The Only Road

by Alexandra Diaz

  “Dishes, for one thing. And you three!” she shouted at the boys behind them, who were also returning their empty plates. “You’re helping with the dishes as well, and don’t let me catch you stealing anything from the kitchen.”

  Just like Jaime and Ángela, the boys didn’t challenge the idea of helping out in exchange for food and shelter. Or maybe they were too scared; the youngest boy definitely flinched a bit. The woman’s gruff “don’t mess with me” tone had returned.

  The tallest boy looked vaguely familiar with his ruffled black hair and dark skin, but Jaime didn’t know from where. The boy picked up a stack of the dirty plastic dishes from the ground next to the table and carried them into a separate decaying wooden building that operated as a kitchen. They all followed him without another word. The kitchen held two large steel washbasins with tubs underneath the drain and a stove with six burners, but no refrigerator. Bags of rice, beans, and ground corn sat under rickety shelves that held plates and pans. In a corner a swarm of flies buzzed around a huge banana bunch. Jaime got the feeling he was looking at the lunch menu.

  Once in the kitchen and away from the grumpy woman, Ángela and Jaime set their bags in a corner. The older boy placed the dishes in a washbasin and turned to Ángela.

  “Hola, Veracruz,” he said.

  Ángela looked surprised. It took Jaime a second to understand what the boy was talking about, and suddenly it hit him. He had been on the bus with them yesterday, sitting up front and playing with his phone. Unlike the guard, it seemed he wasn’t fooled into thinking they had come from the southern Mexican state.

  “Hola, Tapachula,” Ángela replied. She didn’t seem to believe he was from where he had claimed either. With the few words the boy had spoken, Jaime couldn’t figure out where he came from but was willing to bet it wasn’t anywhere in México.

  “Acaxman.” He corrected with a wink of his green eyes, which stood out against his dark features.

  Of course. Jaime had forgotten that this boy had been the first one the guard interrogated. The one who had had the easiest time convincing the guard he was local. Looking at him, Jaime understood why. The boy was wearing a white collared uniform shirt from a school in Tapachula, the school’s emblem bright over the left breast with the name encircling it. Good disguise. Jaime wondered how much he had paid for that shirt.

  The teen smiled perfectly white and even teeth as he continued, “Have you been to Veracruz? I hear it’s beautiful.”

  Jaime raised his eyebrows. This guy was repeating what Ángela had told the guard. What else did this guy know about them? And should they be worried?

  Ángela stood her ground, though her cheeks flushed. “Well, I feel sorry for anyone who comes from Acaxman.”

  The guy grinned as if he and Ángela had been communicating in a secret language only the two of them understood. “Xavi.”

  “Ángela.”

  They kissed on the right cheek in greeting.

  The second boy, small and scrawny but with a few dark, wispy chin hairs, adjusted his ball cap before kissing her too. “I’m Rafa.”

  The third boy was Jaime’s age, maybe a bit younger. His shirt hung like a tarp to mid-thigh, and his hair looked like he’d cut it himself. This boy kept his distance. Jaime would have done the same. While it was fine to accept greeting or farewell kisses, often forced upon by his mamá’s friends, it was weird to think of kissing girls his age.

  The youngest boy shuffled his feet but barely raised his eyes to say his name. “Joaquín.”

  Jaime introduced himself and the five set to work. Washing dishes for one hundred people was no easy task. Washing dishes for one hundred people with no running water and clogged plumbing: eternal. Water was hauled up from the river, sterilized with lime juice (which first had to be squeezed), and dumped back outside once it got too dirty.

  Jaime and Joaquín were in charge of drying and putting away the plates. Jaime had offered to wash the dishes, but Ángela volunteered instead, saying she could do them faster—which was true. The other two were on water-hauling duty. Between buckets they started to get to know each other. The other three boys had just met that morning at breakfast.

  “Mi madre in Honduras, she drinks a lot.” Rafa spilled his life story without being asked, almost as if he were bragging. “We never have enough food. She’s pretty, too, so she has lots of boyfriends. I have ten brothers and sisters; most of them don’t know who their real papi is. Not me. I know mine’s in Texas. I’m going to find him. We’re going to get fat, discover oil, and become rich together.”

