by Michel Stone
ALSO BY MICHEL STONE
The Iguana Tree
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Michel Stone
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Limited, Toronto.
www.nanatalese.com
DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Cover design by Michael Windsor
Cover images: (rabbit) Marco Antonio Davila Torres/EyeEm/Getty Images; and (pattern) Silvia Lavanda, (ground) givaga, and (barbed wire) yamatohd, all Shutterstock
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Stone, Michel, [date] author.
Title: Border child : a novel / Michel Stone.
Description: First edition. | New York : Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, [2017] | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016020094 (print) | LCCN 2016012857 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385541640 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780385541657 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Missing children—Fiction. | Families—Mexico—Fiction. | Mexico—Emigration and immigration—Fiction. | Mexican-American Border Region—Fiction. | Domestic—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.T6569 (print) | LCC PS3619.T6569 B67 2017 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020094
Ebook ISBN 9780385541657
v4.1
ep
Contents
Cover
Also by Michel Stone
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1: Lilia
Chapter 2: Héctor
Chapter 3: Emanuel
Chapter 4: Rosa
Chapter 5: Héctor
Chapter 6: Lilia
Chapter 7: Emanuel
Chapter 8: Rosa
Chapter 9: Emanuel
Chapter 10: Lilia
Chapter 11: The Village Priest
Chapter 12: Héctor
Chapter 13: Emanuel
Chapter 14: Héctor
Chapter 15: Lilia
Chapter 16: Héctor
Chapter 17: Lilia
Chapter 18: Ana María
Chapter 19: Héctor
Chapter 20: Karolina
Chapter 21: Lilia
Chapter 22: Ana María
Chapter 23: Héctor
Chapter 24: Karolina
Chapter 25: Rosa
Chapter 26: Héctor
Chapter 27: Lilia
Chapter 28: Héctor
Chapter 29: Rosa
Chapter 30: Héctor
Chapter 31: Karolina
Chapter 32: Héctor
Chapter 33: Lilia
Chapter 34: Héctor
Chapter 35: Karolina
Chapter 36: Rosa
Chapter 37: Héctor
Chapter 38: Lilia
Chapter 39: Héctor
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
For Eliot
The sound is gone. There’s nothing left but the insomniac throbbing of crickets. Crickets in the garden, the courtyard, the back courtyard. Close, domestic, identifiable. And those out in the country. Between all of them they raise, little by little, a wall that will keep out the thing that lies waiting for the tiniest crack of silence to steal through. The thing that is feared by all those who are sleepless, those who walk through the night, those who are lonely, children. That thing. The voice of the dead.
—Rosario Castellanos, The Book of Lamentations
Prologue
Lilia thrashed and called out, uncertain if she’d given voice to her cry or just dreamed the sound. Sweat beaded between her breasts, and she lay in darkness, shaken from the same disturbing images that had jolted her from fitful slumber too many times to count. She bobbed in that brief twilight of uncertainty, between sleep and perception, unsure if she was floating away from something anonymous and terrible or sinking helplessly, rapidly toward it, pricked and paralyzed by some unidentified, poisonous barb she had not seen.
Then the gossamer veil separating unconsciousness and awareness slipped away, and she realized, as she did each time, that the one unmoored and drifting was not she but her Alejandra, though Lilia was incapable of tossing her child a lifeline, of pulling her back close. The reality cut far deeper than did the dream, for a mother unable to help a child aches far more than a mother unable to help herself.
For years now Lilia had almost seen her daughter: the small girl with a rotten front tooth, skipping down the lane dragging a tattered length of rope; the child tugging on her mother’s frayed hem at the market, her hair in tight braids with lavender ribbons; the little darling in the yellow dress trailing behind her tía who carried a slick, silvery fish wrapped in newsprint on their way home from the pier. Each of them could have been little Alejandra. How could Lilia know?
She also saw her in shadows, just skirting the edge of her vision, but when she turned to look no one would be there. Those fleeting glimpses disturbed Lilia the most because Alejandra seemed more ghost then than flesh, and she feared her baby was dead instead of living somewhere, elsewhere, in the vast, strange world.
Chapter 1
Lilia
Lilia wished the direction of the evening breeze would shift as she diced the small octopus, dropping the chunks into the briny broth already steaming on the fire. But the wind kept its course, and the funk of her village’s incinerated waste continued to waft across the courtyard. She plucked a sprig of mint from the cracked clay pot beside the kitchen door and stripped its leaves from the stem then popped them into her mouth. She chewed the herb into a slick pulp, hoping it would lessen her nausea.
Fernando sat in the dirt nearby, rolling a small truck between his bare feet. When he shrieked with laughter Lilia looked up from her work at the fire.
“What do you see, my boy?”
