Into the Beautiful North

by Luis Alberto Urrea

  Nayeli didn’t get home until ten o’clock. When she came in the door, her mother said, “What were you doing?”

  Nayeli said, “Nothing. Just another day at work, Mami.”

  “How is Tacho?”

  “Fine.”

  Nayeli ate some calabazas and a glass of milk, then went to bed in front of her ancient electric fan. The geckos chirped on the wall above her bed.

  Her mother called, “We’re going to the lagoon tomorrow.”

  “Awesome!” Nayeli called. What she shouted was: “Chido.” But her mother did not know what that newfangled word meant. “Night, Mami.”

  “Good night, m’ijita.”

  Nayeli rolled her head on the hot pillow. She was asleep before she knew it was happening. She dreamed that she lived in a big white house, surrounded by trees and fountains. There was snow on the distant mountain range. Her horses were white, and the swans in her lake floated serenely as the maids served tea. She had English muffins with strawberry jam on a silver tray. She spoke perfect English. She wore a long gown and ate ice cream when she was done with the muffins. Her husband, Johnny Depp, had gold teeth, black eyeliner, and waist-length hair. “Tomorrow,” he said with a metallic grin, “we will go to Kankakee.”

  Chapter Four

  Tía Irma headed down the sidewalk like a parade float, and they hurried to keep up with her.

  “Crab day!” she called as she motored along on squeaky shoes, thinking the people who smiled at Nayeli were smiling at her.

  Crabbing was like going to heaven. A whole day immersed in the clear lagoon, with barrels of ice full of soda and beer, the thatch-roofed huts in the sand swinging with hammocks, the big pots boiling crabs to be eaten on stiff fried tortillas. There was nothing better than crab day.

  They boarded the two boats at the sloping little dock. Nayeli had stopped at the graves of her grandparents and pulled a few weeds, shy red-legged tarantulas feeling their way between the monuments.

  The river water was deep green and sluggish as it moved by, carrying pollen and leaves. The banks here were dark mud flecked with a scatter of white shells. Fat green frogs, the eternally grinning type destined to be shellacked into bizarre poses while wearing mariachi hats and holding toy trumpets and guitars and then sold in tourist traps all over Mexico, jostled lazily in the dappled shadows. Brilliant egrets and blue herons stalked the reeds on the shore.

  La Osa settled into the first boat, tipping it alarmingly but refusing to note the hubbub she caused. She wore a vast straw hat upon her head, and she snapped her 10,000th picture of a tree orchid with her ancient plastic Kodak. “Each flower,” she lectured, “as distinct as a snowflake!” Not that any of them had ever seen a snowflake.

  Behind Tía Irma sat Nayeli’s mother—a well-known hypochondriac since her husband left.

  “María,” Irma said. “How are you today?”

  “Oh,” Nayeli’s mother said. “Not very well.”

  Irma snapped, “You’ve been dying for years. Why don’t you get it over with?”

  In an hour, they had come to the bend in the river where the boats could be beached and tied to bushes, and the party disembarked and grunted over the slope, breaking suddenly, amazingly, from jungly dark to a dazzling white cove that had at its center a wide oblong lagoon of brightest turquoise. Beyond the far end of the lagoon, the thundering surf of the deadly beach could be seen, dark ocean water exploding in spray and foam with a relentless basso roar. Everything seemed woven of purest sunlight. The coconut palms bobbed with their bright green harvests nestled among the silky-looking fronds. Beyond the coconuts, hibiscus trees stood twenty feet tall, burning with crimson blossoms. Little thatched huts sagged at jaunty angles, and Nayeli wasted no time getting to them, prying open their storage boxes, and unfurling the mesh hammocks stored inside. The breeze never stilled: miraculously, no one could tell how hot it was, or how humid. The faint whiffs of rotting porpoise occasionally spoiled the Edenic effect, but otherwise they had reached the most perfect spot in the world.

  Irma said to María, her niece: “Your husband should have come here before he left. He would have stayed home. ¡En México lindo!”

  Nayeli’s mother replied, “You cannot eat beauty.”

