by Aura Xilonen
“Come on, come over here, kid. I want to show you something.”
I unglue my gaze from the horizon and herd myself over to the lady.
“You’re a legend,” she says once I’m standing beside her.
“Qué!” I say, disoriented, strident.
The lady gets up and pulls a stool over so I can sit next to her.
“That day they beat you up outside the bookstore, there at the bus stop, I was nearby—a total fluke. Anyway, I wasn’t feeling real good since the medicine they’re giving me hasn’t been completely effective, but you probably didn’t notice me because I was wearing sunglasses. I was parked there, well, you know how it goes, sniffling snot over some of the crap I’ve been going through lately—but that’s another story. I saw you come out of the bookstore and stand there on the sidewalk like a zombie; you looked like you were having trouble breathing. I just watched you. Then you started to cross the street, totally ignoring the cars that were honking at you, yelling things, all insults and curses, and you looked like you wanted to die crushed under their wheels right there. I took out my cell phone and started recording. It was instinctive for me, you know? I used to be a reporter at the Sun. Now I work for the Chronica News, but that’s another long story. I was about to turn off my cell once you were sitting on the bench, but suddenly they were all coming up behind you and then, without saying a word, that bunch of cocksuckers started beating you up. I leaped out of my truck and went over to film you surrounded by that gaggle of assholes. I kept filming all of it, even the passersby who gathered around to gape. I recorded it all. And you didn’t make a peep, didn’t say a word. You didn’t say a word, can you believe it? You took that pounding and didn’t make a peep. I never imagined someone could withstand a beating like that. You didn’t say anything or scream or anything. Like you were made of steel or I don’t know what, stone maybe. But you made me think about a lot of things. Anyway, I wanted to take you to a doctor that day but you told me to fuck off, remember? I got home and that same afternoon I wrote the story of what I’d seen and uploaded the video to YouTube with the link for a freelance gig I do for Chronica News. I’d written a lot of articles, especially about immigrants and their rights and the kitchen sink, you know, in support of the immigration law, but never anything really eye-catching. Well, this article isn’t eye-catching either, just the basic facts and a bit of a reflective conclusion; the really remarkable bit is the video. Look.”
She points at the laptop screen. I still don’t understand and keep staring and staring at the screen.
“Look at the numbers,” she says with a goddamn twinkle in her eyes. “It’s had 1.7 million views in less than four days. Can you believe it? Facebook, Twitter. The world went apeshit over my video. It was a hashtag around the globe. Some in favor, some against. Yesterday they broadcast a special on CBS about immigration reform and civil rights, and they used the video as background footage. Last night CNN contacted me to see if I could help them out since I’d recorded the video. They want an exclusive interview with you. It’s a hot topic now, muy caliente, kid. Everybody wants to know who you are and where you’re from. You could be a huge help to millions of people here. Can you believe it? Can you understand that? Do you understand the magnitude of what I’m telling you? You’re famous now! You’re a hero! So can I interview you?”
I don’t understand a thing; I don’t understand a bit of what the fucking lady’s saying. I only feel madness swelling up inside me, and I get up from the stool in a fury, like someone’s rammed a chile up my butt. All my words disappear; they’re stuck in my throat. All I can do is shout at her with lacerated eyes, knockoutified, feeling suddenly used, betrayed, downtrodden by what I’ve just seen and heard.
“Fuck you!” I shout at her.
The highway is dark like a fucking serpent, enlivened only by the cumuli of the car headlights speeding through the forest. Their lights tattoo my eyes like a rabbit, like a stupid deer, frozen stiff: an imbecilically lampified deerbbit. The rocks dig into my feet—I took off from the damn crazy lady’s house without putting any shoes on. The pain creeps in through the soles of my feet and up to my spine, and there the pebbles pile up like a haystack of needles on top of my nerves. In the distance I can see the city with its turpentine streetlights tracing the virulent outlines of the buildings and their illuminated offices. The red beacons, which not long ago had seemed like lighthouses for my vagabondage, now look like somber buttonholes in the night sky. “Fuck you,” I keep roaring furiously into the air like a shower of hurricane-swept nights and, seething, I start walking to go look for her, as if my pilgrimage were an eternal return. “Fucking dumbass broad,” I say to myself. “Everybody’s always trying to take advantage of you, pinche pendejo,” I repeat. “Everybody.” And I keep walking, stumbling, on the edge of the air.
* * *
[Like when I collapsed to my knees on the highway after crossing the Rio Grande, seeing the lone car move off into the distance, chasing the hot vapor rising from the road, and me now without clothes, because the heat was boiling up from within me now, spewing from my pores, and little by little I’d ditched my clothing, discarding it along the way, leaving it behind; I ended up stripped bare, buck-naked, my shoulders now blistered with sunburn, blisters fatter than agave caterpillars, totally fucking tunisian. In despair, I fell flat on my face to bite the crucified dust, to sink in up to my neck and wait for the vultures to strip me of my flesh and the sun to bleach my bones there in the gringos’ desert. “Fuck it,” I said to myself, feeling the scorching weight of death on my bare shoulders, on my burnt-alabaster skin. “Fuck it,” I repeated as I roasted by the side of the road after crossing the Rio Grande—there, like a tortoise without a shell, my arms splayed out like a cross, silent, breathing in less and less air and more and more dust. “Fuck . . .”
