Border Child

by Michel Stone

  “I don’t want to hear about that stuff,” Emanuel said.

  Neither spoke for several minutes, but when they’d loaded the majority of the day’s deliveries Diego said, “Yeah, that’s some ugly shit.”

  Emanuel spit and nodded. “Who the hell would do that? Why do people get into evil like that?”

  “Why do you think people get caught up in shit like that?” Diego said. “I mean, you and me, we wouldn’t be in that situation. We do our jobs. I take the tourists’ money with my beautiful dives, and you take my father’s money by kissing his ass and being the perfect delivery boy, eh?”

  “I don’t know, man,” Emanuel said. “Something very alluring must get people involved with such bad players. It’s the money, right?”

  “Sure, sure,” Diego said. “And maybe power and prestige, and yes, of course the money. Hey, that doesn’t sound all bad! We should look into getting work as criminals, Emanuel, no?”

  “And end up faceless? You’re a pig turd, Diego. Stick to your diving, and I’ll stick to impressing your father.”

  “I’ve had opportunities,” Diego said, raising his chin and looking down his nose at Emanuel.

  “Opportunities for what?”

  “Running drugs or whatever else, what do you think? Opportunities to make quick money. People see my father has this delivery business and access to the fancy hotels. I’ve been approached, that’s all I’ll say. But I tell those guys, no thank you. No thank you.”

  Emanuel made his way toward the back shelves, collecting the final few bundles of linens. “Were you tempted?” he said.

  “Of course. You see the slick guys in their snakeskin boots and thick belts. You see their expensive sombreros. You know they can get the most beautiful women. Wouldn’t you be tempted?”

  Emanuel considered this, especially the part about the beautiful women.

  Diego continued, “But you know, then I figure the fine clothes, the ladies, they come with a price. One thing I learned from my father: Material joys and pleasures from loose and beautiful ladies are never without a price.” He shrugged and slammed shut the back of the truck after Emanuel shoved in the final load. “I’ll take what I got, you know? I’m happy with the skin on my face. The air in my lungs. My heartbeat.”

  Emanuel considered the irony of Diego’s words. Half the guys in Acapulco would kill for the attention Diego got from the ladies, silly local chavas, yes, but also the curious Canadians, Americans, Costa Ricans, and other foreign-born tourists, intrigued and lured by Diego’s athletic prowess and apparent invincibility even on frightening cliff dives.

  Emanuel rolled his bike into the building where it would remain while he made the day’s deliveries. “So, I’ll see you later,” he said to Diego.

  “Later,” Diego said, locking the building’s door before mounting his bike to head to a morning of cliff diving.

  “Thanks for your help,” Emanuel said through the truck’s open window, grateful for Diego’s assistance each morning. “Avoid the rocks,” he shouted down the street to Diego’s back.

  Diego threw up a hand, giving Emanuel a thumbs-up.

  Emanuel made his way down the narrow side street, turning onto the main thoroughfare of Acapulco. He considered Diego’s life as a famed diver and wondered if Diego’s situation were different, if his father didn’t own a successful business and tourists didn’t flock to watch his dives, would he have considered the offers to run drugs. What would Emanuel do if someone wearing expensive boots and sporting beautiful women at his side offered him an opportunity? He pictured a gorgeous lady with smooth, creamy skin, large golden eyes, hair loose and flowing, not so much like the popular ladies in the movies but more like the women in famous paintings. He always pictured his dream lady surrounded by calla lilies, though he never told anyone this for fear he’d sound foolish. He considered the famous art he’d studied in school, paintings by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Carlos Mérida, and Frida Kahlo. Rivera often placed his subjects among mounds of waxy, white lilies, and the blossoms enhanced the women’s beauty and desirability and somehow made them seem mysterious to Emanuel.

  He would like a woman who smelled of lilies, a woman worthy of having her portrait studied by Mexican schoolboys for generations beyond the painter’s lifetime. But he knew, even if as a younger man the thought had intrigued him, no flicker of temptation to run with the high-stakes crowd dwelled within him. He had no stomach for such things.

  Perhaps if a boy is among thugs and bandits for long enough, he adopts the mind-set that joining up in their ways is better than continuously trying to avoid them.

