Chico traces the stars in the sky with his fingertip, randomly connecting one to another to another. He does this over and over again as we rumble on.
The train is going so fast—my fingers ache from holding on, my body feels pricked with needles. My head is itchy and my eyes sting from the rushing wind, from dirt and dust.
La Bestia shifts slightly, winding through the night, and it screeches and howls like some kind of banshee as Chico holds on to me tightly. It straightens and lulls us again with its rocking back and forth, with the rhythmic sound of the tracks. Chico loosens his grip.
“You okay?”
He nods, but he looks so scared. He takes a deep breath, and looks again to the sky. Begins tracing the stars again. I think he is making wishes on all of them.
I look to the scattering of dust, not to the brightest or biggest. I look to the stars nobody cares about, that don’t hold anyone’s gaze and nobody bothers to wish on.
If they could grant wishes, what would I wish for? Where would I start?
When I was born? On this dirt instead of that? As a girl instead of a boy? As poor instead of rich? When Papi left and didn’t come back? When Rey was born? When I lifted my head to the sun? When he saw me? When he climbed into my window? When the child was that bundle of stars inside me? When I threw myself from the bus, hoping it would take a life, not caring if it was mine or that baby’s.
It had been so hot. I don’t even know if I was in my right mind. I hadn’t thought to go to Leticia. I didn’t even think of doing what I did until I saw the bus drive past, so full of people, their arms poking out from the windows and the door that had long been taken off so people could more quickly and easily enter and exit.
For six months I’d carried that secret. For six months, Rey kept finding me. That morning, too, as I walked among tomatoes and green peppers and eggplant at the market.
He smiled his terrible smile and was at my house before me, waiting. I couldn’t stand his smell anymore. He filled the air, my room, with the smell of sulfur, rot and evil—a smell that had been stuck in my nose since that very first time.
When he left, I walked through our barrio from end to end, climbing hills and rocks. I walked and walked, willing my body to give up.
And then the bus, with those arms, bright and reaching in the sun. And the driver, who stopped when I raised mine and let me on. It was so full, so clustered, so thick with people. The day was broiling. And the smell of him followed me everywhere.
Can you smell it, I wanted to ask them. But their faces, apathetic, brown and tired. Greasy with sweat.
Maybe I died and went to hell. Maybe this is hell, that’s what I remember thinking. And then I panicked, that hell should be the barrio where I grew up, with my people, on a white van to the market.
I had to get out. I had to escape. I leaned out the door and let go.
But now, on this train, packed with all these people, I hold on.
I ride and hope and stare at the night sky forever, for hours, until the stars above me blur and spin like a kaleidoscope. Until I feel like I am out of my body and realize some part of me is.
I am looking down at the train, at Pulga and Chico and me on it. I see the tracks, as if they are glowing, and the trail of things the train leaves behind as it travels into the night.
The track is littered with bloodied limbs; with sliced-off feet and legs and hands and arms. With tearstained faces. With crushed photographs and fluttering flowers. With bloodstained dollar bills, with whole and broken bones.
A sense of dread comes over me and I feel myself falling, but in the distance, a faint glow catches my eye and when I focus on it, the glow becomes bigger, brighter. Until I see it is my house, illuminated by the sun.
On the patio, I see my mother. And I feel a sharp pain in my chest, a pain that travels down to my abdomen. A pain that grinds and crushes and breaks my body apart. The pain of life coming out of me. I call for my mother and back there, in that land, I see her hold out her hands. And I watch that child fly to her, the long cord still attaching us.
She holds his small bloodied body, and looks into the distance, into the darkness, searching for me.
I feel myself crash back into my body, to the top of the train again, to its jagged metal and violent rumbling.
My eyes snap open to someone grabbing my shoulder, jerking back harshly. A strange man’s face is inches from mine. “Stay awake!” he yells at me.
The person who was close to the edge has moved, and little by little, I’ve shifted closer to the edge. My feet are nearly hanging over it.
I pull them up and away. Pulga and Chico jolt awake as La Bestia screeches and howls. The brakes are being applied and it screams into the night. The guy who told me to stay awake suddenly looks toward the front of the train as we hear more and more voices, shouting back to one another.
Cars suddenly appear, racing alongside the train up ahead.
The night is cut with the flash of headlights.
With screams and yells.
With desperation and fear.
Pulga
Narcos! Kidnappers! La migra! People shout over one another.
“We need to jump off now!” a guy yells—it’s the man I noticed earlier with his girlfriend. He hurries over to her and I can see him shouting, telling her not to be scared but that they have to jump.
“What’s going on?” Chico yells.
“I don’t know,” I tell him and Pequeña. The sound of La Bestia’s brakes being applied cuts through all our voices as cars come up along the right side of the train.
The headlights and taillights. Cars. Of either narcos or officials, racing next to the train. There is nothing in sight, not a building or lights of a town. Nothing but seemingly endless field. So, whoever it is, whatever they want, it can’t be good.
The woman climbs down the ladder, and the guy keeps telling her to jump, now, jump now!
The train is still moving fast enough that just the thought is terrifying.
