Jesse

Originally written January 22nd, 2022.

It was raining dust on the morning I heard the saddest story ever likely to be told. 

The author was only eight years old.

The abnormal weather that accompanied the world on that chilly January morning made my usual routine a little more entertaining than usual. I had to use a broom to clean my windshield and mailbox, and the streetlights were still dimly lit, providing the little illumination needed to transverse the brown fog that had settled in. By the time I reached the school I had avoided four car accidents, lost a windshield wiper, and possibly ran over half a dozen dead squirrels. I had hoped they were just clods of dust gathered on the edges of the road, but as I locked my car I noticed blood and bones stuck to my front left tire.

The children were out in the schoolyard making dust angels, throwing clods at each other, and building forts out of the dust that had gathered in the basketball courts. It was the closest thing to snow the Central Valley would get. I had wrapped my tie around my face so none of the grimy particles would clog my nostrils and mouth, but it wasn’t enough to protect the tip of my chin and forehead. By the time I walked through the front gate my eyes were damper than a leech’s armpit, and my hair sandier than a rattlesnake’s nest. When I walked into the office, Miranda looked up and shook her head.

“Nice scarf Ramirez. Here are your messages. You have a visitor. Nice and early today.” She was wearing goggles, a surgical mask, and a fur-trim parka. Despite all these precautions, I could still notice some lighter bits of dust on her face that contrasted with her finely sprinkled freckles.

“A visitor?” I glanced down and checked my watch. “It’s still a quarter to eight though. School doesn’t start for another half hour.”

Miranda shrugged. “Wasn’t about to let the poor guppy drown in dust, was I?”

I walked into my cubicle and thought for a second Miranda was just trying to get on my nerves. There was no one seated in the visitor's chair. But when I looked again, I saw the smallest crumb the school had to offer. I’d seen preschoolers bigger than this boy. My hand could’ve covered his entire face, but it appeared as if someone had beaten me to it. The boy’s face was more bruised than a dropped pear and purpler than a raisin. I sighed. It was always the small ones that got into fights. I draped my coat over my chair and took a seat. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes until I cleared my throat and leaned back.

“Was it on the bus?” The boy nodded. Fights were not uncommon on the school buses, it was just surprising that there’d be one this early. “Have you been checked by Nurse Hollins yet?”

He nodded again. “She gave me a bag of ice and told me to wait here for you.” I raised my eyebrows. I had started to gain Hollins’ favor in the past few weeks, but to have her send a student to me meant something more to me. It meant respect. I looked at the kids' hands. Bruised and cut too, clenching strands of a plastic bag as if holding onto the final strands of his life.

“What happened to the ice?”

“Huh?”

“You said she gave you a bag of ice. Where’s the ice?” The boy’s eyes turned from dry lifeless stones into pools of trembling water. “Hey, hey it’s ok. You’re not in trouble. I just don’t want to find melted ice cubes in my potted plant later.”

“Had them for lunch.”

“What?”

“I ate them.” The boy’s cheeks became riverbeds of tears. I bit my tongue and looked down at my keyboard. I had a weird feeling about this one.

“Go to class. Come see me during lunch. We’ll talk about it then. Stay out of trouble.” I pushed the box of tissues that sat on my desk toward him, and he took three, squeezing his nose with one and putting two in his pocket. He hopped off the chair and scurried away, his feeble body disappearing past Miranda’s desk and out through the office door. I put my chin to my fist and after some mindless consideration, I got up and stopped by Miranda’s desk.

“Hey Miranda, who was that? The kid who just visited me.” Miranda looked up and rolled her eyes at me as she pulled out the visitor log from the filing cabinet. Through a mouthful of bubblegum, she told me that the kid’s name was Jesse Maldonado, that he was in Mrs. DiMagio’s third-grade class, and that he was brought in for causing ‘disruption to public safety’ on bus route 17. The bus driver complained that the commotion he caused coupled with the morning dust devils almost led to an accident. “Is he a frequent visitor? Or is this his first time?”

