Betrayed

by Sam Morton

  Rico reached out and grabbed him by the shirtsleeve. "Where are you going?"

  "To find her."

  "For what? So she can take your head off again?" Rico shook his head in confusion. "Look man, I hang around her because she's my cousin and pretty much the only person my age I know down here. But even I stay out of her business. I said what I said so we don't have to dance around it the next two weeks. She got mad. Big deal. Maybe she'll leave us alone and we can have some fun."

  Austin faced his friend and looked him straight in the eyes. "I don't know if I can leave it alone. She needs somebody to either stop her or help her before she winds up missing like your Uncle Viktor."

  Rico saw some of the neighbors' ears prick up at the mention of Viktor's name. He pulled his friend closer and lowered his voice. "Both of those choices are dangerous ones. Sometimes it's best just to let hard-headed people like her crash and burn."

  Austin stood silent, but resolute. He couldn't argue with what his friend said, but he still felt pulled, like gravity was sweeping him toward Veronica. He breathed methodically and gnawed on his bottom lip while deciding what to do.

  Rico pulled him into the shadows beneath a tall, leafy tree to continue their conversation unobserved. He snapped his fingers in front of Austin's face as if to break him out of his trance-like state.

  "Hello!"

  Austin blinked and brought his eyes back up to Rico's.

  "Austin, a month ago we agreed–all of us, your family, my family, the lawyer–that Mom, Dad, and I would do the 'right thing.'" Rico made air quotes with his fingers. "Come back to Mexico and apply for citizenship like we're supposed to."

  Austin closed his eyes and nodded his head. "I know, but…"

  "Let me finish! Do you think I wanted that? Do you think I like it here?" He swept his arms in a half circle.

  Austin stammered to try to say something, but Rico cut him off. "I have tan skin. I speak enough Spanish to get by. I have the accent, but dude, I left this place when I was five years old. It's not home. It's not me, but here I am doing the right thing." Rico spat out the last few words.

  "I know," Austin said, finally able to get a word in.

  Rico grasped his friend by both arms to have his complete attention for the full emphasis. "Then why slap me in the face by helping my cousin do the wrong thing?"

  The revelation hit Austin like a board to the side of his head. He let it sink in for a moment. He saw Rico's logic, yet his heart still hung heavy.

  "Look, since her father died, she's stepped things up. And now with Uncle Viktor missing, she's pretty much the 'go-to' girl if somebody wants to cross the border." Rico's voice sounded tired. He let out a heavy sigh. "Problem is, her reputation is starting to precede her. And she helps people for free, which cuts into the paid smuggler's profits. She's either going to get caught or get hurt, and either way, there's not a damn thing either one of us can do about it.

  "That's what my mom said to me yesterday in Spanish outside the bedroom; to keep you away from her and out of trouble."

  "But she needs us. We have to try," Austin said, even though his optimism felt false.

  "Why?" Rico said.

  "I…I can't explain it," Austin shrugged and looked pleadingly at his friend. "We…I just have to." He walked off to find Veronica, leaving Rico shaking his head.

  Chapter 28

  Barrio Gómez

  Carranza, Mexico

  Austin headed in the direction that Veronica left the block party. Behind him he could hear and see the fireworks the partygoers had begun to shoot off. In the distance, he heard muted "oohs" and "ahhs" from the neighbors. He hadn't gone two-hundred yards though it seemed to him he'd been gone for an hour. Now he didn't know which way to go. There was no sign of her. Worse, he hadn't paid attention along his path, so he wasn't sure he could find his way back.

  He heard rustling in the brush behind him. He ducked into the shadows to avoid being seen. As he did, the rustling stopped. Doesn't have to be a person. Could be a raccoon or a dog, anything. He started to inhale a deep calming breath when a hand reached out from the bushes beyond and grabbed him by the shoulder.

  Austin screamed and jumped, trying to pull away. A man about his size, darkened by the shadows, barreled through the brush toward him. He had one hand out and the other with its finger over his lips to quiet Austin.

