Espero que la salida sea alegre,
y espero no volver nunca más.
—FRIDA KAHLO
Nadie construye muros mejor que yo, créeme
THE GUARD gently led Rogelio out of the lookout room. The boy shook his head so hard that tears flew from his eyelashes, hitting the guard’s green uniform and making dark petaled blotches on the thick fabric. Rogelio was trying to shake from his mind the image of his huddled sobbing parents. But he couldn’t. And though he was only in fifth grade, Rogelio was smart enough to know that he’d never be able to wipe away the memory of waving good-bye to his parents through the cloudy bulletproof Plexiglas.
The president’s executive order explicitly laid out the design of the detention centers that connected to the Great Wall, and explicitly prohibited the expenditure of funds for more humane farewells. Children who belonged in the United States—because they were born in the country or were otherwise naturalized—could have no more than thirty seconds to gaze upon their soon-to-be deported parents through the Plexiglas. Because the president prohibited the installation of microphones and speakers, the good-byes would consist of silent, tearful pantomimes: mouthed expressions of love, promises to behave, vows never to forget.
Soon Rogelio and his older sister, Marisol, would pack their meager belongings and be sent to live with their tía Isabel in Los Angeles. And his parents would be with the other sobbing parents on a large black bus that would take them through one of the reinforced gates in the Great Wall and back to Mexico—regardless of which Latin American country they called home. The grieving parents would disembark in Tijuana and be left to fend for themselves.
The president had designed this process, praising himself for coming up with such a clean, fast, and beautiful way of MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! He had tweeted: “Only a Very Stable Genius could come up with this very GREAT system! And Mexico will someday PAY for my Great Wall!”
The guard led Rogelio past the other children, who waited in two snaking lines—one for boys, the other for girls, as the president had decreed—along the walkway toward the nurse’s office for a quick visit before going back to the barracks to pack. Above the cries, shouts, and laughter of the other children, Rogelio could hear the recurring audio loop of the president’s voice blaring over the intercoms that spotted the ceiling: “I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” Rogelio’s teacher, Ms. Becerra, had noted in class one day that Mexico had yet to pay for the president’s wall, which cost more than $21 billion to build.
As he walked with the guard, Rogelio blinked away his tears and looked out the large floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed perfect views of the Great Wall. Enormous spotlights were trained on the wall at intervals, also lighting up the cool San Diego evening. Rogelio thought that the wall was a dreadful, hideous thing even though the president had paid “good money, the best money” to one of his most supportive Twitter followers—a contractor from Alabama—to design the outlandish golden curlicues that were painted along the wall’s top and bottom edges. Between the borders of gold paint, the president wanted to share with people on either side of the Great Wall his life’s accomplishments as depicted in bas-relief, captioned scenes beginning with his childhood (I was the best son!), his education (Only the greatest schools and top grades!), his careers in business and television (I had the highest ratings!), his run for president (Biggest victory ever!), his swearing in (So Presidential!), and him signing executive orders (Making America Great Again!).
The president saw on Twitter that the bas-relief scenes on the Mexican side of the Great Wall had been defaced in obscene ways, but his staff convinced him that photographs of the defacement were nothing more than fake news designed to embarrass him. And this attack on his greatest accomplishment simply confirmed in the president’s mind that he had been justified in imposing martial law and suspending the 2020 election four years ago. The president had seen numerous preelection polls that showed him losing the general election in a landslide, which he blamed—in an early-morning tweet—on the “Lying Liberal Media, Fake Polls, and Chinese Interference!” He had no choice but to call off the election and order the military to keep “the peace.” In a rambling hour-long prime-time address to the world on October 15, 2020, the president had promised that once a full televised Senate investigation into traitorous activities could be completed, he would lift martial law and only then could free, fair elections resume. He was true to his word: most evenings during the last four years, the Senate’s hearings had been broadcast on Fox, the only television network with a federal license to disseminate news, in which witness after witness divulged in exquisite detail the plots against the president and America. The hearings would take another two or three years, said the president, but they would eventually come to an end, and a full unredacted report would be released. This is what the president promised, and who but the nastiest traitor could question his sincerity?
The guard brought Rogelio to another line, this one in front of the nurse’s office. Unlike the lines to say good-bye to their parents, there was only one line here, where boys and girls could mix and talk. The guard gently touched Rogelio’s shoulder and said: “Wait here until it’s your turn.” The boy nodded, and the guard turned on his heel and went back to the lookout room to fetch the next child.
Rogelio watched a sobbing girl came out of the nurse’s office, rubbing her right forearm. Another guard guided her toward the girls’ barracks. Rogelio sighed. He figured the children were being forced to receive some kind of booster inoculation. Rogelio hated shots, but he liked that word: inoculation. He let it roll around in his mind. He’d learned from his teacher that all words had origins—roots—in other languages. French. German. Latin. Where did “inoculation” come from? And what about the very first words? How could those words have any roots if nothing had existed before?