Miranda blew a bubble. “Nah he’s been here before, most years he’s been here. Kindergarten year was filled with truancies, and the days he did come he’d be here with pissed pants, figured out that he’d be sent home if he didn’t hold it in. First grade there was an incident, big enough that the school excused him for the rest of the year. Last year, he wasn’t here as frequently, at least as far as I can tell. The same went for this year. Until today, I guess.”

“Anything else? Parents, contact information, anything that stands out?”

Miranda crossed her arms and looked squarely back at me, “You’ve been here for half a year Ramirez, surely you know where the personal records are by now. Try looking there. Besides what’s so special about this kid? He got beat up on the bus, so what? You don’t need to look into his life story.”

“Ice.”

“What?”

“He ate the ice from his ice pack. For lunch.” 

I returned to my desk to leave a new voicemail greeting as I would be gone for the day, but before I could record it, Jasper’s head popped out from the next cubicle.

“Don’t do it.”

“What?”

“I know what you’re planning to get into. Don’t. You’re not gonna like it. Just do your job man. Do what they need you to do.”

“Maybe that’s why these kids are in this mess, Jasper. Too many people doing just enough, but no one doing just right. Now I don’t know if they made you all believe you’re incapable of doing good, or you’ve just forgotten over time, doesn’t matter. Won’t stop me either way.”

“I know it won’t.” Jasper sighed. “Wish it would.” 

I rolled up my sleeves and headed down into the basement to look through the student records. With only the aid of the dying light bulb that hung ever so delicately from the cracked ceiling, I made my way through the poorly lit basement to the filing cabinet labeled with Jesse’s class’ enrollment year. Jesse’s file was hidden in the third cabinet down, in between the singular Maddison and the numerous Martinezes. It was noticeably thicker than the others too, and I leaned on a discarded stool that was near the stairway as I flipped through the file.

Jesse had been born with some sort of illness, where his bones develop at a severely delayed rate and are relatively weaker than most children’s. His doctors immediately assumed it was a lack of calcium deficiency, and as a result, Jesse was breastfed incessantly until it was found that an overindulgence of milk was severely damaging his digestive system. From there there was a gap in medical history until it came time for his kindergarten physical. Jesse was noted to still have this slow bone development but the doctor noted that the strength of his bones was notably stronger, and he was cleared for most physical activities. In the section for additional comments, the pediatrician noted: ‘needs to smile more’. I counted 54 truancy letters from his kindergarten year, and various reports from different police officers. They were from different dates but they all described the same situation more or less. Several phrases were repeated, like obedient suspect and harmless environment. One slip with egregiously poor handwriting mentioned that the whole place smells like beans- clean but what a shithole. These slips presented a problem, for me at least. A seemingly unaggressive home life meant that Jesse’s problems weren’t going to be as straightforward as I had assumed. The first-grade file changed everything though.

Jesse had begun school normally, without any outstanding behavioral or medical concerns to report. His academic grades were not outstanding by any means either, but given the fact he had essentially missed half of his kindergarten year, it wasn’t surprising. What happened that November was, however. Jesse missed two weeks in a row without any notice from home. The cops showed up at Jesse’s home in full riot armor on the morning of the third week and found Jesse’s mother holding a pale Jesse on the floor of their bathroom. Jesse had a strained form of flu, and his entire body convulsed as his frail frame became inconceivably weaker. The mother, being fluent in only her native language, could only plead with the policemen in broken English, and the only thing they understood was her apparent reason for not notifying the school.

