My body was as long as a hunting rifle.
Then Corazón placed another bag, the one containing pistols, lightly on top of my body.
The bag above me also settled and I could feel the weight of dozens of pistols wrapped in newspapers through the canvas. Eli’s gun was in good company.
You’ll be hidden like this, Corazón said. No one can look in and see you.
I was home. I’d been lying across the backseat of a car my whole life. I was in my mother’s bedroom.
Corazón explained that every month they paid a border guard to let them bring the guns into Mexico, but that taking a child might create problems.
Once we cross over, you can come and sit in the front seat with me, she said. This won’t take too much time. Just take it easy. Let’s hope there’s not too much traffic. Once we get across the bridge, everything will be fine.
Ray turned on the engine, backed up, and then slowly drove the car away from the hotel, away from the body of Eli Redmond, away and away and toward the border.
Corazón could not stop talking. She was filling up my silence with her words.
You’ll see, she said. Mexico is the most beautiful country in the world. It’s true. You will love her. Everyone speaks Spanish. We know there is speech in silence. We know you can love someone and never tell them. You’ll never want to leave. Maybe you’ll be famous and sing at parties. I’ll show you everything and it will not be a dream.
From my space under the bags there was still a tiny crack through which I could look up at the sky through the back window.
It’s going to rain, Corazón said. Look at those black clouds.
A few drops began to fall.
I thought of Leo in the foster home sleeping in my my-love-for-my-killed-mother tears.
We’re crossing now, Corazón said.
I knew I’d be coming back to the United States someday for Leo and to look up my father in the Yellow Pages of life.
We’re on the bridge, Corazón said. It’s the Juárez–Lincoln Bridge. We’re going over the river.
I looked up at the sky and took in my first breath that belonged to no country.
Outside, a few larger drops of rain began to fall and break on the glass pane and then it slowly began to rain, rain and morning thunder, and so the windows were bleeding down water.
The morning became as dark as nightfall.
At the port of entry and highway on the Mexican side of the bridge, a border guard stopped us. He tapped on the widow on the driver’s side of the car.
Don’t move, Pearl, Corazón said to me. Don’t even breathe.
I have the money here, Corazón said as Ray stopped the car and turned off the engine.
Ray pushed the switch and I listened as the power windowpane went down on the driver’s side. I also heard the rustle of paper as he handed the guard a large, yellow manila envelope.
Some words were said in Spanish and then Ray turned on the engine and steered the car toward the highway.
As we drove away, we left the storm behind us in the United States of America.
Don’t be afraid, Corazón said. Ray likes to drive really fast. He doesn’t care about speed limits.
As the gauge on the speedometer moved up, the car was lit with sunlight. Corazón rolled down the window and a warm breeze blew into the car.
The piece of sky turned blue as Ray picked up speed, going faster and faster into Mexico.
I lay among the guns and knew I lay among the deaths that had been and the deaths that were coming.
The sunlight and speed made me sleepy and I eased into the cradle-bag that held my body.
In my daydream I lay among skeletons, as gun parts were long femurs and ribs and short ulnas and ribs like the images in X-rays, X-rays of pieces of broken bodies broken, and I smelled gunpowder and maybe I smelled rust and blood and blood and rust. And the souls of animals and the souls of people were all around me and I heard a song of praise. Applause. I heard Pearl, Pearl, Pearl in congratulation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Santa Maddalena Foundation, the City of Asylum Pittsburgh, and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, a fellowship of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. She also wishes to express her appreciation to Richard Courtenay Blackmore, Susan Sutliff Brown, and Claudia Salas Portugal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JENNIFER CLEMENT is the author of multiple books, including Widow Basquiat. She was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship and the Sara Curry Humanitarian Award for Prayers for the Stolen. The president of PEN International, she currently lives in Mexico City.
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