And when I opened my eyes I was already in a truck, like I’d been transported to another dimension, full of paisas staring at me.
“It’s a miracle you’re alive, güey,” one of them yelled, aiming a stream of water from a small jug over my blackened, thirst-swollen lips.
“Watch out, kid, don’t drink too fast.” He pulled the canteen out of my hands, which were shaking, shredded with desperation. “You can die if you chug it all down in one go. Take little sips, like that, a bit at a time.”
“Ay, cabrón, it’s a miracle you’re alive,” another says.
“Your skin’s going to hurt like hell, it’s going to hurt a lot, but you’re alive and that’s thanks to God and His mother, our Virgencita de Guadalupe.”
“And thanks to us too—we came by just in time, kid,” said another.
“We saw you there, sprawled out.”
“And we stopped and poked you with a stick to see if you were still alive, and yes, you moved one hand like a snake, so we lifted you up into our truck here.”
“Ay, it’s a fucking miracle, it really is, kid. If you knew how many bones there are scattered around out there from vatos like you who get lost and never come back . . .”
“It’s like you’ve been resurrected. A dead man brought back to life.”
“A lacerated miracle full of thorns.”
They’d already put a blanket over me to cover my nudities. My skin was burning like I didn’t have any at all.
“Paisa,” said the man with the canteen, “we can take you and drop you off near a gringo checkpoint, and the cabrones will fix you up there, but then they’ll send you back to the grave you crawled out of. Or you can stick with us and we’ll take a look at you and all chip in to give you a hand. It’s up to you, kid: you can either die here with us, or die on the other side.”]
When I leave the reporter’s house, there is no sun scorching me; instead, I am enfolded in the embrace of the night and the highway shooing cars in both directions. I feel violated, betrayed, beswarmed on all sides by the pain of having someone hold out a hand to you and the
n turn around and stab you. That dagger is much more painful than a stranger’s, and it cuts you deeper. Because betrayal always comes from close by, never from far away; betrayal is the lowest circle of hell, the one that tightens like a noose around the condemned man’s neck and doesn’t slacken until his tongue is lolling out and there’s no life left to asphyxiate.
The highway keeps going that direction. I’m heading downhill, dazed, pebbles poking my calluses. I’m thinking about the chickadee, about Aireen coming back from work. “Will I still be able to threadle my way and get there in time to wait for her at the bus stop?” I’m not sure—maybe I should look up at the stars to figure out whether I’ve got the direction and the time right. But destiny is never in the heavens, up there above, enflatulated.
“Shit,” I say to myself when I see a highway patrol car approaching. They race past me, and me looking straight at them, meeting their gaze.
I hear their tires squeal as they brake twenty or thirty yards down the road.
“Puta madre, they saw me. They’re going to nab me.” Never run, they used to tell me, but now there’s no choice: run for it, puto, or you’ll spend the night in the slammer.
Instead of sticking to the highway, I plunge into a group of trees on the hill like a fucking gazelle fleeing a pride of lions.
You’re not going to catch me that easily, assholes.
You’re going to have to drag me down kicking and screaming from the highest treetops.
Now the stones are searing the soles of my bare feet; I feel the damp of the grass and all of its pricklers. The trees become denser and start to fall into line like black soldiers on an utterly dark, moonless night, two by two.
I splash through a small stream, muddying my feet. Behind me I can see the blue and red lights of the patrol car shattering against the trees and two flashlights shining in my direction, trying to pick me out.
I scramble toward a rocky promontory and climb up one side. I’m breathing heavily. Take a deep breath. Slowly, like everything’s fine. Like you’re just out for a little air. “Think about Aireen again.”
I’ve reached the top and start descending again on the other side of the rocks toward a little hollow. I can’t see the patrol car’s lights clearly anymore; it’s as if the trees have put up a wall of twigs and foliage, as if I were another tree they were trying to protect.
I head down a trail that seems to be used by mountain bikers.
I race ahead a few hundred fast-flowing yards. Now the rocks are jammed between my toes like little flintstones giving off sparks.
Suddenly in the sky I see the red eye of a helicopter approaching from the city. A few minutes later it passes over me, its blades and motors going at full bore, and heads toward the darkest area of the forest. It’s got a spotlight that shines down from above like a giant luminous keyhole that unlocks the night.
“Pinches cabrones, they’ve even got a helicopter after me.”
I start running along the path to get far away from there as quickly as possible, and I end up sliding down a steep hill. Branches slap me all over.
I keep rolling down the slope until I fall into a little ditch of soil and weeds. I’m out of breath from the impact, but I leap out in a prickle, a crown of bruises encircling my cabeza.
I roll a bit farther and tumble to the left. I can no longer see or hear the helicopter’s engine. I stand up and start running toward my pursuers’ antipodes. I’ve got to get to the city as fast as I can; it’s easier to disappear there.
