by Mark Oshiro
I missed her. It was a brief, fiery thing.
It passed.
Because while I missed home, I knew I had left for the most important reason of all: to become myself.
My mouth dried out quickly, though. You were falling past the horizon and Your light was fading, yet the air lacked any moisture or relief. I longed for the oasis again.
I sipped at my water as we came upon another crop, this one with stalks that rose high above us. The leaves were browned on the edges, burned from the heat, but they were still green and thriving otherwise. A few ears of yellow maíz poked out here and there. It survived as the rest of us had.
“It’s easy to get lost here,” Emilia said, “so stick close, Xo.”
Xo.
I liked the sound of that. Lito had been the only one in my life to call me by that name. But this felt right.
So I reached out and grabbed her hand, and she twisted around and smiled.
“Now I get to be the teacher,” she said. “Since I’ve been here before.”
Emilia guided me forward, between two rows of the towering stalks. The leaves were rough around the edges as they brushed against my bare arms. The rustling was the only sound, and the shadows from the setting sun were long, haunting. I had no sense of where I was or where I was going. All I had was Emilia, holding me tight, pulling me forward.
It was long before the edge of the crop came upon us, opening up to a clearing.
I should have felt relief as I looked upon the flickering light that danced in front of the dark outline of some large structure. There were people there gathered around a fire, and they turned to see who was approaching.
Emilia had done it. We did not get lost at all, and she’d accomplished it without a guide or a map.
She had done it, Solís, as promised.
But then an anger filled me. Emilia was telling the truth, which meant that You really had guided her.
Why?
Why had You chosen her when I had been so loyal to You for half my life?
Emilia eagerly ran toward the flames, toward the person she apparently knew, toward certainty. I watched her greet and hug a man, saw her turn to the others and introduce herself, and this all seemed so easy for her.
I shoved the anger down and kept it to myself. These people wouldn’t understand me. And I feared that ultimately Emilia wouldn’t either.
When I walked up to the fire, Emilia turned and then waved me over. There were six others by my count, mostly men and one older woman, a young boy clinging to her side.
“Let me introduce you, Xochitl, to everyone else,” Emilia said.
There was Jorge, tall and wiry, his face seemingly stuck in a goofy grin. These farms and fields had long been in the family, and Jorge’s mother had passed them on to her children before she passed. She had taught the twins how to till the land, how to rotate out crops, how to use every drop of water that fell from the sky, ran down from las montañas, or lay deep within the ground. He explained to me over dinner that night how more and more people were passing through his fields, getting lost in the maíz, as they tried to find work or new homes in the surrounding desert. He decided to open his home and his lands to them, and for the past three years, this had been a safe haven for those who traveled.
And then there were those who traveled.
Rosalinda, short, round, who never drifted far from her son, Felipe. He had her curved face, her big cheeks, her thick black hair. They had been traveling for over a month, had come from Hermosillo, had escaped something that Rosalinda would not explain, and I knew not to ask her about it.
There was Eliazar, a flash of gray in his hair, his beard full and long, his smile infectious and joyous. He was much more eager to talk, more willing to spill the details of who he was and where he’d been. He had been walking for over a year, had come from El Mar, far out to the east, a place I’d only heard of in stories that seemed magical and impossible.
Then there was Roberto y Héctor, who sat close together, stealing glances at each other, always touching, their gaze dancing off the rest of us. Roberto reminded me of Papá: tall, long, flowing hair, with a wide chest and dark eyes. Héctor was smaller, his face long and sharp, and he wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone.
They smiled briefly. They said hello. That was all.
“There’s agua over near the house,” Jorge announced. “Take as much as you need to drink, but no bathing.”
I nodded at Jorge, and that smile of his spread across his face. “Gracias, compadre.”
“And where do you come from, señorita?”
He asked this as I sat next to Emilia. I hesitated. Maybe it was smart to keep things to yourself, but we were so far from my home. There was a freedom in that; no one here knew who I was, what was attached to me. What I had done. I could choose to be who I wanted to be, how I wanted to present myself.
“Empalme,” I said. “It’s about two days to the south.”
“Ah, someone else from the south,” said Rosalinda. “Bienvenida.”
“And are you seeking something? Someone?” Jorge asked.
I looked to Emilia, who simply inclined her head.
“Someone,” I said. “In Solado.”
At the mention of Emilia’s home, Héctor bolted upright. The motion was so quick that it startled me. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, and panic spread over his features. He glanced back down at his partner, who reached up and held his hand, guided him back down. Lips quivering, he sat. Then he whispered something to Roberto, too low for any of us to hear.
“Not now,” said Roberto. “They won’t believe us anyway.”
“Believe you about what?” I said.
A silence fell over the group. Our attention was on Roberto and Héctor, who seemed to shrink before us, as if they were willing themselves to be smaller.
“Te dije que te creo,” said Jorge, his voice soft, his grin gone. “Does it matter if they do?”
The rest of us looked at one another.
“I feel like I missed something important,” I admitted.
“Niña, we all did,” said Rosalinda, and she stroked Felipe’s hair as he lay with his head in her lap. “What’s wrong with Solado?”
