The four of us sit outside, bleary-eyed, staring at the sunrise.
I doubt that any of us slept. I heard movement all night. Tossing, turning, getting up, walking outside, lying back down, sobs, sighs. Every time I was on the cusp of sleep, the noises would merge with my imagination and jolt me awake. At one point I could swear I heard a car approach. Sure that La Frontera was about to burst inside and gun us down, I stared at the door, trembling in the darkness, waiting for the end. But nothing happened. My eyes closed again. Then the cycle would repeat.
It was the second-worst night of my life.
“We can’t stay here,” Marcos says. “They have the whole country looking for us. They’ll find us. We may be in the middle of nowhere, but it’s also the middle of their hive. Somebody’s going to notice something. It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’”
He pauses. No one says anything.
“The way I see it, we have three options. One, we can go to whatever family we have left and hope…that things have calmed down…that they’ll protect us. But I don’t have that much hope, and I don’t want anybody else to get hurt.”
He holds up two fingers.
“That leaves us with two options—north or south. South is easier. A lot easier. Gladys and I have some cousins in Puebla who could help us, and I don’t think the gangs are strong down there. But we’d still be in Mexico. We’d still be within their reach. We’d have to live every day looking over our shoulder. I don’t want to live like that. Which leaves us with one option.” He points north. “We cross the border.”
“Aren’t they building a wall?” Arbo asks.
“Who knows. And even if there is one, then we climb it. Or we go underneath it. I don’t know how people get to the U.S., but they do it. Every day. And once we get there, we’re free. We leave this chingado country and the gangs behind.”
He looks at me, then Arbo.
“You guys need to decide for yourselves, but Gladys and I are going.”
“When?” I ask.
“I’d leave now if we could, but it’s too risky. We were on the front page of yesterday’s newspaper. I don’t like it, but we’re stuck. We have to chance it here for a few days.”
We both nod.
“Sleep on it,” he says. “But you need to decide soon. For now, we need a couple of rules. First, same as when we got here, no contacting anybody. No friends, no third cousins, nobody. If one rumor gets out, we’re toast. I don’t like that Ortíz was out hammered and chatting people up, but I guess it was necessary. Second, stay on the lookout. For anything. Nothing happens out here, so if something does, we have to act. If somebody drives up that road, we leave. At that moment. Car keys stay in the car. We keep an emergency bag packed—food, water, other supplies. Whatever you’re doing, be ready to run.”
• • •
Arbo and I sit with legs dangling out of the back of the truck.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“I’m not thinking. I don’t want to. I can’t,” I answer.
“I know.”
We fall silent, listening to the tiny squeaks from the lip of the truck bed as we swing our legs.
“This is home. It’s hard to—”
“Don’t worry,” he cuts me off. “No te preocupe-th.” Sometimes he makes fun of his lisp to lighten the mood. I think this is one of those times. “We’re good. We don’t need to talk about it. Any of it. Right now at least. We’re either dead, running for our lives, or we have a few days to decide.”
“I’m hoping it’s the third option,” I say.
We hear the hum of a small, low-flying airplane. We both jerk around and watch intently as it passes in the distance.
“Yup,” he answers.
• • •
I wake from a nap that afternoon and walk from the shelter of the house into a flood of sunlight, reflecting off nearly everything, smacking me like it always does at this time of day.
Gladys sits alone near the edge of the garden, beneath a slender overhang of shade from the roof of the well.
She has mixed fertile soil from the garden with other crushed leaves into three small piles of different colors. On the cracked dirt in front of her, she spreads these out with several small branches into a canvas of desert landscape.
As she does this, a beetle walks onto her hand. She slowly raises it to eye level and watches as the insect skirts through her fingers.
She isn’t like other girls. Not in a tomboy kind of way, she just seems free-spirited. And quietly confident about it.
Watching her, I’m reminded of a time a few years ago when a group of boys found a toad outside of our school. First, they put it in a girl’s backpack. She screamed until they removed it. Then, they chased other kids as the frightened animal peed in the air. And finally, they tossed it back and forth as if it were a ball. I just watched. Not Gladys. She stepped into the middle of their game, marched toward the boy who had caught the toad, and simply held out her hands. He handed it to her.
“Hey, where are you taking it?” one of the boys asked.
“It’s not a toy,” she said. She walked to the edge of the schoolyard and released the toad.
