We Are Not from Here

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  The man crouches next to him, talks to him for what seems forever. But Pulga just shakes his head. He says something I can’t hear, something that makes the man take a deep breath and nod.

  Then they are both picking up Chico, what’s left of him, and bringing him to the truck. They are putting him in the back and I’m worried about Chico’s head being banged around, that’s what I’m worried about, and I tell the woman, His head, please, watch his head, but when I look, Pulga is back there with him, holding his head in his lap.

  The man gets in the driver’s seat.

  I watch the world outside race by in a blur until we are at a shelter and the man and woman are telling us they will help.

  There are so many people standing outside the shelter; I think they were the ones on the train with us. They stand there looking.

  A few men come from inside to help the man who brought us here. They call him Padre. He’s a priest.

  The woman who was at the scene goes into the shelter and comes out, holding sheets that she gives to the priest. They lay them on the ground. A few men come out of the shelter and remove Chico from the truck, lay him down on those sheets.

  The woman wraps him, like a child. Wraps his whole body, but leaves his face visible. Then she tells a few of the men who are standing around to take him inside and they do.

  I watch, Chico’s blood already blooming through the sheet.

  And I feel myself falling,

  falling,

  falling.

  Through darkness, through imaginary worlds with water and spiders and stars—where witches who are also angels watch over you.

  Her dazzling eyes and long silver hair come into my mind’s eye. Come and tell me this is all a nightmare, I tell her. Come, wake me. Please.

  Maybe she will come to me on top of the train, maybe she will whisper in my ear that none of this is true.

  But before the image of her slowly fades away, I know she’s not coming.

  And I know all of this is real—achingly, terribly real.

  Pulga

  Time does not make sense.

  The sky was just orange and then blue and now it is black. In seconds it changed. How can Chico be alive this morning and then dead this morning? How can I have lived a lifetime in just hours, and how can hours feel like seconds, and how can seconds feel like eternity? And how can today not really feel like a day, so maybe today never happened. Chico is not dead.

  Except, I’m stuck in today. There is only today. Which means it happened.

  He really is dead.

  He is.

  Because I’m looking at him, there on the table where they’ve laid him. On the back patio. I stare at his body, wrapped in sheets. Like a mummy. I think of how I’ve heard that La Bestia, this journey, turns you into a mummy.

  He was so hungry. He was so tired.

  I pushed him too hard. I pushed him until I broke him. My mind fills with his smile. With his voice. With the nightmares that made him cry in his sleep.

  My mind reels back to the day Pequeña’s baby was born. That stupid shirt he wore, the shirt he’s still wearing now, dead.

  Shut the hell up, man. It’s my favorite one, okay?

  It’s wild, you know? Pequeña having a baby.

  I think of how he ran that day, in the sun, running to meet Pequeña’s baby that took so long to come. Was it this same body? Is this really him?

  Maybe that’s why the woman left his face visible. So I can keep looking at it and remind myself, yes, it’s really him. It’s really him.

  But even his face is not his face. This face is gray and dirty. This face doesn’t smile or look at me.

  I close my eyes because I can’t look anymore. My mind goes back to Barrios, to our streets. How we ran that day, how dust swirled around like it was trying to hide us. I see Chico and me, headed to the store. Chico with that stupid grin on his face, the one not even the death of his mother could completely erase. And me, throwing rocks by his side. I watch as we walk up to the counter. I watch, like some kind of sad god, the last moments we were kids.

  When I open my eyes again, there is the glow of candles all around the patio. And there are people behind me, filling this place with prayers as soft as that light.

  And there is a woman, there, gently washing his face.

  And it is Chico.

  It is Chico.

  My chest cracks open with pain too big for my heart to contain. Tears burn my eyes and my cheeks and I weep for him. For the person he never got the chance to be. I weep for myself, too. For all of us.

  The candles burn down.

  The sun goes down.

  And I close my eyes to this day.

