“Eduardo … m’ijo … Magdalena, m’ija,” he muttered.
Elena inched closer to my side, grabbed my hand, and squeezed. She furrowed her brow in concern. Javi had confused the bodies with his own children.
“Dios los guarde.…” The wind muffled the rest of Javi’s words.
“We can’t just leave them, Miguel.” Elena’s grip tightened. “We should bury them.”
“No.” I pointed to the mother’s feet, already covered with sand. The desert would take care of the burial. “We need to save our energy.”
Who was she? Where did she come from? Where was she going? Who would wait for her, and the child, only to have them never appear? The desert had claimed her life and the life of her child. It would now take them away completely.
I took Javi’s elbow to help him up. He pushed me away, continuing to pray in a barely audible whisper. Twice more, I tried to lift him to his feet. Finally, he allowed Elena to take his hand and pull him up.
We walked now side by side, the three of us, at Javi’s pace, very slowly. We’d lose each other if we weren’t close. The wind began to blow violently. In the driving sand, I couldn’t see the mountain. I couldn’t even see my fingers when I stretched out my arms in front of me.
If we didn’t go on, we would run out of water and time. If we did go on, we’d run the risk of walking in circles or back, in the wrong direction. But we were in the middle of a giant desert sandstorm, and there were no good choices.
“We have to stop!” I yelled over the wind to Elena and Javi. “Get out the tarps! We’ll curl up in them and wait this thing out. Maybe it won’t last long, and we can go on.”
We took off our backpacks, dug into them, and pulled out the tarps. Our water bottles were nearly empty. I shared the rest of mine with Elena. There didn’t seem to be any point anymore in saving the water. Javi had already curled up inside his tarp like a butterfly in a cocoon, his backpack tucked close to his chest.
“Tengo miedo, Miguel.” Elena’s voice wavered weakly. “I don’t want to be alone.”
We strained against the driving sand to make our own cocoon, one tarp under us, the other tucked in as tight as we could make it around our bodies. By then the wind was howling fiercely.
We lay side by side. In the muffled darkness, the screaming wind all around us, I could barely make out her words.
“Are you mad at Papá, Miguel? I’m not mad at Mamá. Don’t be mad, Miguel,” Elena murmured. She felt for my hand and intertwined her fingers with mine.
“It’ll be better in California than we ever dreamed, right, Miguel? It’ll be worth the wait, won’t it?” She held tightly for a moment, then loosened her grip. She was too tired to hold on hard.
“You let me come with you. You didn’t send me back to San Jacinto, like I deserved. No me abandonaste,” she whispered. “Gracias, Miguel. Gracias.”
Darkness fell. The storm got worse with each minute. Despite our efforts to block out the sand, it crept into our shelter. We kept our bandannas over our noses and mouths to filter it out, but I could still feel the grit between my teeth.
Elena slept beside me, exhausted. But I lay awake, listening to the wind. It was a thousand voices competing to be heard. Hundreds moaned in despair, hundreds in sadness. It was the people lost in this place, calling me to join them. It was the mother and child we left, now arisen and walking with the others.
It was La Llorona out to bewitch me, just as Doña Maria had warned. If I listened and followed, I’d be lost forever. With the last little piece of resistance I had, I plugged my ears with my fingers to shut out the sounds. And, finally, somehow, I slept.
CHAPTER 30
I put my head under the waterfall, tilted it back, and took big deep drinks of cold water. Lalo pulled me into the pool, wrestling me down into the green depths. Our arms and legs tangled and we burst to the surface, laughing and gasping for air.
Chuy reached into his pocket for his carving—bright green horns, red claws, blue fangs, yellow-spotted wings—and put it in my hand. The creature fit easily on my palm. I touched its head, between the horns. It turned and looked at me, then jumped spryly to the ground.
It grew, in an instant, bigger than a horse. “Get on!” Chuy and Lalo shouted together. They dived into the pool and came up as one. Their heads were bobbing black balls on the water.
“Chuy! Lalo!” I cried as the creature lifted me off the earth. “¡Adiós!”