  "Rico? Jesus Christ, man! You about gave me a heart attack! What are you trying to do?" Austin yelled as his heart raced and sweat beaded up on his forehead. With both hands, he pulled his shirttail down where it had come up in the frenzy.

  Rico bent over laughing, trying to hold it in, while at the same time shushing his friend. "I'm coming to help," he said gasping for air trying to squelch his laughter. "I think I know where she is. And you could look for days and not find her."

  Austin's chest still heaved from the rush of fear and adrenaline. "What made you change your mind?"

  Rico straightened himself and gave his head a slight shake. "I'm not sure I've changed it. But you're my best friend and she's my cousin. So I'm in. Whatever happens happens."

  Austin reached out to shake Rico's hand and slapped his friend's shoulder with the other.

  "Besides," Rico said, "the way it's gone down so far, you guys are going to need a referee to keep you from killing each other."

  "True," Austin said. "Very true."

  Rico withdrew back into the bushes and Austin followed. Before long, Austin looked down to see a worn footpath, a shortcut through the woods. The broad-leafed trees and bushes captured the day's humidity and kept it low to the ground. After a few minutes, Austin felt drenched, the sweat trickling down his spine. The path was too narrow for the boys to walk side by side, so Rico led and Austin followed wordlessly in his footsteps. Twenty minutes later, they exited the woods onto a paved road, though it had been worn down to its gravel base and was pocked with potholes.

  A hundred yards ahead of them sat row upon row of six-story brick tenement buildings. Austin saw that almost every window was open, some with box fans propped precariously in the sills and held aloft by twisted wire. Long curtains billowed out of other windows. Most of the apartments were dark, but some shone with the amber-honey glow of a dim light bulb, the only sign of any life in the building. The entire complex sagged and looked defeated.

  A family sat outside one of the buildings. A kid wearing only a diaper toddled across the dirt that passed for a lawn and put something that looked like it was covered in grime in his mouth. His mother, smoking a cigarette, yelled at him in Spanish. The little boy simply turned away and toddled faster. The mother jumped from her chair, swatted his bottom, took the dirty thing from his hand, and returned to her chair. The man near her, her husband or boyfriend Austin presumed, barely looked up from his beer. The child's older sister, a pretty little girl who looked about seven with a tangle of straight black hair and wide brown eyes, merely looked on appearing shell shocked.

  The family cast wary glances at Rico and Austin as they entered one of the apartment buildings. It sat front and center with two buildings flanking it at right angles creating a courtyard of sorts behind the structures. As they made their way through, Austin's nostrils burned at the acrid odor of stale urine, cigarettes, and old food. Paper, beer cans, and broken bottles littered the floor. He could hear a muted television in a distant apartment and a baby crying in another. As they passed an elevator that looked like it hadn't worked in a decade, he noticed an old bulletin board that probably once held announcements of activities, flyers about things for sale, or meeting notices. Half its cork was now torn or missing. It was lot to take in and terribly different from the Carranza he had seen so far.

  He and Rico walked past the elevator and out the fire exit at the rear of the building. Dormant wires hung uselessly from the alarm that had been ripped away some time ago. The air outside was heavy with humidity, but at least it was fresher than the inside the building.

  There in a clearing beneath a tall Montezu
ma cypress ringed by broad-leafed philodendrons, Veronica sat on a bench crudely made from a split log. She appeared to be in deep thought and gave a start when she noticed Austin and Rico approaching.

  She stood, arms crossed. "Leave me alone." She bit her lower lip.

  Austin raised his hands. "Please, Veronica, I don't want to fight anymore. I just want to talk and help if I can."

  "Don't you get it, Austin? I don't want your help. As a matter of fact, you just being here is probably going to hurt things."

  He had an incredulous look on his face and it came through in his voice. "How?"