“No phone…no phone, no phone!” She pointed to the spot where the home’s landline should’ve been, but the police report noted there was no such device. They had found unpaid phone bills which they later took as evidence. The report entailed that as they tried to communicate with the woman she became less and less compliant, and held the child’s body closer to her own. No intentions of anyone providing the child with medical support were reported. As more cops arrived and ransacked the house, the mother finally agreed to move to the living room but was now completely silent. The school report then ends abruptly, noting the arrival of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Tediously thorough and heavy to carry, prompting me to take breaks from reading and massage my forehead, the report from immigration services was mostly bureaucratic drivel and secretive at best. The ICE agents had taken Jesse and his mother to a detention center to be processed. Jesse’s mother had been detained before, so her record was already on hand. She’d have been shipped back to Nicaragua within a few hours had it not been for Jesse. When they arrived at the center, Jesse and his mom had been separated for undisclosed reasons. The report revealed that they had interrogated six-year-old Jesse for about two hours, asking him things from identifying his mother to naming the colors on the American flag, to listing every student in his kindergarten class. After making him stand in line for another two hours, they took him to a room to get his fingerprints recorded. And it was here that ICE realized that they had screwed up. Big time. After reviewing Jesse’s answers from the interrogation and finding his medical records, the ICE officials realized that Jesse was a United States citizen. It was nothing short of miraculous that the ICE officials hadn’t attempted to verify this before the arrest, but once they found out it was over. The agency had violated multiple constitutional amendments, and would at the very least be fined and face a long process of internal investigation. I flipped through the rest of the folder but there was nothing of note. Only copies of receipts detailing transactions of cash delivered to a certain Rosa Maldonado. I grabbed the folder and headed back up the stairs, trying to assemble the great puzzle that was Jesse Maldonado’s childhood. Before I could regroup all my thoughts at my desk, however, Principal Kozminski leaned on the entrance to my cubicle. His gut was larger and louder than usual.

“Ramirez! They don’t pay you to go exploring. The school board didn’t inform me Indiana Jones was joining this crew. Get back to…” His incessant grumbling was interrupted when he saw the folder I carried under my left arm. His mood changed completely, going from a condescending attitude to a more defensive, hesitant one. “Where’d you get that?”

“How much do you know about Jesse Maldonado?”

“Who?”

“Come on, Kozminski. This place is starting to feel less like a school and more like a cattle ranch the way I’m having to trudge through all your bullshit. Be a man for once and tell me what happened with Jesse Maldonado!” I felt my face redden with rage, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Jasper’s eyes widen behind his glasses and Miranda’s mouth gape more than usual. Kozminski’s teeth were grinding like gears on a diesel motor. I was knee-deep in some serious shit, and I loved it.

Kozminski leaned over and growled into my ear,  “My office. Now.”

I followed him inside and he slammed the door shut. He closed the blinds and leaned on his office door. The tension inside the little space was absolutely suffocating, and I just wanted Kozminski to open the door and let some cleaner air creep in.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he said softly. “It’s probably the biggest fuck up I’ve seen in thirty years of working within the government. I picked them up from the detention center, you know. I took them straight to the hospital, it was midnight when we got to the emergency room. Stayed there until nine in the morning, when Jesse’s condition became stable. I’ve never seen something so weak have such a strong spirit.” He paused for a moment. “The receipts in there are proof of payments given to Jesse’s mom. The money is received monthly from the detention center itself. A third goes to the local sheriff to keep them from snooping, a third goes to Jesse and his mother, and a third stays here in return for keeping our mouths shut. Everyone has to keep their mouths shut, though. All it takes is one bird to sing for the cats to come for the cage.”

I was speechless. I had too much to say, and my body felt like a tea kettle, with the words rising to my mouth like boiling bubbles. Kozminski sat down at his desk and extended one of his arms over the table. “Well, now that you know, I can imagine you won’t need those. I mean, imagine if they were to fall into the wrong hands.”

“Wrong hands?!” I shouted. “In how much worse hands can they be? You’re blackmailing a woman to silence. You’re covering up the illegal actions of multiple individuals. You’re taking bribes and you hide the proof right under your office. You’re, you’re…”

“Shameless? Horrible? A monster? These are all things I’ve been told, Ramirez, and frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if deep down I have started to believe them as well. But let me open your eyes a bit. Those funds to the police, they didn’t just cover their mouths. They also provided guns and handcuffs.”