The child pointed at a white hen and her butter-yellow chicks pecking at the dust just beyond Fernando’s new rubber ball, abandoned for now beneath the shade tree.
Lilia had not experienced any morning sickness with Fernando. Her pregnancy had gone so smoothly she’d worried something was wrong with the baby until she saw him, counted his fingers and toes, and heard him wail. His head had been bare, unlike the thickly matted scalp of Alejandra at her birth. Lilia’s pregnancy with Fernando had been so different from her first that she should have suspected the child to be a boy, but no. That simple conclusion had escaped her, and instead she’d assumed the child inside her womb to be deformed, and she had not fully felt excitement or love until she’d held him and he’d suckled at her breast. Only then did her tears and prayers of gratitude emerge from somewhere unexpected and deep within her.
But this third pregnancy felt similar to her first, with daily morning vomiting, and the constant taste of bile lingering in her throat. Perhaps this baby, like Lilia’s first, would be a girl child. Little Alejandra would be almost four now. Is almost four now. She is almost four, Lilia told herself. Is, not would be.
Lilia prayed daily for Alejandra’s well-being and happiness. And on the days she felt her hope waning, at those dark times, she prayed to God to punish her for allowing her faith and optim
ism to slip. These occasional, doubtful thoughts she did not share with Héctor; she’d learned long ago she must shoulder enough strength for the both of them. Lilia ached to believe that Héctor trusted her again as fully as he ever had, that he understood the depth to which her being had been shaken with the loss of their daughter and the horrible, undeniable guilt that permeated Lilia to her marrow for her part in that loss. She longed to tell him that oftentimes as she passed the village cemetery at the top of the hill she felt it watching her closely, as if she should be there with the dead instead of walking among the living.
For months after Lilia’s border crossing and the disappearance of Alejandra, Héctor sneered at the sight of his wife. He tried to hide his contempt by turning away, busying himself in some pointless activity, but she felt his scorn as sure as a slap to her cheek. Even if his countenance had not betrayed his deep disappointment in Lilia, his inability to touch her all but screamed what Lilia interpreted as disgust, perhaps even loathing. They had been the most loving, most affectionate couple in all of Mexico until that unforgettable, life-altering day at the border, when she’d arrived unexpectedly and without their child. Ah, but enough of these thoughts.
She spit the wad of mint into a gnarled hibiscus, its spent orange blossoms littering the ground around it.
Her grandmother had planted the shrub in honor of Lilia’s birth, and even now, years after the old woman’s passing, when Lilia looked at its large, trumpetlike flowers she thought of her grandmother Crucita, and how, at Christmastime, she would dry the blossoms to make delicious sugared candies for Lilia to suck.
“Papa!” Fernando said, waving to Héctor. “Papa home!”
Héctor, haggard and sun-darkened, brushed the boy’s head with his grimy fingertips but did not scoop him up into a big hug as was his usual greeting for Fernando. He tossed a sack on the lone table in the courtyard. “Squash and onions,” he said.
“José brought us an octopus this afternoon. I’m making a stew,” Lilia said. “I’ll roast the squash, too, if you’d like.”
Héctor sat in one of the two chairs beside the weathered old table and unlaced his work boots. The breeze rattled the wind chime that hung inside the kitchen window, though Lilia didn’t notice the sound until Héctor said, “Can we get rid of that thing?” He jutted his chin toward the jangling.
“You don’t like it?” she said, sensing something other than the gentle clanking of the shells as the source of his irritation.
During their courtship and early marriage, prior to their time in el norte, Héctor wore his emotions like a banner; he’d been so easy to read. His imaginings and zest for life had drawn her to him when they were in school. Even when she’d been but fifteen years old and Héctor sixteen, they’d sit under the stars beside the bay speaking of their future, of the children they’d have, and of the life they imagined together. Lilia would have been content to live out her days in Puerto Isadore, but Héctor had held bigger aspirations and an imagination like no one else she’d ever met. He’d been silly and jovial as a schoolboy then, laughing and joking and dreaming what others might call impossible dreams. Lilia had believed in him and in his vision for their future.
“We’ll go to el norte one day, Lilia,” he’d said. “I’ll go first and find work, and I’ll save enough money to bring you to me.”
She knew such days of innocence and pure delight would never return, yet she refused to give up on the notion of their happiness.
He lifted the other boot and began untying its laces. Without looking at her he said, “No, Lilia. I don’t like the wind chime. I’ve never liked it.”
She wiped her hands across her faded yellow apron before detaching the chime’s string from the rusted hook above the open window.
She set the wind chime on the table beside the bag of squash and onions, then hoisted Fernando to her hip.
“That boy’s too big to be a hip child,” Héctor said, bringing a hand to his temple.
“What’s wrong, Héctor?” She squeezed Fernando when he gripped her shoulder, eager to remain in his mother’s arms.