They didn’t turn around. Maybe they couldn’t hear me. Or maybe they’d forgotten me already.
The creature circled higher and higher into the sky. Abuelita’s rancho was a tiny little speck in the patchwork of green-brown fields. Up, up, we went. Then we headed south.
“North!” I commanded. But the creature didn’t obey. It flew south, to Guatemala and the river. It gleamed below us and, from thousands of feet up, I was able to see every rock, every tree branch, each obstacle in the river’s path.
The creature dived down sharply. Desperately, I tightened my hold on the horns. We swooped low over the water, and I saw it wasn’t water at all, but a giant wall of sand.
I felt my grip slipping, and then I fell, slowly, slowly, deeper and deeper into the very middle of the mass.
I woke to a suffocating weight on my chest and legs, complete darkness and stillness. I was dead, or this was what it felt like to be buried alive. My heart beat faster and harder, as if it would burst out of my chest. I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth.
“Miguel! Miguel!” Elena pulled my bandanna off my face. “Help! I think we’re covered in sand!”
Her movements caused the weight on me to shift slightly. It was just enough to loosen up my fear so I could move. I pushed with all my strength on the tarp and Elena did the same.
We broke out of our cocoon to a world swept clean by the sandstorm. The mountain, our landmark, loomed to the left of us. By luck, by chance, by the grace of God, we had ended up where we needed to be. The sky was a brilliant blue and, for once, the morning was cooler. If we’d had water, I could even have felt happy.
“Javi,” Elena whispered next to me. “¿Dónde está Javi?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “He’s there, asleep.” I pointed to his tarp and the lump under it.
“No.” Elena’s voice was flat. “No, that’s not Javi. It’s not big enough. It’s not him.”
I picked up his tarp. The only thing inside the green cloth was Javi’s backpack. Elena dropped her eyes, unzipped the pack, and pulled out what we expected to find.
There was Javi’s water bottle. The last of the liquid sloshed in the bottom third of the bottle. It was most of the water that Javi was supposed to drink the day and night before. Except for small sips, he’d stopped drinking his water.
I took the bottle. There might be enough left to get Elena and me to someone who could help us. I didn’t care if it was la migra, even the militia. Elena’s face had sunk now, too. We didn’t have much time left.
“We can find him, Elena. He can’t have gone far, not in his condition.” I turned around and around, scanning the desert in every direction.
“No,” Elena answered. “No, Miguel. He wanted to go.”
What was she saying? My own thinking was slow. I knew Javi’s water was here and he was gone, but I couldn’t somehow put the two together in a way that made sense.
“Besides, maybe he made it already,” she continued.
Her voice sounded like Javi’s had before the dust storm. Her words slurred and ran together. “He could’ve, you know, if he went in the right direction … if it wasn’t too far.…”
Elena began to cry, quietly. How did her body find enough water to make tears? They traveled in small tracks down her blistered and swollen face. They mixed with the dust to form little muddy rivers of sorrow.
Maybe Javi had gotten so dehydrated that he didn’t know what he was doing. Maybe he took off in the middle of the sandstorm, sure that New York was just over the next hill. Or may
be he’d crawled off, like a sick or injured animal would, to die alone.
But I wanted to believe Elena was right. Javi left with a purpose, and left his water behind with a purpose. He knew his footsteps would be covered by the wind-driven sand long before we woke. He knew we wouldn’t be able to follow him. There was no way of knowing where he went or how far he might have gone. He knew Elena and I would have no choice but to go on together, just the two of us, alone, without him.
I took Javi’s water, drank a few small sips, and handed the rest to Elena. She tilted the bottle to her cracked, swollen lips. I held it up for her, until every last drop had trickled down, out of the sparkling blue plastic, into her waiting mouth.
We packed everything up, even Javi’s pack and tarp, and walked north. The crystal-clear day soon gave way to clouds, at first fluffy white and billowing. To pass the time, to forget our pain, Elena and I played an old childhood game, naming the shapes we saw in the clouds: a pirate ship, a two-headed goat, the engine of the mata gente.