I always wished I had done what she did. It was the right thing to do. Gladys has her own compass. That’s not easy, especially where we’re from.
I snap back to the present. She’s looking at me. I have no idea how long I’ve been staring. But I’m busted.
I walk closer.
“That’s amazing,” I say.
“Thanks,” she answers. The beetle is gone, and she grabs a fistful of the darkest soil. She drops it in front of her, then brushes it upward with her finger into the sweeping arm of a cactus.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“My sister. She called it sand-scaping. I paint, so she wanted to find something of her own.” She pauses and looks down at the work. “She was a lot better at it.”
“I’m sure she was.”
Neither of us speak. All conversations now have these awkward pauses, when we mention someone we lost and none of us know how deep we want to go.
“But this is really beautiful. I can’t do anything like this,” I say.
“Sure you can.” She pinches a few fingers full of the lighter-colored soil and dribbles it into the corner of her piece. “Do what I did. You can put it right next to where I dropped that dirt.”
I lean into the shade and follow her instructions, creating a small pile of soil next to hers. She grabs a stick, flicks it out and upward from her pile about a dozen times, then hands me the stick and tells me to do the same.
When I finish, two wiry shrubs sit side by side on the dirt.
“The real talent is figuring out how to do it the first time. Once someone shows you, it’s not that hard,” she says.
“Says the person whose little shrub looks much better than mine.”
“They look the same.”
“What do you do with it now?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“You just leave it?”
“What else can you do?” she asks.
“Nothing, I guess.”
“Right. So you keep it in here.” She points to her head. “That’s the only place you can hold on to some things.”
As if on cue, a small gust blows some garden debris across her earthen canvas, skidding through the scene as though the wind itself were now captured.
We both stare at the ground.
“Are you guys going to go with us to the U.S.?”
I pull out of the shade.
“I don’t know. I…” I still don’t know what to say, or how to think about it.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to push. Or maybe I was, and I shouldn’t have been. It’s a hard choice. Let’s not talk about it.” She’s quiet for a moment. “I’m doing this to take my mind off of everything. I mean, what else is there to do, other than go crazy, thinking about what happened, reliving it, regretting it? I’d rather create something and get lost in it. What do you do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t, I suppose.”
“So you just think about what happened?”
“Pretty much. Over and over.”
“I’d cry myself to death,” she says.
“That doesn’t sound so bad sometimes.”
“What do you like to do?”
“Play soccer, read.”
“Sr. Ortíz found a soccer ball. Marcos plays. Why don’t you play?”
“It doesn’t feel right to play. That’s something you do to have fun. I don’t want to have fun. I shouldn’t be having fun.”
“Do you think I have fun when I do this?”
“That’s different. It’s like…being creative. You can be sad and artsy, but you can’t be sad and play soccer. They’re different emotions.”
“Soccer isn’t an emotion,” she says with a slight smile.
I frown back. “But it’s enjoyment. That’s not where I’m at.”
“Can you be sad and read?”
“Yes.”
“Then read.”
“Show me a book and I’ll read it.” Sr. Ortíz is apparently not a reader. I haven’t seen a book in days.
I get that feeling you have when you’re being watched, that itch from the fringe of your awareness. I turn back toward the house. Marcos. His cheeks pulse as he clenches his jaws. He locks eyes with me for several seconds, then he turns and walks inside.
• • •
Later, in sight, but too far away to hear, Marcos and Sr. Ortíz talk. I pull my hand to my forehead to shade my eyes. Marcos throws his arms in the air. They’re arguing. I stare for a few seconds, cupping one ear to listen. I still can’t hear anything. Then they see me. Their discussion quickly ends.
They know something we don’t. I can tell. It’s more than an argument. It’s a secret.
Marcos says something and walks toward me. Sr. Ortíz looks concerned. I make eye contact with Marcos. His lips purse as though he’s about to say something but is waiting until he’s close enough to share it. Then, before reaching me, his intent vanishes. He nods at me and looks away, as if he changed his mind from one step to the next. He strides past me and enters the house.
Sr. Ortíz stays where he is. I take a step toward him. He drops his head, turns, and walks to the shed.
I let him be.
• • •
“You guys remind me of my sons,” Sr. Ortíz says to Arbo and me.