  Jaime and Ángela looked at each other with raised eyebrows but said nothing to Rafa about his plan. It wasn’t their place to ruin someone’s dreams.

  “What about you, Xavi?” Ángela asked when he came in with a bucket of water. “Are you getting fat and rich too?”

  Xavi laughed. “I don’t need to be fat and rich to be happy. Just . . .” He averted his eyes as if the idea of what he needed to be happy was painful. He took a deep breath before continuing. “I just want the freedom to make my own choices and be in control of my future. I didn’t have that in El Salvador.”

  “Us too,” Ángela said, and Jaime agreed. Had they joined the Alphas back home, their lives would never again be their own. There would have been no future to call their own. Like Xavi, they kept their story vague. No mentioning Miguel. It felt safer to keep personal details minimal. At least the details that could come back and hurt them.

  Joaquín said nothing except that he came from Honduras too.

  They were almost done when Xavi hauled out the dirty water, his arm muscles cut against his dark skin, and Ángela pulled Jaime close.

  “I need a favor,” Ángela muttered as she looked out the kitchen into the thick vegetation surrounding the shelter. On the flattened undergrowth that marked a path to the river, Rafa was returning with the not-as-dirty river water. Ángela rushed her words. “When Xavi comes back, ask him how old he is.”

  Jaime frowned. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I don’t want to.” Ángela rolled her eyes as if she expected him to get it.

  “Why?”

  Ángela let go of his arm but then turned back to him and whispered even lower just as Rafa returned, sloshing water on the floor. “Just do it. Por fa.”

  Jaime rolled his eyes back and glanced at Joaquín to see if the boy knew what Ángela was talking about. But Joaquín kept his head down and dried the plates. Jaime thought he knew his cousin, but every once in a while she went all weird. Girls.

  Xavi returned with the empty dishpan a few minutes later and stretched his arms over his head, his back cracking.

  “You creak like an old man, Xavi,” Jaime teased. “How old are you?”

  “Sometimes I feel like a viejo, but I’m just seventeen. You?”

  “I’m twelve. Too young to feel like an old man.” He grinned and got a few chuckles from Xavi and Rafa.

  “Seventeen too,” Rafa volunteered. He turned to look at Ángela with a grin. “What about you, mamacita?”

  Ángela shook her head at Rafa in annoyance, then turned to Xavi. “Dieciséis.”

  Jaime had to bite his lip and focus on the dish he was drying. Sure she was sixteen. In five months.

  They all turned to Joaquín, waiting for his response. Maybe it was the heat of the day, already making sweat pour down their foreheads, but Jaime was sure Joaquín reddened just a bit before saying, “Once.”

  “Eleven? And you’re by yourself?” Rafa asked. “What kind of trouble are you running away from?”

  Joaquín left the kitchen and when he came back, he had three forgotten plates in his hands, which he immediately began washing himself. Xavi picked up one of the damp rags they were using to dry the dishes and finished the task. Once that was done, the older boy placed a hand on Joaquín’s shoulder.

  “Hey, you can travel with me.” The words were quiet, but the other three still heard. “We’ll look after each other.”

  Joaq
uín looked up, his dark eyes wide with . . . surprise? Fear? He seemed like he wanted to say no, then changed his mind. He nodded in agreement and quickly grabbed the remaining plates from Xavi’s hands to place on the shelf before leaving the kitchen.

  “C’mon, man,” Rafa said in a low voice. “Why’d you say that? You don’t even know the kid. He’s only going to slow you down or get you into trouble.”

  Xavi didn’t answer right away. He draped the dishtowels over the faucet that didn’t work and grabbed the broom to sweep water out of the puddle they had made on the floor.

  “You remember that woman on the bus yesterday?” he asked. “The one they hauled off?”

  Rafa hadn’t been on the bus, but Jaime and Ángela nodded. How could they forget? The way they dragged her off and whacked her to the ground as if she had no right to seek a better life.

