“Whoa, sorry. I just know a little Spanish, un poco español.”
“His eyes,” I said, moving my hands over my head to explain the bandages. “Bruises,” I added, and ran my fingers over my cheeks, nose, and chin.
He looked through the window in the door and nodded.
“The doctor’s in there. Doctor?”
“Yes,” I said, “and mi tía Isabela.”
“Oh, right. Okay, I’ll just wait with you,” he said, and nodded at the lounge.
We went into the lounge. I thought it was very nice that a friend of Edward’s had come right away to see him. He had not mentioned Jesse to me, but he had told me very little about his life, his friends, or even what interested him most to do.
There were only a few other people in the visitors’ lounge, but one of them was a woman with a little girl who looked no more than three or four. She spoke Spanish to the girl, who focused her beautiful ebony eyes on me and smiled when I smiled. I began to speak to her in Spanish, too, and her mother asked me who I had here. I explained that my cousin was in a car accident, and she told me her sister’s husband had fallen from a scaffold while painting an office building’s window frames. Her sister was in with her husband now, and she was watching their little girl. I asked her if she spoke any English, and she said very little. However, she and her sister and her sister’s husband were not from Mexico. They were from Costa Rica.
When I asked her how long she had been in the United States, she grew very nervous and mumbled an answer. As if to make things sound okay, however, she told me her sister’s little girl, Drina, had been born here. Jesse, who said he spoke little Spanish, listened keenly to our conversation.
He leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I think she’s illegal,” he said. “Maybe the parents are, too.”
I told him Drina was born in America.
“She’s an anchor baby,” Jesse said.
I shook my head. “Don’t understand.”
“Baby born aquí?”
“Sí.”
“Illegal parents are anchored to the U.S. because the baby was born here. You know the word anchor?”
I shook my head.
“Tied down, like a boat is tied,” he explained, gesturing with his hands.
“Oh,” I said. “They stay because of the niña.”
“That’s it.”
Drina’s tía saw we were talking about them and grew even more nervous. She got up and walked Drina out and down the hallway.
Moments later, my aunt came into the lounge. “You can go see Edward again,” she told me, and looked at Jesse.
“Hello, Mrs. Dallas. I’m sorry to hear about Edward’s accident.”
“Yes. Me, too, Jesse,” she said dryly. “You can go see him, but don’t stay more than fifteen minutes. Bring her down to the cafeteria, please,” she told him, nodding at me. “I’m going to get myself a cup of coffee and something. I haven’t eaten much today, as you might imagine.”
“I will,” Jesse said.
He walked out with me, and we entered the floor and went to Edward’s room.
“Hey, stupid,” Jesse said as we entered.
“What are you doing here?”
“I figured I’d use you as an excuse to avoid Kasofsky’s pop quiz. What do you think I’m doing here?”
Edward reached out, and Jesse took his hand. They held on to each other firmly.