During that week and the following, the restaurant manager told me that the wives and girlfriends of the kitchen crew would call in, asking whether they had heard any news about their husbands and boyfriends. There was nothing to tell them. No one had checked in.
The following week I happened by the restaurant and helped a young woman who didn’t speak English talk with the manager. She didn’t have a phone and so she stopped by in person to inquire about her husband. After telling her that no one had seen or heard from him, I remember watching her walk away. It is an image I still can’t get out of my mind. She was slightly hunched over, and she held on to her baby as though it was all she had left. Maybe it was.
