The migrant men are loaded into the dark vans first. They sit awkwardly inside with their legs extended and their hands cuffed behind them, trying not to tip over on one another. Some of them are already crying. The first van is full; the doors are closed. Lydia and Luca are last to be loaded into the second van. Rebeca and Soledad are still seated on the tailgate of la migra truck.
‘My daughters,’ Lydia says to the officer who fondled her as he hoists her now into the back of the van.
‘Your what?’
Lydia points with her chin to the sisters in the back of the truck.
‘Those are your daughters?’ he asks, even though they both know that the two Central American girls with their Honduran accents and their skin an entirely different shade than Luca’s are not Lydia’s daughters.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘We need to stay together.’
‘No room,’ he says, lifting Luca into the van beside her. ‘Van’s full.’
He slams the left-hand door, but Lydia sticks her leg out to block the second door with her foot.
‘Please,’ she says, looking across at the silent sisters. Rebeca and Soledad stare back at her, their expressions ranging like a quarrel of sparrows across their faces. ‘Please, we have to stay together.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the man says, pushing Lydia’s leg back inside the van. ‘We’ll give the girls a ride.’
When he slams the door, Lydia’s almost grateful for the blackness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Behind Lydia’s most immediate fear of being murdered in obscurity, or worse, watching Luca suffer some act of brutality, she’s also afraid that, whomever these men are working for, they may find out who she is and submit her to a different kind of murder instead. Even if they’re not actively looking for her, they might discover her accidentally, as Lorenzo did. If they are working for a cartel, which seems increasingly undeniable, and they do recognize her, they wouldn’t necessarily have to be allies of Los Jardineros to identify her as a valuable commodity. There are any number of ways they could use her: as a bargaining chip, a peace offering, a humiliating prize, an expression of competitive violence. Lydia still has her voter ID card in her wallet. Why? Why hadn’t she gotten rid of it? If she survives this captivity, she will destroy it before they go any farther. She will surrender her name; she has already relinquished everything else. Lydia thinks again of Marta, swinging from the vent of that distant dorm room. She thinks of Javier in grief. And though she can’t conceive of forgiving him for what he’s done, she also wonders, now that she knows about his daughter, if she might’ve been able to reason with him, given the chance, to appeal to that decimated, fatherly part of him. To plead for mercy, for her life and Luca’s.
Beside her, Luca presses his head against her arm. ‘Mami, I’m scared.’
‘I know, amorcito.’
‘Where did they take Rebeca?’
‘I don’t know, amorcito.’
She curls her head over his because it’s all the comfort she can give him. She tries not to think about what Soledad and Rebeca are enduring right now. Her body shudders in an effort to sling her imagination shut. Sweat trickles down her spine, and the hot air in the van feels damp and close. The reek of fear is thick. But when Luca slips his little hand up beneath her hair and clutches the nape of her neck, the sensation of his slick palm against her skin is like a shot of determination. They will survive this. They must. She curves her whole body toward him in the dark.
When finally the van doors open, the light is painful after all the blackness. The migrants feel sweaty and dizzy and thirsty. Luca’s pants haven’t dried because it was so humid inside the van. The stale urine has a piquant odor, but no one mentions it. Maybe not all of it is coming from Luca. The migrants scoot on their butts toward the open doors and try to hop down without falling. It’s a cement floor beneath them. Dim fluorescent lights high overhead. They’re inside a large warehouse, and the men in charge are no longer wearing uniforms. It takes a moment for these facts to land in Lydia’s consciousness. It’s not a precinct or a jail or an immigration detention center, but a dingy, anonymous warehouse. Carajo.
In one corner, there’s a utility sink with water running, and the migrants are permitted one at a time to stick their heads under the murky tap and take a drink. The water tastes of rust and hard-boiled eggs. Luca can’t reach.
‘Please, can you untie me so I can help my son?’ Lydia asks one of the guards.
He doesn’t answer her but instead lifts Luca so he can stick his mouth beneath the faucet.
‘What stinks?’ the man asks and then, realizing it’s Luca, tosses him down. ‘¡Qué cochino!’