The normal early evening wind is nowhere to be found, leaving the heat of the day like a blanket on top of us. Arbo and I sip some horchata that Gladys made from a cool pail of well water. Sr. Ortíz has moved on to the fermented stuff, but he isn’t wiped out yet.
“How?” Arbo asks.
“A lot of ways. Pato, you look like my oldest. In fact, we almost named him Patricio too. But there’s more than that. It’s the way you get along. I watch you talk. I see how you appreciate each other’s company. Your families were close, weren’t they?”
“Our dads were brothers and best friends.”
“I knew it. You learn how to act like that. Someone has to teach it to you,” he says, with a somber tone.
“So your sons are friends?”
“They’re best friends. They live together. They work together. You can’t pull those two apart with a crowbar.”
“Where are they?” Arbo asks.
“Far from here.”
“In the U.S.?” I ask.
“Farther. In Canada. They’re good boys, like you two. Always have been. Though they’re not really boys now. They’re men.”
“How old are they?”
“Not that old, but probably old to you. Ignacio… Iggie is, well, let’s see, he has to be about thirty-one. And that would make Mateo twenty-nine. No, wait.” He sucks in a gulp of air and chases it with a swig of tequila. “I still mix them up.” He stops and closes his eyes. “Mateo’s twenty-seven.”
“Mix up who?” Arbo asks.
“I have another son. No, I had another son.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what? You didn’t do anything. It was those cabrones who killed your… It was the damn gangs. They did it all.”
The conversation falls silent. You don’t ask about these things. I know far too well. People tell you when they’re ready.
“I have to go,” Sr. Ortíz says.
He stands, leaving Arbo and I sitting by ourselves. He hovers over us for a few seconds, then sits back down.
“No, you know what? I never talk about it. I never have anybody to talk about it with. And now you’re here and… You two, I’m so sorry to say, know exactly what this is like.”
We nod, not knowing exactly what’s coming, but in what direction it’s headed.
“I had three sons. And a daughter. She’s fine. She lives in Canada with Iggie and Mateo. So, four kids in all, and they were all good kids. Kids who knew right from wrong and did the right thing. Or at least that’s what I thought. Diego was the second. Right between Iggie and Mateo. He was smart—too smart sometimes. I used to tell him he should be a lawyer. He was so good with words. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to see it. I should have seen it sooner. Maybe I could have done something about it.”
He speaks like we aren’t even here, head tilted upward, as if looking at his thoughts drifting across the evening sky.
“You know what I hate most about telling this story? It makes Diego seem…like he was just another one of them. Another chingado gang member. He got caught up in it. I don’t know how. And I was so slow to figure it out. He always had an explanation. And I always bought it. I even took his dirty money. You never think that someone in your own family, someone you love more than yourself, could lie to you. Or could do things that you would hear about on the news and wonder what kind of parents had raised someone like that.”
He continues staring into the sky.
“One day, Diego never came home. By that point, I’d found out what he was doing, and he knew that I knew. We argued about it. A lot. I figured he’d moved out. But a week went by. No Diego. A month went by. No Diego. Six months. Every day, I’d sit outside at dusk and wait. I’d look out at the horizon—for hours—and scan it back and forth, sure that he’d appear. He was my son. He couldn’t just be gone. If you look out there long enough, you imagine things. I saw him come home a thousand times, but he never did. He never—”
His voice cracks. I turn away. I can’t watch him. I’m already tearing up. From the corner of my eye, I see him wipe his arm across his face.
“You know what’s funny about when I would imagine him coming home? It was always as a little boy. He used to drag his feet and kick up dirt as he walked, no matter how many times I asked him not to. That’s what I’d see. Little puffs of dirt coming closer and closer until I could almost hear that little kid talk, and talk, and talk. I guess that’s how I thought of him. Or how I wanted to think of him—as my innocent little boy. I couldn’t think of him as a nar…as one of them. Knowing what he was… It’s a curse. It’s my biggest regret. I couldn’t change him. I tried. I wish I’d never found out. Do you have any idea how awful it is to have your memories spoiled? It’s like losing him twice. I don’t want to think of him that way. So most days I don’t. He’s my little boy who will never come back. Mateo and Iggie tried to find him. They got shot at three times, and the last time, they were warned to stop looking and to leave Mexico.”
He refills his glass with a hefty pour.