“You think we should be afraid of phantom police threats?”

“I’m not sure if I am, but I know the Maldonados are. There’s a reason Jesse gets into those fights. Not easy to be relaxed when a police cruiser is parked across your house every day. Try telling him those boys in blue are phantoms.”

I left the office too stunned to speak, but Jasper seemed to have known exactly every word that had been exchanged in there. He handed me a sticky note with a scribbled address.

“Keep playing Superman you dumb fuck,” he whispered, “and you gonna get your cape all burnt up in flames.”

The address seemed familiar, but before I could go look for it, I had to meet Jesse for our scheduled lunch. I decided to take the initiative, and rather than wait for him to report at the start of recess I headed straight to the cafeteria to look for him there. He was seated at the back of the cafeteria, at the table closest to the stage. As I lumbered across the linoleum, the cacophony of lunchtime shouts dulled to a buzzing whisper, and when I sat down across from Jesse it shrank to an echoing silence. Jesse only had a banana peel in front of him.

“You on a diet?” I joked. I then remembered that when he had come in earlier in the morning, Jesse had no backpack or lunch pail. “Where’d you get that banana, Jesse?”

“Janitor Jeff.”

“Jeff gave it to you? Does he usually give you food?”

Jesse nodded. “Yeah, the fruits or veggies. Jeff don’t like ‘em, says I need ‘em more than he needs ‘em.”

“So you get to eat something every day at lunch, right?”

Jesse shook his head. “Some days, the kids take ‘em. Some days Jeff is too busy.” I looked at my lopsided brown lunch bag.

“You want some of mine?” Jesse looked down at his feet. “Come on, take some kid. I’m not that hungry anyway.” I really wasn’t, the scent in Kozminski’s office completely ruined any semblance of appetite I had.

As Jesse eagerly took out my fairly unspectacular lunch, consisting of a roast beef sandwich, an apple, a bag of potato chips, and a can of grape soda, I couldn’t help but observe his appearance. His hair was trimmed to the scalp, and his dark caramel skin matched his nervy eyes. He wore a faded red polo that was at least two sizes too big for him and a pair of denim that had probably been his father's since they were considerably worn at the bottoms where they had been peculiarly cut. The bottom of the hem for him reached where the knees of his father had been. He wore a scuffed pair of running shoes and mismatched socks. Despite all this, the thing that stuck out to me was how clean and pressed every piece of garment was. Even after Jesse finished my entire lunch, the clothes were still spotless. I at times had the occasional mustard stain on my tie, but Jesse ate like a gentleman. As the bell rang to dismiss the students to recess, Jesse finally worked up the courage to dispel the silence.

“Am I in trouble?” He stopped his kicking underneath the table when he asked this, and his eyes became fixated on mine. The empty echo of the cafeteria that followed the recess bell seemed to discomfort me more than doing anything to him.

“No Jesse you’re not. But you will be if you keep fighting kids. I’ve talked to Ms. Montiel, the office secretary. And she’s told me that you do this a lot. You get into fights in the playground. And you always get hurt, Jesse. Now why do you keep getting into them if you know what happens?”

Tears began to grow in the corners of his eyes again. “Cuz they say stuff.”

“Who, Jesse?”

“The kids, even the girls. They call me tic-tac, crybaby, wimp, shrimp, gusanito, frijolito, y enanito. And whenever I try to say sum back, I stumble on my words and they laugh more. I hate ‘em. I wanna make ‘em hurt the way they hurt me. So I do the only thing that I can do. I start punching and kicking and biting. And I don’t care if I get hit, cause when they kick my ass, I know they’ll like me more. And when they bruise me, I know maybe next time they won’t call me names. Maybe they’ll even let me eat lunch with ‘em. People like tough people.” He stopped crying, and what he said next was said with more venomous pain than anything he had said before. “And then Mama will be happy. She’ll see that I got friends, I’ll bring ‘em over to play and she’ll be happy. She’s always sad that I’m always fighting. How I don’t got friends. Before, when I peed myself or got in a fight she’d hit me with her chancla. But now she just looks sad when I get in trouble. Don’t tell Mama Mister, please don’t tell her bout the fight. She hasn’t cried since Papa’s birthday.”

