A kind of understanding comes into her eyes, and I blink back tears. She gives me a soft reassuring smile just as the train screeches and jerks and loses speed.
I watch as her brow furrows, as she holds tight to the girl, speaks to her husband.
There’s a man next to us, who Pulga is certain must be a pollero, the way he directs the three kids with him and is constantly on alert. He stands up, looks toward the front of the train, where small bits of light dot the night, and then signals and says something to his charges, who begin inching over to the closest ladder.
¿Qué es? ¿Qué pasa? people ask one another, as the train screeches and slows down more, until it almost stops.
“Come on,” Pulga says, keeping an eye on the pollero, carefully making his way behind the three kids in the man’s care. People crowd behind us as we reach the ladder, pushing us forward so we almost fall; we scramble down as quick as we can. Others skip the ladder altogether and jump down to the ground, falling and rolling before getting back up again and running. I hear someone scream and look around to see a man who has fallen being practically trampled as people run past him, over him.
Children begin crying.
The sound of gunshots fired in rapid succession breaks through the night, and then panicked, urgent yelling, the sound of feet pounding the ground, running in every direction.
My eyes search the crowd for Pulga and Chico.
When I find them, I reach across bodies and backpacks and grab on to Pulga’s shoulder just as he turns, searching for me. We race in the same direction as the pollero, into the darkness of the fields, running with our heads down as more shots are fired and bullets race past, our shoulders tense as we wait for them to explode into us at any moment.
Desperation and roaring engines and doors slamming and commands and threats being yelled fill the air. ¡Por favor! ¡No! ¡Mamá! ¡Papá!
The words reverberate in my mind as we keep up with the pollero, running, running, running farther out into the brush under faint moonlight.
The pollero and the kids lie down in the overgrown grass and we do the same.
Screams and begging pleas pierce the night, over and over again, over the sound of my heart beating in my ears, drumming through my body, pounding pounding pounding.
I am trying to catch my breath. I think I’ve forgotten how to breathe. I try to pull oxygen into my lungs, but it gets stuck somewhere in my neck. I try again and again, trying to keep my panic from taking over.
Pulga and Chico are breathing so hard, too, I worry they might die, and the ground feels like it’s shaking and I think I can feel their hearts vibrating through the dirt.
Pulga is looking in the direction we came from, his eyes wide and blinking rapidly, as he searches for anything coming our way. Chico is curled in a ball, his hands over his ears, his eyes shut tight.
The adrenaline that ran through our bodies slowly begins to drain and I watch as Pulga’s trembling arms give out and he lies down completely, falling face-first into the dirt.
And then I hear rustling and hollering coming closer, and I know, I know we will be found. Sweat and the scent of fear escape every pore in my body and the rustling comes closer, closer.
“We will find you,” a man calls out in a teasing, singsong voice. “This is no time for hide-and-seek,” another says.
A bullet splits the silence and they laugh. And somewhere out here, a child screams. And they run toward that scream.
Then comes the sound of a man pleading, and a woman crying, and that child screaming. Louder.
And I know, I know it is them.
The girl’s braids flash in my mind, her mother’s soft smile when she looked at me, the man with his arm around them both, on top of that train just moments ago.
Something in me jolts, dislodges, and I feel a part of me travel through the night, to look down at that field. I try to pull myself back, I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know. I want to turn away.
But I can’t.
And then I see—
I see the father down there on his knees, a gun to his head. And the mother being touched and grabbed by the other. And the girl, her eyes closed so tight, her mouth opened so wide in a scream that does not come, as her mother tells her, “Cierra los ojos, hija.”
The father lunges forward and is knocked across the head with the gun. The woman doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry. She just stares up at the sky. At me, as if I am her angel. I hold her gaze, and I hear the thought that loops through her mind.
Help me.
But I don’t know how.
Help me.
But I can’t move.
Help me.
I can’t even look away.
I open my mouth, but no words come out. Only silence, and something like air, a breeze that moves the grass in the field below.
The grass rustles and when I look, I think I see something faint. Ghosts. Forgotten spirits looking for a way out. I feel how tired they are from roaming.
Help me.
My gaze returns to the woman, and as her eyes lock with mine, something surges through my body. Something that breaks me into a million little pieces that fall away and drop to the ground below.
Then I see it, an army of spiders emerging from that field. I watch as they climb up the men, under their pant legs, up their backs, and onto their faces, into their hair. Hundreds and hundreds of spiders. Clusters and clusters of spiders.
I hear the men calling out to one another. I hear them asking each other what is going on, if they feel that, as they swat at their skin, as they swat at nothing, at the spiders they can only feel biting them with their pinchers, scurrying all over their bodies.
More and more come. Marching around the girl, around her mother, around her father. Converging on the two men, who run stumbling from that field, run back toward the track where they get in a car and speed away, the spiders following, following.
And then I am back, next to Pulga and Chico.