  He pulled the truck to the delivery entrance behind Hotel Pacifico. The manager there always slipped him a sweet cup of steaming coffee, and so Emanuel made this the first stop every day. As he stepped from the truck, he heard the siren of an ambulance in the distance. He wondered if the ambulance were going to the woman he’d seen arguing in the street, but then he doubted that. Distracted in his thoughts, Emanuel didn’t notice Héctor until too late, the force of Héctor’s blow slamming Emanuel’s shoulder against the hood of his truck.

  Chapter 8

  Rosa

  Lilia and Rosa sat on the bench shelling peas, as Fernando chased an orange-and-black butterfly around Rosa’s yard.

  “What do you think this baby will be, Rosa?” Lilia said, looking toward the place where Fernando giggled, hidden behind a mass of prickly pear, its fruit red and swollen like infected thumbs.

  Rosa knew the child would be a girl. She was never wrong about such things, but before speaking she turned toward Lilia and studied her belly a moment. “What do you think you’re carrying?” she said, returning her attention to the basket in her lap.

  “Some days I think it’s a girl because I feel like I felt with Alejandra. But other times I think I’m only wishing for a girl because I miss my firstborn so much. Then I feel sinful and ashamed, as if I’m trying to replace Alejandra with a new daughter, which I could never do.”

  Rosa looked at her again, willing her to hush her endless chatter about matters over which only God had control. She set the basket of peas on the bench and stood, her knees popping and aching as she rose.

  “Come,” she said, walking inside the house.

  She heard Lilia follow her.

  “Just a moment,” she called over her shoulder as she went to retrieve a few necessary items from the wooden box beside her bed.

  When Rosa returned to Lilia she said, “Lift up your dress.”

  Lilia looked about her, as if to be certain no one else would see her underclothes, before she hoisted her hemline to her shoulders. Rosa put a hand on Lilia’s belly, noting its pointedness. “You’re not so round this time,” she said.

  “You think a girl, then?” Lilia said.

  Rosa ignored her. She placed Lilia’s face between her palms, fingering Lilia’s cheeks with her fingertips. “Hmm,” she said, closing her eyes and tapping the pads of her thumbs against Lilia’s cheekbones.

  “What?” Lilia said, sounding like a schoolgirl attempting not to laugh at something humorous. Lilia’s cheeks flushed in the glow of Rosa’s motherly touch, and so Rosa prolonged her examination. Fernando had come inside and stood beside his mother, eyes wide, watching Rosa.

  “Come here, boy,” Rosa said to him. She plucked a small pocketknife from her apron and before Fernando could protest she cut a single strand of hair from close to his scalp.

  She motioned toward her bed. “Lie down,” she said to Lilia, working the thin strand in a loop around a silver band she’d slipped from her own ring finger.

  Lilia did as she was told. Fernando climbed in beside her as if ready for a nap with his mama. Rosa stood beside the bed and dangled the ring a few centimeters above the peak of Lilia’s belly. She held her hand steady and watched as the ring at first swung from side to side before settling into a gentle, circular pattern.

  Lilia smiled. “A girl?” she asked.

  Rosa slid the ring back ont
o her finger and blew the strand of Fernando’s hair from her fingertips, nodding. “Without question,” she said.

  “I knew so,” Lilia said, smiling.

  “Héctor came to see me yesterday,” Rosa said. “He wanted to know everything about the day I spoke to Emanuel.”

  Lilia stood and followed Rosa outside again. “And what did you tell him? I know you don’t care much for my husband.”

  “What I think of your husband doesn’t matter. I understand his motives in seeking Emanuel, more so than I’ve understood his motives for anything else he’s ever done. I didn’t have much to tell him, as you know, but I told him what I could.”

  “And what was that?” Lilia said, looking out toward the road where a man peddling strawberries and sugarcane wheeled a wobbly cart.

  “Same as I told you. I gave him all I could, which was little. I told him that Emanuel worked making deliveries to hotels, that he mentioned the name of one, Hotel Pacifico. Emanuel spoke of its loveliness, with beautiful polished stonework, vases of fresh flowers throughout, and a luxury store inside that sold jewelry and watches from Switzerland. I’ve never seen such a place, and I asked him to describe it to me. He said fine artwork and murals graced the walls, and the guests wore elegant, strange clothes.”