“So they did. They left. Within a year, I lost all my sons. And two years later, my daughter, Lupe, went to join them in Canada. She said she couldn’t stand living in a war zone. I don’t blame any of them. Once this hits home, it’s never home again.”
He swirls his drink around in his glass.
“My wife died a year after Lupe left. They said it was a heart attack. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me it was her heart. Now my kids want me to move to Canada, but I know what they went through to get there, and I’m too old for it. No, actually, I’m not. I’m too stubborn. This is where I’ve lived my whole damn life. The narcos stole so much from me already. I’m not going to let them take my home. What’s left of it anyway.”
I put an arm around his shoulder. Arbo does the same.
I want to ask him about his argument with Marcos, but he didn’t want to talk about it before, and I’m not going to press him after the story he just told. I let it go. For now.
The final traces of light dwindle, and I stare out into the darkness, wondering what’s left of my home.
• • •
I wake early the next morning and step outside. The sun sits like half an orange on the horizon, turning the dwarfed desert plants into a field of lengthy shadows. There is a faint beat and familiar sound coming from behind the house. I peek around the corner. Marcos is juggling a soccer ball.
He doesn’t appear to be aware of my presence. He’s in the moment. His eyes, narrow and determined, never leave the ball. Left-left-left-right-right-right. The ball leaps from foot to knee to head to chest as though this were the final cut of a how-to film on grace with a soccer ball. He’s no less of an artist than his sister, his canvas is just a soccer field instead.
But the longer I stare, the more I see beyond the grace. I see what fuels it. With each tap of the ball, he pops a crisp and rigid breath, as if releasing a tiny sliver of anger and frustration. Soon the grace falls completely from view. All I see is his rage as he attempts to slowly bleed it dry.
For an instant, his eyes dart toward me. The ball falls to the ground. He taps it in my direction.
I walk-dribble the ball over to him.
“You can do better than that. I’ve seen it,” he says.
“You’ve seen me play?”
“A couple of times. You play midfield, right?”
“Yeah.”
Marcos is the star of our varsity team. I play on a much lesser team. I don’t stink, which is about as much as you can say. I’m in the middle of the pack.
I’m surprised and a little flattered that Marcos knows even this much about my game. Where we’re from, everybody (okay, everybody except Arbo) plays soccer.
“You’re fast, that’s a big help there. And you handle the ball well. I saw you score a goal against Dorado. That was awesome.”
That was my shining moment of the season. My lone goal, and against our rival high school. It was a long bomb over my head from our defense, which I chased down past our offense. One fake-out later, it was only me and the goalie with a few seconds remaining in the game. I nearly bungled it by jamming it into the goalpost, but the ball ricocheted in.
Marcos saw my goal. My chest puffs out, as if I’m holding a deep breath of confidence.
“Oh yeah, I remember that one. Thanks.”
“Of course you remember it. You won the game. You don’t forget those.”
Coy never did work well for me.
“So, let’s see what you’ve got,” he says. He pops the ball into the air, taps it short with his left foot, and then bumps it off the side of his right foot over to me.
I knee it into my nose.
He chuckles and I turn red.
“Relax.”
Again, he kicks the ball into the air toward me. This time, I receive it with my right foot and bounce it high. I tap it three times with my forehead, then back down to my left foot and over to Marcos.
“Nice,” he says.
After that, I relax. I even enjoy it. I feel guilty using the term “fun” with anything right now. But this moment at least feels not un-fun. That’s as far as I’ll go.
After about fifteen minutes, Marcos drops the ball into the dirt and speaks in a low voice.
“I don’t like you talking to Gladys.”
“What?” I ask, though I heard it perfectly.
“I’ve seen you talking with Gladys—a couple of times. I’m asking you, as a favor to me, to please not talk to her.”
“We’re the only five people out here.”
“Then act like we’re four,” he says.
“I’m not trying to do anything. We’re just talking.”
“Look, you’re a nice guy. I know that. And we’ve all been through a lot of… I don’t even know what to call it. But I’m the one looking after her now, and she doesn’t need any of this.”
“What’s ‘this’?”
“Don’t play stupid. I see the way you guys talk,” he says.
Gladys and I have really only had one meaningful conversation. Otherwise it has been a few words here and there. But I don’t think it’s worth arguing that point.
“I’m not trying to do anything.”