Emilia was shaking her head. “Why were you two going there?”
“I heard there was work,” said Roberto, and he ran his hand up and down Héctor’s arm. “It ran out in our aldea, so we headed north to find something.”
“Oh, we found something,” Héctor spat out. “Don’t go to Solado. You’ll never make it.”
“I’m from there,” Emilia said. “We’ll be fine.”
Héctor’s mouth dropped open. “You’re going back?”
“We are,” I said, sticking my legs out in front of me and bending forward, thankful for the stretch it gave my muscles. “She has something to retrieve, and I have someone to see.”
“You’ll never make it,” repeated Héctor, shaking his head, still not looking at us. “You can’t go.”
“We’ll be fine,” said Emilia. “I’ve lived there. I know how to keep us safe from los—”
Now Héctor lifted his head, and his eyes bore straight into Emilia, straight into me. “That’s not what I mean. You won’t make the journey itself.”
“¡Ya basta!” said Roberto, and he tugged his partner closer to him. “You’re just scaring them.”
“After what we saw? What we went through?” He scoffed. “They should be scared.”
Jorge walked up to the fire, maíz in his hands. “Enough of this talk,” he said, then looked at me. “Some people don’t make the journey, Xochitl.” He began to place los elotes on an old metal grating over the fire. “They turn back because it’s too hard, too long, or … well, they start to see things.”
Ah. The heat. I knew about that. But as I nodded at Jorge, Héctor stood again. “None of you believe me,” he said. He glanced down at Roberto. “I expected you to support me, but you’re a coward, just like it said you were.”
He walked away from the fire, off toward the fields to the east. Roberto gave us an apologetic look, but said nothing. He chased off after Héctor, and left us to ponder what this had all been about.
What had they seen? Why was Héctor so convinced we wouldn’t make it? What had told Roberto that he was a coward?
The maíz crackled and popped as it cooked, and Jorge started to hand it out after adding spices, butter, and some sort of white cream on top of it. When he handed me an ear, I realized how hungry I was.
“Gracias, Jorge,” I said, taking the food from him.
“It’s what I do,” he said. “Solís be willing, I help where I can.”
We raised our free hands and covered our eyes and then our hearts.
“Don’t pay too much attention to them,” he continued. “I’ve been hearing stories for years.”
“What kind of stories?” asked Rosalinda. Her son, who had remained quiet during all of this, was staring with his eyes and mouth wide open. Rosalinda gently tapped his chin with her hand. “¡Qué grosero, Felipe! ¡Cierra tu boca!”
He did, but he kept staring.
“I never know how much to believe,” Jorge said. “Mi familia … we have always been en este valle. Tending las granjas. The fields. The crops. There’s livestock to the east that my twin sister manages. I see her only a couple of times a year, she’s so busy.” He went quiet, wistful. “We don’t leave this place. There’s too much to do, and now that I help others … well, there’s not a whole lot of time to go exploring.”
Jorge spread strips of some sort of meat over the grill, seasoned them liberally, and flipped them over to do the same for the other side. We waited, eager to hear what he had to say next.
“So I take it all in,” he continued. “Los cuentos. I hear what people have to say. And I don’t know if the heat of Solís makes people imagine things or what. But something happens between here and Solado. People … see things.”
“What kinds of things?” Felipe’s voice was high but soft, his attention rapt, focused entirely on Jorge.
Jorge knelt in front of Felipe, and his smile lit up his face. “It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he said. “You’re brave, aren’t you?”
Felipe puffed up his chest and nodded.
“And you’re traveling with your mother, ¿no?”
Nodded again, harder this time.
“And neither of you will let anything happen to the other one?”
“Never,” Felipe said.
“Good.” He ruffled Felipe’s hair. “Then you’ll be fine.”
When Jorge returned to the fire, I nudged Emilia. “Did anything ever happen to you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I was with my father as we traveled south.” Then she pursed her lips. “Things happened, I guess. But it was always him that was happening.”
“So will we be safe?” I asked.
No one responded.
We looked to Jorge.
“The more of you there are, the better chances you have,” he said. “You’re all heading north for various reasons. Why not travel together?”
It wasn’t a bad idea. But where were the others even going?
“I would feel better if we had all of you,” Rosalinda said. “It’s been me and Felipe for a long time, and … it would make me feel safer.”
“I’ve been alone on my journey,” said Eliazar. “I could use the company.”
“I don’t mind,” said Emilia. “As long as I’m not taking anyone into Solado with me and Xochitl.”
“And what of the others?” I said, gesturing with my head toward the east, where Héctor y Roberto were last seen.
“I don’t think they’re going to continue on,” said Jorge, and he started passing out some of the meat he had cooked. “Not after what they saw.”
“And what exactly did they see?” said Eliazar. “Tell us. We can handle it.”
Jorge shrugged. “The truth.”
There was a terrible silence after that. “What does that mean?” I finally asked.
“That’s what Héctor said. He said, ‘The truth came to us, and it judged us.’” He shrugged again. “It spooked them out so much, they came back.”
