Return to Sender by Julia Álvarez Page B

okay to be in a boy's bedroom even if it is nighttime.
    “Do you think it's true what your uncle was saying about la migra ?” Mari asks as they all walk over to Tyler's house. She has to explain that la migra is what the Mexicans call the agents from Homeland Security who try to catch them.
    Tyler can't honestly say whether or not Homeland Secu-rity will raid the family's farms. But as with the possible planetary dangers in the offing, they should at least have a plan.
    “What kind of a plan?” Luby wants to know.
    “You know,” Tyler offers, “like a fire drill at school.”
    “We all run out of the house?” Luby asks.
    “We shouldn't run.” Ofie is good at remembering rules. “We file out and … Then what?” She looks over at Tyler.
    “We hide, right?” Luby thinks this might be a fun game after all.
    “There's all kinds of hiding spots,” Tyler agrees. He can't believe he is the same boy who several months ago wanted this family deported. Now he's plotting how they can escape capture. But maybe it's like the Underground Railroad: helping slaves find freedom. Besides, two of these girls are American citizens.
    “Grandpa showed me where there's a cave,” Tyler ex-plains. “We can go exploring tomorrow when it's light.”
    By now they're at the back door and Sara's getting ready to call her new boyfriend, Hal, when the phone rings. She lets it ring three times before she picks it up. “Hello,” she says casually. “Hello? HELLLOOOOO?! Will you stop it, Jake? I'm going to report you to the police!”
    She slams the phone into its cradle. The three Marías are surprised at this outburst. So Tyler explains about the an-noying caller who keeps hanging up when they answer.
    Mari looks like she has seen her second ghost of the evening. “I think that maybe it's our mother,” she says haltingly. She just recently gave their new phone number to their father's friend to take over to their former apartment. But it could be that their mother went by before the old tenants were deported and got the Paquettes’ number instead.
    Tyler doesn't get it. If the girls’ mother went to Mexico for a visit, wouldn't the family call her so she'd know where they'd be when she got ready to return? “You mean she doesn't know where you are?”
    Before Mari can reply, Ofie speaks up. “We don't know where she is.” Then, in a rare moment of self- doubt, she turns to her big sister. “Right, Mari?”
    “Papá said she went to the other side of life,” Luby recalls. She is holding on so tight to her stuffed puppy, it'd be a dead dog if it were alive. “Right, Mari?”
    Now Tyler is completely confused. The other side of life is the way people talk about Gramps's death. But how can the girls’ mother be dead and be on her way back from a trip to Mexico? “But she's alive—right, Mari?”
    Everyone has turned to Mari as the authority. Tyler notices just the teensiest hesitation—unlike her instant vehement assertion in the loft a few months back—before she replies, “Yes, our mother is alive.”
    As if to prove her right, the phone rings again.
    Mari rushes to answer it. Tyler and her sisters and Sara gather around her. “¿Mamá?” she begins.
    “¡Mamá! ¡Mamá!” The two little Marías are jumping up and down ecstatically.
    Mari hushes them. “I can't hear a thing!” Then she turns back to the caller. “Mamá, ¿eres tú?” But it must not be her mother because her face drains of excitement. “I'm sorry. Yes, she's here.”
    Mari tries handing the phone to Sara. “It's Jake,” she explains. Sara shakes her head and mouths, “I'm not home.”
    “She says she is not home,” Mari tells Jake.
    Sara and Tyler burst out laughing. But Mari doesn't understand what's so funny, even after Tyler explains. In fact, all three Marías have the same stricken look on their faces, as if they have just heard that their mother has vanished without a trace.
    “Let's go up and look through the telescope, you want