“Good. Then it shouldn’t be a problem to stop.” He knocks the ball toward me. “I’m going to grab something to eat. You should keep playing. That’s when I get the best practice—when it’s just me and the ball.”
Only moments before, it had occurred to me that I could learn to like Marcos. That feeling vanishes.
He nods as if he hasn’t asked me for something ridiculous, then strolls back toward the house.
“What were you and Sr. Ortíz arguing about?” I call after him.
“Lunch.”
I punt the ball over his head to the other side of the house.
• • •
“I need for each of you to grab a leg,” Sr. Ortíz says, as calmly as he would ask us to hold a glass of water.
I’ve been rehashing my conversation with Marcos most of the morning. This quickly pulls me back into the present. The cow lies on her side, panting heavy puffs of snotty air. Arbo and I gawk at the gooey hooves poking out from under her tail.
“Come on, you can do it,” Sr. Ortíz says, running his hands in long, gentle strokes along the cow’s belly.
As I grab a hoof, I notice the calf’s black nose, like a turtle’s head, slowly sliding outward from sloppy folds of what look like guts. ¡Qué asco! I look away. But as my face twists and my stomach churns, a voice inside my head chides me. I’ve seen the gruesome end of life, which I will never forget. I might as well give myself the chance to see, in gory detail, the beauty of how it begins.
I look back down and firm my grip.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Sí,” Arbo says.
“A short, smooth pull,” Sr. Ortíz says. “It’ll take a couple of times for him to come out.”
With each pull, the calf glides outward. Not at a steady pace, but in spurts, punctuated by squishing and slurping sounds. A thin, milky film runs across the calf’s partially exposed body like a torn blanket. Everything is slimy. And stinky.
On the fourth pull, the entire back half of the calf emerges with a gush of internal juice that hits my leg so hard it splashes up to my shirt.
The calf opens his eyes and lets out a tiny squeal.
My nausea is gone. This isn’t revolting. It’s amazing.
• • •
“Quick, get inside!” Marcos shouts.
“Why? What happened?” I ask.
“Someone’s coming! Get inside!”
“Shouldn’t we drive away?” Arbo asks, panting midstride. “I thought that was the plan.”
“Gladys is sleeping. There’s no time!” Marcos barks back. “Get inside. And hide!”
We zip by the side of the house near the garden and fly through the front door. As we do, I see the trail of dust in the distance. A car is approaching. It’s still far enough away that I question whether we could have been spotted.
Sr. Ortíz goes outside to meet the car. We wake Gladys and take turns peering through a small crack between the door and wall. Although we can’t all see what’s happening, we can hear it quite well.
“Pablo, how are you?” the man asks.
“Good. I was hoping it might be you,” Sr. Ortíz says.
“You been playing soccer?” he asks.
“No. Why?”
“I saw a soccer ball.”
“Oh, that. Um, well, I found it…out in the desert. And it seemed like a waste. So I brought it back.”
“Okay. I thought maybe you had visitors. I thought I saw somebody else as I was driving up.”
“Somebody else here? No, no. Must have been a skinny cow.”
“Yeah, must’ve been. Did you get a new pickup truck?”
“Oh yeah, yeah, I did,” Sr. Ortíz stutters. “I’ve been thinking about building onto the house and I needed something to haul materials.”
“It’s nice to have that gringo money coming in.”
“My family is good to me.”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, I feel fine. Why?”
“You seem a little on edge.”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m excited every time you show up and bring me something.”
“I won’t hold you in suspense any longer then. I’ve got two for you this time. One came in a few days ago and the other one came yesterday.”
They chat a bit more before the man departs.
Sr. Ortíz comes inside.
“He knew we were here,” Marcos says.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sr. Ortíz answers.
“He knew someone was here. I don’t like this.”
I don’t often agree with Marcos, but I think he’s right this time.
“He’s a nice man. He stays and talks with me every time he brings me a package. He doesn’t have to do that.”
“How long does he normally stay?” I ask.
“Twenty minutes maybe. I usually ask him inside for some horchata.”
“And this time, you didn’t,” Marcos says.
“No, but—”
“He knows something is different,” Marcos interrupts. “The question is whether he puts it together and if he talks about it. And we’re not sticking around for that. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“It’s too soon,” Arbo says. “Our pictures were in the paper two days ago.”