* * *
[Jefe once told me:
“Hey, pissant, if the migra comes poking around here one day, I want you to roll up into a tiny ball and hide in a crack in the bookstore. Right up there is a loft that nobody ever uses. I use it to store a bunch of crap. You go up there and coil up like a snake and don’t make a goddamn peep, because if they catch us, the bastards’ll take the both of us away. Got it, you illegal cocksucker?”
And that’s when he got the idea of having me look after the bookstore for him at night.]
I pass a clump of trees, and the intersection at the edge of the city appears. There’s a Conoco gas station. It must be dawn, yes, because the dew has gotten misty, almost elastic, and fills the air with cobwebs. My feet are covered with mud, pebbles, and scratches.
There are no cars coming in either direction. I skitter across to the other side of the freeway and turn left to avoid the gas station, where there are several cars lined up and the 7-Eleven is open.
I reach a graffiticated overpass. I walk under it and enter the outskirts of the city.
The streetlights spread out in a mapped grid.
My feet are on fire, but what the hell do I care. Two or three nocturnal scruffs go by in the distance, the kind that are sparks in the dark, lighting up only at night. Bums are invisible in the city, which is why we can disappear. Then a yup wearing a trench coat walks by; he doesn’t see or hear me—seems like he’s in a hurry. He picks up his pace and disappears in the other direction.
Two addos are on a corner with their feet crossed and propped up on a wall. They’re smoking joints. I walk past and they size me up.
“Psst, hey, man, wanna score?”
I keep going and spot the mall in the distance. It can’t be far now, less than a mile and I’ll be there. I head for the other side, avoiding walking through the parking lot because the security guards might see me and chase me off.
I walk three more blocks and then turn right, heading into the heart of the city.
The tall buildings are like pencils scribbling on the sky. Their windows reflect me as I pass. Some of them have fountains that turn the water different colors. They’re still running, yes; the fountains in these elegant buildings are on forty-eight hours a day; they’re like the buildings’ blood bubbling at their feet.
The night is quiet, hardly anybody on the street. A few cars pass or come or go, swiftly, toward the intersections and disappear into the distance.
My guts growl. My belly’s calling the shots. I scamper into a 7-Eleven like a frightened rat. The fucking cashier looks at me with his tubular eyes, ready to tubulate me at the least provocation. I pick up a Coke, a can of tuna, some crackers, and some potato chips. I pull a twenty-dollar bill out of the secret place in my belt and pay: $13.30. I’ve got $66.30 left. I tuck the money back in my belt and leave. I’m in no shape to wait till I get anywhere, so I crack open the Coca-Cola and take long gulps. I open the tuna and crackers and munch my way through the entire can before I get to the first stoplight; I open the chips as I walk toward the bookstore. I finish the Coca-Cola to wet my whistle, then crush the can and stash it in the pocket of the sweatpants the lady lent me.
* * *
[Back in Mexico I used to collect soda cans to sell as scrap metal. Five pesos a kilo, which had to be a ton because the fucking things don’t weigh hardly anything. So it had to be a huge sack of them so they’d weigh something and you could get at least thirty pesos and be able to more or less scrape by. That’s when I sewed the secret pouch on my belt. Using a piece of leather and a pocketknife, I bored a hole and attached a snap. My assets have always been what I’ve got on me. I am my house and nothing more. And the belt’s the only thing I never take off, not even that time I got sunstroke.
“I’ll stick with you guys,” I told the paisa when I was feeling a little better. And so I went off to that job, to wear out my hands with fucking cotton. Picking out the seeds on a small farm because the big ones had machines that could do the work of more than ten horses or a hundred men or a thousand dogs. This farm was so small that it needed fewer than ten of us guys for the work. It belonged to a couple of old men from I don’t know where, but they had lots of wrinkles on their faces. And they spoke in English, and I couldn’t understand a thing they said. They had to talk to me in signs.
“I’m Pepe,” said the man with the truck, the one with the cant
een, the one who invited me to come along with them. “But don’t ever call me Pepito or I’ll kick you in the nuts.”
And all the paisas burst out laughing around the dinner table. Most of them were strangers who’d met because they came from the same town, Tetela. And because distance turns shared customs into fraternity, they were like family. Yes, just like that, practically eating from the same plate.
“The work isn’t too bad because they pay in greenbacks. But one thing’s for sure, paisa,” Pepe continued, “you have to save every penny so you’ll have it when you go back or send it over there, because things are really expensive here, so you end up spending everything you earn. It only does you any good if you save. Me, for example, I send my paycheck to my wife and kids to pay for the house and food because we’ve got absolutely nothing back there, not even bits of air, to build something out of. Things are pretty good here, but only if you don’t spend it all. And if you ever want to give yourself a lift so you don’t feel like life’s deflating around you, sometimes we go to the city to fill our bellies with beer in some dive bar—but you have to be careful, because if the fucking gringo migra catches you, they’ll dump you out in the street across the border. We toss back a few shotties and get smashed so we can keep on with our daily toil. Except for El Ramonete—he always carries a hip flask with him so he can stay in shape for the heat that pounds down as we strip those cotton plants, which are as scratchy as cats and tear your fingers up till you can’t feel soft touches anymore. Isn’t that right, Ramonete?”