THE AIRPLANE TOUCHED DOWN IN MONTERREY, A CITY LUZ had never visited. She disembarked onto the tarmac and followed the crowd toward the terminal. Heat danced over the runway. Already the air tasted different.
Her father had called his mother in Las Monarcas, and Luz had spoken with her. Her grandmother would expect her home this evening. We will take care of everything, her grandmother said. But all Luz could think of was the last time she had seen her abuela, the night Luz’s uncle took her away, bound for El Norte. She ended up crossing the river in the dark, early hours. There was a group of them—they’d waited in the willows for the coyote, and her uncle put her on an inner tube in the water and held on, trudging and then swimming alongside her and guiding her as the water pulled at them. Today was the first time she’d ever been on an airplane, and she had boarded, relieved that she’d been passed through security. She’d flown with her forehead pressed to the porthole glass, watching the earth turn far below. She sought the border, but from her vantage tens of thousands of feet above the ground she couldn’t even locate the river.
Her father had reserved a taxi service for her online. In the loop she found the apple-red sedan with the company name stenciled across its doors. The driver was a young man with a toothpick in his mouth and an oxford shirt open at the throat. He loaded her bag into the trunk and hustled her into the car. An old woman was already sitting in the backseat. A man with white hair sat up front, wringing his hands. The elders would be dropped off in Monclova en route to Las Monarcas, the driver explained.
He drove fast, shouting into a cell phone. The cab rocked and pitched, and it was hot inside, in the roiling stink of the driver’s cologne. Luz was queasy. To the south, the mountains cut the haze like colossal incisors. The old woman grinned at Luz, eyes sunk in her creased face. Luz dozed and dreamed of her mother, her eyes that changed in a flash when she scowled. The look reminded Luz of warrior ancestors.