“Do you want to wait here until the next car drives up? How quickly did we escape? Because that was the plan, remember? And we didn’t. There wasn’t time. We hid, and we didn’t even do a good job. If we try that when the narcos come, it’s over.” He stares at Arbo, then me. “Gladys and I are going. You guys need to decide by tonight if you are coming with us.”
• • •
I knew—we all knew—this moment was coming. The visit this afternoon only triggered the inevitable.
Arbo and I shuffle away from the group silently, toward the truck. Neither of us want to be the first to speak. As I scoot onto the edge of the truck bed, Arbo picks up a small rock and points to a cactus about ten paces away.
“If I hit it, we go. If not, we stay.”
He hurls the rock. He comes closer to hitting me than the cactus.
“Maybe you should try,” he says.
“What do you want to do?” I ask.
“What do you want to do?” he asks back.
We both know the answer and neither of us like it. We catch each other’s gaze and look away.
I see a small pad of paper lying behind us in the bed of the truck. It’s ancient. The pages are so old they’ve yellowed. There is a drawing on the top sheet, sketched in blurred pencil lines.
For as long as I can remember, Arbo has drawn a cartoon series of a character he invented based on his one childhood fascination—wrestling. His name is El Revolucionario. The Revolutionary. Or Revo, for short. At eight syllables, it takes a hefty breath to say it. Arbo was so young when he named him that merely pronouncing it was an accomplishment. El Revolucionario rides bulls, travels the world, plays the drums, explores caves on the moon, fights crime, builds skyscrapers from clay, and more. He is a catchall for anything Arbo wants to do. But he mostly wrestles.
What El Revolucionario is not is well drawn. Arbo struggles with stick figures. It’s his curse. He knows it. He’s taken plenty of grief for it. And it’s one of the things I admire most about him. This inability has never stopped him.
I stare at the paper. El Revolucionario is in the backyard. I can’t tell exactly what is happening, but it looks like a different turn of events. Stacked bodies lie in a pile beneath a sign: La Frontera. Crowds cheer. Among them, a man with a T-shirt that reads Papá.
“It’s my backyard,” he says.
“I know.”
“It’s this pencil.” He points next to the pad. “It’s older than I am. It makes everything I draw look like crap.” He smiles. Slightly.
“You should ask Gladys to draw some Revo stuff for you. I think she’s good at it.”
“I talked to her about it. She said no. She said wrestling is violent.”
I don’t ask if he showed her this particular work.
“I miss my dad,” he says. “It’s not fair. He was a good guy. Everybody liked him. And he worked his ass off…for everything. His business, that quinceañera, his family. Then somebody comes and takes it all away from him. No warning. They just take him out. And now he’s gone, and everything he worked for.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I miss them all, but I really miss my dad.”
“I miss mine too,” I say. “We had a lot of good times, us four.”
“We were going to be partners,” he says.
This hurts. To the core.
“I know. I guess you and I still can be,” I answer. It’s more head than heart, but it’s the side of the conversation I’m on.
He nods. “Do you remember how my dad used to joke about how they switched us?”
“Yeah, every time the other person would win at something.”
“Which was usually you.”
“Not always.”
“Which is why I said ‘usually.’”
“Oh, is that what that word means?”
“But really, do you think he was joking?” Arbo asks quietly.
“Are you serious?”
“Sort of. I mean, we’re kind of shaped differently. I’m pudgy like your dad and you’re skinny like mine,” he says.
We are shaped quite differently. The name Arbo actually comes from his nickname, Arbusto. He’s short and round, like a bush.
“We come from the same gene pool. It all gets swapped around,” I say.
“Maybe.”
“And then we got the other half from our moms,” I add.
“Did you just call my dead mom fat?”
I did. “Ummm.”
“Are you serious?”
If someone had asked me minutes before if I thought I would be capable of laughing at any point over the next year, I would have said no. And yet here I am, on the verge of callously snickering about one of our dead parents. There are some moments for which I have no explanation.
“Cabrón, there’s a boundary,” Arbo says. “You can talk about how you were my dad’s lost son, but when you call my mom pudgy…”
“That was your word.”
“So, you admit it? You just used a different word.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s it. I’m going to ask her spirit to curse you.”
“Just don’t ask her spirit to sit on me,” I say, rolling onto my side in the bed of the truck and crying. I put my hands up in a defensive position, fully expecting him to hit me.
“If you were Marcos, I’d kick you in the balls.”