“Come on,” I tell Chico and Pequeña. We have to do the same or whoever is in those cars is going to do something to those on this train, as soon as it comes to a stop. “We have to jump!”
Ahead, I can see other migrants jumping, like bodies from a burning building, and running into the fields.
Then the woman lets go. We watch from above as she stumbles and falls to the ground, as the guy jumps right after her, staying on his feet and running to her. Even though the train has slowed, it is still going fast. But they are okay.
We will be okay.
“Go!” I tell Chico, because the way he’s clasping on to the top of the train, watching in terror as more bodies fall to the ground below, I know he won’t jump unless I make him.
“No way! I can’t!”
“You have to!”
He shakes his head. “No!”
The train and the cars are slowing now, the screeching more piercing as it fills the night. If we wait too long, those cars, whoever they are, will stop and collect all the people jumping off.
We have to go now.
“Fucking jump, Chico! Fucking jump now or you’re gonna get us killed!” I feel like I’m choking on panic. I feel like my chest is going to explode with it.
“I can’t! I won’t make it!” He’s at the bottom of the ladder. All he has to do is jump. Just a small jump. A terrible part of me, the part that is trying to survive, thinks of stepping on his fingers, of crushing them so he will let go.
“Please!” I beg. “Please, Chico, please!”
“Chico, you can do this! Come on, Chiquito!” Pequeña yells over me.
“Oh, God,” he says, and I can hear his cries, blending in with those of La Bestia.
“Now!” I yell. “Fucking now!”
And then I see his hand let go.
I hear a terrible bang
and I look to see Chico’s body flopping around and then rolling, rolling, rolling in the darkness.
There’s another terrifying screech and my legs feel like they’re about to buckle underneath me. They feel like rubber, from being scrunched up on top of the train, from being in the same position for so many hours.
My heart is a furious drum as I throw myself and jump.
For one millisecond, there is nothing. No rattling, no sense of feeling anything other than stillness, before I come crashing down on the gravel, just like Chico, rolling and seeing blurry snippets of train and tracks, and steel and wheels and sky and rock. There is grass, and dirt, but I can’t tell what I’m moving toward and what I’m moving away from. I brace myself for the feel of cutting, for the wheels, sharp as blades, to slice through me.
Somehow, finally, my body comes to a stop, and I rush to my feet, just as Pequeña rolls like a tumbleweed, away from the train. But it’s Chico I can’t find.
“Chico!” I run to where he jumped. I don’t see him anywhere in the darkness and there’s no answer when I call his name.
But then I see him, there, on the ground, far enough from the track—unmoving. I run faster and fall next to him.
“Chico, Chico! Are you okay?” I check to see if a part of him was ground up and spit out.
He is perfectly still, his eyes glistening and staring upward. He is gasping for breath and I’m afraid to turn him over, to see some horrific slice through his back, or blood seeping out from under him.
“Man, please, please!” I beg. “Be okay, Chico.” He looks at me and seems stunned. “Say something,” I tell him.
He gasps for breath, like the time we were running to school and he fell over a concrete block and flipped in the air, like a fucking ninja landing on his back, the wind knocked out of him.
“Chiquito.” Pequeña is on the other side of him, her mouth gushing with blood, and she’s holding her hand up to her mouth, spitting into her hand. But checking on Chico, patting him and looking over his body.
He gasps and finally, finally speaks. “Am I alive?”
I start laughing and crying, because I’m so glad to hear his stupid voice. “Yes, pendejo. You’re alive!”
“Are you alive . . . ?” he asks, looking at Pequeña.
She nods. “I . . . I think I broke a couple of teeth, Chiquito.” She looks stunned but her words are calm as she wipes her hand on the inside of her jacket pocket. “Come on.” Pequeña rushes to her feet, starts pulling him up. “Come on, Chiquito, we have to hide,” Pequeña says. “Can you walk? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, stumbling to his feet.
The faint lights of the train and cars are far off in the distance but still visible. We hear yelling and crying. We see lights flashing and dashing back and forth on the train’s top where just moments ago we rode.
I feel sorry for those who didn’t jump, who couldn’t jump. For the women with babies in their arms, or people who were too scared. I don’t want to know what their fate will be.
We rush into the darkness, Chico stumbling as we grab him on either side and hurry him along into the overgrown grass. There aren’t many trees here, and that makes the walk easier and faster to navigate, but also makes it harder to hide.
“Slow down,” Chico says. “My head, it feels like it’s splitting open.”
It’s hard to see in the darkness. But I picture what we must look like. Walking through that field.
Chico’s arms outstretched, his head dripping blood.
“Stop, stop,” Chico says. “I feel dizzy.” He is leaning on us more and more, stumbling loudly as he walks.
“Just a little more,” I whisper to him. But he is becoming dead weight in our hands.
“I’m trying,” he says. “But—”
“Shhhh,” I say. I hear the crunching of grass, someone coming up behind us. I pull him down, but too hard, and he falls between Pequeña and me, letting out a moan.
The walking stops.
My body wants to run and also seems frozen in place. My brain is trying to stay calm even as it hollers a warning and a command. Someone, something, is out there.