I looked down at the neatly folded chips bag, apple core, and empty can of grape soda Jesse had in front of him. “Don’t worry Jesse. Mama won’t know.”

After walking Jesse to Mrs. DiMagio’s class, I drove to the address Jasper had given me. Even though it was only eight blocks away, I wasn’t sure I would be back before school ended. The address seemed familiar when Jasper had first given it to me, and as I drove I realized it was on the same street as Jesse’s. Jesse’s house was like his clothes: old, worn out, but clean. It was a faded shade of pink with white brick roof tiles and a freshly cut dry lawn. There were plenty of rose bushes but no trees. There were no cars on the front sidewalk. Only a police cruiser outside the neighboring house.

The address I was looking for was across from Jesse’s. It was a mustard-tinted house, with emerald green shutters and roof tiles. Two citrus trees grew on either side of the stone walkway that led to the white wooden door. The house had no doorbell, but before I could even knock an old lady opened the door. She was graceful despite her rickety rackety appearance, and behind her wrinkles and faded hair lay a beautiful woman. She wore a grey gown with a baby blue rebozo draped over her shoulders, tightly fitted huaraches that hid swollen feet, and dangling diamond Cross earrings. 

“Come in, come in. I don’t get many visitors these days. Especially young handsome ones. Apart from Jasper. Oh, Jasper. That rascal. He just told me you were coming. Come, sit here in the recliner while I bring out something. You liked diced fruit?”

I nodded and sat down in her leather recliner. It was a rather peculiar house fit for a rather peculiar person. The furniture inside was all from Tonala and apart from the recliner, it was all from handcrafted wood. It looked identical to the ones my mother used to cut out from Mexican magazine clippings and stick onto the fridge. The other peculiar thing was that there was no TV to go with the recliners. There were the usual bookshelves surrounding the spot where a TV should go, but in place of the TV, there were more books. It was a place that I immediately grew fond of. The owner of such a quaint palace, I would find out over a plate of pickled cucumbers and mangos, was Doña Gertrudes. She and her husband were from Guadalajara but immigrated during the amnesty of the Reagan area. They both worked as Spanish teachers at Lynwood High School and stayed in the area when they had their twin sons. Both became engineers, graduated from college top of their class, and worked for the Shell Oil company. Shortly after becoming grandparents, she and her husband chose to retire to the Jaliscan countryside. Months later her husband passed away peacefully in his sleep, and not wishing to keep her alone, her sons brought her back north where they bought her this fixer-upper to keep her occupied in her final years.

This was when she met Rosa, Jesse, and Fausto, Jesse’s father. Rosa was pregnant when Gertrudes moved in, and both she and Fausto were delighted about the baby. Gertrudes was invited to Rosa’s baby shower, where Fausto’s sisters laid out plates of traditional Nicaraguan food. Quesillo, Guirilas, Indio Viejo, and Buñuelos were spread across tables in the backyard. Traditional Nicaraguan music was played along with Mexican and Colombian cumbias. It was here that while one of the twins danced with one of Fausto’s sisters, the married one sat at the table with Rosa, Fausto, and Gertrudes. A drunk Gertrudes was praising her bashful son in front of their gracious guests, declaring how despite all the gangs and delinquency around the neighborhood her boys still managed to get into USC, and how despite growing up in a Spanish-speaking household her sons made more money in one week than most gringos make in a year. Rosa would laugh and decline any alcohol as she gently massaged her belly, smiling as her hands came as close as they could to her child. Fausto also didn’t drink too much since it was a Sunday, and he had work early the next day. Instead, he probed the twin about the college lifestyle, the work he did, the places he’d been, the women he’d kissed, the knowledge he’d gained, and the money he made. Once the twin managed to answer all of Fausto’s questions, Fausto leaned back in his chair and stretched his strong dark arm over Rosa’s stomach.