  Yolo and Nayeli were in the lagoon. The water only came up to their hips. Tiny fish sniffed and nibbled at their thighs. Nayeli’s hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. Yolo had cut hers for the summer. On the white sand, Tacho had a fire going, and he was boiling seawater with onions and secret sauces. Yolo nudged Nayeli: Tacho was wearing a cloth wrapped around his waist like a sarong. The girls laughed.

  They moved deeper into the lagoon. They watched their bellies and hips wobble and distend in the water. The reflected light made Nayeli’s skin look white. She regarded it fondly.

  Yolo said, “Remember when Mateo the Missionary came here with us?”

  “Ay, Matt,” Nayeli sighed.

  “He was so cute,” Yolo said.

  “That crab pinched his toe.”

  “He was screaming.”

  “I had to bite the crab’s claw open.”

  “Nayeli,” Yolo said, “you were always the strong one.”

  “Do you think he remembers us?”

  Yolo gestured at her own body.

  “Who could forget this?” she boasted.

  But Yolo wasn’t blind—she’d seen Matt’s eyes as he tried not to look Nayeli over.

  “You kissed him,” Yolo said, poking Nayeli in the arm.

  “I did not!”

  “Yes you did.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “No seas simple, Nayeli,” Yolo scolded. “Everybody knows you kissed Mateo!”

  Nayeli smiled.

  “So?” she said.

  Yolo gasped and splashed her.

  “So it’s true! You did kiss him!”

  Nayeli shrugged with one shoulder.

  “Maybe.”

  The kiss—Matt would remember that, she was certain. His mouth was delicious, with his cherry cola lip balm. Soft lips. Those soft curls, too, smelling like apple juice from that girls’ shampoo he used. She liked to think of Matt’s mouth as having American lips—labios Americanos. It could be a power ballad by Maná.

  La Osa’s comadres were across the water, moving toward them. Everyone was hunting for crabs. They each carried a stick. Between each pair of women floated a big straw basket. The notorious girlfriends’ open basket already held ten furiously scrabbling crabs. The armored creatures wrestled one another, and when one seemed about to climb out of the basket and make its escape, the others would grab it and haul it back down into the endless battle.

  “Look at that,” Yolo said. “They never make it out.”

  “That’s us,” Nayeli said. “That’s Mexico.”

  “Don’t let your aunt hear you say that,” Yolo warned.

  They shuffled their feet along the bottom, stirring bright white clouds of sand that curled like smoke around their legs. Suddenly, a huge crab burst out of the sand and scuttled along the bottom. The girls yelped and ducked under water. Nayeli got to the crab first, and she pressed her stick to its back, holding it down. She carefully pinched it from behind—keeping well away from its powerful claws—and pulled it out of the water.

  She shook her head to get the water out of her eyes and said, “Look at that!”

  “Hey!” Yolo said. “¡Es embra!”

  A female.

  Sure enough, the she-crab had a thick girdle of eggs plastered to her shell. Tacho would be delighted. Crab roe made a paste that moved him to orgasmic delight when he smeared it on a tortilla and soaked it in lemon juice and green salsa. Nayeli tossed her in the basket.

  “Don’t you feel guilty?” Yolo said. “Taking an expectant mother?”

  “What, feel solidarity with a crab?” said Nayeli. Yolo was always simmering with revolutionary theories.

  “In a way, she’s our sister,” Yolo insisted.

  This was the trouble with straight-A
students: they thought up positions and then thought up a thousand insane defenses for their instant policies.

  “This crab is not my sister, Yolo. She is my lunch.”

  “She’s no sister of mine—I’m not pregnant. This crab might be the sister of —” she started to say. Nayeli tried to think of a pregnant woman in Tres Camarones. “No sé quién. Who’s pregnant?”

  Yolo snorted. She loved her ridiculous debates with Nayeli. They could talk in loops for hours on the merits of rock en español versus regaeton, or on the merits of fútbol versus beisbol. They left poor Vampi suicidal with boredom when they got on their little jags.

  “Crab!” Nayeli shouted, pointing.

  This time Yolo beat her. She plunged under and worked her stick. It was a small male, but a small crab was still a tasty crab.

  “That’s a dozen,” Nayeli said. “Let’s take them to Tacho.”

