CHAPTER 3

If there’s one thing Santiago knew, it was there’s no telling what will happen in the future. One second his mamá had been crossing the street, holding his five-year-old hand, and the next second a car had run a red light and hit her. In that split second of impact, she’d let go of him, saving his life even though she couldn’t save her own.

Santiago didn’t trust the future, didn’t plan for it. Not when the future did what it wanted to, regardless of any efforts. Tomorrow or a week from now didn’t matter. Instead Santiago lived in the present, and in the present his stomach growled.

Except he didn’t want to leave his spot in the shed just yet. The morning sun glared down on him through the patches of missing roof. For a while he enjoyed the warmth on his body after the cool night, only getting up when his stomach threatened to audition for the tuba section of an orchestra.

In the center of town, near the plaza and a church, a food truck emanated scents of meat and spices, beans and roasted chile. A woman sat at a plastic table in the shade, her plate piled high with more food than Santiago ever remembered having. Inside the truck, a man leaned on his elbows to look out the service window.

For the past few days, Santiago had scrounged for food behind grocery stores and in trash cans, but now he had a better idea.

“Con permiso.” Santiago excused himself to the vendor. “Is there any work I can do—wash dishes, take out the trash—in exchange for a meal?”

The man straightened up, shaking his head. “Business is too slow today; I’ve done everything. She’s the only customer I’ve had.” He gestured to the plump woman at the table.

Santiago nodded his thanks as he turned away. He could try other food vendors, but if this truck, the one with the best smells coming from it, didn’t have much business, others wouldn’t either. Most people here didn’t have spare money to buy lunch.

“Oye, chico. C’mere and share this plate.” The woman at the table beckoned him with her plastic fork.

Santiago hesitated long enough for her to roll her eyes at him.

“Look,” she continued, scooting her plate in his direction across the table. “There’s too much food here. Either sit down and help eat it, or wait to pick the remains from the trash.” She scooped a huge forkful into her mouth and, while still chewing, turned to the vendor. “Now this is GOOD food.”

Still not sure what she might do to him or what she would expect in return, Santiago gave in to his stomach pains and pulled up a chair beside her. She looked young, maybe nineteen or twenty. Her eyes, almost black yet bright, looked straight into his, hiding nothing. His tía never looked him in the eye, and la malvada hit him when he tried to look into hers. This lady, though, smiled and encouraged eye contact. She handed him one of the two tortillas as a scoop to help himself from the plate.

Pork and pinto beans, rice with lime and chile, tomatoes and zucchini with cilantro and olive oil. Tía had been a mediocre cook, and la malvada never gave him any food other people might eat; as he took a bite, he couldn’t remember a meal that tasted so good.

“Right? I told you, good stuff, huh?” The woman took another forkful and shifted to address the vendor. “Can we get another Coke here?”

But Santiago stopped, the sky-high-piled tortilla resting in his hand. Two eyes, dark and bright with extra-long eyelashes, appeared from under the table. Santiago gulped. He could blame the table and bright sun, his empty stomach, or anything else, but that didn’t change that he had done exactly what he hated his relatives for doing—thought only of himself.

“I can’t eat your food,” he said, setting down the tortilla platter after only one bite. “There’re two of you.”

The woman waved her hand as if he’d said the stupidest thing in the world. “There’s enough on this plate for all of us. Alegría, God help her skinny genes, won’t eat any more.”

The little girl, about four or five, straightened up and continued to stare at him through her long eyelashes while she gnawed a pork bone. Mouth and hands covered in meat juice, she offered the remaining bone to Santiago.

A lump rose in his throat as he insisted the girl finish the bone herself. Jesús, Apolo, and Artemisa never shared with anyone. If anything, they stole food from one another’s plates and had learned to eat as fast as they could or be left with nothing.

“Please, eat,” the woman insisted.

The vendor came over with the Coke and exchanged it for the coin the woman had left on the table. Still eating with one hand, the woman used the other to push the bottle across to Santiago.

“Gracias.” The word caught in Santiago’s throat. Thanking someone because he wanted to, because he felt truly thankful, that had not happened in a long time.

The woman shrugged off his word like nothing. “So, do you have a name?”

He finished swallowing before answering. “Santiago.”

“Only Santiago? ¿Sin apellidos?” she teased.

“Santiago García Reyes.” He added his two last names. The one from his father, whom he’d never met, and his mother’s. Everyone he knew had two last names, but sometimes people would skip mentioning one of them. If he ever skipped one, it’d be García, his father’s, but never Reyes. He’d never skip Mami’s.

“Hey, we’re cousins! I’m María Dolores Piedra Reyes.” Her eyes widened more as she kissed her daughter’s head. “And this is Alegría García Piedra. We’re definitely related.”

She meant it as a joke, as people often did when they met someone with the same last name. Santiago stared at her to make sure they weren’t really primos. Surrounding her face were full cheeks, so ready to smile. Her hair fell loose, midnight black from her scalp to her ears and then bleached blond until her shoulders. And of course her eyes, her happy, kind eyes. On her and her daughter. No one in his family had happy eyes. Not anymore at least.

“Are you from around here?” he asked, just to be sure.

“No, from Culiacán, near the coast. Can’t you tell from my voice?” Her accent wasn’t one he’d heard before. She kept on talking without pause. “We’re just passing through. Going to el otro lado, where my sister lives. She and her husband own a restaurant and asked if I could help them out.”

“Sounds nice.” He tried to hide the bitterness in his voice. That they had a place to go, that people wanted her and her daughter there. From the table he picked up a piece of zucchini that had fallen from his tortilla. He squashed it between two fingers then ate it. He couldn’t waste food now when later his stomach would once again audition for the orchestra.

María Dolores continued, not worrying about speaking with her mouth full. “If you think this food’s good, you should try my sister’s cooking. I swear, she talks to her ingredients, and they return the favor by turning into meals that sing back. I don’t have that talent. Instead, I excel at taste testing.”

Santiago forced a smile at her joke and shoved the last of the piled tortilla into his mouth. The little girl, Alegría, once again offered him her bone, which still had a few bits of meat clinging to it, and once again he shook his head.

“You eat it, chiquitina.” He smiled and nodded to her. “I’m getting full,” he lied, but his thoughts turned in a new direction.

El otro lado. He could get a job there. According to rumors, even the lowest-paid jobs earned more per hour than the daily wage here in México; food was so plentiful, grocery stores threw items away when they got old. And best of all, it was far away from here.

He wiped his mouth with his hand and ran his tongue over his teeth to make sure no food stuck to them. Shoulders back and sitting up straight in the plastic chair to make a good impression, Santiago looked directly into María Dolores’s eyes.

“I want to go with you two. To el otro lado.”