Luca manages not to cry. He stands next to his mami. They are made to sit on the floor, and for a long time that’s all they do, lined up along a wall, listening to whatever sounds they can hear: a steady trickle of water dripping into that filthy sink, the clacking of some metal rollers nearby, the occasional furtive whisper of one migrant to another, the unafraid voices of the guards echoing from a nearby room where they’re talking and laughing. They’re smoking in there, too. Luca can smell it. The migrants don’t ask questions or complain. No one moves. Some of them pray quietly together. After what feels like hours, a door in one wall rolls up on its tracks, and all the migrants squint from the onslaught of unexpected daylight. A truck rolls in, the one with all their backpacks, the one with Rebeca and Soledad seated in the bed, facing the rear with their backs to the cab, their wrists still bound behind them. The door quickly rolls shut again.
‘Mami! They’re here,’ Luca says, and he starts to stand, but Mami tells him to sit back down again.
‘Luca, don’t look at them or talk to them yet,’ Lydia says. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s see how they are.’
Luca sits, even though he doesn’t fully understand what Mami means by ‘how they are’. They’re here! He was worried he’d never see them again. Mami leans forward in the dirty light. She asserts her face into his so Luca has no choice but to look at her.
‘Luca, these are very bad people. You understand?’
Luca hardens his lips against each other. He investigates a small tag of rubber tread that’s come loose from the sole of his shoe.
‘We have to be careful not to draw extra attention to ourselves now, okay? You have to be very quiet and still until we figure out what’s going to happen.’
Luca tugs at the rubber tag until it snaps.
‘Okay, mijo?’
He doesn’t answer.
Lydia is amazed by the girls’ arrival. She, too, presumed they would never see one another again. When the men were finished with the sisters, they could’ve chosen to keep them or sell them or kill them, and that’s frankly what Lydia expected, insofar as she permitted herself to expect anything at all. Lydia had buried that presumption in a shallow place, an unmarked place, for the last several hours. She’d pushed it away because she didn’t have room for it. The girls do not look well.
Soledad has a black eye and a scraped cheek on the same side. Her hair is wild and full of grit. Rebeca is bleeding at the temple. Just a thin, bright red cord against her skin. Her mouth is swollen and raw. A guard pulls them by the ankles, one at a time, toward the liftgate of the truck and flings them to the floor like sacks of rice. Soledad and Rebeca don’t complain with their voices or faces or bodies. They’re both limp – all the flinch has gone out of them. The sisters land near the far end of the line of migrants, and they don’t move from where they’re placed. Rebeca closes her eyes at once. Soledad keeps hers open. She lifts her chin, leans forward, and looks down the line until she sees Luca sticking out a little from the rest of the migrants. She nods at him once.
‘Soledad,’ he says, just loudly enough for her to hear. Because he knows without knowing that the act of saying her name in that moment is the flag she needs in order to return to herself.
‘Re
beca,’ he says also. But Rebeca squeezes her eyes shut even tighter. She’s not ready. She pulls her knees up in front of her and buries her face there.
Now the five men who were in that truck with the sisters are uncarefully unloading the backpacks. They wear untucked white T-shirts over their dark blue uniform pants, and Lydia wonders if they’re real agentes who also work for the cartel, or if the uniforms and trucks are just elaborate costumes and props. Qué importa. They stand in the bed and toss everything down in a heap. Luca can feel the whole line of migrants clicking to attention, their spines snapping them upright. A fizz of nervousness in the air. A few more men from the office come to join them, and soon the one in charge stands before them. The others call him comandante.
‘Is anyone here a Mexican citizen?’ he asks.
‘I am,’ Lydia says. Three or four other voices join hers.
El comandante steps up to the first man, seated directly beside Rebeca. El comandante nudges the migrant’s worn shoe with the toe of his boot. ‘You’re Mexican?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re not lying to me?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You wouldn’t lie to me?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘From Oaxaca.’
‘City?’
The man nods.
‘In what state is the city of Oaxaca?’ el comandante asks.
