The woman shook her head. “Vicente Fox was the president of Mexico many years ago,” she said. “Look. I can put you on that bus, and you will be in Tegucigalpa tomorrow morning.”
Just hearing the name of my city melted my insides. I thought of Humberto, his lips, his curling black hair. I thought of my house, the pallet where I could sleep unmolested. But then I thought of Junior, so small, adrift in Chiapas.
“I am Mexican,” I said. “I just forgot! Of course, the new president is …” She waited, but no name came to me. More specifically, only one name came to me: Vicente Fox. “The new president is …,” I said, helplessly.
The woman watched me with patience. Her eyes were so soft I wished for a moment that she would adopt me herself. I had to force myself to stay in my plastic chair instead of leaping into her lap and begging her to save me.
“The president of Mexico is …,” I repeated. I held my breath and bit my lip, praying for the answer to appear in my mind. I put one tired foot on top of the other. I wrapped my arms around myself, digging my fingernails into my skin. I stared at the official, wondered if she had children, if she sang lullabies at night.
“Yes?” said the woman. She held her pen aloft, ready to seal my fate. Outside the jail, a row of buses idled, waiting to return us to the places we belonged.
28
Alice
AFTER DINNER, WE got into bed. Lazily, Jake kissed my neck, then my collarbones, my breasts. I turned to him. We made love tenderly at first, and then frantically, as if trying to reach a place we’d lost the directions to. Was he thinking about Lainey? I was thinking of myself, in a way—how I might look from above, my hair tangled, nightgown abandoned, moving above my husband, his eyes closed, large hands grasping at the meat of my waist. We both climaxed, technically, but I felt far away from Jake, and for that matter, far away from myself. This was a strange time in our marriage: we were being fashioned into personalities by reporters like Lainey, but we were losing sight of who we’d hoped to be, who we were, and what the hell we wanted.
Jake was leaving town in the morning, so he rose around 10:00 p.m. to head into Conroe’s and prepare the ribs for the next day. I was still wide awake and decided to join him. Through rainy streets, we drove to the restaurant, detouring to grab pastries from La Mexicana Bakery. The fecund scent of Austin—the smell of things growing; too many things, growing too fast, but thrillingly so—calmed me, brought me back to myself. Why had making love with Jake left me unmoored? I decided not to think about it.
At Conroe’s, we worked together soundlessly, classical music on the radio. Pete slept in his crate. Around midnight, I was cutting fat from a brisket when I heard a rapping on the window. I looked up and saw Evian standing in the rain outside Conroe’s.
“Honey?” said Jake.
“It’s my deal,” I said.
“Damn right it is,” said Jake.
I washed my hands and pushed open the door. Evian saw me and rushed forward. “Oh, Alice!” she cried, throwing herself against me, a wet storm of fruity-smelling body spray and booze. There was a dull thud as the side of her face hit my rib cage. I hesitated for a moment, stunned, but then slowly lifted my arms and folded them around her skinny shoulders. “My mom kicked me out,” said Evian, her voice rapid-fire and muffled against my shirt. “She hates Sam. She won’t let me smoke. I can’t handle it! I can’t handle it!” Evian sobbed wildly for a while. I patted her shiny jacket.
Over her head, I watched the kitchen nervously, afraid that Jake would see our embrace and be angry. I could see the little painted sign I’d hung above the refrigerator: Home is where the heart is. I’d found it in the pile of trash the previous owners had left in the living room of our Mildred Street house. I’d also found some beat-up pots and pans and a Crock-Pot that worked fine once you duct-taped the crack in the lid. I found it surprisingly easy to feel hopeful when I read the plaque, rather than focusing on the fact that the previous owners of our house had perhaps given up on the sentiment while packing for Pflugerville.
“Shh, shh. What can I do?” I said.
She took a deep breath and pulled back, presenting me with her tear-stained face, made grotesque by some sort of multicolored mascara. It’s not that I fell for her histrionics, but I remembered clearly being a teenager and wanting a mother. I guess I saw a bit of myself in Evian, though we hadn’t had the sort of face paint Evian favored at the Ouray Variety Store. Her pupils were wide, and I tried to remember if this meant she was drunk or stoned.