We stay in place and the crunching starts again, comes closer.
Something tells me to scream. Something tells me not to make a sound. The sound is nearly next to us, and then it is here.
It is the guy from the train, the one whose girlfriend jumped first. He has a gun in his hand, pointing it into the dark, in our direction.
I can just barely see him thanks to the small bit of moonlight as it shines on his face.
“Please, don’t shoot,” I whisper. “Please.”
“Who’s there?” he says. Chico moans and Pequeña whispers to him.
“We were with you on the train,” I hurry to explain. “We jumped after you.” He takes a step closer, looks at us, shakes his head.
“You’re lucky I didn’t blow your head off,” he says. He lets out a soft whistle and the girlfriend who was with him emerges from the darkness. She looks a couple years older than Pequeña.
“Just those three kids from the train,” he tells her.
“Oh . . .” she says. “You okay?” she whispers to us. But the guy starts talking over her, telling her they can keep walking now.
“Come on,” he says, taking her hand and pulling her away.
“Wait,” she says. “What happened to him?” she points at Chico, who is still lying on the ground. “And you,” she says when she sees Pequeña.
“He hit his head hard when he jumped. He’s dizzy, having trouble walking. I think he needs to rest,” I tell her.
“I hit my mouth on some rocks when I jumped,” Pequeña says.
The guy is pulling at his girlfriend’s arm, but she pulls away from him.
“Get him up,” she urges, coming over to us. “He needs to keep going. Come on,” she says, helping Pequeña and me get Chico back up on his feet. “If you don’t get back on the train, you’re going to be stuck out here for who knows how long.”
She calls over to the guy. “Come help,” she says. “Let him lean on you.”
“No,” he says, “we don’t have time to babysit these three. I told you. Before we left, didn’t I? We can’t get attached to anyone. I already woke them on the train when you asked me to.”
“Help me,” she says, ignoring him. “Or you can go on without me.”
He sucks his teeth and sighs, but comes over and pushes me out of the way, then puts Chico’s arm around his neck. The woman goes on the other side.
“Gracias,” I whisper to her as we walk into the darkness.
She doesn’t say anything at first, and then suddenly, several minutes later she says, “You three reminded me of my little brothers. Are you brothers?”
“Yes,” I say. It’s only half a lie.
“I could tell. I left my brothers in El Salvador.” Her voice is heavy with longing and guilt suddenly.
“I left my mamá,” I tell her. “In Guatemala.”
“I left my mamá and papá, too,” she says. “I didn’t tell them I was leaving . . .”
“Me neither. Just left mine a letter.” My heart pulses with regret and shame. Mamá deserved more than just a letter. I press down on my chest, push away those feelings.
Her eyes catch the little bit of moonlight there is and I can see in them exactly how I feel.
“Stop talking,” the guy whispers. “We don’t know who’s out here. All I know is we can’t go too far from the train,” he continues. “We have to catch it when it starts up again.”
He doesn’t need to say what could happen if we don’t.
We quiet down, keep walking, dragging Chico through the night until the guy tells us to lie down in the grass and stay quiet.
We follow his instructions because he seems to know what he’s doing
. Every few minutes, I look over at Chico and he’s closed his eyes. I don’t know if it’s exhaustion or his head, but I know he can’t sleep now.
“Wake up, Chico.” I give him a nudge. His eyelids flutter.
“I’m awake,” he whispers back. And then I look toward the train, trying to make out what’s happening in the darkness, catching only glimpses of people when they are in the headlights of the cars. Three cars.
From here it looks like some of the people on top are being ordered down to the ground. They are being lined up. My heart quickens as I think of the stories I’ve heard outside Don Feli’s store—of people being executed.
I look over at Chico. His eyes are closed again. Pequeña nudges him and I say, “Chico, wake up.”
“I’m awake!” he says loudly, scratching at his head.
“Be quiet,” the guy snaps.
The lights on top of the train hop down to the ground again. I think whoever stopped the train got their payoff from those on top. After a while, I see those who were lined up being forced into the cars on the road. Then the cars are turning around, driving back down the length of the train. The headlights get brighter and brighter as they come in our direction, as their engines roar in that quiet night, and finally pass us.
I watch as the red rear lights get smaller and dimmer, disappearing into the night, and am relieved the sound of bullets didn’t break the silence.
Even so, my nerves won’t quit jangling, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. But there’s no time.
“We have to get closer now,” the guy says. “It might start up and leave at any minute.”
Chico moans as we move him. “I’m awake,” he says.
“I know, but you have to walk,” I tell him. “Come on, Chico. Keep walking.”
He tries but he still needs help. If this guy weren’t here, I don’t know what we’d do.
His girlfriend and I are on one side of Chico and the guy is on the other. Pequeña follows behind us, rubbing her jaw.
My clothes are sticking to me and the smell coming off Chico’s armpits keeps wafting up. I feel sweat trickling along my scalp, down my face, falling into and burning my eyes as I hold him by his waist. I wipe my face on his shirt.
We Are Not from Here Page 17