When Rogelio’s turn finally came, a guard opened the door of the nurse’s office and said, “Go in.” Rogelio complied, stepping into the darkened room, lit by a lone lamp over a phlebotomy chair. The moment the guard closed the door with a loud click, the president’s audio loop about the Great Wall disappeared, and the room was enveloped in the most beautiful song Rogelio had ever heard. Two women’s voices, singing in a language he did not understand, seemed to come from every corner of the dark room.
The nurse stood to the left of the chair swiping at an iPad. He reminded Rogelio of his cousin Mateo who lived in Los Angeles, the only son of his tía Isabel, except the nurse had blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard. The nurse suddenly stopped swiping and looked up at the boy. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said the nurse.
The boy nodded.
“It’s called ‘The Flower Duet.’”
The boy nodded again, feeling calm for the first time since Homeland Security had rounded up his family in their home in Chula Vista two weeks ago.
“It’s from an opera called Lakmé written a long time ago.”
The boy listened.
“Here, this part—it’s so beautiful when the two voices play off each other.”
Rogelio nodded.
The nurse sighed, then looked back at the iPad. “Rogelio Acosta?” He pronounced “Rogelio” as “roe-jell-io.”
Rogelio had heard his name mangled too often to even notice. He nodded.
“Show me your dog tag.”
Rogelio pulled the dog tag out from the top of his T-shirt and showed it to the nurse. The nurse bent forward, squinted, nodded, and then typed something into the iPad. “Please sit.”
The boy went to the phlebotomy chair. It was a green padded contraption that had seen far too much service. The right arm of the chair, set in the down position, was cracked, revealing white stuffing, and the dilapidated seat bore witness to the many bottoms that had nestled uncomfortably waiting to be poked. The left arm of the chair was propped in the upright position, allowing Rogelio to slide in.
“I’m getting a shot?” said the boy as he settled in. He tried to sound brave, but his voice cracked, something that was happening more often lately. He then tried to impress the nurse: “An inoculation?”
The nurse let out a muffled laugh that ended in a sloppy snort. “I guess you could call it that,” the nurse said as he picked up what looked like a long fireplace lighter from a table that stood in the shadows behind him. “It’ll feel like a shot.” He used the other hand to grab a bit of cotton. The strong smell of alcohol hit Rogelio’s nostrils.
“Put your arm down, keep still,” said the nurse. Rogelio complied. The nurse quickly swabbed the boy’s forearm. The boy’s entire body tensed.
“Look up at the corner,” said the nurse, with a nod to a spot above and to the left of Rogelio’s head. “It’s better not to look. It’ll be over fast.”
Rogelio obeyed. The music seemed to grow louder, and the women spoke to him in a mysterious language that he felt almost on the verge of understanding. The corner’s darkness filled his eyes, and the music removed all thought from the boy’s mind. Rogelio felt the nurse take hold of his wrist, heard a click, felt a small pinch on his forearm, and it was over.
“Good job,” said the nurse. “We’re done here. Just let me put a bit of cotton and tape on because it will bleed a little for the next couple of hours.” The nurse worked fast. A few seconds later, Rogelio looked down at his forearm where the nurse had expertly wrapped a wad of cotton with blue stretchy tape. “Easy-peasy,” said the nurse. “You can go now.”
Rogelio stood. The women’s voices reached an apex of beauty. He couldn’t move.
The nurse smiled. “Stunning, isn’t it?”
The boy nodded.
“Almost as if God is singing.”
Rogelio nodded. “What are they saying?” he whispered.
The nurse shrugged. “Beats me. But does it really matter?”
Before Rogelio could answer the music ended, and a sharp rap on the door shook the two out of their mutual reverie. As the door opened, the president’s audio loop invaded the room (“Nobody builds walls better than me, believe me”), and a different guard stuck her head into the room. A teenage girl stood silently near the guard, waiting for permission to enter.
“Time to go,” said the nurse.
The boy nodded and slowly walked to the door.
A mí la muerte me pela los dientes
THE LARGE BLACK BUS rocked back and forth on the I-5 freeway toward Los Angeles. An hour earlier it had made its way from the six-level parking structure at the base of the Great Wall to the freeway entrance. Rogelio rested his head on Marisol’s shoulder. His sister snored softly. He felt safe with her. The forty-two children on the bus made little noise save for exhausted snores, muffled sobs, terrified whispers. The bus driver had turned off the interior lights just before backing out of the parking structure, explaining through the intercom system that it would take several hours to drive to Los Angeles and “deposit” the children at their designated new homes. She’d said that the children should enjoy the box of snacks that had been set on each seat: bottled water, a bag of pretzels, an apple, a wrapped mint. Not much, but their new families would feed them, she was sure of that. In the meantime, enjoy this free and very excellent nourishment courtesy of the president, and then try to get some shut-eye. Most of the children had quickly made their way through the snacks, then fell asleep. With the lights turned off, few could fend off the brutal fatigue that encased them in the aftermath of their farewells to their parents.