“I don’t have anywhere to go!” she cried. “Sam doesn’t have a house! He lives with the football coach. I can’t go there!”
“Sam lives with the football coach?” I asked.
“He’s the quarterback!” Evian wailed. This was surprising news, as Sam was certainly tall but not very broad. Maybe he was the JV quarterback. Sometimes it seemed as if every man I met in Texas was, wanted to be, or had been a quarterback.
“His mother’s on drugs,” cried Evian. “I have nowhere to go!”
“I’ll take you home,” I said. “Let me get my keys.”
“No!” shrieked Evian, folding inward and howling as if someone had kicked her in the spleen. Jake came to the door.
“Alice?” he called, pushing open the screen.
“Here,” I said. “I’m here, with Evian.”
“Oh. I see,” said Jake. He went back inside, not stopping the screen door from slamming (as he knew it would) with an emphatic bam. He couldn’t have planned it better: Oh. I see. Bam!
“Wait here,” I told Evian.
In the kitchen, Jake was making coffee-chipotle sauce. He raised his eyebrows when I came in. “Her mother kicked her out,” I said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jake evenly. He looked old under the fluorescent lights. I saw fine lines around his eyes that I’d never noticed before.
We both leaned against the steel counters we’d salvaged from a restaurant on South Lamar when the owner had been arrested for trafficking heroin. “I think I’m going to tell her she can stay with us tonight, and that’s all,” I ventured.
Jake whisked with fervor. He set the metal bowl down sharply, snapped his head up, and said, “I disagree.”
“Noted,” I said, pushing the door open and stepping outside.
“This is a really important week for me,” said Jake. “Lainey’s here for six more days.”
“Fuck off,” I told him.
I went to Evian and took her hand. “You can sleep on our couch,” I told her, leading her to the truck.
“Thank you,” she said. I noticed she was dragging a large garbage bag, which she explained was her belongings. (“Mostly dirty laundry,” she told me.) I couldn’t tell if I had done the right thing, but I felt strong at least, as if I was taking charge of something.
I made Evian a bed on the couch with a sleeping bag and two pillows. I even found a mini-tube of Crest and an extra toothbrush that had probably not been used before. I brought her a washcloth and a bar of soap and told her to sleep tight. Pete had stayed at Conroe’s with Jake.
“Hey, Alice?” called Evian as I was changing into pajamas.
“Yes?”
“Do you have, like, a Wi-Fi password?”
“Oh, sure,” I said. I jotted it down, WHERESTHEBEEF, and brought it to Evian, who seemed to have recovered completely from her previous hysteria. She sat on the couch in my pajamas with her legs crossed, tapping away at her device. I went into my room and tried to fall asleep, but sleep would not come. After a while, I heard the front door open. Jake tiptoed to our room, changed quickly, and climbed into bed.
“I’m awake,” I whispered.
“I have to get some rest,” said Jake. “Lainey and I are leaving in a few hours.” Since Jake had told Lainey about the different styles of Texas barbecue—hickory-smoked and slathered with sauce in East Texas; South Texas barbacoa, beef heads smoked in a hole in the ground; direct-heat, mesquite-flavored “cowboy style” in West Texas—she’d g
otten the go-ahead from her editor to take Jake on the road. “Are you sure you and Benji can handle the rush?” asked Jake.
“We’ll be fine,” I said.
“She can’t live here,” said Jake.
I breathed out. “She has nowhere else to go,” I said.
Jake spoke with a measured calm, as if he had practiced his words on the walk home. “I know you wanted a baby,” he said. “I know how much you want to … take care of someone. But this girl isn’t ours. She needs more help than we can give.”
“Noted,” I said.
Jake paused. I knew he was fighting the urge to yell. “When I get home from the trip, I don’t want her here,” said Jake, his voice tight. “Is that noted?”
“I can’t promise anything,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m saying this with love, but I don’t really like who you’re turning into,” said Jake.