The man hesitates. ‘Oaxaca state?’ He is unsure.
‘Yes, amigo. The city of Oaxaca is in the state of Oaxaca. Congratulations. You must have done very well in school, in Oaxaca.’
The migrant squirms where he sits.
‘And tell me,’ el comandante continues. ‘Who is the governor of Oaxaca now?’
‘The governor?’
‘Yes, the governor. Of the state of Oaxaca. Where you are from.’
Another hesitation. ‘We, uh. We had elections recently. The governor, the last governor, he was um . . .’ The man shakes his head.
‘Surely you know the governor’s name?’ el comandante says.
‘Esperanza?’
El comandante turns to a guard standing behind him, who’s googling Oaxaca on his phone. He shakes his head. ‘Governor of Oaxaca is Hinojosa.’
El comandante returns his attention to the migrant. ‘Now. Would you like to tell me again where it is you’re from?’
The man swallows. He says quietly, ‘Oaxaca.’
El comandante draws his pistol and shoots the man between the eyebrows.
Rebeca jumps, her skin and her bones. Lydia cries out. Every migrant in the line cries out. Luca begins sobbing and screaming. He clamps his hands over his ears and squeezes his eyes closed and rocks himself. ‘No, no, no.’ El comandante clears his throat irritably, a tiny sound which is louder than all the reverberating noise in the room. With huge eyes and a cracked mouth, Rebeca is staring at the slump of a man beside her. His eyes are still open as he falls over onto her lap. He bleeds onto her legs. Rebeca doesn’t move.
‘Should anyone else be interested in lying to me about where you are from, allow me to suggest that you reconsider,’ el comandante says. ‘Now I will ask again: Who here is a Mexican national?’
Luca is shaking his head frantically, but Lydia takes a deep breath, and ‘I am,’ she says. This time she’s the only one.
El comandante turns and approaches her. ‘This is your son?’
She doesn’t breathe. ‘We are from Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero,’ she says. ‘The governor is Héctor Astudillo Flores, and the state capital is Chilpancingo.’
Before she can stop him, Luca moves swiftly to his feet. He’s trembling, but he stands up straight, tips his head back, and closes his eyes. His voice is clear as he takes over for his mami. ‘Although the site of Acapulco has cultural influences ranging back to the eighth-century Olmecs, it wasn’t established as a major port until the arrival of Cortés in the 1520s. The city has a current population of more than six hundred thousand inhabitants, and a tropical climate with distinct wet and dry seasons—’
‘Is he for real?’ el comandante interrupts. He’s looking at Lydia.
‘Yes,’ she says.
The man’s face looks very different when he’s smiling, as he now is at Luca. He looks grandfatherly. Portly. Wild, bushy eyebrows. A pebbly wash of gray around the temples. This man who just shot a shackled human being between the eyes.
‘Tourism is the main eco—’
‘Mijo, stop,’ Mami says.
Luca snaps his mouth closed and sits back down on her lap. He turns sideways there, so his body is mostly covering her. El comandante leans his hands on his knees.
‘Where did you learn all that?’ he asks.
Luca shrugs.
‘Did you make it up?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t lie to me?’
‘No.’ Luca would pee again if he wasn’t dehydrated. He buries his face in Mami’s neck.
El comandante straightens himself up again. ‘So you are from Acapulco.’
She hesitates even though it’s too late. She already told the truth because there was no alternative; she can’t change her answer now. ‘Yes,’ she says.
‘And why did you leave such a glorious place?’
El comandante looks into her face, and Lydia doesn’t see any recognition there. Sebastián’s face, the slain reporter, has made the national news, but hers has not. Neither has Luca’s nor Abuela’s nor Yénifer’s, nor any of their other sixteen slaughtered loved ones. It’s only that traveling text message that might identify her. Lydia takes a deep breath. She will not lie; she will tell some of the truth.
‘The city has become extremely violent, frightening. I could no longer afford the costs of running my business.’
‘So you left.’
‘Yes.’
‘In search of a better life for your remarkable son.’ He smiles a toothy smile at Luca.
‘Yes.’
‘Smart.’
