The Far Away Brothers: Chapters 15–19

Tuesday evening: President Salvador Sánchez Cerén made a public address, promising more security forces to bolster the transportation workers and civil society against the gangs’ threats.

The MS-13 and Barrio 18 factions were at war as always, but now the government was ramping up its side of things.

A Salvadoran law called agrupación ilícita, or illicit congregation, allows law enforcement to arrest anyone who looks suspicious, which often means youth dressed stylishly and hanging out together in public spaces.

A Salvadoran law called agrupación ilícita, or illicit congregation, allows law enforcement to arrest anyone who looks suspicious, which often means youth dressed stylishly and hanging out together in public spaces.

Police patrols are on the rise, and several illegal killings of suspected gang members—extrajudicial massacres that smack of the death squad atrocities of the civil war years—have been exposed by local press, who risk payback from both the corrupt police and the gangs.

In recent years Salvadoran individuals and businesses, from market vendors to pupusa shops to hotels, have paid an estimated $756 million in renta. The increments are often small—twenty, fifty, two hundred dollars every two weeks—and paid for protection from the very people who collect it.

She shook his birth certificate. Ernesto had a tattered color copy with a new stamp, so it looked original, whereas Raúl’s was a black-and-white facsimile, the duplication slightly askew.

When Ernesto’s Social Security card arrived at school six days later, he laughed as he tore open the envelope. When he saw the small card attached by perforation, “That’s it?” he said.

“Places like that,” from the twins’ point of view, were where people like them worked, not where they were patrons.

Their comfort in the affluent parts of Oakland wasn’t an issue of either language or legality.

The table was a mess of splattered soy sauce and sushi remnants, and Ernesto did his best to be inconspicuous as he cleared the plates.

He gesticulated just as Ernesto went to take one of his empty bottles, inadvertently swatting it out of Ernesto’s hands and into his own lap.

His boss didn’t reprimand him but simply said, “Stay in the back until he’s gone.”

He had a hard time sleeping, and even when he was awake, thoughts rose to the surface that for more than a year had been pretty well tamped down.

Ernesto loved her eyes; sultry but also kind and soft.

She’d ride more than an hour each way to see him for this fleeting break, but it was worth it.

Is it so surprising that more and more girls are joining the gangs, wresting a tiny hunk of power from the male-dominated world—of gangs, of police, of the trials and tribulations of their own families—around them?

Is it so surprising that more and more girls are joining the gangs, wresting a tiny hunk of power from the male-dominated world—of gangs, of police, of the trials and tribulations of their own families—around them?

One took him to Alameda, where he stared out the window as the bus crossed the Oakland estuary and meandered through the quiet, tree-lined streets full of big houses.

One took him to Alameda, where he stared out the window as the bus crossed the Oakland estuary and meandered through the quiet, tree-lined streets full of big houses.

Another took him to the base of the Oakland hills, where he looked up at the hillsides balding from thirst—the same drought, he knew, that was afflicting his family back in El Salvador.

After a few nights of fitful sleep, she came to the conclusion that this girl must be working witchcraft on Cesar.

“I have to be responsible,” Ernesto repeated like a mantra.

Raúl watched his brother mull over the mess of possibilities and obstacles.

She was proud of how stoic she stayed as he told her all the things she’d wanted to hear.

People held up signs: NO AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS.

To him, Trump represented the dark but very real side of the United States, filled with subtleties of racism and classism and xenophobia that often only immigrants could see.

To him, Trump represented the dark but very real side of the United States, filled with subtleties of racism and classism and xenophobia that often only immigrants could see.

That weekend Sofía avoided his calls and sent only curt texts.

And though there was something forlorn about Oakland’s sea of anonymity, being alone together, just the two of them, had a refreshing weightlessness.

The tomatoes, though they had a good enough flavor—not his best, but good—were pallid in color, their skin a mottled orange yellow.

The tomatoes, though they had a good enough flavor—not his best, but good—were pallid in color, their skin a mottled orange yellow.

“Sweet flavor, good price!” she crooned to the crowds of the roadside market.

After that night he grew even more vitriolic, as if he were punishing her for knowing his secrets.

“It’s very unlikely he will win,” I told Raúl one day at school during lunchtime, as he slumped on the couch outside my office, ruminating over what to do.

He gingerly handed the baby back to Sofía and called Raúl to tell him the news.

They turned their eyes to the TV, watching raptly, laughing uproariously.

After nearly a decade in the United States without papers, deportation seemed likelier than ever before and his future, in certain ways, all the more precarious.

They worried about her growing up in a place rife with racism, having fewer opportunities, being hated or scorned.

Back at Inspiration Point, they looked out over the frenetic plane of Oakland, the shimmering bay, and across to the Golden Gate.