I turned from him, curled into myself.
Jake spoke quietly, his voice deadly sad. “I know you’re disappointed with our life,” he said.
I was quiet. He was right.
“I’ve worked so hard—we both have, Al … and you are always … you are still disappointed. I hate myself for that. But you know what, Al? I want to be happy. If you can’t even try to be proud, or even the tiniest bit satisfied, I don’t know what to say. I can only disappoint you for so long. It’s killing me.”
“Jake …,” I said.
“Yes?”
The hope that I would say the right thing—that I was satisfied; that I didn’t want a child, not anymore; that I would stop fighting God’s plan, would stop trying to fashion a baby out of a dog or an opportunistic teenager named after a brand of bottled water—hung in the air, it must be said, like smoke. And then it dissipated. Jake rolled over and closed his eyes.
I must have fallen asleep, because something woke me—the sound of a car pulling up to our house. The clock radio on my nightstand read 4:03. Stumbling from bed, I went into the living room to see that the couch was empty. I heard voices outside, and pushed open the front door.
“Evian?” I called. “What are you doing?”
Two men sat on my porch swing. One wore a leather jacket and one a sleeveless T-shirt. Both were smoking, dropping ash onto the ground. “She’s having a little discussion,” said the one in the jacket. He watched me steadily, and I felt scared. They were drinking something brown from crystal glasses that had been my mom’s.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Conroe,” said Evian. She was leaning against a post, and had dressed and reapplied her makeup. She also held one of my mother’s glasses.
“Evian, come back inside,” I said.
She laughed, and the men laughed with her. “Let’s roll,” said the one in the jacket, and the two men stood. The swing crashed into the side of our house. Evian tossed my mother’s glass onto the lawn and followed the men down the steps and toward a sedan with tinted windows.
“Evian!” I cried. “Come back here!”
I ran down the walk and grabbed her arm before she could get in the car. She yanked it back with force. “Who do you think you are?” she hissed. “You’re giving me a couch to sleep on, lady, you’re not my mother!”
She slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door, and the car peeled away. I stood by the street, my hand covering my mouth. Who did I think I was? Who?
29
Carla
I LAY AWAKE ON a mattress as thick as my wrist. When I moved my body, the springs complained. The smell of urine filled my nose. In my whole life, I had never slept by myself, and I couldn’t stop thinking of my brother, whom I had failed. I prayed for assistance, though I was no longer sure that anyone was listening.
By the time my interview had concluded, the last bus of the day was gone. I supposed I would be transported back to Honduras in the morning. I am ashamed to remember how close I came to losing faith during my night in the Mexican jail.
I finally fell into a deep sleep, and I saw Humberto. He was waiting for me inside my grandmother’s house. Without Junior, Humberto and I could make a life together. I had not sold my crumbling home; I had left in haste and without the thought that I would return. But in my dream, Humberto had swept the floor and filled the kitchen with ingredients. I could even smell onions frying. Humberto opened his arms and held me—not in a romantic way, but as if I were a baby needing comfort.
After what had happened to my body, I no longer wanted to kiss Humberto, or anyone. All I wanted was a motherly embrace. I wanted my mother. I hurt.
In the dream, Humberto fed me with a warm wooden spoon. There were bad people outside the house, but Humberto had installed a large padlock. I felt a fragile peace.
When a guard opened the cell door in the morning, I jumped up, all the calm of my dream falling from me as if it were a skin I had outgrown. The guard’s eyes slid up and down my body like hungry hands. I looked at the floor and prayed he would not touch me. “You have family in America?” he said. His voice was rough, and my heart beat terribly, thumping at my rib cage as if it would escape.
“My mother,” I whispered. I must have been somewhat delirious. “I want my mother,” I said. My eyes filled stupidly with tears.
“Breakfast,” he said, handing me a tray of bread and water and then closing the cell again. I dried my eyes and ate.
