by J. K. Wise
“They’ll get over it, Cor. They’re being stupid, but they’ll come around. You’re really brave. You’re living your life.”
“I don’t feel brave.” A few seconds later, she adds, “But thanks for saying so. And you’re welcome to come stay at my Aunt’s if you don’t want to go home.”
I can’t imagine going home, but I can’t imagine not being at home either.
“There’s a lot more damage on this side of town,” I say as we pass rows of barricades.
“I know, I told you. It gets worse over on the west side of the river,” Corrina says. One building has a storefront on the bottom floor and nothing on top at all, just metal exposed girders and half-finished concrete walls. A large, brightly-colored painting of Jesus covers the cinderblock sidewall next to a raspado stand. Kids line up to buy the sweet ice advertised by the sign in Spanish. The fences are wrought iron, and the buildings are washed in pale colored adobe with tile roofs or tin walled-buildings that are flat on top. People walk on wide sidewalks. In my neighborhood, I hardly ever see anyone walking.
Orange barriers and caution tape surround places in the road where the concrete buckled or broke apart last week, but the bridge that spans the now-dry Santa Cruz River is still intact. A little boy sits on the edge of the broken concrete in front of the bridge, his feet in a hole as he plays with a small toy.
Just behind him, I see a whole row of green army trucks driving down Grande Avenue on the other side of the river. They pull into the intersection and block cars from crossing into the Barrio. We sit in traffic for a few minutes. No one can get through. People on the sidewalks start to walk across the bridge to the HumVees. They call out to soldiers who won’t turn their heads.
We wait for the trucks to move or for someone to tell us what is going on. The soldiers set up barricades across the entrance to the bridge, and one of them waves orange flashlight-looking things to route the line of cars off a side street.
When we get close to the soliders and the barricade, Corrina shouts out the window. “My house is on the West side. Is the Rillito Bridge open?”
“All the river crossings are closed to vehicles,” he answers, a tough voice from a sympathic face. “The pedestrian bridge is still open.”
“Why? Is everything okay?”
“Neighborhood traffic is closed for security.”
“Security? What does that mean?”
The soldier focuses on a point in the distance. “You need to move your vehicle. We need to move traffic away from this area.”
“How long will this be closed?” Corrina asks, her usually steady voice shaking as she shouts louder. The soldier turns to the next car as more men stand in front of the barricade, their hands clasped behind their backs in an official-looking way.
“Hey! How long?” she shouts again, but he ignores us and waves the orange thing back and forth. I flip the radio on. Every station is playing the same thing, a calm female voice interviewing a man.
What can you tell us about when and where the violence began?
There have been different reports. It’s hard to get a clear picture with so much of the infrastructure damaged from last week’s earthquake. What we know for sure is that there have been three vigilante-related episodes of violence resulting in multiple injuries and deaths. Those episodes have occurred in three different neighborhoods, and unconfirmed reports are coming in from all over Tucson. Neighborhoods have created their own armed “watchguards” who are patrolling their streets to keep looters away from their homes.
What can Tucsonans do to stay safe?
Stay inside, listen to the police and National Guardsmen who are on the ground, and don’t take the law into your own hands. Food and supplies will be distributed to neighborhoods, and shelters have sufficient resources. But the most important thing to do is to keep calm.
Corrina pulls the truck over and punches the button to turn off the radio. “I have to get in there. The kids are over there. I have to get to them.”
“You know this area a lot better then I do,” I say.
She takes a deep breath and thinks for a few seconds. “Okay, okay. We’ll drive to the walking bridge on Congress Street, and we’ll park and carry the water and food. I can leave the rest until the bridge reopens.”
“Do you want me to drive? Try your Aunt again,” I say, and she nods. She slides over, and I climb over her in the truck. Corrina is shaking so hard, I don’t think she could hold onto the wheel.
“I know I complain a lot, but if anything happens to my mihas…” she says.
I pick up her phone from the console and throw it over to her. “Call them, Cor. You know how the news is always trying to make a big story out of a little thing. You’ll feel better when you hear them.”
“Can’t get through. All the circuits are busy.” She wipes off a tear with her sleeve.
I pull into a gas station on the street. The police and the soldiers’ trucks block the crossing from this bridge too, and there’s a line of people waiting to climb the stairs to the pedestrian crossing. Bodies stand shoulder to shoulder. Some people start to push forward, trying to speed things along.
The police are already getting more aggressive, yelling at people to back off as carloads of people leave their cars and demand answers in front of the barricades. Bad things are going to happen here, and I hope that we can get across before things get really ugly.
“Corrina, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to cross that bridge. Maybe we should cross the riverbed?”
She checks out the same scene and nods.“Yeah, it’s basically dry, just a lot of mud.”
“Let’s try to get the water and other stuff into our bags and out of sight, though. People are crazy.” I shake my head at the memory of people grabbing things out of each other’s hands at the Safeway, and that was a couple of days ago. Everything is more desperate now.