The rhythms of the freeway and the traveling shadows that shifted across the bus’s interior soothed Rogelio. Before drifting into an unavoidable slumber, the boy remembered his father’s favorite dicho when things got difficult: A mí la muerte me pela los dientes. When he first heard his father say this, the boy had wondered: Why would Death peel anyone’s teeth? And could teeth even be peeled? But as he now capitulated to sleep, Rogelio believed he finally understood that old Mexican saying.
“MARISOL AND ROGELIO ACOSTA!”
Rogelio’s eyes popped open as the bus driver called their names over the intercom. His sister was already zipping up her backpack. Rogelio figured Marisol must have been awake, reading a book with her mini-reading light. His sister loved to read—poetry, novels, short stories. That’s why Marisol did so well in high school, their mother often said. Loving books will lead to success in life, she asserted. Rogelio preferred to entertain himself with video games when he couldn’t be outside playing basketball or soccer. But he hoped that someday he’d like to read books as much as his sister did, and maybe then he’d get better grades.
“We’re here,” Marisol whispered. “At Tía Isabel’s house.”
Rogelio looked out the window and saw his aunt standing in her driveway. She looked so much like his mother even though Tía Isabel was eight years older than her sister, Alma. In fact, there was a time—when Alma was in her mid-twenties and Isabel in her early thirties—that many who met them thought the sisters were identical twins. Sometimes at family gatherings, whether in Chula Vista with Alma and her family or here in Los Angeles with Isabel and hers, the sisters would deliberately confuse the neighbors who had been invited over to celebrate.
Despite the 127-mile distance between Los Angeles and Chula Vista, the sisters’ families remained close. In fact, Rogelio knew his tía Isabel quite well because he had interviewed her for an oral history project last year. He had learned that with the cunning and expensive assistance of a coyote, Isabel and her now late mother, Abuelita Belén, had come to the United States seven years before the infant Alma and their father could. And because of this simple accident of timing, Rogelio’s aunt and grandmother had become U.S. citizens under President Reagan’s 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Tía Isabel did well in school, majoring in business administration at San Diego State University, then landed her first job in Los Angeles working the registration desk at the Double Tree downtown. Now Tía Isabel was the hotel revenue manager at the Courtyard Marriott near LAX. At fifty, she looked years younger, her actual age betrayed only by a streak of white that ran from the top of her forehead that she brushed back over her otherwise black hair. The women in that side of the family kept their youth, Rogelio’s father, Alejandro, often said. Good skin, great hair, nice teeth. Alma would always add: And we’re smart, too.
Yes, Tía Isabel was healthy, but her late husband, Tío Manny, who had suffered from type 2 diabetes for years, survived three strokes before a heart attack took him on Christmas Day 2016. Rogelio’s father said that it was really the election that killed Manny, but Rogelio couldn’t figure out how an election, even that one, could cause a heart to stop.
A few years after Manny passed away, Tía Isabel’s son, Mateo, came down from Sacramento, where he had earned a master’s in English literature at UC-Davis. He didn’t want his mother to be alone, and he could easily find a teaching gig at a high school in Los Angeles. Mateo didn’t need much to live, just enough to keep himself clothed and fed while he worked on a novel. He moved into the small house that stood in the large backyard that Abuelita Belén had enjoyed as her haven. But it had been vacant since her death, so in many ways it was a perfect solution. Mateo saved money on rent and helped his mother stave off sadness and loss. He quickly found a teaching job at Cathedral High School. “Not a big paycheck, but enough to keep body and soul together,” Mateo liked to say, “while I write the Great American Novel.” But his mother knew he had sacrificed the full life he had fashioned up in Sacramento to save her from the loneliness of widowhood. Mateo was her only child; though young when she had Mateo, Isabel could not conceive again. “Quality, not quantity,” Mateo joked whenever his mother fell into a funk because she could not give him at least one sibling. And he’d add: “And that way I have you all to myself.”
Rogelio and Marisol stepped off the bus. The night had gotten very cold. The crickets chirped loudly. Tía Isabel opened her arms wide and said, “Come here, my babies.”
