1 There is a forest behind my trailer, through the weeds and under the gate and across the trickly, oily ditch. It is a forest of very, very old car parts, heaps of rusted metal, spotted orangey brown, with rainbow layers of fading paint, and leaves and vines poking and twisting through the holes. Birds and snakes and bugs sometimes peek out from the pipes and hubcaps. My neighborhood is called Forest View Mobile Home Park. I think this must be the forest they're talking about. On the day Papa was deported, that's where I went. The police had pulled him over a week earlier, and while he was in jail, Mama was on her cell phone all the time. Deportado, deportado, deportado, she said, in a hushed, dangerous voice. Deportado, she said to my aunts Rosa and Virginia and Mar'a. Deportado, she said over the phone to Uncle Luciano in Mexico. Deportado meant Papa would be sent back to Mexico, and it would be very, very hard for him to come back. The day before he was deported, I saw Papa at the jail. He stared at me through the scratchy plastic divider. The phone shook in his hand. He said, "Goodbye, Zitlally." Then he whispered, "Ni-mitz nequi." I love you. He looked strange in the blue jumpsuit, and even stranger because he was crying, right there in front of the other prisoners and their families and the guards. But my tears stayed hidden under a stone inside a cave inside me. I worried that Papa thought I wasn't sad because my face was dry when I said goodbye. The next day, alone in the car part forest, I felt tears pushing out like a geyser. My name is Zitlally. Estrella. Star. That's what it means in Nahuatl. Nahuatl is what Papa speaks to me in secret, even though I don't understand. It is a soft language full of shhhhs and perfect for whispering at night. I used to think it was the language of the stars, what they whispered to each other. This year during the Mexico unit in school, I found out it was the language of the Aztecs. The Aztecs are supposed to be all dead. Maybe they're the ones whispering. I didn't tell anyone that their words aren't dead. I know because Papa speaks them. Because he named me one. Because I hear the stars whispering. Shhhh. The day after Papa was deportado, Mama was on the phone saying deportado, deportado and crying and Reina was watching a murder movie on TV and Dalia was hanging out with her friends at the edge of the park that no kids are allowed to go to because of the broken glass and needles. Usually Mama would frown and Papa would say that Dalia couldn't hang out with them and that Reina couldn't watch murder movies, but now that Mama was always on the phone, saying deportado, deportado, she didn't notice much. I brought my math worksheets outside and sat on the ripped Astroturf porch, leaning against the tin side of our trailer. I shivered and wished I'd brought a sweater. It was a little cold because it was April. Fractions. Four-fifths. The fraction of my family here. Papa used to look over my shoulder as I did math homework and help me. He didn't do problems the way Mr. Martin did on the board. He had his own system. He was a framer and always had to cut wood perfectly, down to the exact one-eighth of an inch, and not waste any wood. He was a master of fractions. Something crashed, something glass. It came from next door. Then came a waterfall of bashing and breaking and yelling. It was that girl, Crystal's, mom and her mom's boyfriend. I never talked to Crystal at school. My best friend, Morgan, said that Crystal shopped at garage sales. My second-best friend, Emma, said she had poor dental hygiene and chronic halitosis. And my third-best friend, Olivia, said she used to pee in her pants in first grade. Since they were my best friends forever, I knew where my loyalty was. When Crystal tried to talk to me at the bus stop Excerpted from Star in the Forest by Laura Resau All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
