For a time, Sofia had considered making Juárez her home. Her first year at the University of Texas at El Paso, she had crossed the border several times a month. The culture in an American university had been jarring. She had thought she would never settle in comfortably. She had traveled back with other freshmen from Mexico who had felt the same way. They had walked along the market streets and dined in family-style restaurants. Gradually she had come to think of Juárez as a home away from home.
During her first two years at university, Juárez had been vibrant and filled with a growing prosperity. The border factories had employed almost two hundred thousand people. The smaller local companies who supplied them had created another quarter of a million jobs. The entire city vibrated with new energy and promise.
Then the year before she graduated, the nightmare came to Juárez.
Sofia had adapted to the American university and culture. She had made friends. She had become active in two of the campus ministries. She was involved in her studies. She had entered the honors program. Her junior year, she had not entered Juárez at all. Of course she heard about the change. She saw the worried expressions of those who returned. She heard the stories whispered around the halls. But there was a very real difference between reading the stories in a newspaper and witnessing the change.
She went in late October of her senior year. The border crossing took twice as long as before. The patrol officers were different, very grim and cautious. It was the first time she had ever seen body armor. The streets of Juárez were drenched in unseen shadows. Every face she saw was creased and stained with fear.
Today as they approached the city’s outskirts, a ghost town rose up around them. People flitted into sight, then vanished just as quickly. Cars raced down the side streets, the engines sounding a shrill note, as though echoing their passengers’ fears. Stoplights were meaningless things. They might as well have spelled out the word flee.
Then the army came into view.
Armored-personnel carriers appeared on the corners. Soldiers loitered in the plazas fronting the churches and municipal buildings. Their guns were stacked like cordwood. They hung their thumbs from body armor and eyed the passing cars from behind mirrored shades. Juan gaped at them, then turned round eyes toward her.
Sofia said, “You must stay close. You do not point at anyone. If a man glares at you, look down. You remain silent while we are in public.”
“Yes, Sofia.”
She pulled into a multistory parking garage and waited while three guards inspected the car’s interior and trunk, then passed mirrors underneath. They entered one of the safer shopping areas, which meant enduring bag searches and X-ray machines like were found in the American airports.
She first took Juan for a haircut, then to a men’s store where she bought him his very first jacket and dress slacks and shoes and white cotton shirt. The sight of him emerging from the dressing room caused her eyes to burn with tears she was determined not to shed.
She took him to a restaurant on the top floor of a high-rise building connected to the shopping area. She selected a table where they could sit and look out over the Rio Grande to El Paso beyond. She pointed out the spires of her university. She described the people and the life. For a few minutes, the grim nature of the city below was forgotten, and they were simply two people enjoying a midday meal.
Juan surprised her by announcing, “I like Simon.”
“So do I. Very much.”
“He did a bad thing to the professor.”
“How do you know about this?”
“I heard you two talking about it one night.”
“You young imp. What have I told you about listening at windows?”
Juan paid her scolding no mind. “The professor loved him. I heard Vasquez say it himself. Why would Simon do this?”
Dressed in his new outfit, Juan looked as though he was perched on the border of manhood. That and the distance between them and the orphanage made it easy for her to say, “Sometimes when I look at Simon, I see what might have happened to me.”
Juan nodded. “If Harold had not found us. If we had not learned how to trust. And how to hope. And how to pray.”
The burning sensation returned to her eyes. “You are a truly remarkable young man.”
“Do you love Simon?”
She started to deflect the question, then decided otherwise. “Can I trust you to keep this completely between us?”
“Always and forever.”
“The answer is, I don’t know if I feel what the professor felt, or if it is really what I have come to feel myself for Simon.”
Juan looked out over the cityscape, his expression thoughtful. “Or perhaps it is God placing this in your heart, so the professor’s love can live on.”
Sofia found it difficult to shape the response. “Perhaps.”
Juan looked at her with a gaze far older than his years. “God is right to trust you with His love.”
She used both hands to wipe her face. “What makes you say this remarkable thing?”
“Because who could be better at showing Simon what love really means?”
As they approached the tallest building in Juárez’s business district, Sofia saw the helicopter descend onto the rooftop landing zone and knew Enrique had arrived.
The soldiers surrounding the central plaza were backed up by agents wearing suits and carrying walkie-talkies. The absence of uniforms made them more dangerous, not less. These people did not follow the normal rule of law. In today’s Mexico, such agents were the law.
Juan was cowed by the military and the guns and the tension. He shrank back as an agent recognized Sofia and saluted her and ordered the military to pull up the barrier so she could park in the VIP section. She cut off the motor and said, “Everything is all right, Juan.”
He nodded but did not speak.
Halfway across the sunlit square, she squatted down in front of Juan and waited until he met her gaze. “You know I am dating the mayor of Ojinaga, yes?”
“Yes, Sofia, of course.”
“You also know that he is running for the governor of Chihuahua state?”
“Everyone knows this.”
“This is the other side of Mexican politics. The threat can only be met by real force. We are going to observe Enrique as he is interviewed by the national television. And then we are attending a rally. Do you know what a rally is?”
“Of course, Sofia. I am not a child.”
“No, that is certainly true.” She straightened his jacket and smoothed his hair. “You look very handsome, Juan.”
He beamed. “I am dressed like a prince.”
“Indeed you are.” She rose to full height and said to the hovering agent, “We are ready.”