ROGELIO AND MARISOL had settled into a comfortable if not wholly normal routine in the month they had been living their new lives with Tía Isabel and Mateo. The house, built in 1933 in northeast Los Angeles, was just six miles from downtown in an area known as Glassell Park, near Eagle Rock, Highland Park, and Mount Washington. These communities had undergone aggressive gentrification over the last fifteen years, and Tía Isabel’s modest 1,450-square-foot home was now worth well over $1 million, according to Zillow and Redfin. But Isabel would never sell. She and her late husband had toiled to scrape together the down payment when they were newly married, and the house held too many memories. And now that her niece and nephew were living with her, Isabel needed the house more than ever. She had converted the study of her wood-framed home back into the bedroom it had been when Mateo was young. Isabel furnished it with sturdy bunkbeds, two dressers, and two small desks that she bought at Ikea. She knew that she could never replace Marisol and Rogelio’s parents, but at least she could make their home as comfortable as possible.
Marisol enrolled as a high school senior at the Sotomayor Learning Academies on North San Fernando Road, a short drive away. Rogelio enrolled at the same campus in the middle school program. Because he had been identified on the enrollment form as one of the relocated children, the school granted a waiver allowing him to enter the sixth grade early to be on the same campus as his sister. “Small kindnesses,” his aunt had said when the waiver was approved. Each morning Mateo would drop off his cousins at school and then head to his teaching job at Cathedral High School. The children would then stay on campus doing school-work or attending club meetings until 6:30 p.m., when Isabel would drive to campus and gather them up for dinner. Structure. Activities. Near normalcy.
And part of that normalcy was their weekly government-sanctioned—and monitored—video call with their parents. Each Sunday night Isabel would set up her laptop at the kitchen table for Rogelio and Marisol, click onto the Homeland Security-approved weblink, type in her family password and code, and connect with her sister and brother-in-law, who sat 1,576 miles away in a small apartment in Ocotlán, Jalisco, their hometown about 150 miles southeast of Guadalajara. They were allowed fifteen minutes each week to gaze upon each other and share as many bits of news about themselves as could be managed in that short time. Since cell phone and internet connections to all Latin American countries had been blocked by Homeland Security under Executive Order 9066, they were forced to savor each of these minutes. At the end of the video calls, Rogelio’s mother would always break down in tears, and his father would valiantly try to comfort her as tears fell freely from his own eyes. The one thing that kept their parents sane was knowing that the children were in safe hands and clearly thriving despite the pain of separation. And so this was the new normal: parents on a computer screen, fifteen minutes a week.
ROGELIO had his suspicions about Marisol.
At first he thought he dreamed what was happening. But one night, as the glowing alarm clock numbers read 11:02 p.m., Rogelio forced himself to stay awake while pretending to sleep—complete with fake snores—as he waited in his perch on the upper bunk. Marisol whispered: “Are you awake?” The boy did not answer. After a minute Marisol slowly got out of bed. Even in the shadows, Rogelio could see that his sister was fully dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. She slipped on a pair of sneakers, grabbed her backpack, and gingerly opened the window. Within a few seconds she was outside standing in the flowerbed. Marisol closed the window and was gone.
Rogelio blinked in disbelief. He heard a car start up—he thought it sounded like Mateo’s battered Honda Civic that was always parked out front—then a car door open and close, followed by the sound of the engine revving then slowly making its way down the street. As the last sounds of the car disappeared, fatigue overcame Rogelio, and his fake snores soon became real. His final thought was that he would confront Marisol and Mateo in the morning as they drove to school. Rogelio felt as though he had no choice but to find out the truth. He did not like being lied to.
Los caminos de la vida
“Turn it up,” said Marisol, even though she could have reached over from the front passenger seat and done it herself.
But Mateo complied, pushing the volume control on his steering wheel. Marisol bobbed her head to the song. Rogelio thought it was funny how his sister had gotten into the habit of exploring their aunt’s vast CD collection. So old school. Fortunately, Mateo’s ancient Honda had its original CD player, so Marisol could bring the music with her on the rides to school. Lila Downs had become Marisol’s musical crush of the week. Rogelio’s Spanish was not as good as his sister’s, so he strained to understand the words to “Los caminos de la vida.” He eventually gave up and remembered the task at hand.
“Where did you go last night?” asked Rogelio. He kept his eyes trained on the back of his sister’s head, which stopped bobbing at the question. Marisol turned toward Mateo as if for guidance, but he kept his eyes on the road, mindful of the children who were walking to school and crossing streets.
“Are you two dating?”
“Oh, gross!” said Marisol.
“No, dude,” said Mateo. “I wouldn’t date my cousin, and I certainly don’t date seventeen-year-olds. Want me to go to prison or something?”
Then Marisol said: “Look, we were going to wait to tell you.” She kept her eyes on Mateo, who nodded his approval to continue.
“Tell me what?”
Marisol twisted her body so she could look at her brother. “We go to meetings,” she began.
“What kind of meetings?”