Anxious shouts in Spanish and English grow louder and more frantic with every second. Already, people are sliding down the dirt sides of the riverbank and climbing through dry brush.
“Corr, you can ride a bike, right?”
She whips around and sees my bike in the truck bed. “Do you think they’d let me across the bridge on a bike?”
“Maybe. I could wait with the truck.”
She nods in agreement, and we fill her backpack with bottles of water and as much food as she can carry. As I unload the bike from the truck, people are crowding into the parking lot all around us. Cars are abandoned in the street, in parking lots, and in the median. It feels like all of Tucson has shown up at the Santa Cruz Bridge in the last five minutes. Usually, the only people in the riverbed are homeless people or kids getting themselves into trouble. Now, climbing up and down are moms with kids, business men in suits, teenagers trying to get home from cancelled school days. The broken buildings and split-open streets are the backdrop, and the rounded tops of the Tucson Mountains rise up closely behind the barrio just across the bridge.
Every soldier holds his gun in front of his body now. They are tense and alert in their olive-drab uniforms. As Corrina mounts the bike, I grab her arm.
“Ask nicely before you try to cross, and do what they say, Corr. Be safe. And call me as soon as you can get through. I’ll wait here until I hear from you.”
She nods and tries to ride toward the bridge, but the crowd is too dense. It’s a stalled human traffic jam. Corrina gets off the bike and walks it at a crawls-pace to the police. I can’t see her now. From the shouting, I hear a roar go up, and like a wave, the mass of people sway forward and then push back to where I stand.
I jump into the bed of the truck, and so do other people standing near me. I scramble to the top to cat
ch a look at what is causing the frantic movement from the crowd.
Everything breaks at once. A cloud of gas rises up over the crowd. I crawl over the truck, slide in a window, roll up the windows as fast as I can, and lock the doors. The weight of the people being pushed into the truck makes it sway dangerously. I have no idea where Corrina is, but there’s no way that she is going to make it back to the truck and even less of a chance that I’ll be able to drive anywhere in this crush of people. In the last few minutes, this neighborhood changed from a disaster area into a war zone.
I sit in the truck as it pitches back and forth and try to catch my breath, but when a big surge from the ground feels like it lifts two wheels off the ground, I scream. It’s too scary to stay by the river. Where can I go? I grab my backpack and swing out of the truck. I climb the chainlink fence behind the convenience store and run as fast as I can down the alley. Ok, good, I’m a little out of crowd now. My eyes are burning a little, but I just want to get far away. All of the tiredness that wrecked me earlier is gone, replaced with pure fighter’s adrenaline, a thousand times more juiced up now than I am during a meet.
The alley dead-ends, and I run into a cul-de-sac of lofts missing their walls and roofs. A dry wind blows garbage towards me as I keep running, the sounds of a battle behind me.
The narrow streets are lined with trashed bungalows and boutiques with their windows smashed in and their awnings lying ripped on the ground. It’s a ghost town. The earthquake cracked the streets in patterns that look like jagged lightening. At the end of the street, a police car screams past.
I slow down. My lungs ache, and my legs burn. I sit on an abandoned stoop. Did Corrina get over the bridge? I pull a bottle of water and my phone from my backpack. No service. The tall buildings hover around me, glass broken in frames and swaying in the wind, waiting to fall and shatter.
I have to get back to Corrina. How much time will it take for things to settle down enough for me to get close?
When I stand, shadows move across the street, three guys carrying duffle bags over their shoulders. They see me. They walk closer. I look around. Is anyone else nearby? I don’t see anyone. There’s no one to hear if I yell. I turn and walk. I can hear their steps behind me. I start to walk faster, and their footsteps pick up also.
I take off running, and I hear the men running too. My heart pounds so hard. Fear has been a lurking shadow until now.
Around the next turn, two busses idle at a makeshift bus station. I head toward the building, running for my life now. I jump onto the closest bus.
“Those guys are chasing me,” I gasp to the bus driver, a small, grey-haired woman wearing the blue Sun-Tran uniform. Without waiting, she pulls the lever to slam the door shut. She stares out of the glass at the men who stand, waiting and watching. I collapse into an empty seat and look away, shaking, hot tears down my face. My hand trembles, and I can barely unzip my backpack to get to my phone.
“Phones don’t work downtown. And there’s no sense in calling the police. No one would come right now anyway,” the bus driver says.
I slump lower in the front seat and turn my head slowly to where the men turn, their duffle bags in their hands as they walk over to a metal bench and light smokes, their heads down, out of breath. The sun is setting. It’s already dark in the downtown buildings’ canyons.
“What’s the fare?”
The driver shakes her head. “No fare. This route goes to the shelter by the University.” Only a few other people are riding the bus. The bus groans as it starts to move. I’m in another world now, a twilight zone in my own hometown.
I should try to find a way home. I don’t have any money. I don’t have any way to call home to Dad and his stupid, pathetic lies or to Mom who knew that he was cheating and let me think that everything was just fine.
There’s no school to go to. There’s no family to lean on. There’s no water to swim in. There’s no friend to call. There’s no phone to call with. I pull my shirt up over my face and try to catch my hot tears that keep coming.