“And if I were Marcos, you’d hurt your foot.” I take my voice an octave lower. “Remember, ‘I’m the only one who thought to grab a gun. My balls are like steel-plated steel.’”
“Shh. He can probably hear you. I bet he has superhearing.”
“No, he can’t hear us. He’s too busy listening to his own brilliant thoughts.”
“‘Look how beautifully I juggle the ball.’”
“I bet Marcos could kick Revo’s ass,” I say.
“And now I am going to hit you.”
He doesn’t.
“By the way, he told me not to talk to Gladys,” I say.
“At all?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“He thinks I’m trying to hit on her.”
“Why?”
“Because I talked to her,” I say.
“I talked to her too. There are only five of us out here.”
“That’s what I said!”
“You didn’t do anything else?”
“No. Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything,” he says.
“No. Nothing. You know him, he’s intense.”
“Yeah. That’s how he is.” He draws in a breath and holds it, as if deciding whether to continue on with his thought.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says.
“‘Nothing’ means you’re lying. What?”
“I never told you… I used to have a crush on her.”
I knew this was what he was going to say—and I already regret asking the question.
“Gladys? When?”
“Last year.”
“No, you never told me.”
I leave it there. He doesn’t give any more information, and I don’t ask for it.
We hear a noise and turn. Sr. Ortíz has opened the shed and is handing a few things to Marcos and Gladys, presumably supplies for the trip.
“We need to decide,” Arbo says.
“Let’s each say our answer on three, whatever it is.”
He nods.
I hold out my hand and begin to count. “Uno, dos…”
“U.S.,” we say together.
For me, it comes down to this: I understand the power of revenge. If I had the opportunity, I’d shoot everybody in the gang. Twice. I’m not proud to admit it. I’m not that type of person. But I still would do it. I’d do it for my family. I’d do it for Arbo’s family. I’d do it for Sr. Ortíz’s son, even though I know he was part of the machine, part of those who took my life from me. That’s what’s twisted—revenge lacks precision. It’s a hurt that wants to lunge in any direction to hurt back.
Because I see this in me, I know that Rafa’s brother won’t stop. He’ll hunt us for the rest of his life, and if he can’t hurt us, he’ll hurt those near us. I need to put as much distance as I can between me and anyone I know. I’m a liability in my world. I need a new one.
• • •
Within a few hours, we have a plan. Sr. Ortíz shows us letters from his children describing how they crossed the border. They even sketched a crude map. They wanted Sr. Ortíz to join them and provided the name of the coyote who guided them across the border from Sonoyta, the closest border town. Our hope is to drive there early tomorrow morning, find this man, and pay him with the pickup truck. None of us know how much a rickety, old truck is worth in the world of human smuggling, but it’s all we have.
Sr. Ortíz loads us up with all the supplies he can, then makes a quick trip to town to buy a few extra items—flashlights, canned food, matches, and water jugs.
We’re packed and ready to leave before the sun goes down.
I go to the garden to weed one last time. It doesn’t need it, but I do. I need a moment to myself.
Within seconds, I’m holding dirt-ridden hands to my eyes, filled with a storm of memories and the realization that I’ll never again see my one true home.
I hear steps behind me.
“What’s wrong?” Gladys asks.
“Nothing. I’m just thinking,” I say.
She steps carefully over the rows of plants and takes a seat.
“I’m going to miss it all too.”
She puts an arm around me and lays her head against my shoulder.
This is the first time we’ve ever touched. It’s electric, but not in a romantic way. Her embrace feels so maternal, so unconditional. It’s a shocking feeling from where I was only seconds before.
“What?” she asks.
“I’m thinking about my mom. She loved to garden. She had patches of herbs and peppers around the yard. And she put so many plants inside the house, my dad started calling our living room the jungle.”
“I always liked your mom. I mean, I didn’t really know her, but there was something about her. Some people give you a good vibe. She was one of them.”
Whatever sadness I had been feeling vanishes, and I hold on to a separate set of memories—warm, delicate, peaceful. I submerge myself in all of the reasons why I loved my mom and my home. Nobody can take those memories away.
I don’t know what to make of this nostalgia, so I don’t try. I just let it happen.
Gladys leans in a little closer. It feels wonderful, but I can’t fully enjoy it, mostly because of two people who I’m sure are watching carefully.