We don’t move. We don’t make a sound. Hot tears burn my eyes.
The pollero’s gun shines in the moonlight, and I see a spider on the revolver. A few scattered around Pulga and Chico. But no one moves, they don’t say a word, they don’t see or feel them.
I feel as one crawls into my ear, whispers, Stay still, Pequeña.
I stare up at the moonlit sky as the sound of clicking and spinning fills my ear. Then tap, tap, tap as the spider walks along my cheek, my nose, to my other ear, where she spins a web that covers that one, too.
The spider tap-tap-taps on one of my eyes—spins a web over it, then the other. Until all I see is gauzy webbed white.
For a moment, the world is silent and there is no more darkness.
For a moment, I feel some kind of peace.
Pulga
Silence. We let it wash over us.
My heart cowers in my chest as we follow the pollero back to the train. As we look for an open boxcar and find them all locked. We climb on top, and stare into the night while La Bestia sits idle on the tracks. As we hear the conversations of those around us.
There are less of us now.
“Those weren’t cops just looking for money,” someone says.
“Kidnappers,” says someone else.
“Pobres,” says someone, referring to the people who were taken. Who knows where they are now? Those men and women and children who just wanted better—who are just like us—whose lives will depend on whether their families can come up with money for their release.
“We barely escaped,” Chico whispers to me. “They were so close to us.”
The train wakes up and the vibration of it rumbles beneath us. We hold on, wait to once again continue on. Then the train jerks forward, pulls away once more.
“Pulga . . .” Chico whispers. “I’m scared. I just want to rest.”
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I hear him, I do. But I can’t shake the feeling of what almost happened. How close we were to being taken. Maybe, probably, killed. Like we cheated something. And I know it will catch up with us; I know we are pressing our luck if we don’t keep going.
But when Chico looks at me, his eyes are empty, like his soul has been scooped out. And he looks so tired. “Okay,” I whisper. “Next shelter, all right? I promise.”
Chico leans against me. “Okay,” he says. He smiles, white saliva crusted in the corners of his mouth.
He closes his eyes.
I can feel the first rays of morning sun shining over us. It’s the colors that wake me. The glowing colors of it behind closed lids.
In those colors are memories. Of Puerto Barrios and Mamá. Of familiar places and a longing that I know is longing because it comes from my heart, but it feels like hunger. Like a deep, unending hunger.
I grasp on to the grates on top of the train, holding on tighter as we’re swayed, back and forth. I’m awake but not, I’m aware but not. Because the rocking motion feels like being on the hammock on our patio and if I stay in these colors and in this motion, if I block out the noise, I can almost believe I am back home. I can almost see my mother through the woven mesh of the hammock, standing in the doorway, looking out at the street and then at me. The splotches of pink and yellow and red get brighter. They turn black and forest green and then to neon orange. They turn white.
I want to stay in this moment.
I don’t want to open my eyes to the reality of the train, to the dust and dirt and the tired faces of everyone on this journey. I don’t want to see the hopelessness, or the desperation. The hunger in their stomachs and hearts that shows through their eyes.
“Pulga.” I hear Chico’s voice call to me, so faintly through my sleep.
“Pulga,” he says again. The train rocks and rocks. As I open my eyes ever so slightly, the sun so bright in the sky, I am blinded. If my body worked, if it didn’t feel like I was made out of lead, I could sit up. But I feel like I can hardly move.
The train screeches into that fiery morning, like some giant centipede being hacked to pieces.
I can feel Chico struggling to get up next to me. I use all the strength I have to sit up, squinting against the sun as I try to adjust to the blinding light. I can hear Pequeña mumbling something about how we need water.
“Easy,” I tell Chico as he bobs forward like his head weighs a thousand pounds. His face is so coated with dust, but he nods.
More screeching and braking and I hope wherever we are stopping, a shelter is close by.
“Hang on, Chico,” I say.
He sits, eyes closed.
I see his mouth open as he says something, and he turns to look at me, his eyes bloodshot and tired. But the train lets out a horrendous screech and I can’t hear anything he said, and Chico’s words are lost in the wind as the weight of his entire body pulls him forward. And I watch as he topples, topples, topples over. I watch as my hand, too slow, reaches to grab his shirt and catches nothing. I watch him disappear.
Over the side of the train.
What happens is your brain refuses to believe what it has just seen. What happens is that it tells you you are hallucinating and your ears recall what Pequeña just said about needing water. Even with the scream stuck in your throat. Even as you try to yell and your screams are cut off by those of La Bestia, who won’t be outdone.
So the screams form in you like a thousand bubbles, multiplying, squeezing one on top of the other, filling your chest and your throat. Where they stay there and choke you.
And you realize you’re choking on screams.
And you can’t breathe.
And you can’t hear because even the screeching sounds far away.
And your head, your head doesn’t work. Because it refuses to realize what’s happened.
Even though there’s this part of you, the deepest part, that knows exactly what happened.
