ago,” Carmen said. “What did I know then of what was right? What did I know then of what the world is capable of?”
Ana didn’t know whether she spoke about the death of her daughter, or Ana’s story. The air-conditioning sputtered on. How quickly a story unravels, an image blurs.
“Do you live here now?” Ana said because she could think of nothing else to say.
For so long, she’d had a different story about her own trajectory. She marveled at the way memory became static history, this thing so easily manipulated and shaped by her own desires. She had wanted to believe that Jeanette was a soft landing before the shock of detention, of deportation, all those years before. She had wanted to believe Jeanette kind. What did she know of other people? Of what they do?
“I suppose you could say that,” Carmen said, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. “She rented this house because she couldn’t live with me anymore. And now I can’t seem to leave it. I bought it. I can’t seem to go home