“I hope my kid gets to live even a sliver of what you’ve lived sir. I hope he gets to travel the California coast and feel the sand underneath his toes. I hope he has many girlfriends and gets to feel love with at least one of them. I hope he can get away from a neighborhood like this and go to bed knowing his wife and children are safe. But most of all, I hope he doesn’t give up on his education like I did. It’s not that I want him to be rich either. I just don’t want him busting his ass all the time like I am.”

With Rosa staying at home full time, Fausto now worked two jobs. In the mornings he would fix irrigation pipes in the cotton fields on the outskirts of town, and in the afternoons he would clean the bathrooms of the nearby Burger King. It barely covered the basic expenses, and the man would sleep for four hours on most days. Rosa started a garment business with Gertrudes on the weekends to pay for smuggled WIC stamps. Through both their efforts, the young couple managed to be ready by the time little Jesse came around. But as it so happens in life, as soon as the sailors managed to grab onto their oars, a tidal wave of misfortune would make sure they never attempted to set sail again.

Jesse was so frail that Rosa wouldn’t allow anyone to touch him. Gertrudes had to simply admire him from afar. With the baby taking control of Rosa’s life full-time, the income she had from the garment business was gone. The cotton fields fired Fausto after missing work for Jesse’s birth. Burger King fired him after finding out he had two jobs. After a few weeks, he finally found a full-time job as a night watchman at the local railway yard. It still wasn’t enough for the baby’s expenses and the bills. Rosa and Jesse went to live with one of her cousins for a few months to save on food. Fausto’s diet consisted of canned beans and green oranges from Gertrudes’ trees. Sometimes Fausto would go weeks without sleeping, constantly too tired to even close his eyes or lay down. There were a couple of days where he’d just sit at Gertrudes’ dining room table, and stare into space. One day he came in and told Gertrudes that time wasn’t real, and he just lived through one never-ending day of hopes and disappointments. Then he got a promotion.

One night some of the mechanics saw him staring longingly at their tools, so they invited Fausto to work with them for the rest of the shift. Fausto must’ve done something to impress them because, by the following week, he was a full-time railroad mechanic. Jesse and Rosa came back to the house, and everything seemed fine once again. But then the digestive problems began for Jesse. The overindulgence in dairy had seemingly tickled his digestive system enough that his body just wasn’t taking the necessary nutrients from the food he ate. Fausto and Rosa had no medical insurance, and Jesse’s treatment would cost upwards of one hundred thousand. Desperate for anything to save their precious son, they turned to Gertrudes, who recommended the couple go to a specialist in Guadalajara she knew very well. The treatment there would only be a few thousand, and Gertrudes suggested that it might even help with Jesse’s growth. When they packed for the trip down south, Fausto and Rosa packed heavier than usual, in case they couldn’t come back. They were going to risk their lives in the States to head down south for their son’s treatment, stepping into a country where Central Americans have always been looked down upon, with the possibility that they wouldn’t be allowed back north again.

By the time they arrived in Guadalajara, Fausto only had fifteen thousand of the twenty thousand he had taken when he left America. Most of the five thousand had been paid in the form of ‘tribute’ payment to vandals who had let them pass through their roads. The hospital in Guadalajara was much nicer than the Maldonados had expected, but somewhat more expensive as well. Jesse was cured, through some form of experimental drug the doctors had used on him, but they had used up the fifteen thousand left as well. Fausto found that there was no money left to return. The point was to get his wife and child back under his roof happy and healthy, not desolated in the streets of Guadalajara. After consulting a bar near the hospital, Fausto found some people who were touched by his story enough to loan him five thousand dollars in cash - with heavy interest, of course. Fausto decided to throw the five thousand into Jesse’s diaper bag and told Rosa to head back home. To Nicaragua. Fausto knew he wouldn’t be able to pay back the five thousand but until he figured out a way to do so, he knew he needed his family far away from danger. He told Rosa to go deep into the Nicaraguan highlands and stay in his parent’s village. Their old humble pink home would resemble a mansion in comparison to where Rosa and Jesse would stay in Nicaragua, but he knew the loan sharks would not find them there. After kissing Rosa and Jesse goodbye at the Guadalajara central station, Fausto headed back to the hotel where they had been staying. After a few weeks of failing to secure a job, disillusioned by the endless ocean of misfortune he had encountered, and dismayed about how badly he thought he had failed as a father and as a husband, Fausto took the only option he believed he had left. He hung himself with an extension cable he had found in the hotel room’s cupboards. He was 23.