  * * *

  ~~~

  When I open them again, it is morning and Pequeña is sitting next to me, holding my hand, staring at Chico.

  I look around to the empty patio; the only other person here is the priest, Father Jiménez, who tried to save Chico. He walks over to us after a few moments.

  “I know this is difficult,” he says. “But I need to talk to you about . . .” He gestures toward Chico. “Your friend?”

  “My brother,” I tell him. “Chico.”

  “Chico,” he whispers. “I’m sorry to have to talk to you about this now. But I need to know what you would like us to do with Chico. Sending him back will be difficult. It’ll take a long time.” The father speaks slowly, letting his words sink in. Letting my brain have time to process them.

  “Authorities will come and get him if I call, but . . .” He chooses his words carefully. “Then he will be in the morgue for who knows how long. It is difficult, right now, to keep track of . . . people. I’ve heard of some not making it back to their loved ones for proper burial.”

  I imagine Chico’s body crossing borders back to where we ran from, all of this, our whole journey, in vain. Ending up exactly where we started.

  I can’t stand the thought of sending him back. And I can’t stand the thought of him in a morgue like someone forgotten and left behind.

  I look over at Pequeña. “I don’t want to send him back,” I tell her.

  She nods and Father Jiménez continues. “We have buried people here . . .” he says, pointing to a field in the distance. “There is a cemetery out there, for those just like Chico, who met their fate on this journey.”

  I look at the crosses in the distance. I think of Chico, here, for eternity. In a cemetery far from home, so far away from where he dreamed of being. I think of him forever caught in between.

  “I don’t know . . .” I say.

  “We will do it properly. And I will take care of him once you leave here. I visit the cemetery every day and pray for all of them. He won’t be alone.” Father Jiménez looks out at the field behind the shelter to where the others who have fallen lay, those whose dreams and hearts stopped here, broken and crushed on the rails of La Bestia.

  Just like their bodies.

  Just like Chico.

  Pequeña stares out in the distance. “It seems like the best thing to do,” she says quietly.

  But suddenly the idea of leaving him behind is unbearable. I can’t imagine leaving him here. I can’t imagine going on without him.

  I shake my head. “No, no, we . . . we have to go back,” I tell her. “We have to take him home.”

  “We can’t go back . . .” she says.

  “Then I will,” I tell her. “I’ll take him home, to Barrios, and bury him next to his mamita. It’s what he would want. I have to . . . I can’t leave him here, alone.”

  Pequeña stares at me, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s not here anymore, Pulga,” she whispers. “He’s gone.”

  “He’s right here,” I tell her. “And I’m going to take him home.”

  “Listen to me,” she says, gently grabbing me by the shoulders. I p
ush her away, but she holds tighter. “Do you think he’d want you to go back? Do you think he’d want you to set foot back in Barrios now? Would you want him to go back if it were you on that table?”

  “Let go of me,” I say, but she doesn’t. She won’t.

  “You have to keep going,” she says.

  I close my eyes and shake my head. No. What I have to do is grab Chico. I have to lift his broken body onto my back, and carry him home—past borders, through fields with narcos and policemen and screeching trains. Back to that place we loved and hated, that loved and hated us.

  “You’re going to keep going,” she says to me. “We’re going to keep going. And we’re going to make it, for Chico, okay?”

  I shake my head again, but then I’m crying because I hear myself promising Chico the same thing, just days before: We’re going to make it.

  What did you know? I say to myself, staring at his body, and then I am hugging his body, even though it smells like death, and even though his face is not his and I am telling him, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. And Pequeña is pulling me away and then she is hugging me. And she is telling me, He’s not there anymore, Pulga.

  “He’s here,” she says, putting her hand over my heart. “He will always be here.”

  But I don’t have a heart anymore. It is destroyed.

  * * *

  ~~~

  Pequeña doesn’t understand. She could never understand. She didn’t love Chico the way I loved him. And she is not the reason he is dead.

  I am.

  Some men from the shelter begin to build a coffin. Father Jiménez stays with me and Pequeña.

  We sit outside like that for the rest of the day. Pequeña is still and stoic; I keep forgetting she’s there until I cry and I feel the slight touch of her hand on my arm or shoulder as she reaches out for me.

  I think of the flash of Chico’s last smile.

  Somewhere in the distance—somewhere far away from where Pequeña and I are—women come in and out of the shelter, putting cups of water, cups of coffee, pieces of bread in our hands.

  The sun moves across the sky and Father Jiménez is suddenly standing up, speaking. His voice fills the patio as I stare at Chico.

  I don’t even remember going inside.

  He tells everyone, all those strangers who aren’t strangers because they’ve been here mourning Chico, too, that we on earth mourn the dead, but that they are in a better place. He talks about the glory of God and how Chico is now reunited with his maker.

  But I think of how he is reunited with his mother. I imagine him running into his mamita’s arms.

  Father Jiménez talks about how Chico will now want for nothing, and will feel no pain, no hunger, no thirst.

  How he is safe now—secure in the hands of God.

  I know these are the things Father Jiménez has to say. These are the things all holy people have to say. And even though there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to hear it, there’s a part of me that lets the father’s words wash over me like water, holding on to the hope they offer.

  But I don’t know what I believe anymore. I don’t know if I believe in God. Because if God exists, and if he sees everything, why doesn’t he see us?

  Why?

  And why do we have to die to finally, finally be safe?

  And how can the world hate us for trying to survive?

  And how are we only reunited with our mothers in death?

  But these are questions no one ever wants to answer. Or maybe there are no answers. Not really.

  When Padre Jiménez is done, all that’s left is the humming of prayers and the flickering of candles in that patio.

  And Chico.

  Then they lift him and put him in a box.

  A box.

  They raise him up onto their shoulders.

  And we walk to the field.

  And he is lowered into a hole someone has dug.

  And the father says more words, but all I can think of is Chico’s stupid grin. Then I am throwing dirt in a hole in the ground, and each particle of soil that falls is a heavy weight in my heart.