And then, fantasies of the food we would eat: three scoops of strawberry ice cream, a giant limonada, cinco enchiladas, carne asada, arroz, frijoles, watermelon, and glass after glass after glass of ice-cold water.
And we never stopped looking, either one of us, for a sign of Javi. Our eyes moved over the landscape, searching for any unusual shape or movement. At regular intervals, we even turned around and scanned the desert we’d left behind us.
In the sky, a hawk circled. On the ground, a desert hare bounded for its hole. Army ants scavenged. A tortoise crawled, unconcerned, across a wide expanse of flat rock. But that was all. That was all we saw.
Then black clouds came on the wind, clouds promising rain. I shivered, remembering the storm from before. But the wind was as thirsty as we were. It pulled the rain skyward before it could reach the ground. Silvery trails of water descended from the clouds, then disappeared, phantomlike, into the air. It rained and rained, high in the sky, yet not one drop of water hit the bone-dry earth.
A bolt of lightning appeared to strike the earth some kilometers in front of us and then, several seconds later, the thunder rolled toward us. A low hum reached my ears. Was it the thunder echoing from far off? The drone continued, a steady roar of sound. I imagined it to be water, or millions of people, the mighty rushing river of my dream.
Elena’s eyes were half-closed. She took smaller and smaller steps. She mumbled a conversation with Abuelita, as if she were right in front of us, nonsense about going to find Javi. Soon Elena wouldn’t be able to walk or talk or think at all. Neither would I.
I pulled her by her fingertips, ever so slowly, to the top of the last hill. Elena sank to the ground in a heap, unable to move. I fell beside her, and raised my eyes to the sound rushing toward us.
There, below us, a steady stream of traffic sped east and west on a big multilane highway. The road ran just where Moisés said it would, right beyond the mountain. It slashed across the desert as if the vastness were nothing. I concentrated on the traffic heading west toward California. The sun reflected off car rearview mirrors, trailer taillights, and the windows of giant semis. Quick bursts of light, impossibly radiant, blinded me with their brilliance.
THE PHONE CALL
If I crane my neck, I can just barely see the bridge out of one corner of the window in my small third-floor apartment. The morning rays bounce off the bright blue of the bay and the dark orange of the span. The fog begins to move in toward the city, a white, wispy mass that will soon obscure the sun, the bay, the bridge. The day will be gray and chilly and windy. It’s summer, and I’ll wear my thick black sweatshirt later.
I return to my little desk, pick up my cup of café con canela, and take a sip. Laid out in front of me are two photos. In both, the sun shines brilliantly. If I close my eyes, I can almost remember the warmth. Beside the photos is Abuelita’s Virgen de Guadalupe medallion.
I pick up my phone and punch in the numbers. It rings, distantly, just once.
“Hola, Miguel,” Elena says before I speak. She’s expecting my call.
“I got the picture. I still can’t believe you graduated from college, and with a degree in English, of all things,” Elena begins. We always talk about the California pictures first, the ones I send her. San Jacinto comes second.
“Mamá looks good, but Papá looks old, Miguel.”
“I know, Elena. I know.” I look at my copy of the picture, now framed, on the wall.
Papá’s hair is white now, and some of his canas verdes are my fault. I made him suffer for the black emptiness I felt on the mata gente. It took me years to accept that Papá did what he did out of love, not pride.
Papá refused to be obligated to Don Clemente—a complicated and dangerous man—in any way. He rebuffed every one of Don Clemente’s offers to help, until he could no longer stand it. Then, finally, no línea mattered.
“What do you think of the twins?” I ask.
“They look so grown up! I can’t wait to see them next summer when they come to visit.”
I’ve grown to love my little sisters, the hermanas I’d never known or held until I came north. The cuates are smart, a little sassy, and strong, like Elena. But I feel a familiar twinge of envy. Maria and Liliana have advantages they don’t appreciate or understand. Papá and Mamá made sure their Spanish is good, but English might as well be their first and only language, the way the words just tumble out of their mouths so naturally and easily.
Papá and Mamá never left my sisters’ sides, not even for a day. Maria and Liliana never had to wonder when, or if, they would see their parents again. And the twins are citizens. They can go to Mexico and come back whenever they want. For them, there is no línea.