“They’re planning meetings,” said Mateo.
“And we volunteer after the meetings,” added Marisol.
“For what?” said Rogelio. He kept his body still, his voice under control. He wanted the truth.
“Meetings of Los Otros Coyotes,” said Marisol, keeping her eyes on her brother. “They help reunite separated families.”
“Where do you do this. . .meeting and volunteering?”
“They have an office downtown, at the Bradbury Building,” said Mateo. “They pretend to be event planners. You know, special events like weddings, quinceañeras, and retirement parties.”
Rogelio knew the Bradbury Building from that old movie Blade Runner. Marisol, a self-proclaimed sci-fi nerd, had made her little brother watch that film with her three times, though she believed the Philip K. Dick novel on which it was based was far superior. The five-story office building, best known for its astonishing skylight atrium, marble stairs, tiled walkways, and wrought-iron elevators, had been a Los Angeles landmark almost from the moment it opened in 1893. With a shiver, Rogelio remembered the creepy scene where Harrison Ford, his blaster drawn, makes his way through the darkened, dank, dilapidated atrium in search of a renegade android. This is where Marisol and Mateo snuck off to each night?
Marisol saw the confusion on her brother’s face. “The Bradbury is filled with businesses and law offices,” she said. “It’s nothing like what you see in Blade Runner.”
Rogelio appreciated his sister’s explanation. Now he could move on to his next question: “Can we be reunited. . .with Mamá and Papá?”
Marisol again looked at Mateo for guidance, but her cousin kept his eyes on the road. She turned back to Rogelio. “Do you want to be?” she said.
Rogelio blinked. Tears filled his eyes. He nodded.
“Okay,” said Marisol. “Okay.”
Mateo pulled into the school’s drop-off lane and said: “We’re here. We’ll talk tonight.”
Rogelio nodded again. “Yes,” he finally said. “Tonight.”
El Señor es contigo
AFTER DINNER that night, Tía Isabel logged onto her laptop at the kitchen table to work on bills. Marisol and Mateo saw this as the perfect time to get out of the house and take Rogelio to the Bradbury Building.
“Tía,” began Marisol as Rogelio handed her the last dish to dry. “Mateo said that he’d take me and Rogelio out for ice cream at Grand Central Market.”
Isabel kept her eyes on her screen, nodded, and said: “Well. . .”
“It’s Friday, so no school tomorrow,” added Marisol.
“Okay, I guess so,” said Isabel.
Marisol continued: “Do you want us to bring you anything? McConnell’s has your favorite, double peanut butter chip.”
“No, thank you,” said her aunt without looking up, but betraying a hint of temptation. “I’m gaining too much weight. Go have fun. I need to finish the bills.”
Marisol nodded at her brother. Rogelio smiled. He appreciated how his sister plotted.
MATEO DROVE HIS HONDA on Broadway through Chinatown. The evening was warm, the streets teeming with people enjoying the weather. But dotting the street were dozens of tents and jury-rigged structures of multicolored tarps: the homes of people who could not afford apartments. The happy pedestrians made their way around these makeshift abodes without stopping.
Marisol riffled through her aunt’s CD holder, found what she wanted, popped it in the player, and “La cumbia del mole” came on. She was still on her Lila Downs kick. Rogelio liked this song—and truth be told, he preferred the English version that comes later on the CD—but he wanted his sister and cousin to explain the next step.
“Tell me,” he said from the backseat. “How do we get to see Mamá and Papá?”
Marisol turned down the music’s volume and twisted back to face her brother. “We have to volunteer tonight anyway, so we can go early and introduce you to them.”
“Them?”
“Vivaporú,” said Mateo, catching Rogelio’s eye in the rear-view mirror.
Rogelio blinked. “Vivaporú?”
Marisol nodded.
“That’s how Mamá pronounces Vicks VapoRub,” said Rogelio. “You know, because of her accent.” He closed his eyes and tried to remember the feel of his mother’s warm hand as she rubbed the ointment on his chest whenever he got a cold. She’d whisper, “Ave María” as she slowly applied the Vicks to her son’s narrow chest. He could almost hear her voice: “Ave María llena eres de gracia, El Señor es contigo. . .” Rogelio opened his eyes, which were now moist. He said again: “Vivaporú?”
“That’s the name they go by,” said Mateo.
“They?” said Rogelio again. “How many people am I meeting?”
“Just one,” said Marisol. “And they go by the name Vivaporú, okay?”
“Okay,” said Rogelio, still feeling confused, but he didn’t press the issue.
“We’ll park in the structure on Spring Street and then go through the courtyard to enter the Bradbury from the rear entrance,” said Mateo. “It’s safer that way.”
“Okay,” said Rogelio. “Okay. And tell me about Los Otros Coyotes.”
