We exit off the highway to Progreso, on the US side of the border, and after a couple of stoplights we follow the sign to the international bridge. Palm tree after palm tree lines the streets of the town. Annabelle parks the car in the border crossing lot, and we climb out. I pull the seat forward, but Bea doesn’t get out of the back seat.
“I’m not going,” Bea says, staring straight ahead, her jaw set. “It’s too dangerous.”
“All right.” Annabelle hands her the keys. “Have it your way.”
“It’s okay, Bea,” I say. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“But for God’s sakes, don’t sit in the car,” Annabelle says. “You’ll bake.”
“Whatever.” Bea climbs out and heads to a nearby ice cream stand. She sits under a patio umbrella, facing away from us.
I’m about to call to her when Annabelle cuts me off.
“Forget it,” Annabelle says. “It’s her decision. Let’s go.”
We follow a group of people through a turnstile and past an adobe building. Next to the building is a little garden with giant terra cotta chickens. For some reason, the chickens make me feel calmer. It’s like nothing bad can happen to you when giant chicken statues are part of the situation.
“Don’t be mad at Bea, Annabelle,” I say. “She’s trying her hardest to be a good friend. But what I’m doing goes against everything she believes.”
“I don’t care what she believes,” Annabelle says, “just as long as she keeps those thoughts to herself.”
We enter a covered walkway that spans the bridge. Green fields stretch ahead of us, and the Rio Grande flows beneath us. I always thought it would be a gushing waterway, but it barely qualifies as a river. A scraggly line of trees and bushes border each side of the water, and it looks more like a creek, something you could swim across in about twenty strokes. My creek at the Globe is wider than this one.
In the middle of the bridge, there’s a red line that divides the American and Mexican borders. We step over the line and into Mexico. It feels weird to enter another country like that. People are straddling the line and taking selfies. I could take a selfie on that line, smiling away like I’m having the best time of my life: Half in and half out! #Mexico #America #yolo
People would be jealous of me and my fun in the Mexico sun! They wouldn’t have to know the real picture should be me standing in front of a pharmacy: Looking for Cytoteca to end a pregnancy! #abortion #ashamed
We reach the end of the bridge. Two boys shove baseball caps through the fence and wave them, begging us for money. Annabelle pretends not to notice and keeps walking, but I can’t help looking through the slats at them. One is little, maybe six or seven. The other looks a bit older but not by much. I dig into my purse and drop a dollar into each hat. The boys jerk the hats back through the fence and scoop out the money. I run to catch up with Annabelle, my flip-flops smacking the concrete.
After a few minutes we see a sign over a cement building that reads BIENVENIDO A MEXICO. A long line of cars wait at the crossing, but we follow the other pedestrians into a building where a border crossing guard stops us and asks us our business in Mexico. We tell them we’re going to shop and have a look around for the day. We pass through another turnstile that dumps us onto the streets of Nuevo Progreso.
It’s like a different world. Traffic clogs the dusty streets and people blare their horns. Some of the sidewalks are busted up, and the buildings are janky, with peeling paint on plywood billboards out front. But everything is so colorful, and the shopkeepers shouting out to people are cheerful. On the sidewalks, people sit in lawn chairs next to open suitcases lined with silver jewelry and boxes of knock-off designer handbags. Men hold out flyers advertising all-you-can-drink bars written in English and Spanish. We walk past line after line of painted terra cotta pots and clay chimineas. Tejano music pours out of the shops. Street food stands are everywhere, and the smell of tortillas cooking makes me hungry again. It feels like a never-ending carnival.
Several men holding beer bottles catcall us as we walk by. “Don’t say anything!” I say to Annabelle.
“Don’t worry,” she whispers, linking her arm through mine.
About a block ahead, next to a health clinic, there’s a sign that says AZTECA FARMACIA. The shop looks like any other pharmacy I’ve ever been in. There are several people, Mexican and American, waiting in line. The Americans look nervous. I hear an older man ask for Viagra while his much younger wife shifts from foot to foot next to him, her cheeks pink with embarrassment.
I get in line behind them. My heart is roaring in my ears, and I try to breathe in and out to calm down, like I do before I go onstage. But it isn’t working. What if the same thing happens like it did when I tried to buy the pregnancy test? What if the pharmacist makes me explain why I want the Cytotec? What if everyone in the shop overhears?
“I can’t do this, Annabelle,” I whisper. “I’m sure he won’t let us have it. Let’s just go.”