  “I recognized her,” Xavi said, his arms leaning against the broom handle. “She was from the next village over. I lived with my grandmother, who is la curandera. The bus woman came over one night with a horrible black eye and fat lip. But more than something for her injuries, she asked my grandmother how to break the evil curse that caused her husband to beat her so much. It was my grandmother who said the curse was strong and the best way to break it would be for the woman to leave her husband.

  “I didn’t recognize her until she got dragged off the bus. I don’t know if it was good or not that she didn’t recognize me.” Xavi put the broom back where it belonged and fiddled with the stacked clean dishes, straightening them in the rows Jaime had color coordinated.

  “You couldn’t have saved her,” Ángela said softly. She reached out a hand but then dropped it before it touched his shoulder. “If you’d have tried to stop them, they would have taken you, too.”

  Xavi spun around, his green eyes narrowed and dark. “Would you have sat by while they deported Jaime?”

  “Of course not.” Her response was quick and hostile, as if he dared suggest such a thing. “But we’re family.”

  “And the woman left hers because of mine. Those guards will probably treat her worse than her husband did.”

  Jaime wished he could have helped her too, but not if it would have gotten him, or Ángela, into trouble. But at what point do you stop helping people? He and Ángela had grown up together; his mamá had taken care of her and Miguel while Tía worked; they were practically brother and sister. He’d like to think he’d help anyone in his family if he could, but what about family members he didn’t know, or friends? Where would he draw the line between those he’d help, and those he’d let get abused and deported?

  “But they said they were only going to take her back to Guatemala. She can come back to México and try her journey again,” Jaime said, grabbing the only optimism he could from the grim situation.

  “If she has the strength. Or the money,” Xavi reminded them. “Would you?”

  Ángela shook her head sadly. “Home’s not safe for us anymore.”

  “But neither is this trip.” Xavi turned back to Rafa, daring him to question his motives again. “That’s why Joaquín is coming with me.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  They spent the day with Xavi, Rafa, Joaquín, and other kids hanging out and playing fútbol in front of the church with a semi-deflated ball. The street dead-ended at the church, and the people who lived farther up never glanced in their direction. Padre Kevin assured them the church was safe from la migra or any gangs. César, a Nicaraguan boy who joined their game, said it was safe because El Gordo controlled the area and it was in El Gordo’s best interest to keep the immigrants safe.

  The more Jaime heard of this El Gordo, the more he didn’t like him.

  Jaime wasn’t sure if he liked Rafa, either, who talked too much and seemed to have unrealistic ideas about the future. They still knew nothing about quiet Joaquín except that he didn’t know how to swim and had no interest in cooling off in the river with the other boys when it got too hot and humid. But Xavi? Xavi was what he imagined, and hoped, Tomás would be like.

  Xavi hadn’t mentioned where in El Norte he was heading, but Jaime hoped he’d travel with them for a bit. Ángela, Jaime knew, would agree. If anything, there would be safety in numbers.

  When night fell, Rafa tried to convince them to go with him to a dogfight a few kilometers up the river. “I have a hundred pesos I’m putting on this one dog that honestly can’t lose. Just think, if we put our money together, we can make enough to hire our own private smuggler. Whatcha think, mamacita?”

  Ángela shook her head with her nose scrunched up. “Absolutely not. I loathe dogs.”

  “Besides,” Jaime said, “those fights are really cruel.” Not that he’d ever been to one, but he didn’t need to in order to know how bloody and heart-wrenching it would be.

  Rafa laughed. “Nah, it’s fun.”

  “If I wanted to watch animals rip each other apart, I would have stayed home,” Xavi said. He didn’t elaborate, but Jaime got the feeling he wasn’t talking about four-legged animals.

  Joaquín didn’t say anything, but he huddled closer to Ángela as if just the thought of a dogfight scared him, too.

  “Fine. Look me up if you make it across the border. Hasta.” Rafa waved and headed off with some other men hoping for the same fortune at the mercy of dogs with sharp teeth.