  “What did Héctor say, Rosa? Tell me everything. Did he think he could find Emanuel based on what you offered him? He speaks to me so little about what he’s thinking.”

  Rosa tucked a wayward strand of her graying hair behind her ear. “After I gave him the name of this one hotel—surely one of many Emanuel services—Héctor seemed satisfied. He spoke of you, Lilia. He doesn’t want to crush your hopes, but he doesn’t want to build false expectations in you, either.”

  Lilia looked at her sandals, and Rosa couldn’t be sure if she saw gratitude or embarrassment in Lilia’s expression.

  “Héctor’s always seemed driven in ways that disrespect his heritage. But yesterday I realized his torment. His slumped shoulders, the worry lines in his young face. I saw his great pain regarding Alejandra.”

  Lilia nodded and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “He loves our children with heartbreaking abandon, Rosa,” Lilia said. “Above all else, this I know about my husband.”

  “Héctor left, and I wished him well,” Rosa said. “I’d like nothing more than for you to recover sweet Alejandra, Lilia.”

  “I understand this, Rosa. Héctor left for Acapulco. By bus. I packed him a sack of food, and he took what money he could. Maybe I’ll see him tonight. Maybe tomorrow. I don’t know how long the journey there and back will take him because I don’t know how long finding Emanuel will take.”

  Rosa knew all this, but she nodded as if Lilia’s words interested her.

  “Héctor and I…we’ve fallen into a peaceful existence since our return from el norte, but our life together isn’t what it once was,” Lilia said. “Our marriage is like a shattered clay pot whose shards have been glued back in place. The thing is not what it once was, but it’s been salvaged.” She paused, then added, “Despite that, my love for him has never wavered.”

  How could Rosa explain to Lilia that such was the nature of marriage and partnerships? She lifted Fernando to her hip and kissed his dirty cheek. “You will come see your tía again soon, yes?” she said, touching her nose to the boy’s.

  The boy nodded, then squirmed free of Rosa’s meaty arms.

  “Everything evolves, Lilia. Do you see that shoreline there? When I was a girl it stretched much farther out at that point beyond the rocks, but the sea and the wind have changed the land during my lifetime. Though the shoreline along the bay remains sand and rock, its characteristics have changed.”

  Lilia studied the bay as if considering the familiar beach for the first time.

  “The tide and wind over time can both erode and build a coast.” Rosa paused, choosing her words with care, desiring to advise Lilia as would Lilia’s mother, were she still in this world.

  “I’m sure that what you’re saying is true, Rosa. People change. That’s natural. But what about love? Does love evolve? Can’t time and experience erode love just as crashing seas and blowing storms can deteriorate a coast?”

  Rosa took Lilia’s hand and brought it to the crook of her neck. “Run your fingers along this bone, Lilia. Tell me what you feel.”

  Lilia did as she was told, gently sliding two fingers across the ridge in Rosa’s flesh. “Right there. I feel a knot. What is that?” Lilia said.

  “That’s a place of strength that once was much weaker. When I was a girl I fell from a mango tree and snapped that bone. As the break healed, the pieces of bone meshed themselves and thickened, and their seam is now stronger than the rest of the bone. Difficult experiences do that to people’s hearts and spirits just as they do to bone.”

  Fernando clung to Lilia’s leg, his head heavy against her knee.

  “We should get home,” Lilia said, her fingers gently swirling through her boy’s hair.

  Rosa nodded. Despite whatever had happened at the border, Lilia was a good mother to Fernando. As she watched Lilia and Fernando make their way from her, she called to Lilia, “I’ll pray Héctor’s trip is successful.”

  “So will I,” Lilia said.

  Rosa sat on her bench and closed her eyes. Reclining against the wall of her house, she listened to the breeze rustling the bougainvillea vines, and wondered what would mean success for Héctor on his journey to find Emanuel. If he returned to say he’d discovered Alejandra was dead, then he and Lilia would have an answer and an end to the uncertainty. If he returned not knowing anything more than when he’d left, he and Lilia would remain tormented and unsure.