And you see Pequeña, lying on top of the train, her arms outstretched over the edge, screaming. And you’re sure she is screaming even though you can’t hear anything.
And you know.
You know.
You know.
As the train slows and screeches and cries and whines and howls and roars and screams a scream so piercing, you feel your whole self shatter.
And that’s when you jump off, you jump off before it comes to a stop and you’re on the ground, the world a blur as you roll and scratch at the dirt and try to get up.
And you run.
You fucking run.
You run even though you can’t breathe.
You run as your mind flashes with horrific images.
You run even though it’s miles, right? Miles? Or days? Was it days ago?
Or did you already pass him.
You stop, because maybe you fucking passed him already.
And you fall to your knees and you feel around as the snot and tears drip from your fucking nose because my god, a moment ago, your ears and your head didn’t work so maybe your eyes don’t work and maybe you already passed him.
And you’re screaming, screaming, screaming his name under that white-hot sky.
You start running again, even though your body barely works and you have to keep telling it to go. Keep going. And you do, you keep running, you keep running, you keep running, until suddenly there’s a car coming up next to you and you wonder how did this car get here? and there’s someone yelling to you to get in and you see Pequeña’s already in there, too, and you get in and the car races ahead to wherever it is you were running.
And you keep your eyes on the window full of smashed bugs, trying to see.
And then you do.
You see the lump on the ground.
And you think, it can’t be him, it won’t be him.
But it is.
His shirt. It’s the one he switched into in the last place we stayed, the blue one that was his favorite.
I get out of the car and run to him, his crumpled fucking body—his leg mangled like it’s been eaten by a pack of wolves, flesh and veins exposed, and so much blood. An impossible amount of blood.
Like Don Felicio.
“You’re okay, you’re okay! You’ll be fine, Chico. I promise!” But I can hardly get the words out because I’m crying so fucking much.
And he’s looking at me and he smiles. He fucking smiles even though his eyes are closing and he’s turning gray and clammy right in my hands, right in my arms, oh god, no! as I tell him to please, please hold on.
The train whistle blows and drowns out my words, but I hold him closer to me and I whisper right in his ear and I tell him, Don’t worry, okay? Don’t worry.
He stares at the sky, the endless sky above us, and his eyes roll back in their sockets.
“No, no, no, look at me!” I yell at him. “Chico! Chico!”
“Pulga . . . don’t worry . . .” he says. “I’m okay . . . don’t cry . . . okay.”
Except he isn’t. I’m watching the life drain out of him, just like I watched it drain out of Don Felicio, and I don’t know how to make it stop. I don’t know how to make any of this stop. All this life, always draining. And nobody cares.
“I’m okay . . . I . . . we made it. I see it . . .” He looks past me, back at that sky.
“No! Stay with me, Chico! Please . . . please . . .”
But he doesn’t. Right there, on the ground, in my arms, he stops breathing. His eyes go vacant, their gaze set on something far away.
His body goes limp.
And right there, Chico dies.
My brother, my best friend.
And I hold him to my chest and I tell him that I love him and I tell him that I was supposed to protect him and I tell him he’s the best person I’ve ever known and please, please
don’t go and leave me here all alone.
I tell him please come back,
Don’t fucking leave,
I’m sorry,
I’m so sorry,
I’m sorry,
Chico.
Pequeña
There are a man and woman, next to Chico. They are talking fast, they are moving fast, they are tying something around what remains of his leg. I want to get out of the car and run to them, but I can’t. I can’t even stand. I open the door and fall onto the ground, crawl. My body wants to vomit but I have nothing more to give.
The man and woman are pushing Pulga out of the way.
Pulga—punching, kicking, screaming at the ground. I crawl over to him—reach out and hold on to him.
The man is giving Chico, Chiquito, CPR. The woman is running to the truck, she is coming back with a red box with a heart on it. And then they are tearing open that shirt he loved so much and putting paddles on Chico’s chest and they are shocking him—again, and again, and again—trying to bring him back to life.
Each shock makes his body flop like a fish out of water. Each shock makes my brain flash. Each shock is a knife viciously cutting up and slicing and slivering my heart into pieces.
Then they are stopping.
Try again! Try again! Pulga shouts.
“Ya se fue,” the man says. Pulga pulls away from me and scrambles over to hold Chico again. I wrap my arms around my body because I feel myself coming apart. I am sobbing and I am trying to say, No, no, no, because I can’t believe it. It can’t be real.
But the words won’t come out.
Only my insides slide up my throat, out of my mouth. And I sit there, spitting out my heart, my stomach, my spleen. I choke on broken pieces of ribs, on piece after piece of myself. Next to Chico. Next to all that spilled blood and pieces of him.
The man and woman are saying something.
“Come, don’t look anymore. Come,” she says as she helps me up and takes me to the truck.
The man tries to help Pulga, but Pulga won’t move. He won’t leave Chico there alone.
We Are Not from Here Page 20