More Than Allies by Sandra Scofield

is clamped on his arm.
    â€œMom!” he protests, shoving at her hand. “Okay, okay.” He crawls out, pushing against her body, as Hilario gets out the other side. “Es nada,” Hilario says. “We don’t do nothing.” He tries to laugh. “A yoke,” he mispronounces. He looks at her with the native, jocular insolence of a cocky young man. Already he knows women will defer to him.
    â€œGo home!” she says sharply. He shrugs, turns, and runs away.
    To her son, she says, “Where were you?” though she knows.
    She marches him across the street. By her car, she pauses. Her chest hurts. She realizes that, in fact, they were doing nothing, boys acting silly in an unlocked car. She puts her hands on her son’s arm again. Intently, she looks at him and she says, “You have to understand. Two Mexican boys in someone’s car. It doesn’t matter that it was nothing. You would get in so much trouble.”
    â€œMom, we knew the car. It’s Mr. Nathan’s car. The P.E. teacher. What would he do to us? He left it unlocked. We weren’t hurting it.”
    She makes herself take a deep breath, takes her hands away. She points to her car. “Get in.
    â€œDid you eat?” she asks. He presses himself against the far door. He mumbles something about a tamale.
    â€œWhat? What were you doing?”
    They were watching the little kids while Lupe was at the laundromat. She left tamales.
    â€œI haven’t eaten,” Dulce says.
    He sits up. “I’m still hungry.”
    â€œI heard from your father,” she says. She didn’t know she was going to say that. “From Texas.”
    His head jerks up. “What’s he want, Mom? Is he coming?”
    â€œHe wants you—us—he wants us to come to Texas. To his folks.”
    â€œWhen, Mama? We will go, won’t we?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t know.”
    â€œDoes it cost too much? On the bus?”
    â€œHe sent money.”
    â€œI want to go!”
    â€œI don’t know yet. School’s not out. We’ll see then. In June.”
    â€œThere are ways to get to Texas,” he says sulkily. It’s a dare. She has told him how her papa walked the last forty miles to the border, to save his pesos for the crossing, his first time.
    â€œI haven’t made any supper,” she says. “We could go for hamburgers.”
    He shrugs. She knows he wants to go.
    She reaches for his hand. “Let’s get through the school year,” she says. “You know how I am about you missing school.”
    He pulls his hand away and gets quickly out of the car and runs to the trailer. Sighing, she pulls away from the curb. She’ll get food and bring it back. She’ll tell him she knows he wants his father, though she wonders what he thinks that means. She will say he isn’t big enough to go all that way on the bus, but she knows he can do it, knows, too, that sooner or later he will. She will try not to think how that will break her heart.
    After supper the four of them—Polly, Maggie, and the children—lined up cozily on the couch to watch videos of cartoon movies. Jay slumped against his mother and played the little boy, until some idle gesture of affection on her part reminded him he was unhappy, and he inched away. Stevie, seated on her other side, pointed and called out “Mousie!” about a hundred times, whatever the nature of the characters. Polly, benign, put on her bifocals and worked a crossword puzzle, no doubt relieved at the relative peace.
    Later, Jay took his comic books to bed down the hall. Maggie bathed Stevie, getting in the tub with her, taking a long time, making a game of soaping and washing and rinsing. When Stevie was in her crib and quiet, Maggie went in to see Jay. She sat on the bed and put her hand on his knee over the covers. His cheek where the can had struck him was purple. He made a show of turning