Héctor slapped both hands on his thighs and sat up straight, inhaling a long, slow breath.
“Guess who I saw today, Lilia,” he said, staring at her, his eyes dark, troubled.
She eased Fernando to the ground, afraid her legs would fail her under the added weight and the news coming toward her. A strange flickering played in her chest, and the ever-present bile thickened in her throat.
“Tell me.”
“Emanuel,” he said.
She slipped into the chair across from Héctor, her palms flat on the table between them. “Are you certain you saw him? Did you speak to him?”
Héctor brought his hands behind his head, interlocking his fingers and tilting his face toward the clouds mounding in the western sky. “I know who I saw,” he said.
“Did you talk? What did he say, Héctor? Where did you see him? Oh, my God. Tell me everything.”
“I don’t have much to tell. No, we didn’t speak. I saw him, but he didn’t see me.”
“Are you sure the person you saw was Emanuel? Where was he?”
“He was boarding the bus to Escondido. I know it was Emanuel. I’ve looked for that pendejo every day for years, Lilia. The man I saw was Emanuel.”
“This is good news, Héctor. We’ll find him!” She reached for him and took his hands in hers and brought them to her lips, tears brimming her eyes.
Héctor exhaled, and for the first time since his arrival from work, he seemed to relax, to soften, though the worry lines, long etched into his brow and temples, remained, a constant reminder to the world, to Lilia, of his grief.
“All the emotions, you know?” he said. “Just when I begin to put him and our past behind us…” He shook his head. “I hate him, but we need him.”
Héctor stood and scooped Fernando into his arms. “Your stew smells good, Lilia.”
She returned to the pot and stirred its contents with a long wooden spoon, her thoughts far away from the fire or this courtyard. She closed her eyes and inhaled sharply, her mind not on the briny scent of her cooking but lost in the memory of the lavender-scented head of her firstborn child.
Chapter 2
Héctor
Héctor lay in bed listening to the predawn awakening of his village as he imagined for the countless time what he would say if he were face-to-face with Emanuel. But as always, something in his mind would not allow the thoughts to get beyond Emanuel’s eyes, and self-loathing brimmed within Héctor for his inability to conquer his foe even in his imagination.
In Héctor’s envisioning of their chance meeting, he would encounter Emanuel someplace familiar, like the market or la farmacia. Héctor would always approach the vendor with goods in hand for purchase, mundane everyday items like matches or gum or a can of juice. The person in line in front of him would be a man in fancy clothes and spotless boots, and as the man turned, Héctor would recognize Emanuel’s profile and would speak Emanuel’s name. Emanuel would turn to face Héctor, less than a meter between them.
Héctor wanted to imagine punching him in the face, feeling the crunch of bone beneath his bare knuckles, and as Emanuel’s blood began to flow Héctor would ask him a series of questions that would lead to Alejandra’s whereabouts and her safe return home.
Héctor would think these thoughts as he worked the fields every day, as he ate his meals, as he played at the sea’s edge with Fernando. But when he lay in the dark solitude of his room each morning before work, after Lilia had risen to stoke the fire and prepare breakfast, his mind’s eye would play out the imagined meeting. Héctor wanted his illusory self to cause Emanuel deep pain, the kind that scarred a body and a soul, to break him in an irreparable way as Emanuel’s actions had done to Héctor and Lilia and their family. Instead, in Héctor’s quiet daydreams, when Emanuel turned to him, his glare weakened Héctor, rendered him as useless as ditch water.
Héctor longed to play out the punch, the cr
ushing blow of fist to face, but he could not. Instead, when the two would lock eyes, Emanuel’s were the eyes of a god, powerful, mocking, and all knowing. He would stare at Héctor, a slow, wicked smile spreading across his face until Héctor had to look away, divert his eyes to his own shit-caked boots, and when he finally found the strength to lift his eyes, Emanuel would be gone, along with any information he held about Alejandra.
Even in his daydreams Héctor had no ability to protect his family, and that secret knowledge haunted him, vexed him like a dull thorn wedged deep beneath a toenail, its silent infection seeping into his veins.
Héctor smelled the wood smoke from the breakfast fire, and he rose from bed, resigned that he would begin every day for the rest of his life just like this until either his daughter was reunited with him and Lilia or he knew with certainty that she was dead.
A time had existed when Héctor dreamed of his potential, of the possibilities the wide, mysterious, promising world held for him, and for anyone willing to pursue his dreams, for anyone with the hope of something better, something more, even if he could not name what possibilities existed. Héctor had been that boy, that young man, but no more. In his youth he’d seen other boys, older boys, sniffing glue, their way of coping, of escape. And he’d seen the men who, after the workday, took to their bottles in the dark shadows of their village. He’d not be them. He’d never be them, he’d told himself from his earliest days.