  She paused for a moment and looked at the ground. She seemed to be formulating her words like a frustrated teacher trying for the thousandth time to explain a concept to a lost student. "Take a look around. I suspect this is the Mexico you expected to see. Poor people who live in these filthy buildings, who drink or do drugs because getting drunk or high is the easiest of two ways they can escape their problems."

  Austin closed his eyes and rocked his head back. "Look, I don't want to get into that again."

  "I know, I know," Veronica said. "I just want you to understand. These are my people, the ones I help. The other way for them to escape their troubles is to literally escape across the border."

  Austin chose his next words carefully. He did not want to ignite the volcanic temper of Mount Veronica. "Can we sit on the bench and just talk for a minute?"

  Veronica nodded her head and they sat. Rico took a seat on another bench facing them at an angle. She folded her hands in her lap, a sign Austin took as a peaceful one.

  Austin faced her. "Look, don't automatically bite my head off, because I'm just trying to understand, okay?

  She closed her eyes and nodded.

  "Don't you understand what you're doing is illegal?"

  "No. It's not."

  Austin shook his head to make sure he had heard her correctly. He had a baffled expression. "What? You're kidding, right? Of course you are."

  She got that condescending look on her face again. "Austin, I've never crossed the border illegally. I've only helped others do so. There may be laws in the States about illegal immigration, but I'm a Mexican citizen, and it's not against the law here for me to help people cross over."

  "That's splitting hairs isn't it?"

  She looked confused.

  "Splitting hairs means arguing over unimportant details," Rico explained. He looked toward the stars, searching for the right words in Spanish. "Um…una distinción demasiado fina."

  "Ah," she said with a flash of recognition. "Entiendo." She gave him that "poor slow child" look again and stood. She took Austin's hand and he felt electricity arc from her fingertips to his. For the third time, he felt liquid inside. "Austin, come with me."

  He stood and began following her. He looked back at Rico. "Go ahead, man," he said. "If she's taking you where I think, I've had this tour before. It's a little tough." He snickered. "And I'm pretty sure she won't bite you, but don't hold me to it. Just in case, listen and don't argue."

  Veronica scrunched her nose and gave her cousin a fake pout. She walked toward the once white tenement building that now bore a tired shade of weather-beaten gray.

  Chapter 29

  Austin followed Veronica to a doorway. She knocked lightly. The door creaked open and a man Austin thought might be in his late 40s appeared.

  "Veronica, como esta?" A smile brightened the man's face when he saw who stood at his door.

  "Bien, Arturo," she replied. She then asked if they might come in and visit with Benita. Arturo showed them into the dimly lit living room to a worn, sagging couch, its back covered by a colorful fringed blanket. Almost swallowed up in an overstuffed cloth chair perpendicular to the couch sat Benita, shriveled and old, a faded scarf covering her entire head from her forehead to the base of her neck. Her hands lay folded in her lap. The apartment smelled of mold and stale air, and Austin felt uncomfortable.

  Though Veronica spoke in Spanish, he got the gist that she asked about the lady's health. She introduced Austin as her friend, words that made his heart beat just a bit faster even in his discomfort and confusion.

  Finally Veronica turned to him. "Benita has cancer. She is one of the people I help cross over frequently."

  Austin's expression and his gut tightened. "I see."

  "There is a free medical clinic in Eagle Pass that will give her chemotherapy and the medications she needs to stay alive. None of that is available here, and if it were, she couldn't afford to pay for it." Facing Austin, Veronica swept the room with her eyes as if to indicate the squalid conditions in which the woman and her family lived. "Sometimes the treatment requires her to stay in the U.S. for weeks at a time, something that's clearly not legal."

  Austin saw where she was going. He spoke in a tone he hoped she thought respectful. "And that's why we have hospital emergency rooms closing, because of the number of illegal aliens crossing the border and getting medical care that's free to them, but costs U.S. citizens."

  Veronica perked up and smiled. "Ah yes, the vanishing hospital argument. Name me one hospital that has closed, Austin."

  He drew back, thinking, feeling his face redden because he didn't have an answer.