  “Let’s eat!”

  In her atrocious English, Nayeli said, “Oh yeah, baby!”

  As they waded to shore, she said, “But who’s pregnant? Seriously. I can’t think of anybody.”

  Yolo thought.

  They came out of the water, each of them holding a handle of the basket.

  Yolo shrugged.

  “I can’t think of anybody, either,” she said.

  They squatted and gobbled their crabs, the women and Tacho. The shrimpers and boys sat at the far end of the lagoon, eating beans wrapped in tortillas and minding their own business. Occasionally, Tacho whistled, and one of the boys came running to open beer bottles and bring more crabs from the aromatic pot. La Osa made Tacho surrender three fat crabs to the boys so they could eat some, too. La Osa reminded herself of Benito Juárez at moments like that. She basked in affection for herself.

  Nayeli waited for an opportune moment to ask the ladies, “Who’s pregnant?”

  “Not me,” said Tacho.

  They threw napkins and crab claws at him.

  “Do you mean among us here?” La Osa said, patting her gut. “Because it’s a little late for my comadres and me!” The older women chuckled. “You’d better not be trying to tell us anything,” she warned. “You’d better not.” She shook a crab leg at Nayeli.

  La Osa finished another beer. Tacho hustled to fetch a fresh one and fished out a 7 Up for himself.

  “Siete Oop,” he announced.

  “Why do you ask?” Aunt Irma finally said.

  “When was Tres Camarones ever without babies?” Nayeli asked. “What an odd thing.”

  “Excuse me, girlfriends,” Tacho interrupted. “You need men to make babies.”

  The old women nodded.

  “What?” Nayeli said.

  “Men,” said Tacho.

  “What are you talking about, machito?”

  “Men. Didn’t you notice?”

  “Notice what?”

  “All the men are gone.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “Jesus,” Irma announced. “Is there anyone sillier than a teenage girl?”

  The women and Tacho laughed out loud.

  The girlfriends sat there glowering: they couldn’t stand being called silly.

  “All teenage girls ever notice,” Irma said, “is their own little dramas. They’re idiots.” She used the graphic word babosadas, which denoted drool running down their chins but also suggested they were as stupid as babosos—slugs.

  The girls were outraged.

  “Are not!” they cried.

  The women shook their heads.

  “All gone,” Irma said, making a puff with her lips. “Blown away. Off to the beautiful north.” She took a swig of beer. “Welcome to the real world, children.”

  Nayeli stared at Yolo with her mouth hanging open.

  All she could think was: I’ll show you who’s stupid!

  Irma stood. She smacked the sand off her legs.

  “I have one word for the men,” she said as she stomped away. “Traitors!”

  Nobody wanted to go home after their day at the beach, so they gathered at Tía Irma’s house on the corner of 22 de Diciembre and Madero streets to watch her color television. La Osa set the TV in the window, facing the street, and the guests all hauled chairs out onto the cobbles so they could feel the breeze. They watched a telenovela featuring savage love among hacienda owners in Brazil. Then they watched a telenovela that featured savage love among cattle ranchers in Durango. It grew dark. Cicadas knocked themselves senseless against the television screen. Bats twirled above them like leaves flying in a windstorm. Passersby called, “¡Adios!” and all the watchers politely called back, “¡Adios!”

  When a car came down the street, they all rose and moved their chairs up onto the curb so the car could pass. They didn’t notice that one of the cars was the big narco LTD. “¡Adios!” they called, then moved their chairs back into the narrow street. Nayeli watched everybody on the curb. She looked very carefully. And she realized Tacho was right. There was nobody left in town but women, old men, and little children.

  Adios.

  Chapter Five

  Although the Mexican government didn’t seem to know where Tres Camarones was, its citizens knew in their hearts that they were Sinaloans. They listened to Sinaloan radio from XEHW in Rosario; they did their shopping in Villaunión; and when they went to the big city, as Irma and the girlfriends had done this morning, it was the long jaunt by dirt track and two-lane highway to Mazatlán.