Lydia does not answer.
‘Stand up then,’ el comandante instructs.
Luca stands like a baby fawn and helps Lydia, who struggles with her wrists tied behind her. She leans on Luca and gets to her feet. The pain in her ankle is still there, but it’s diminished. The twang of a slight sprain. If she were at home she might think to ice it, to use it as an excuse to get out of cooking dinner for the evening. She’d send Sebastián out to pick up tortas.
‘Anyone else?’ el comandante asks.
Rebeca stares open-mouthed at the dead man on her lap. Soledad looks as if she’s considering speaking, but Lydia silences her with a panicky twist of her neck.
‘Untie her,’ el comandante says to one of the guards, who approaches Lydia with a sharp blade. She winces when she feels the unpleasant pressure against her skin, but a moment later, there’s a snap and her arms drop loose. The plastic zip tie is still attached to one arm, which she holds out now so the man can cut it and snag it from her wrist. Should she thank him? Lydia doesn’t make a sound.
‘Gather your belongings,’ el comandante instructs her.
Luca steps forward with her, and together they collect their packs from the pile. Lydia knows it’s foolish to look for the machete and its holster, but she does anyway. It’s gone, of course.
‘Follow me.’ El comandante returns to the office, and Lydia and Luca follow.
Inside, he tells them to sit. There’s a notebook at an old metal desk, behind which el comandante sits in an upholstered office chair. The pen atop the notebook is gold with something engraved on its edge, and the incongruity of that pen, of the impending paperwork, while the corpse of a recent man is still warm just beyond the door, is too much. Lydia feels her mind slipping. Surely this is the worst moment of their lives. Wait, no. All their family was murdered.
Nothing can ever be worse than that. Once again, she and Luca seem about to escape the horrific fate of everyone around them. How does this keep happening? When will their luck run out? Will it happen right now? Will he recognize her, pull up her picture on his phone, give her a forehead bullet from Javier? Her breathing feels rapid and shallow.
‘Now then,’ el comandante says. He opens a drawer in the desk and retrieves a cell phone, which makes her heartbeat hammer in her ears. ‘Stand just there against the blue poster.’ He indicates a patch of blue pinned to the wall. Lydia stares at it, reluctant to obey. Reluctant to disobey. She stands in front of the poster, and el comandante takes her photograph. ‘You next,’ he says to Luca. Luca does as he’s bid, and then sits back in the chair beside his mother.
‘You have identification?’ el comandante asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s see it, please.’
The gunshot that killed that non-Oaxacan migrant is still a sensory echo in her ears. Lydia opens her pack with trembling fingers and finds her wallet. From this she withdraws her voter ID card, proof both that she’s a Mexican citizen and that she’s the woman Javier Crespo Fuentes is hunting. It feels like a rescue boat and a torpedo at once. She places it in his open hand, careful not to touch his skin. He waves his fingers at her to indicate that she should hand over the rest of the wallet as well. He photographs the ID, and then tucks it back in the clear pocket where it lives. Then he withdraws the money from the billfold and counts it: just shy of 75,000 pesos, or about $3,900. Lydia put a lot of thought into the way she divided and stored their money, anticipating robbery. At the first Casa del Migrante back in Huehuetoca, another migrant had advised her to make sure she stashed money in different places, so if they got robbed, when they got robbed, the thieves might not find all of it. So she’d put a third of everything they had into the billfold. It was a decent sum. Most people wouldn’t expect her to have more than that. She’d divided the rest into ten equal portions of 15,000 pesos each and hidden them in various places: one wad is sewn into her bra strap beneath her left armpit, one’s in her underwear against her right hip. One remains in the banker’s envelope zipped into the hidden bottom compartment of Luca’s backpack. Another is flattened and tucked beneath the insoles of her mother’s gold lamé sneakers. Right now Lydia feels both grateful that she did that and terrified that there will be some punishment if el comandante finds some portion of the reserves. He opens another drawer in the desk and places most of their 75,000 pesos in an envelope. He returns the rest to the wallet.
American Dirt : A Novel (2020) Page 27