The bus to Honduras was empty but for me and one man, a skinny man with thick eyebrows. It made me upset to think about the cost of the gasoline to drive me and one man all the way back to Tegu. I could have fed Junior for a year with the money. I tried not to ask God why He would allow this, but a voice in my head said anyway, “Why?” Maybe God was taking care of the man who owned the bus, or the old man who drove us, his expression placid as a cow’s.
The bus lumbered to the edge of town. I rested my head on the seat, looking out the dusty window. It was early in the day, most of the shops still shuttered, no children playing outside. The driver turned down an alley. Sharply, the bus pulled to the side and stopped. I sat up, panic igniting in my veins. The other Honduran looked relaxed, as if he knew what was going on. My mouth was dry; I waited. The voice I could not silence in my mind said, Please, God. Please, God. The driver opened the door.
The Honduran man with the large eyebrows stood. “It’s your lucky day, little girl,” he said. “Come.” I lifted my gaze, unsure if I had heard him correctly.
“Let’s go,” he repeated.
My mouth opened. I was scared, wondering what he wanted from me. (I figured it was going to hurt, whatever it was.) I rose and stepped hesitantly toward the man, expecting him to grab me, force me down.
We moved toward the door of the bus and the driver did not look at us, just waited. We stepped into the alleyway. The Honduran man bid me to follow him, and I did, ducking behind a building. The bus started up and drove away.
“You can go,” said the man, once we were out of sight. “Unless you have money for the coyote. What an idiot! But at least he paid the Zetas in time.” He rubbed his eyes.
I didn’t know what he was talking about, though I understand now. The drug cartels in Mexico run everything from the prisons to the human-smuggling coyotes. If a coyote falls behind on payments, his cargo is taken away. As soon as my fellow passenger’s coyote paid the Zetas (who controlled the town we were in), the cartel ordered his release. God had not left me alone. He had put me on a bus that would not leave town.
I took advantage of God’s kindness, the first good thing anyone had done for me in some time. I looked up and down the street, then began to run. I pushed my sore legs against the ground, breathing deeply, moving fast. In the distance, I heard the siren of the train. I could climb atop the train at any time, I knew. I could find my brother, and bring him to America. God was with me.
30
Alice
I WOKE TO THE smell of coffee. Bleary-eyed, I pulled on my ratty robe and opened the bedroom door. Jake was frying eggs in the kitchen next to Lainey, who wore a leather miniskirt
and boots that came up above her knees. Her hair was in a bun on the very top of her head, a look I didn’t understand but surmised was chic. Lainey leaned close, smelling Jake’s pan. I put my shoulders back and ran my fingers through my hair, wishing desperately that I had a more glamorous robe to pull on … a kimono, something silk. “Oh, hey,” said Lainey. “I’m so sorry, did we wake you?”
“Not at all,” I said breezily. I made my way quickly to the bathroom, but the door was locked.
“Evian’s in the shower,” said Jake without inflection.
“It’s so funny you have a teenager on your couch,” said Lainey. “Named Evian,” she added.
“Oh, she just needed a place to crash, you know?” I said, my words coming fast and screechy, as if I had no control over my mouth.
“This house is adorable,” said Lainey. “It is so cute. In New York, this place would be huge!”
I went back inside the bedroom and closed the door. There was nothing for me to add to the breakfast confab. I sat down on the bed, considering climbing back under the covers. Instead, I opened my bureau drawer and found a sweater dress that was a bit pilled and stretched out. I took off my pajamas, donned the dress, and added turquoise vintage boots and lipstick. I brushed my hair and pulled it back. Thinking of Evian, I applied mascara. I threw open the bedroom door for the second time, feeling more ready to defend my house and husband. “I love eggs!” I trilled.
Lainey was already out the door, trailed by Pete, who leapt into the truck. Jake had his overnight duffel in his hand. “Oh,” he said, “I’m sorry, there wasn’t enough.…” I followed his gaze to the kitchen, where two plates and the frying pan sat in a sink full of soapy water. “There’s some coffee,” said Jake.
“Okay,” I said.
“We’ve got to get going,” said Jake.
“Sure,” I said.
Jake smiled at me, and I smiled back. “I love those boots,” he said.
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