  "That's what I thought. You're parroting your news commentators because you don't know, but I do. Last year in California alone, over seventy hospitals closed their emergency rooms and some even shut down completely."

  "So you've made my point then,' Austin said.

  "No, the only suggestion that they closed because of illegal immigrants comes from your right-wing bloggers who only want it to be true. Yes, many of the emergency rooms that closed were in largely Hispanic areas, but they were also in bad financial shape already. It's like blaming the passengers' weight for sinking the Titanic after the captain hit the iceberg." Her voice remained calm and reasonable.

  Austin remained silent, considering her words.

  "The next building over a man has left his family to work construction in Mississippi. There he earns four times what he could make here, so he sends back what he can, and you know what? Because of it, his brother can actually afford to go to college." Veronica shifted in her seat and pointed a finger toward the ceiling. "There's a kid who used to live two floors up whose dad ran off and whose mother got killed when she got caught between two drug gangs in a shootout. We got him across and now he lives with his aunt and uncle somewhere in Arizona. Here he would have starved to death, forgotten in some orphanage."

  Austin shook his head. "C'mon, Veronica. It can't be that bad. Isn't there some kind of government agency that could help these folks?"

  Her face darkened and she became sad. "Two years ago up in Oaxaca, teachers went on strike to protest how poor the schools were. Our government sprayed them with tear gas and beat them with sticks. Then their supervisors fired most of them. They could not pay their bills so the government took their houses. If they are caught begging for food, our government arrests them."

  Austin bit his nail, focusing his gaze not on Veronica, but on some distant corner of the den. "There's got to be some middle ground, some way to solve this problem without breaking the law. The United States welcomes immigrants, but there's a right way and a wrong way, and this isn't the way to do this."

  "Believe it or not, I agree with you. But this isn't civics class. This is real life. By the time we filled out the paperwork and took 'our place at the end of the line,' as your politicians are fond of saying, many of the people I help would be dead."

  "You don't know that for sure,' Austin said.

  "No? Look at Benita and tell me how much time she can stand to wait."

  The air was electric. Austin felt in his heart that there had to be a better solution, that Rico had been right to be angry about his cousin's illegal activity, but he could not counter Veronica's compelling arguments. And he could not bring himself to look Benita in the eyes.

  "Tell me something, Austin. Were you not upset when Rico had to com
e back here? Didn't you think it was unfair?" Veronica asked, one eyebrow raised.

  "Yeah," he admitted. "I was pissed. That means really, really upset."

  "And he is your one friend who had this happen. I see it every day with nearly everybody in this neighborhood. And this is just one small town in this huge country. Is it not as equally unfair to them?"

  "Yes,"' he said, his voice tired and defeated.

  "So now to answer your question about splitting hairs. Perhaps I am, but no more so than having an imaginary line in the air or the river or the dirt and calling it a border. No more than saying that on this side of a grain of sand, you are an American, you are human and entitled to all your privileges; and on this side, you are something less."

  "Wow," Austin said. "I swear you're headed straight for law school. You could argue a tree stump to death."

  She laughed and smiled widely. Austin's heart leapt. It was the first real sign that she might be warming to him.

  "And we didn't even get to the part about how we're taking all the jobs Americans refuse to do or you tell me how bad your schools are because of us, right?" She smiled again.

  Benita's exhausted, yellowed eyes followed their conversation, but without any apparent understanding. Veronica gave her a hug before leaving and the woman grabbed her hand before she left. She pulled her close and whispered something to her. Veronica blanched and said, "No!" and shook her head violently.

  As the pair made their way back into the hall, Austin asked, "What was that last thing all about."

  Veronica's face blossomed red. "She said we make a nice couple."

  Austin could only smile.

  The pair rejoined Rico who was waiting in the clearing. "Have a nice visit?" he asked.

  Austin just rolled his eyes. Then a thought occurred to him. It was something Veronica had said earlier that just now seemed to register in his brain. He turned to her. "You said earlier that my being here might hurt things. What did you mean?"