  Irma had maneuvered her apocalyptic 1959 Cadillac through the murky verdure surrounding Tres Camarones and hit the main road by 9:00 AM. The notorious girlfriends had snored and snuffled in the big backseat as she drove. Vampi had not been allowed to wear black clothes or black makeup, so she had miserably reported to Irma’s house clad in an orange jumper. “¡Así se viste una señorita!” La Osa had enthused, brusquely turning her back and forth, and grabbing her chin to inspect her freshly scrubbed face. She approved: that was the way young ladies dressed.

  “You’re not even half ugly,” she had added.

  They’d cut through the great green lowlands—white birds exploded from the fields. The highway to the Durango mountains whipped by, and Irma had told them for the hundredth time that there were waterfalls up there, and one day, when she wasn’t so busy, she’d drive them up there for some roasted goat. They’d love the waterfalls—very fresh and chilly. “I went there once,” she intoned, “with Chava Chavarín!”

  “Who?” Vampi said.

  The girlfriends no longer listened to these empty promises. They nodded off to the relentless hum and rattle of the Caddie.

  Irma barely saw the oldest cowboy in Mexico trotting along the road on his ancient pony. He lifted his hat to her. She waved with one finger.

  Irma lit a cigarette, jabbed on the radio, and heard Agustín Lara. Ah, real music! Not this idiotic ass-twitching noise the girlfriends listened to. Or worse, that norteño crap with the accordions, rube music for cocaine smugglers. La Osa tipped down the rearview mirror and checked her teeth for lipstick and tobacco shreds. She watched the girlfriends leaning against each other’s shoulders, sleeping with their mouths open.

  “My black-eyed girls,” she said.

  Tía Irma turned to the vegetable seller in his booth and said, “What the hell is happening to these beans!”

  “Excuse me?” he said, pausing in his inventory, holding the stub of a pencil above the wilting pink pages of an order pad. “There is something happening to my beans?”

  “How dare you charge so much for beans!”

  “Charge?” he said. He looked at the hand-lettered tag he’d magic-markered onto a fragment of manila folder two days ago. “No,” he said, “this is the rate.”

  “¡Es una infamia!” she said. “¡Es un robo!”

  “No, no, señora,” he said—not knowing he’d just made her even angrier because she’d never been married and didn’t intend to have the slave’s moniker of “Mrs.” applied to her under any circumstances. “This is the correct
price.”

  “First, tortillas,” she complained. “Now this. What’s next, water? Will you charge us for water? Ha! What are the poor people supposed to eat?”

  He looked at her with wide eyes and shrugged.

  “The poor?” he said. The poor did not shop at the fruit market—they sold lizards and birds and corn husk dolls on the highway. They ate armadillos. He didn’t have time for the poor.

  Beyond the fruit market rose the green Mazatlán hills and the white cliffs of the gringo tourist hotels. They could hear joyous voices and splashing from the hotel pools. They could smell the salt of the sea among the odors of cut sugarcane and fish and crushed mangos and oranges. Music and radios and trumpets and whistling and laughter and shouts and truck engines and some idiot’s “La Cucaracha” car horn. Seagulls fighting over pieces of bread. Oyster shells.

  “Forget the poor!” Irma shouted. “What about the good working people of Mexico!”

  “Go, Tía,” Nayeli said.

  “We are Mexicans,” Irma informed the fruit seller—needlessly, he felt. “Mexicans eat corn and beans. Did you notice? The Aztec culture gave corn to the world, you little man. We invented it! Mexicans grow beans. How is it, then, that Mexicans cannot afford to buy and eat the corn and beans they grow?”

  He would have kicked her out of his stall, but he had manners—his mother would have been deeply offended if he had tossed out this old battle-ax.

  He smiled falsely.

  “Look here,” he said, pointing to the burlap sacks full of 100 pounds each of pinto beans. “These beans come from California.”

  “What!”

  He actually flinched away from her.

  La Osa took her reading glasses out of her voluminous black purse, and the girls crowded around her. They read the fine print. California, all right. Right there on the bag.

  “¡Chinga’o!” she said.

  “These beans are grown here in Sinaloa,” he said proudly. “The best frijoles in the world! Right near Culiacán. Then they’re sold to the United States. Then they sell them back to us.” He shrugged at the mysterious ways of the world. “It gets expensive.”