Mateo said, “We’ve told you all we should for now.”
“Vivaporú will explain,” added Marisol. “Be patient.”
Rogelio nodded. The boy knew he had little choice but to wait.
THE THREE took the elevator down from the seventh level of the Broadway Spring Center, a large parking structure on Spring Street. “We cut across here,” said Marisol as they exited.
Rogelio looked across the courtyard toward the red-bricked building his sister pointed to. Along the pathway stood a long gray wall that looked like the kind of reverse timeline that he and his classmates made for their history class. As they walked, he looked up at that first section of the wall that had the year “1900” chiseled at the top over the words: “Los Angeles mourns and reveres Grandma Mason.”
“Biddy Mason lived right here, after the Civil War,” said Marisol. They stopped in front of a replica of a photograph of the former slave. “She ran the city’s first childcare center out of her home and founded the city’s First African Methodist Episcopal Church in her home.”
“Wow,” said Rogelio.
They started to walk again, but slowly so that they could read the legends in the wall.
“She was born into slavery in Georgia,” said Marisol. “A Mormon family owned her. But when the family moved to Southern California, she sued for her freedom because California entered the Union as a free state in 1850.”
“You mean when Alta California was stolen from Mexico,” added Mateo.
“What happened?” said Rogelio.
“She won,” said Marisol and Mateo in unison. They laughed: “Jinx!”
As they read the entries on the timeline wall, Rogelio learned that after winning her freedom, Biddy Mason worked as a nurse and midwife, delivering hundreds of babies during her career. She also was one of the first African American women to own land in Los Angeles. Biddy Mason became a successful businesswoman who shared her wealth with charities. She spoke fluent Spanish, was much loved, and even dined on occasion at the home of Pio Pico, the last governor of Alta California. They got to the end of the reverse timeline with the year “1810” and the words: “Biddy Mason born a slave.” Rogelio shivered, but he didn’t know why.
“Up these stairs,” said Mateo. They marched up the ten concrete steps. Mateo opened one of the large wood and glass doors, and they were in the Bradbury Building. As they walked down the hallway, Rogelio was not impressed by what he saw. Yes, the floor was beautiful, with its Italian marble and Mexican tile—which Marisol proudly pointed out as if she’d designed the building herself—but it was nothing like what he knew from Blade Runner. They turned, went down a few steps, and then entered the magnificent atrium area. Ah! This was it!
“Pretty fucking amazing, eh?” said Mateo. Marisol elbowed her cousin.
“What?” said Mateo. “I suspect he’s used that word before.”
Rogelio blushed but he liked how Mateo treated him like a peer.
“Okay, fine,” said Marisol. “Now up to Los Otros Coyotes. Let’s take the stairs.”
Rogelio could not hide his wonder. The Bradbury was a functioning office building, and even though it was after the dinner hour, tenants—and a few tourists oohing and aahing and taking photos—wandered about. On the second floor they passed several large doors whose beveled glass windows had painted on them the names of different businesses and law firms, such as “Charoenpong, Eskandari, & Lundgren LLP,” “Toma + Van Gelderen Architectural Concepts,” and “Pletcher & Jones Designs.” They finally arrived at a door with the name “Los Otros Coyotes: Party Planners.” Under the lettering was a painting that resembled a woodcut showing three coyotes howling beneath a full moon. Marisol pushed a small button, and they waited. After a few moments, a thin young man opened the door. He smiled at Marisol. She smiled back. The young man said, “Come in.”
They entered. Rogelio observed about a dozen young people at standing desks typing away on laptops, their faces aglow from the screens, almost all with earbuds, listening to their own personal soundtracks. At the back of the room a large table groaned with soft drinks, bottled waters, plates of fruit, coffee pots, paper cups and plates. To the left of the table was another door with VIVAPORÚ painted across it in bold black letters.
They walked to the door, and Marisol knocked.
“Adelante,” came a voice that was the most beautiful Rogelio had ever heard.
Marisol opened the door, kissed Rogelio on his forehead, and said: “Don’t be afraid.” He nodded and walked into the dark room as Marisol closed the door behind her brother. Rogelio turned and set his eyes on a figure who sat in an oversized green leather chair in front of a large old wooden desk. A brass lamp at the desk’s edge offered the only illumination in the room. Seven or eight books in Spanish and English sat in a stack just beneath the lamp. Rogelio could discern titles on four of the spines: Under the Feet of Jesus, La metamorfosis, The Children of Willesden Lane, and La hija de la chuparrosa. The figure looked up from a large ledger. Rogelio lifted his eyes from the book titles, noticing for the first time that, unlike in the main office, no computer or laptop adorned this room. And instead of earbuds, the person in front of the boy had a record turntable on a credenza just behind the large chair, the words “love supreme” repeating out of two large speakers. The figure reached back and lowered the music to a whisper.