  The four stayed at the church, where some of the older men built a bonfire next to the river. Xavi’s phone, freshly charged by a neighbor’s outdoor electrical socket, didn’t have any minutes to use as a phone, but contained some great music on it—hip-hop, pop, salsa, rock, and even some songs in English. Xavi and a couple of other boys began showing off their street dance moves. At least two insects flew into Jaime’s mouth as he stared in awe at Xavi’s break dancing and acrobatic talent. By the bonfire light, Jaime sketched the older boy holding all his weight on one arm while his body was parallel to the ground like a sideways star.

  In a moment of bravery, Joaquín slipped out of the shadows and performed a series of cartwheels without stopping. Jaime outlined a sketch of that, too, but decided he needed proper light to execute the drawing he had in mind, a graceful circle of human blur.

  Even Ángela jumped in with some invented hip-hop moves. For a few minutes she and Xavi seemed to be having a conversation with their dancing where one would dance and the other would respond. Jaime drew that, too—Xavi staring intently at Ángela with his hands on the ground like he was doing a push-up, but with his legs curled into the air like a scorpion’s tail, while Ángela shook her finger “no” at him but with a huge grin on her face.

  It was late when the kids made their way the few meters back to the church; the older men had gotten drunk and rowdy, especially after Padre Kevin put his flip-flop foot down, saying they couldn’t sleep in the sanctuary in that condition.

  “Are you staying here, Joaquín?” Jaime pointed to the women and children’s section of the church. “You can set your blanket next to us.”

  “I’m not a girl,” Joaquín answered sharp and quick, the most words he had said all day in one mouthful.

  Jaime yawned, barely able to keep his eyes open any longer. “Me neither. But we’re still kids, so it’s fine.”

  Joaquín looked from Ángela to Xavi as if to get their permission.

  “You’re welcome with us, cariño.” Ángela used the word of endearment she often reserved for younger kids, or kids she needed to mother. Something she picked up from their mothers. “But if you feel more comfortable staying with the men, Xavi will look after you.”

  A roar of laughter came from the bonfire through the trees. Joaquín took hold of Ángela’s hand. “Pues, con vos.”

  Jaime collected three tattered blankets from the same old woman who had taken them in the morning, while Ángela and Xavi exchanged kisses on the cheek in the traditional farewell gesture.

  “See you in the morning.” Xavi waved before heading to the men’s side of the church.

  • • •

 
; It seemed Jaime had barely closed his eyes, when an arm reached over him to wake his cousin.

  “Chapina,” Padre Kevin whispered to Ángela. “El chico salvadoreño. He needs you.”

  Jaime, Ángela, and Joaquín sat up, almost whacking Padre Kevin in the mouth. The sun was just coming up, but they gathered their things in seconds, the advantage of sleeping in their clothes and never unpacking their bags. They folded the blankets quickly and returned them to Padre Kevin, who once again was the epitome of cheery. If Jaime hadn’t been so worried about Xavi, he would have been annoyed at the priest.

  Xavi stood waiting for them in the trees by the embers of last night’s bonfire. The drunken men were nowhere in sight.

  In Xavi’s arms he cradled a wet, bloody blob.

  “What is that?” Jaime asked as he rushed over. It was impossible to tell where the blood was coming from—Xavi or the thing he held.

  “A dog.”

  Ángela backed away.

  Xavi continued, “I think they used her as bait for the dogfight last night and threw her in the river when they were done. I found her in the bushes. Poor thing. She’s barely breathing.”

  Ángela’s mouth twitched as if she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what. Jaime saved her from having to make a decision. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Water.” Xavi took a deep breath. “And some limes to disinfect the wounds.”

  Without a word, Joaquín sprinted off through the thick undergrowth to get the supplies. When he returned, Xavi sat on a rock near the fire pit with the dog in his lap and began gently dowsing it with water. The lump twitched but didn’t, or couldn’t, try to escape. Xavi’s white uniform shirt soon became soaked through and pink with blood.

  Jaime could see it was a miracle the dog was still alive. One ear had been completely ripped off. Bite marks oozed blood all over the body. But the worst was the gaping wound on its side.

  How could Rafa have thought that dogfights were fun? For a second Jaime thought about Miguel and how he’d been beaten to death, how the Alphas may have even thought that was fun. Sometimes Jaime really didn’t understand humans.