  How can I leave him here?

  But I do, we do. I throw more and more dirt on him. We pile it on and on and on.

  All that dirt.

  Until he is deep in the earth, like he never existed.

  But he did. He did.

  Even if the world didn’t care.

  PART FOUR

  Despedidas

  Goodbyes

  Pequeña

  I can feel someone’s gaze on me as I wash my spare clothes in the sink outside behind the shelter. When I look up, I’m not sure she’s real at first. But it’s her, the woman from the field. The one whose eyes locked on mine as I floated over her in the sky, whose thoughts—pleas for help—I could hear.

  She’s standing by the door, her head tilted. Her look intense as she holds on to her little girl’s shoulders.

  “Cómo está, your brother?” she asks, meaning Pulga. “Will he be okay?”

  When I first noticed them here, the little girl, the mother, the father, I’d thought they were ghosts. I didn’t know they’d made it back to the train that night. I didn’t know they’d stopped here, too. But then there she was, one of the women who washed Chico’s face. There he was, the father, one of the men who helped build and carry his coffin.

  I look up from scrubbing my jeans. “I don’t know . . .” I tell her.

  She nods. And I don’t know how you can feel connected to a stranger, feel that you have known each other in some other life, but that’s how I feel with her.

  “There’s a train that leaves tomorrow,” she says. She stares at me with that intense look, like she’s trying to place me. “You should make sure you’re on it. You need to make him keep going.”

  I know she’s right. Pulga hasn’t said a word since the funeral three days ago. I worry that if I don’t get him to leave soon, he will go further and further into his grief and it will anchor him here forever. But I’m worried he won’t go, that he won’t be able to leave Chico.

  From here, I can see the graveyard. And when I think of leaving him, pangs of guilt hit me and tears fill my eyes and spill down my cheeks.

  The woman comes over to me, gently takes the soap from my hand, and begins scrubbing at my clothes.

  “I know it may seem impossible, to go on after something so terrible has happened. But . . . it’s the only way,” she says, reaching for my hand, squeezing it tight. And when she does, I know I have known her before. I know our connection is one that doesn’t die—one woven through centuries, through the past and the future. She has loved me and I have loved her and our paths have crossed before this life.

  She smiles. “You remind me of someone,” she says.

  “Who?”

  She shrugs, keeps scrubbing at my clothes, the smell of lemon soap filling the air. “I don’t know,” she says, sighing. “But you do.”

  I look at her and wonder if she was my mother in another life, or my sister, or my aunt, or a cousin, or best friend.

  She hands me one side of my pants and she holds the other and we wring the water from them like we’ve done it a million times before. She takes them from me and grabs wooden pins and hangs them on the drying line strung across the backyard of the shelter.

  And then she helps me with the rest of my clothes. And Pulga’s. And we do the same with each piece, in a rhythm.

  The little girl tugs at her, tells her she’s hungry.

  “Bueno, we’re going to be on that train tomorrow. Make sure you and he are on it, too,” she tells me again.

  I nod. “I will.”

  She goes inside with her little girl, and I stand there, willing myself to remember that other life when I must have known her, but I can’t.

  So I sit on a bucket and st
are out at the graveyard.

  I think of Chico.

  And my mother.

  Dreaming of when I’ll see them both again.

  And I cry, shedding the tears I need to shed in order to go on.

  * * *

  ~~~

  That night, I lie on my side on the floor and look at Pulga as he stares at the ceiling.

  “There’s a train tomorrow,” I begin. He doesn’t turn to look at me, but I know he’s listening. “We need to be on it, Pulga.”

  I watch as his breath quickens, as his chest rises and falls faster. As his throat swallows, holding back sobs. But he stays quiet.

  “I know you don’t want to. I know it’s terrible to leave him behind, but . . . we can’t stay here forever.”

  Tears fall out of his eyes and slide down to his hairline. I look away as my own tears start again. “We have to,” I tell him. “It’s what he would have wanted. It’s how we have to honor him. It’s why we have to keep going.”

  We lie in silence for a while, until Pulga finally speaks.

  “I know,” he whispers. “I know. Even if it kills us.”

  Pulga

  We wait, but the train sits idle on the tracks. I can feel Pequeña’s gaze on me every few minutes.

  “Here,” she whispers, offering me some food. I turn away from her. I don’t want any food. I don’t want anything. “You should eat something,” she insists, but I ignore her. I don’t want to hear her voice, or eat the bread, or wait for that beast that doesn’t want to leave.

  She offers me the bread again, and I push her hand away. “Stop.”

  “Don’t be mad at me, Pulga.”

  I stare at the tracks. I want to tell her I’m not mad. But I can’t. I don’t know what I am.

  I want to tell her I don’t want to be mad. And I don’t want to be sad. And that what I’m trying to do is feel nothing, to tune out the words my heart keeps shouting, the words I hear Chico whispering back there, under all that dirt, from the darkness of his coffin.