“If that old dude can get Viagra, I’m sure we can get the Cytotec.”
I shake my head and back toward the door.
“We’ve come this far! We can’t back out now. Look, I’ll go up and ask,” she says. “Hang out there and don’t worry.” She points to a rack selling Mexican candies. She picks up a bottle of aspirin and gets in line.
I stand by the racks and stare at the unfamiliar candy, the little pucks of De La Rosa Mazapan, the plastic bags of Pica Fresa and Bubbaloo. Two little boys in blue jeans and T-shirts push each other for their chance to turn the rack. They grab packs and shake and squeeze each one before shoving it back into its slot and grabbing another. I remember doing that when I was a kid, spending my birthday money on candy, walking up and down the grocery store aisle while my mother shopped, weighing the merits of Starbursts versus Nerds and Kit Kats versus Twix, like it was the most important decision I had to make. And maybe it was.
The memory of that, the cheerful packs of candy on the rack, the hopefulness of the boys sends a wave of sadness through me that feels like the worst homesickness I’ve ever felt. I’m going to cry. I’m going to burst into tears, and everyone is going to turn and stare at the hysterical American throwing a fit in the pharmacy.
I step away from the rack and wait by the door, wanting to be anywhere but here.
Annabelle’s turn comes. I try not to stare at her in case the pharmacist notices me freaking out and gets suspicious. My palms start to sweat. This is worse than the time I had stage fright during a production of The Winter’s Tale so bad that Mr. Knight had to physically push me onto the stage.
Annabelle asks the pharmacist for the Cytotec.
He pulls a box off the shelf, and Annabelle hands over the money. The pharmacist slips the box and the bottles into a paper bag and moves on to the next customer.
We hurry out of the shop, and Annabelle exhales and hands me the bag. Her hands are shaking, too. We step into a little alley between the pharmacy and a market called Oxxo.
I take out the box and slide out one of the packs. Each pill is packaged in its own little compartment. I should be happy that I finally have the pills. I’m terrified.
“How many do you start with again?”
“Four.” I try to take the pills out of the packet, but my hands are trembling too hard to get the foil off the back.
“Here.” Annabelle takes the pack, pops out four, and dumps them in my palm. I put each one under my tongue. They taste so bitter, I have to resist the urge to spit them out.
“How long do we wait?” she asks.
I’m too scared to open my mouth to speak in case the pills come out from under my tongue, so I hold my fingers up in a three and a zero.
Annabelle shoves the box in her tote bag and sets the timer on her phone for thirty minutes. And we wait, standing in the alley, leaning against a chipped adobe wall, not speaking.
Thirty minutes feels like forever when you’re standing in a hot alley with abortion pills under your tongue. Annabelle must feel the same way because she keeps looking at the timer. My mouth is dry, and the pills don’t seem to be dissolving like they should.
Two police officers come up the alley from the other direction, automatic weapons slung over their shoulders.
“Shit,” Annabelle whispers.
I suck in my breath. The policemen look menacing with those guns. I imagine them pointing them at us. I imagine them searching us, finding the pills, and hauling us off to jail.
“They’ve seen us,” she mumbles. “Smile when they come up. Acting skills at the ready.”
My heart speeds up. I nearly swallow the pills from fear.
The policemen pass us. They don’t look at us. They are laughing at something, acting normal, like normal people.
I let out my breath, and Annabelle closes her eyes.
Annabelle’s phone alarm goes off. I spit what’s left of the pills out in my hand, like the instructions say. But they don’t look much different from when I put them in.
“Should I put these back in for a little while longer?” I ask.
Annabelle studies the pills in my hand. “Maybe the medicine is on the outside, like in a thin coating?”
“Maybe.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to put them back in again?” She sets the alarm. “Let’s do another fifteen minutes.”
“These are so gross,” I say. I put them back in my mouth and I wait. Fifteen minutes later, I spit them out in my hand. They’ve dissolved into tiny chips.
Annabelle empties the aspirin bottle into a nearby trash can and pops each Cytotec pill out of the pack and drops them into the aspirin bottle. She rubs the bottle against the building to make it look old, like I’ve been carrying it in my purse forever. I’m impressed that she knew to do that.
I hide the bottle inside my makeup bag between my blush and mascara. We buy a sombrero and a piñata at a booth, head to the crossing. As we step over the line, taking us back to the United States, my phone dings with a message from Bea.
I hope you’re okay. I wish I would have come now. Love you …