The bus throws me around as it bumps down jagged, split streets and then stops at a red light, waiting for cross traffic that doesn’t exist. I lean my head against the cool glass window and look at a web of caution tape and orange cones. On the long strip of Congress Street, all the businesses are closed and shattered.
The next time the bus stops, the doors open and the lights turn on inside.
“This is it,” the bus driver calls. Everyone stands to exit, so I wipe my tears with the back of my hand and stand too.
The University of Arizona football stadium looms over the dorms and classroom buildings. I follow the rest of the people. I realize that I’m not reciting my cadence. I can’t remember the last time I felt my rhythm outside of the water. It doesn’t work anymore. Too many bumps in the road.
Barricades block off traffic from entering the pedestrian section of the mall. The only times I’ve been down here, this whole grassy area was covered with tailgaters for the U of A football games. Now, one enormous white tent covers the mall.
I walk into the tent where hundreds of people, maybe thousands, sit on cots or the grass. Just inside the tent, a family sits on a Red Cross blanket eating tacos from a Rubios bag and drinking milk from cartons. The little girl looks up at me when I walk past, but the rest of the family keeps their focus inside their small circle.
I walk along the edge of this huge tented city of people and make my way down a sort-of aisle. When I get closer, I see that the people are lined up to fill water bottles. A lady is watching the lines. She looks like she’s in charge, so I ask her where I can find a phone.
She’s nice enough, but also really tired-looking, and she points to a temporary house. “Over there,” she says, and she turns her back to me before I can thank her. There’s a line for the phone. I stand, willing myself not to look around.
When it’s my turn to use the landline, I have to think hard to remember Corrina’s number that I never actually dial. The phone rings twice and then a message tells me that the number I’m trying to reach is temporarily unavailable.
I miss my parents. I don’t want to. I want to hate them. They’ve always made me believe that everything would be okay. But they lied, both of them, in different but equally awful ways, and their lies pushed me here, alone.
When did it start for Dad and Mrs. Portillo? Did they watch each other across the invisible lines dividing our backyards? Did they want to be together for days or for years, like a slow burn? Or did they smash into each other in one moment, crumbling onto each other like bricks into dust?
I take a second, and I dial my mom’s number. When it goes to voicemail, I hang up. I don’t know what to say. Come get me? Screw you?
I dial Dad next. His goes to voicemail too. I hang up again without leaving a message.
People behind me are waiting, so I leave and stand in line to get a sandwich, an apple, and a water bottle. I walk out of the tent and find a spot in the grass between groups of people sitting under the flood lights. The huge white tent glows next to me, lit like a spaceship from inside. When I sit down, it all hits me like a wrecking ball. I curl up into a ball and rest my head on the inside of my arm.
“Hey,” a guy’s voice says next to me. I stay still. I don’t know whether to look over or not. “Hey. Could you use a blanket?”
I try to pretend like I can’t hear him, even though he’s only a few feet away.
“Okay, suit yourself, but it’s pretty cold at night.”
I’m already chilly, dressed in warmups from my bike ride that seems like ten years ago. I roll over to where some kids a little older than me are lying on the ground with their heads propped on their backpacks. A black-haired guy hands me a Red Cross blan
ket and nods. Then, his eyes change as he checks out my face.
“Hey! You’re that girl from the supermarket thing.” He hits one of his friends on the shoulder. “Right? You were in that mess?”
At first, I can’t figure out what he’s talking about. But then, he tells me that he saw my face on the news from some footage of the Safeway riot. “One of the news stations has been playing the same clips over and over, and your face is all blown up in one of them. You’re on the ground and some Mexican guy shoves you out of the way and then picks you up and throws you.”
Some Mexican guy? Are they talking about Jared? “The only person who picked me up was my friend. He probably saved my life,” I say, confused.
“That’s not how they’re spinning it on FOX News,” he says, shrugging. “What’s your name?”
I introduce myself and thank them again for the blanket. When I roll over in the grass, my eyes are so heavy, I can’t keep them open anymore. I try to pretend I’m floating underwater. I slow my breathing down and find my rhythm. But only one word matches up with my breath.
Jar-ed. Jar-ed.
After a while, people lower their voices into a low rumble and hush. I can’t sleep, Inside, the line for the phone is shorter. When it’s my turn, I make one more call to the only other number I know from memory.
Jared answers after two rings.
Chapter 22
Downtown
The sun has set and the wind dies down as I finish my beer. Even in the stillness, it’s chilly, and I’m glad I have my jacket. My hand throbs under the ice pack. Damn. Punching that wall was stupid. I do a lot of stupid things these days. Chris lies on the bench next to the table with his arm over his eyes. I can’t tell if he’s sleeping.
I’m zoning out when my phone vibrates. It’s a call from a number I don’t recognize, so I almost don’t answer it. When I hear Melanie’s voice, my heartbeat shoots up into my throat. “What’s up?” I ask, trying to keep cool.