Call me Manuel. It is a good name, says Abue, short for abuelita. Mine is a good name my grandmother has told me for as long as I can remember, a good name as good as the land itself. Then slowly, like the priest who sometimes visits this place, she moves one dry brown arm in a widening gesture to point out the dry brown landscape before us. The milpita, little corn plot, which is our life.
Here there are many milpitas, flat flat. Ours and those of our neighbors, all touching each other like the patches Abue sews onto our worn-out clothes.
Our corn plot. Really it is not the dirt itself that keeps us going, but the maíz, the corn, along with pumpkins and frijoles, which spurts up from it. So we tend it with great care. “We are People of Corn,” Papi says. “Since time before time our family has tilled this field,” he tells me proudly and many times over. “And this field repays us.” He pats a small plant with tenderness, saying, “This little green one, one day she will feed us.” I know it is true.
The seasons come. The seasons go. Twelve years since I was born. Papi and I and my little brother Javier and little sister Belén turn the earth. We plant the kernels. We tend the plants. Each year, with sun, with rain, with prayers they grow tall tall. I think, when the wind shuffles them, they are shambling and beautiful as old people. And each year they give us corn. But in times of little rain not enough. Then we work harder. We eat less.
We have one ox. We do not name him. Because if he has a name we will mourn him like family when he dies. And it will hurt deep in our hearts. More than being nameless. Even so, deep in my heart I call him Trini.
We have a dog also. Tough and full of life. He does have a name, I do not know why, for surely our hearts will feel stabs of sadness when he goes. Anyway, he is Guapo, with a body like a bear and a head like a bucket. When a stranger lurks close—maybe a drug person slinking toward the nearby train—Guapo runs him off with deep growls and bites. Pure fierceness like a wolf. With us he is just pure slobber and licks. Guapo follows me sometimes to the milpita to hunt moles, but mostly he guards the house.
Our milpita, beautiful to me, lies not far from a lonely stretch of railroad tracks. I have seen the freight train. I have heard the shouts of the riders atop it. And the screech of the wheels. I would like to go close to watch. But when you are working in the field you do not have time for train watching.
Both day and night, when a train passes this way, I hear the whistle mourn and I think of the far places it is going and I think of Toño who I love more than anything. Gone four years. On the train. Now he is nineteen.
When Mami got her sickness Toño raised me. He and Abue. He is like my other father. But my brother he is gone gone. Not ever will I see him again. For me, it is a terrible train.
Really it is not one train, but many on many routes, all going to the same place, la frontera, the border. Here in this land of Oaxaca we call it La Bestia, The Beast. Many people both children and grown-ups struggle onto it to get away from this hard life. Or gangs. Or to find loved ones lost in El Norte, Gringolandia. Some are chopped up right then and there if they miss the jump to get on. Many make it. But, mostly, like Toño, they never come back. Ay how I miss my hermano!
On this day I am walking barefoot behind Trini, up and down, up and down, plowing weeds in the furrows, the dirt rough beneath my feet. I dig my toes into it deep and feel a great surge of greenness inside myself, as though I were a growing plant.
The tall corn whispers as we go, about sky, about clouds, about secrets corn knows. The ox and I are both lost in the dust we make. Dust. Like the breath of the earth. We are a little dust cloud of our very own, I think as I walk. I am looking at nothing much. Then—Trini balks and plunges away dragging the plow, bellowing. “Trini!” I call, looking down for what has frightened him.
It is a body. Crumpled in the dust.
“Toño,” I whisper, thinking my brother has come home. I hold my breath.
“Aggggh”—a small gasp comes from the body. Smaller than a whisper. Trembling, I bend down.
“Aggggh.”
It is a boy. Younger than me. And he is bleeding. Bleeding bleeding into the dirt of our milpita. How could he get this far without help? The dust has settled upon him. This small dusty boy, he has lost one foot. I know without knowing The Beast has taken it.
“Papi! Abue!” I race for the house.
Abue with her herbs and chants and wisdom, she is a magical one. But I know as I run she can do nothing. Even so, we can comfort the broken boy. And we can pray.
The boy dies quickly. Here nobody knows him. He must have come from far away. Now he is buried with our prayers in the holy earth of the pueblo’s graveyard, along with others of our family. Mami, and my brother and sister who lived only a few breaths. His blood has seeped into the furrows. Few know now his sleeping place but us, this boy taken by The Beast.
After this terribleness I think of Toño very much. He made The Beast journey alive. This is a great grace of God both Abue and Papi keep telling us. To find his mother, my friend Leo tried Beast Riding one time. He fell off. Now he walks with a cane. Leo is ten.
Every once in a while Toño sends money to help us. Little dribbles and bits, but no matter, it is money. Money he earns cleaning toilets in a big building and doing other throw-away jobs in a place called Los Angeles, The Angels for heaven sakes. How can the angels let my good brother work hard hard cleaning toilets, and for so little? He is smart. He has more school than I do. He should have a job of respect. But I know Toño like I know my shadow. Even with this mean work, he will do it with flare, maybe sometimes flourishing the toilet brush, maybe sometimes singing in his big, loud voice. I smile when I picture this.
I miss my brother and his smile and his flare. Two years ago he sent me his picture. He now has a mustache. Without him our family has a missing piece. My heart has a very big emptiness. The train that took Toño from us is the one that left the broken boy in the dust. The Beast. The very name makes me shake.
Our adobe is small. It is sheltered by two tired old trees and guarded by cactus. Tall and prickly soldiers. A bougainvillea has grown itself right over the roof, like a purple shawl. There is a yard noisy with chickens and one goat which chews everything including our clothing if we stand too close.
Our home has two rooms, one for cooking, one for sleeping. Since recently we have electricity, but it costs so much we use it little. Also, it works little, failing in storms, failing in earthquakes, failing because it just feels like it, I think. Electricity, it is a mystery. We use no light but candles at night. The bathroom is a hole dug in the earth outdoors. Sharing one bedroom on petates, palm mats, the five of us share snorings, sleepwalkings, nightmares, dreams.
Breakfast we eat together, to start the day as a family. Corn, chiles, frijoles, those are the Oaxaca foods. And eggs in some form. My favorite is with chopped-up chiles and nopales, cactus leaves carefully scraped free of thorns. And soft, warm tortillas or tlayudas, the big chewy ones. If I am not in school, Papi and I take lunches, mostly cheese and totopos, with us to wherever we are working. Each on his own. But in the evening always always we eat together gathered at our little wooden table that Papi made. There, as we bow our heads over simple foods, Papi gives the blessing. He ends this by saying Keep us happy with the small things. And we are—I am anyway—happy with the small things of our life.
Abue believes that signs show themselves to guide our lives. She sees signs in the patterns of clouds or in how a tree holds out its arms or in a feather she has found. In the very face of the land. “Look for signs,” she tells me when I ask where my life will take me. “Follow them.”
One night on my petate, I dream. A pale figure rises, little clods of earth from the milpita soundlessly crumbling off the small body. The dead boy. Words, as if buried, come from the mouth. I failed, but you—A sign, as sure as anything!
I sit upright, shivering with the wonder of what I have seen. And the wonder of the words. Except for snuffles and peaceful breathings the room is quiet, all but my heart beating so loudly I believe it will wake everybody. But they stay sleeping. Through the little small window I see stars glimmering like promises in the dark. I can stand it no longer, not being with my brother who raised me. I failed, but you—The dead boy’s words are showing the way. In this moment I make a decision. I choose out one star, the brightest. Trembling, I whisper to it in complete conspiracy. Star, tell this to nobody, not a single soul. I am boarding The Beast. I am going to Toño.