  She decided her prayer should be that Héctor find Emanuel, that Emanuel somehow held information that directed Héctor to Alejandra’s whereabouts, and that Alejandra was somewhere safe, well fed, comfortable, and healthy. Even as she offered up these prayers to God she shook her head, understanding what a far-fetched request this prayer was. The child had been separated from her mama and papa for more than three years. If she were alive but damaged in some way—oh, but Rosa couldn’t let her mind go to such dark thoughts, to images of a suffering, uncared-for child.

  Chapter 9

  Emanuel

  “Tell me what you know, pendejo!” Héctor said, his voice the low growl of a cornered dog.

  He looked hard into Emanuel’s eyes so that Emanuel felt Héctor’s rage accumulating like sunlight through a lens. The intensity could spark a fire able to consume Emanuel’s face. He’d never been studied with such concentrated hatred.

  “What do you want to hear?” Emanuel said. “I haven’t seen you in years. Last I saw Lilia she was headed to el norte to be with you. What do you want from me?”

  Emanuel knew he wore the expression of a defenseless man encountering a dangerous strangeness, a man wary and unsure of the thing before him. Perhaps Héctor’s mind had rotted on drugs, or some horrible tragedy had befallen him in Norteamérica, something that had left him sick in the head.

  “My daughter. Where is she?” Héctor said, his fervor surging. He stepped so close Emanuel could smell him. His body’s sweat was the sour odor of sickness, not the perspiration produced simply from hot sun or strenuous labor. Héctor smelled of worry, of aggression.

  “How the hell should I know where your child is? Are you mad, man? I don’t know your daughter, and I haven’t seen your wife in several years. What’s wrong with you?”

  “You arranged a coyote for Lilia and my Alejandra. A man named Carlos, no?”

  “Yeah, sure. Carlos was my uncle, but he’s with God now. Why would you be angry at this?” he said in genuine bewilderment and vexation.

  “Your uncle isn’t with God, that I know. God would have no interest in a man like Carlos. Do you know what he did to my Lilia? Do you know that I haven’t seen my Alejandra since that godforsaken day I left for the border? Do you know this, Emanuel?” Héctor was shouting at him now, jabbing a
finger in Emanuel’s face, his restraint not to kill Emanuel seemingly waning.

  Emanuel scratched his scalp with both hands, backing up a half step as he tried to make sense of Héctor’s accusations. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t know these things.”

  “You’re a goddamned liar,” Héctor said, again closing the distance between them.

  “Tell me what you’re talking about, Héctor. I haven’t seen you or Lilia in years, and you’ve tracked me down like a crazed dog chasing his shadow. I don’t know what you’re after.”

  “You’re right. I’m a man pursuing a shadow. I’ve been grasping at shadows a long time, and no doubt I’m mad. But I don’t chase shadows from having gone mad; I am mad from having to chase shadows, shadows you created.”

  Emanuel stared at Héctor now, wondering if at any moment Héctor would pluck a knife from his waistband and slit him right there, gut him on the street and let the gulls pick his slick entrails for feast or entertainment.

  Emanuel took a slow breath, steeling himself as if to talk a lunatic down from a ledge.

  “Héctor. I don’t understand what you want me to tell you. Ask me, and I’ll answer.”

  “Where is my Alejandra?” Héctor said.

  “I don’t know. Explain to me why you think I’d have that information.”

  “The last time Lilia saw our daughter was the day Carlos forced Lilia to give Alejandra to some woman.”

  The insanity Héctor had been spewing began to slow and drift in the air between them. His strange, angry words were snapping together, forming a puzzle with a few mislaid pieces.

  “Oh,” Emanuel said. “Oh.” His mind raced back to the accident that had taken his uncle’s life. Authorities had said a woman had been with him, and that she, too, had perished.

  “And Lilia made her way to el norte, only this bitch never arrived as planned. Can you understand this? Can you comprehend what I’m saying to you? We’ve not seen our only daughter again. Ever. She vanished. This woman who had her vanished as well. Your uncle Carlos was killed, we hear, and for that I thank God, except that Carlos held the only clue to Alejandra’s whereabouts, to her coyote’s whereabouts. So you, you culo, are all we have left. Do you understand now?”