But Rosa had ignored Fausto and instead took a bus north to Ciudad Juarez. She understood why Fausto wanted to hide in the safety of their homeland, but Jesse was an American citizen. The people of America may not like her, but they protect their countrymen. And Jesse was one of them. Besides, she wasn’t safe in Nicaragua either. Her grandparents had been murdered in the Nicaraguan Revolution, and her parents were forced to relocate to the capital shortly after. Having been involved in the general administration of the 1984 general elections, her entire family lived in constant fear of the CIA-backed Contras. The American-backed forces had succeeded in their mission by the time Rosa had been born. They had destabilized the country with so much funded violence and drug exportation that she did not know what happiness was until she met Fausto. Those days of counting pennies in the pink abode had been some of the most pleasurable in her mostly hopeless life.

She used four thousand dollars for a coyote, and within a few hours, she was back home to the private pink paradise where she and Fausto would raise a family together, grow old together, and die together. Except when she arrived, Fausto’s sisters were already there. But Fausto wasn’t. And Fausto would never arrive.

Jesse seemed to have never arrived either. Gertrudes explained to me that despite the medicine fixing Jesse’s stomach and bones, it changed his brain too. From being a joyful and curious baby he became an irritable and selfish toddler, and when Rosa most needed love in her life she received unmitigated rage instead. Jesse became intolerable, and Gertrudes often found herself tending for the child while Rosa lay down to quell her pounding headaches. In the meantime, to earn some money, she rented the garage in the back to one of her nephews, who mostly used it as a site to smoke pot and rehearse with his punk band. Shortly after Jesse entered school, Rosa began looking for jobs but could never maintain one for more than two weeks. 

Then the ICE incident happened. As soon as the white vans pulled up in front of the Maldonado’s household, Gertrudes knew what was unfolding. She ran outside in only a bathrobe, banging on the vans and yelling at the driver to let Jesse and Rosa out. Two cops had to pull her away from the van, one of them groping her along the way. She pulled away, cussed them out, and spit onto the sunglasses of the man who touched her. She stormed into her house and immediately called her sons. Within a few hours, they met with an immigration lawyer in San Fernando, who then directly called the immigration detention center. It was them who faxed over a copy of Jesse’s medical records and social security which Rosa had entrusted to Gertrudes for occasions such as those, and it was them who notified Kozminski where to pick up the Maldonados. Gertrudes noted that it was after this incident that Rosa kicked her nephew out of the garage, refurbished the entire house, bought Jesse a brand-new bike, and finally found a job where she stayed for more than two weeks. It was still her current job. Rosa was the sheriff’s housemaid.

By the time I got back to school, it was half past four and the day had become somewhat clearer. The winter sun was lazily sticking around for the last few minutes of the day, and the morning wind and dust had all but disappeared. My mind, however, was foggier than ever. I only returned to put away Jesse’s folder and grab the thermos I had forgotten on my desk. I had a stack of paperwork left to review but all I had planned for the evening was a lukewarm bath and a long night’s sleep. I walked into the empty office in a rather reserved manner, afraid I’d wake up the machinery of workers and condemn myself to another eight hours of tragedy. I found my blue thermos on my desk with a note taped to the side of it. It was from Miranda. The notes at the end of the day were among the few good things that I would find on my desk. I folded it and slid it down my pocket as I took Jesse’s folder to the basement, thinking I would read it before I lay in my cold lonely bed that winter’s night. I smiled at the thought of the note, admiring how Miranda Montiel seemed to have a penchant for lifting my hopes when they were at their lowest. As I reached the bottom step, however, my mood came crashing back down when I saw Jasper sitting on the stool where I had read Jesse’s file.