“Siéntate por favor,” said Vivaporú, pointing to one of two guest chairs that were stationed at angles in front of the desk.
Rogelio sat as Vivaporú stood up, looking down on the boy. Rogelio had never seen such a perfect person in his life. Vivaporú wore a luminous white three-piece suit accented with a shocking green shirt, collar spread open wide across the suit’s large lapels. Vivaporú’s earlobes were stretched with large golden gauges accented by a great golden chai—Rogelio thought it was a dog or some other animal—that hung on a thick chain around their long muscular neck. Vivaporú’s lustrous black hair was parted neatly down the middle and hung to their shoulders. They must have been at least six feet tall, with the lean proportions of a ballet dancer. Vivaporú’s hazel eyes almost never blinked, and their smooth brown skin gleamed. They pointed down at the ledger while keeping their eyes on the boy.
“Rogelio Acosta,” said Vivaporú, not as a question but a statement of fact. Rogelio remembered how the nurse at the detention center had said his name before checking the boy’s dog tag. But while that nurse had spat out a mangled version of his name, Vivaporú said “Rogelio Acosta” in an almost musical manner, softly pronounced in Spanish, as if the boy were a melody to be shared with an invisible audience. Vivaporú’s voice reminded Rogelio of a sound he’d once heard while hiking the Mother Miguel Trailhead with his father a year before the separation at the Great Wall: a beautiful bird’s song that filled the boy’s mind with thoughts of his home back in Chula Vista.
“Yes,” said Rogelio. “That’s me.”
“Your hermana tells me that you want to be with your parents again,” said Vivaporú. “¿Es cierto?”
“Yes,” said Rogelio. “It’s true.”
“They’re in a safe city. Safe for children. We know this.”
Rogelio listened silently.
“Show me your right forearm,” said Vivaporú. The boy was confused at first, but then he realized Vivaporú wanted to look at the inoculation site. Rogelio pulled up his shirtsleeve and showed it to Vivaporú. The skin had healed, leaving a small, square, shiny scar.
“Do you know what that is?” said Vivaporú.
“My inoculation.”
Vivaporú let out a gentle melodious laugh. “No,” said Vivaporú. “A microchip.”
Suddenly a black and white cat jumped onto the boy’s lap. It purred wildly and made itself comfortable. Rogelio smiled and petted the feline.
“Su nombre es Sophie,” said Vivaporú.
“I like Sophie.”
“Sophie likes you.”
Rogelio extricated his right arm from beneath Sophie and showed Vivaporú the scar again. “Why did they put a microchip in me?” he said.
Vivaporú leaned forward. “So that Homeland Security can track you to know that you’re still in los Estados Unidos.”
“What for?”
“Pues, because they need us as much as they hate us,” said Vivaporú with a loud sigh. “The country desires young people to grow up and then take the jobs that need taking. ¿Entiendes? All kinds of jobs, from janitors to engineers. The white population is aging, not—¿cómo se dice?—reproducing as fast as we are. Too many jobs, not enough people.”
“I want to be with my parents.”
“Por supuesto,” said Vivaporú. “But I don’t know if that’s possible.”
The boy sat up straight. “You said it was safe.”
Vivaporú shook their head. “No, niño, I said your parents are in a safe city. That is a different fact.”
“What do you mean?
“It is a dangerous journey back,” said Vivaporú. “Children have been caught by Homeland Security before they could get back to the other side.”
“And what happens to them?”
“Pues, they get sent far away, to places like Kansas and Nebraska and even South Dakota. They become—¿cómo se dice?—foster children, put with families that are not blood.”
“I don’t care!”
“No, it’s too risky.”
“I need to be with my parents!”
Vivaporú sighed, turned, walked to the turntable, and increased the volume. Vivaporú closed their eyes and swayed slowly to the rhythm of the jazz. Rogelio sat in silence for several minutes. Tears fell from his face. The track ended. Vivaporú turned off the music and turned to face the boy. “The answer should be no,” they said.
The boy held his breath.
“Pues, the first step will be to remove that microchip.”
Rogelio wiped the tears from his face, smiled, and sat up. “Yes?” the boy said.
“Sí.”
Rogelio then grew serious, looking at his forearm. “But the government will know it’s been removed,” he said.
Vivaporú laughed. “¡Qué inteligente eres!” Vivaporú walked around the desk to the boy and gently lifted Sophie from Rogelio’s lap. “My beautiful gato will become you.”
“What?”
“We usually use rescue pets. I had been saving Sophie for a special person, and we have one here: you!”
Rogelio shifted in his seat. He was trying to follow what Vivaporú was saying.
