Undocumented by Dan-el Padilla Peralta

Author:Dan-el Padilla Peralta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

WITH SUMMER on the horizon, Mom put her foot down:

“Yando, you’re going to apply to Pre’ fo’ Pre’.”

“I don’t want to!” was his first response. But when he saw the you-better-not-disagree-with-me look on Mom’s face, he went for a different form of protest: glum and unrelenting silence.

After his teachers at Resurrection recommended him for the program, I helped Mom fill out the parental materials and accompanied Yando, angry scowl and all, to his test battery. Although Mom and I were sure he wouldn’t bomb the tests intentionally, we stressed about his face-to-face interviews. Would he be rude? Or would he simply not talk?

But late in the spring, an admissions letter welcomed Yando to Prep. Mom kissed him on the forehead and thanked God for his mercy to our family. I tried to pump him up about the program:

“You excited about going to Prep this summer?”

He was underwhelmed. “Eh, not really.”

When June came around and school let out for the summer, Akim—a newly hired adviser and one of the few friends I’d made during my summer at Prep—was assigned to my brother. I crossed my fingers that Akim would get Yando to buy into Prep and focused on my new crop of advisees. Before long, Prep summer session was in full swing.

• • •

ONE SCORCHING JULY AFTERNOON, Yando and I were just getting back home from Prep when we noticed a very familiar-looking man standing in front of our apartment building. I squinted. He began to smile as our eyes made contact with his.

It was Dad.

“I wanted to surprise you!” he exclaimed, sweeping us up in his arms. He was wearing slacks, a dress shirt, and a blazer, and was carrying a tagged suitcase; he’d come directly from the airport. A mild scent of cologne wafted from his face.

“Bendición, Papá,” I said.

Yando hesitated; I coaxed him with a nudge. Dad didn’t seem to mind.

“How are my triunfadores doing?”

We led him into our apartment and sat with him in the kitchen. I glanced at the note Mom had left on the dinner table: she was at Resurrection and would be back in a while. I had no clue how she’d react to the sight of Dad.

Dad barraged Yando and me with questions about school, books, plans for the future, the New York Yankees. I quickly warmed to him and everything about him: the suave voice that sounded so much richer in person than on the phone, his arresting handsomeness, the erectness of his posture, the wit and cadence of his speech. At the same time, I kept thinking that he was lucky Carlos wasn’t around. Did he know Carlos was back in DR on a trip to check up on his auto shop there? I’d recently overheard Mom mention Carlos to Dad over the phone. She’d told Dad, in no uncertain terms, that Carlos was the man of her life now: they were living together.

An hour passed. Then I heard the rustle of Mom’s keys and the clang of the apartment door.

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