We had nothing to say to that.
* * *
We settled in, spreading out our sleeping rolls, and Rosalinda spoke to her son in a soft, purring voice. Felipe was stretched out on his back, his eyes up to the sky.
Did these people celebrate at night, as we did in Empalme? It felt strange not to, but I guess we all did in our own way. We had eaten together. Now we were sprawled out, our eyes on the stars around us, and I finally felt calm. Comfortable. The stories had gone quiet; perhaps they were frightened by what Jorge had told us.
The truth awaited us in the desert.
What was my truth? What had I not yet revealed?
I thought of Manolito’s warning. I’d see him again when I was about to admit the truth. Would that be soon? What had I lied about?
So much, I thought. I had lied so many times in Empalme. Would this be a reckoning?
Perhaps. Perhaps I would finally face Your wrath after defying You. Perhaps You wouldn’t let me succeed in my attempt to rid myself of this power, to find a life outside of Your control.
I reached down then, dug around behind me until I felt the edges of the little leather pouch I had found earlier, then pulled it out.
I needed this.
I needed to know what I had found.
I stood nervously. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Emilia. “Just have to relieve myself and take care of a couple of things.”
“¿A dónde vas, Xochitl?” Jorge called out.
I pointed to the south of us. “To the edge of the field. I need some privacy, that’s all.”
“Don’t go too far,” he said. “It’s easy to get lost out there.”
My ecstasy flared, and I did not listen to the aching soles of my feet or the dull burning in my legs. My body may have wanted me to stop, but my soul was calling out for the next poema. I had to have it, had to feel it wrap its arms around me, had to know that someone else out there knew who I was.
At the edge of the field, just out of sight of the others, I crouched down and set the pouch on the ground, then carefully untied the leather strings. They were still coated in dirt, but that didn’t matter. Whatever was inside was pure. It was exactly what I needed.
I slipped the paper out of it, felt the sharp edges, how thick it was, and I could see the writing in black coal, the curved, delicate letters … Oh, it was them, it was the same person!
I read the words under the starlight:
Cada una de nosotras es una desierta
solitaria y vasta
quemada
nos estiramos por siempre
Each of us a desert
solitary and vast
burned
we stretch forever
I fell back, and it swept over me, and I lay supine on the earth, my gaze up at the sky, and I repeated each of the words aloud, felt their sharpness and meaning on my tongue, and I said it all again.
Each of us a desert.
Weren’t we all?
Weren’t we all so vast and solitary inside? Or was it just me?
No, it wasn’t. There was someone else out there who understood me, who knew what it was like to feel this unending loneliness, to be empty within.
We stretch forever.
What did that mean?
I let it tumble in my mind, and as I did so, they awoke.
They stretched.
They yearned for more.
We stretch ourselves: to fit within the roles we are given. To make ourselves look better to those around us. To convince one another that we are good people in a world so vacant.
Each of us a desert.
My back was against the cool dirt, and my heart was satiated. Quenched. As if I had drunk an entire well’s worth of water.
I walked back to the camp in silence
. I looked up, and there was a long flash of light that burst across the night sky. We saw them sometimes, distant estrellas moving across the darkness, and they were considered a good omen, a sign of blessed fortune to come. I nudged Emilia, who was gazing up as well. “Did you see that?” I said.
She shook her head. “See what?”
“Ah, nothing,” I replied, and I smiled at her, thankful that she was here. That I was here. That the others might be joining us on our journey in the morning.
Maybe it was not so strange that Emilia believed so fully in You. I had my doubts about You and Your love, but at that moment, surrounded by possibility and hope, it was easier to believe.
I curled up and faced away from Emilia, the fire crackling behind me, the conversations dying out.
“Where did you go, Xo?”
Her voice was soft, barely louder than Rosalinda’s snoring or the crackling fire. I didn’t say anything at first, because unconsciousness was pulling at me.
The fire sparked louder. “Nowhere,” I told her.
Emilia said nothing more. The fire calmed down, and I passed into sleep.
I woke the next morning, alive with hope.
I watched Your light slowly bleed into the sky. Los pájaros were chatty and eager, though, and I knew they wouldn’t be for long. I could feel Your heat entering the world, Your embrace clinging to my body. I was calm.
Sore and aching still, my muscles protesting the very thought of another day of walking, I was ready to continue on. My destination was clear: Solado. You had guided us here, so maybe Emilia was right. You wanted this to happen.
Maybe You were as done with me as I was done with You.
Rosalinda was already awake and was stirring something in a metal pot over the fire.
“We’re leaving in ten minutes or so,” she said. “Get some food and agua, relieve yourself, and then we go.”
“Mami says we should get as far as we can before el mediodía,” said Felipe, waddling back from the well with a bucket of water.
We. I guess we were all headed north together.
I returned to the edge of the field to duck behind a few stalks to relieve myself. I was thankful that my urine was clear; that was a good sign at the start of the day. I pulled up my breeches and then passed Felipe, his round face bouncing as he rushed to the maíz, panic twisting his features as he hurried to relieve himself.