“What do you think of my pictures?” Elena asks.
I take my time. I don’t want to hurry with this call, this one we make once a year, on this day.
I pick up the first photo. There’s Elena, the one who claimed she wanted to go north more than anyone, right back there on Abuelita’s rancho in San Jacinto. Elena returned as soon as Papá let her, right after she finished high school. Even Mamá wasn’t enough to keep her in California. She says that el Norte never measured up to what she imagined it would be.
Elena is standing amidst her tomatoes, organic ones, in yellow, orange, red, even pink. In her hands she holds a chunk of organic goat cheese, whatever that is. She brags that her foods are becoming very popular in la capital, at the best restaurants.
“What’s up with your hair?” I ask. “Are you growing it out, or what?” Gone is her little cap of short black hair. It’s longer, falling now to her chin, framing her face in gentle waves of black.
“It’s been ten years, Miguel,” she announces. “It’s time to move on.”
I don’t remind her that she said she’d never grow it out. She vowed to keep it short, the way Javi cut it before the mata gente, to help her remember los sacrificios people make for each other.
“I can’t ever forget Javi, anyway. It doesn’t matter what my hair looks like,” she says. “You think about him, too. I know you do.”
She can still read my mind. And I can still read hers. Elena wants to believe that Javier might have made it out of the desert, somehow. Javi could have survived, somehow. He could be working in New York, just like he said. He could have sent for his family, and they’re all together. I don’t think so.
“Miguelito is big, isn’t he?” Elena says.
There, in the next picture is Chuy, holding mi sobrino. Chuy’s smile spreads all the way across his wide face, a picture of pure happiness. He had to beg and beg, but Elena finally agreed to marry him. The baby was born a year ago. He is named Miguel Javier Moisés. Elena chose his names, and the sequence. She says it is the correct order.
“Good thing he looks like Chuy,” I tease.
“Cállate, feo,” Elena says back. “Good thing he doesn’t look like his tío. Guess what? There’s a catalog in the States that might be interested in some of Chuy’s a
nd the others’ artwork. Say a prayer. We could make some money, maybe, for a change.”
“It’s about time,” I say. I pause.
“And the package, Miguel?” Elena asks finally. I was wondering how long it would take her to get around to it. “You were supposed to send Abuelita’s medallion. Why didn’t you?”
I gather my thoughts. Elena waits. And we both remember.
Ten years ago, to the day, Elena and I left San Jacinto. Nine years ago, to the day, Abuelita died. Her heart failed her. Doña Maria found her sitting in a chair in the kitchen, a pile of chiles in front of her ready to be peeled, the kind that bring fierce tears if their juices touch your fingers, and then your eyes. She is buried at the edge of the old cornfield on her beloved rancho.
“I still have the medallion,” I finally confess. “I know we agreed that this year she’d be reunited with la Virgen, but—”
“But today’s the anniversary of her death,” Elena interrupts. “And of the day we left, and of the promise you made to Chuy and Lalo to come back. Lalo’s even taking a day off at the clinic to come.”
I think of all the people I won’t, or can’t, see. Lalo. Chuy. Elena. The nephew I’ve never held. Abuelita, Javi, and Moisés. There’s no belonging—here or in San Jacinto or anywhere—without longing.
“Y La Virgencita?” Elena asks. Her voice has dropped to a whisper.
“She’s staying here with me until I can cross la línea and come back again freely,” I explain.
“Okay, Miguel.” Elena’s voice is almost inaudible now. “If it means you’ll come someday, okay. Te quiero mucho, Miguel.”
“I love you, too.” I hang up the phone. We don’t say good-bye. We never do.
The fog has moved in. It covers the whole bridge now, except for the very southern end. I’m going to walk all the way across the bridge today, because I’ve never done it, because I want to see what’s there to the north, on the other side.
I put on my sweatshirt, zip it up tight, and look at myself in the mirror. There’s the same old Miguel I was in San Jacinto, just a little taller, my face filled out some, a new moustache beginning to sprout. On the outside, the same me.
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