Vivaporú returned Sophie to the boy’s lap, sat down in the other guest chair, crossed their long legs, and leaned toward Rogelio. “Once we have identified a child who wants to be with their parents, we contact the parents by hacking around Homeland Security,” began Vivaporú. “Your sister is already in contact with your parents because she works with us. That’s what those beautiful young people are doing in the front office. ¿Entiendes? Pues, first, we remove the microchip from that child and put it into a dog or cat. That way the government thinks the chip is still on this side of the Great Wall, even though the children are transported back to their parents on the other side. It is like a reverse—¿cómo se dice?—Underground Railroad.”
Rogelio nodded. His class had learned about the Underground Railroad last year when they studied the chapter on slavery. He thought of Biddy Mason, who hadn’t needed to use a secret escape route because she’d successfully sued for her freedom in California. “How will I get back to Mexico?”
Vivaporú took in a deep breath and smiled. “In the belly of the beast.”
“What?”
“Those big black buses that take the parents through the Great Wall and into México, like the one they put your parents on. ¿Entiendes? We have identified several sympathetic drivers and guards who have gotten even more sympathetic with a little mordida—¿cómo se dice?—bribe. And we do not charge you. We are supported by many churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples of all types.”
Rogelio nodded. “And what about my sister?”
“Pues, she has decided to stay here for now. Marisol is one of our best hackers, and she has become invaluable. Ella es brillante. And she has excellent ideas for the Reconquista.”
“The what?”
“No es importante,” said Vivaporú. “At this moment the question is: Do you want to be reunited with your parents even though it is risky?”
“Yes,” said Rogelio after a few moments of thought. “Put my microchip into Sophie, and get me into the belly of the beast.”
Vivaporú clapped their hands and stood. “Your hermana will alert your parents and get you ready.”
En el vientre de la bestia
AFTER MATEO AND MARISOL had finished their two-hour shift at Los Otros Coyotes, they walked Rogelio to a place called Tina’s Café two blocks from the Bradbury Building. They strode in silence, the evening’s cool breeze beginning to make itself felt. In the back room of what was an otherwise normal coffee shop, a man removed the microchip from the boy’s arm and placed it in a tube of disinfectant for eventual implantation into Sophie. The chip’s slow descent through the blue liquid enthralled Rogelio. Removal of the microchip hurt the boy more than expected, but he was happy that it was no longer inside of him.
As they drove back home through Chinatown, Marisol explained the plan. She would contact their parents in the morning so they can begin their journey from Ocotlán to Tijuana. In one week, before dawn, Rogelio and small group of other children would be picked up by a school bus a few blocks from their home. It would look like any other bus taking children to school, but instead of books and folders, the children were instructed to have in their backpacks several changes of clothes, toiletries, water, snacks, and anything else needed for the trip. About a mile from the large parking structure where the black buses were parked, the children would be moved into a van of the kind used by Homeland Security, and from there they would be taken to a particular black bus whose luggage compartment—the belly of the beast—would be waiting for its young cargo. Bribes would be paid at each step. Once the bus passed the Great Wall into Tijuana, if all went well, the children’s parents would be waiting to take them back to their homes. Many of the parents, who had lived in places like Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras, had been given asylum by the Mexican government, so their children would settle with them in their new homes in Mexico. Marisol would not tell their aunt until after Rogelio was safely with their parents. Tía Isabel would be upset, no doubt, but it was the only way.
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST WAS HOT. The black bus rocked back and forth as it made its way down three levels toward the exit gate at the base of the Great Wall. Even through the rumbling of the vehicle’s engine, Rogelio could discern the audio loop of the president that was broadcast in the detention center and parking structure: “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall.”
Rogelio and five other children were huddled together in the dark. Two of them softly whimpered. The beaten-up luggage and duffel bags of the adults who rode above made the small space feel even more confining, like an ancient tomb. Rogelio sat in a corner, hugging his backpack. He willed himself not to cry. He had cried too much already. He was done with tears. He would soon be in Tijuana. He would soon embrace his mother and father. And after a few weeks of living in Mexico with his parents, Rogelio would contact his sister to find out more about this thing Vivaporú called the Reconquista. This was the boy’s promise to himself. And he always kept his promises.
The bus suddenly jerked to a stop. Rogelio heard shouting in both Spanish and English. He held his breath, and the other children’s whimpering grew louder. What was happening? Rogelio could hear cars honking and speeding by the bus. He then heard footsteps on the gravel of the freeway’s shoulder. More shouting, by both men and women. Arguments, cussing—both languages mixing into one cacophonous commotion. Then silence, adults whispering, a clicking and sliding of the locking mechanism that kept the children in the belly of the beast. Suddenly light—three, maybe four flashlights aimed at the children. And then Rogelio—blinded by the flashlights—heard a woman scream: “Oh, my God!”