THANKSGIVING DAY

The morning began with the anticipation of a festive day. The shelter volunteers—older gringo couples, full of biblical phrases—were in good spirits, greeting everyone in the Spanglish they had learned through conversations with the Latinos who made up the majority of the clients at the homeless shelter located in the middle of downtown. For them it was also a special day, because in reality those who live forgotten, Thanksgiving Day is the day when hope—secretly stored away in the form of a phone call or a visit from absent children—becomes a tangible possibility. Deep down, the old gringos live a life just as lonely as that of the immigrant whose children and family live far away, existing only in memories, sporadic calls, or in the magic of WhatsApp.

My knee hurt, he thought silently—it must be the shitty cold. The smells and noise coming from the communal kitchen finished waking him up. He got up from the creaky bed and, with the automatic gesture of every morning, reached for the leather pouch he hid inside his underwear, because there was no way human hands could reach the vicinity of his balls without waking him up. H hid his treasure: the pouch with the scapular Chechi his little sister had given him on the day of his departure; a yellowed piece of paper, worn by time, with an address and a phone number of a friend of a friend who was supposedly going to give him shelter during his first days after arrival, but who never answered the phone or opened the door—despite the fact that on more than one occasion he heard the stumbling footsteps of those who went into hiding when he rang the doorbell in vain; twenty dollars in bills and coins, the product of daily hustling and stealing quarters from the fountain in front of city hall. I’m screwed with winter, he told himself, because with the fountain frozen there was no way for the idiots chasing dreams for twenty-five cents to make their wish by tossing coins into a tradition that at least served so the poor could fulfill their longing for a Big Mac. He stretched and began his walk toward the dining hall, with a mandatory stop at the bathroom.

The streets were full of last-minute shoppers buying bottles of wine or looking for the forgotten ingredient on the long list of traditional items for the day. When the streets were crowded, life felt less sad, because he could blend in with everyone and pretend that he too had somewhere to go, even though the only thing on his mind was the memory of the day of his departure. He had become so good at this game of imagination that at times he felt the urgency to get nowhere, as if someone were truly waiting for him.

The day of departure was a Monday at six in the morning. The ship, La Sirena Caribeña, an old cargo ship with Panamanian flag, looked imposing, anchored at the terminal. With the help of cousin Juancho, and armed with a can crackers, half a salami, two cans of sardines, and a gallon of water, he dared to hide inside a container full of bananas—and, as he would learn during the journey, rats that indiscriminately shit on the bunches of fruit that would eventually end up on supermarket shelves in the North. It was a journey of heat, fear, and disgust, but he survived the four days and managed to get out unseen. That said, he never again ate bananas in his life, because the mere smell of the fruit produced an uncontrollable vomit, like a volcano erupting after a thousand-year pause.

He tried in vain to find the friend of the friend, and when he understood there would be no help, he managed alongside other undocumented people from around the world and found his way to an illegal factory making NFL and NBA team T-shirts. He was an exceptional worker, working seven days a week, fourteen hours a day for $2.75 an hour with no overtime pay. It seemed like everything might have a happy ending, and someday he could bring his mother to live in the North, or return to his homeland with a few cents saved, like Juanita in the story turned legend in the voice of Joe Arroyo, and sung endlessly at the Friday and Saturday parties, savoring tamarind juice under the shade of a matarratón tree. But it was not to be. Immigration came one day and wiped out the factory and all the illegal factories in the city. He ran and escaped, although if he could relive the story, he would have stayed so they could catch him and deport him. If only he could have predicted what was coming…

What followed was loneliness, fear, and madness. First, he was kicked out of the little room he rented for lack of payment. Then he pawned his possessions one by one until all he had left was the little leather pouch and the clothes on his back. He became a street dweller. He learned to butcher English and to perfectly master the language of the birds, with whom he held daily, deep conversations during his morning visits to the central park. The birds gave him directions to the homeless shelter, because birds were the means of communication used by the city’s poorest to send messages and survival strategies. Slowly, life became a routine of walking, shelter, conversations with birds, and fleeting moments of sanity.

Hunger began to tighten again, so instinctively he directed his steps toward the shelter. Typical of Thanksgiving, there was a long line of luxury cars parked in front of the old building, along with television station vans. There were his daily companions: women, men, children, young people, and old folks—human beings who, by twists of fate, had ended up sharing a title recognized only among themselves, within this circle of poverty and hopelessness, as citizens and residents of the street. Every year on this day, the politicians who shut down the illegal factories, the football and basketball players whose names he used to print on the jerseys he assembled seven days a week, fourteen hours a day for $2.75 an hour with no overtime pay, and other prominent members of society who never showed up in this part of the city during the other 364 days of the year came to serve Thanksgiving lunch: turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green beans, and a slice of pumpkin pie. He ate eagerly and went back for seconds, because today seconds were allowed. Everyone talked and told stories, and the church choir sang hallelujahs and amens, television cameras recorded the event for the evening news, while he remained silent—because some time ago he had decided it was better to talk to birds.

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