“So Superman, was I right, or was I right?”

“Seriously? Using a kid to point-score on me?”

Jasper clicked his tongue. “Not talking about points. Talking about doing what other people need from you, not what you think other people need. You should’ve stayed on campus. At least wait until class is dismissed to play superhero. I had to handle twice the number of kids I usually do. And Miranda left earlier than usual. I wonder if it was because you weren’t-”

“Why did you help me?”

Jasper sighed. “See, it's always the same problem with you young brothers. You think you know everything because you’ve been told you do. They tell you kids that you’re the next big generation, and you believe it. You think it’s your destiny. They probably told you you’re some maverick educator and you decide that you’re entitled to becoming one. Ramirez, this school is in free fall. Your job isn’t to launch it back up. You’re here to cushion the fall. While you out there playing hero, we had three fights, a lockdown, and a student hauled off to juvie for the third week in a row. Now how are you gonna explain that to your board?”

“How can you stand here and lecture me, when you’ve seen this kid become…a…a…a pawn in a game of corruption?! How can you let his mother become tangled in such a shit show? Are they sharing some of the money with you? I hope they are because otherwise, you not only come across as a sick bastard, but a stupid one as well.” I was shouting at this point, and my neck was damp with cool sweat. Jasper’s shoulders slumped and he looked at me gravely.

“My hands were tied here, Sam. Same as yours. Let me make this clear though, Sam. Don’t you dare make this about no money.” He looked down and shook his head, “See, you ain’t this genius you think you are. And I’m not the bumbling imbecile you think I am. I knew there was something about this kid too. When he had peed his pants for the fourth time that week in Kindergarten, I waited for Rosa to come pick him up. And, well, I fell for her. Her enchanting eyes, her broken laughter, her thick accent. I visited their household quite frequently until Kozminski found out. He rightfully put a stop to that boyish immaturity, reminding me how further fucked the school would be if the parents found out that its guidance counselor was having a relationship with a student’s mother.

Everything was fine until I heard about the ICE raid. When Kozminski headed to the detention center, he was only going to pick up Jesse. I had to plead with him over the phone to rescue Rosa, too. Thanks to me Jesse has someone to kiss him good night. Thanks to me Rosa has a job now, cleaning the sheriff’s toilets. Thanks to me the ICE detention center’s ass has been cleaned once again, and it can continue to separate families as it nearly did to the Maldonados. Thanks to me the sheriff has got his hands all over us, while Kozminski adds a couple thousand to his retirement plan every few months.”

He paused to light a shaking cigarette that had been slithering out of his shirt cuff, hopelessly trying to stabilize his grip on it before settling it between his teeth.

“And what do I get in return? A coworker who tries to solve a mystery I created out of stupid infatuations. I get an angry ex-wife who sucks every cent out of my paycheck. I get two angels who, God bless them, they're the sunlight in my life, but only want to visit me on weekends because I let them do whatever they want. And on top of all that, the guilt. I’m forced to put on a little smile and pretend all is fine in the world despite knowing all the principles I’ve broken over selfish reasons. So you know Sam, you’re kind of right. I am one stupid bastard.”

I moved out of his way, letting him escape that damp cavern as I soaked in all its moldy misery. I half muttered a goodbye to Jasper, which made him stop for a second, and say to me, cigarette still in mouth and his back still to me,

“Sorry, Sam. I know you just want to do the right thing, that deep down you just wanna be a good kid. But I’ve learned over time that God, well, he has little use for children in the time of man.”