Her voice was almost laughter. She didn’t seem as angry as she had sounded yesterday. I wanted to ask her about it, but of course, conversations were one-way.
“Yes, it is a pretty day, my gringa friend. That means white girl.”
From what I knew, the term wasn’t complimentary.
“I will show you my fears today,” she said. “They might fire me for it, at least if you tell them. But no one but you can hear me, right?” Her breath was fast from the slow jog and the heat. “We are alone.”
She slowed, let her heart slow until I could no longer feel it overtake mine. Her stride became a ground-eating walk, something she did with no complaint even though I felt actual physical pain with every step she took. It made me wonder if she felt the pain like I did, or if she had somehow learned to go through it and past it and beyond it.
Personally, I wanted an ibuprofen, and it wasn’t even my leg that hurt.
“I am going to show you my grandmother’s house.” She spoke English, out loud, since that was the only way I could hear her. The road was empty; a few birds and maybe a monkey overheard her. “My grandmother’s life. And then I will show you my mother’s life, and then my life. And then maybe we can talk about hope the way you talk about it in America. This isn’t what I’m supposed to do, but then I’m not good at doing what I’m supposed to do. I’m no good girl like they usually pick for this. But after talking to you, I hope you are a little like me.”
I could feel her—she was proud of herself and apprehensive as well; she felt like I felt when I suspected that something I was about to do would get me into trouble. Only I hadn’t felt like this for a long time, hadn’t taken risks, had done just what I was told, like sending my report to the Good Doctor Peters on command and doing everything else on command because I thought that would get me what I wanted.
If this was real diplomatic work—watching a situation that might hurt someone you like and not being able to do a thing about it—it sucked. Mom and Dad had always said it sucked, even though they went back every day.
Valeria turned down a thin track. Ruts showed a car or a scooter or something wheeled with an engine used the road. She walked down the middle, swinging her arms. Her hands were free; no machete. A pack pulled her shoulders back, but of course I couldn’t see it. She started singing in Spanish, her voice high and clear. She felt wary, but not afraid. She rounded a corner and stopped in front of a short, circular home with no walls—an honest-to-god thatch hut—beside a small cenote. An orange tree had been planted beside the hut, the fruit ripening. A banana palm and three or four other non-native trees also looked healthy. A white plastic bucket tilted on its side by the cenote suggested they were hand-watered. Three brightly colored pots with herbs sat by the hut. Another whole line, maybe a dozen more pots, sat under a makeshift shade of tied colorful tourist saris—the kind you can buy for five dollars each in the beachside markets. These pots held blooming flowers that might have been found in an American grocery store: miniature roses and sunflowers and orchids. While there might be enough shadows inside to hide someone, I rather doubted it.
Whatever wheeled transportation used the road, the only thing here now was a broken bicycle completely missing both wheels.
I guessed we’d come all this way for nothing, but Valeria didn’t hesitate, or even stop singing. She simply went around the back and followed a thin trail into the jungle. After a few minutes, she stopped and smiled, watching a small woman so old her back humped and her hair had thinned to mist. The woman balanced on her toes, her slender brown arms reaching into a tree. Before she turned, she pulled down a spray of yellow and orange flowers. Valeria sounded proud as she whispered, “That’s my grandmother. She makes her living selling flowers.”
There weren’t enough flowers in all the pots for any kind of living.
“And I bring her some money every week. Otherwise, the jungle feeds her, too.”
It sounded romantic, but I imagined it wasn’t. The two women broke into excited, fast Spanish that I didn’t have a prayer of following, so I watched the old woman’s face. Wrinkles had folded her cheek and chin to the texture of figs and nearly hidden her eyes from the world. Even though her body moved slowly, her tongue kept up with Valeria’s and they seemed happy to see each other.
Valeria passed her a handful of bills. The amount never came up, and the older woman simply shoved them in her pocket. After, Valeria gave her a long hug. I couldn’t see the grandmother’s face, of course, not at that point. I smelled the flowers—still in Valeria’s grandmother’s hands, and felt the love between the two women so hard that it stung my eyes.
I had never known one of my grandmothers, and the other I certainly wouldn’t have known enough to find on a path in the jungle. I’d seen her at a handful of family events.
When we were nearly at the corner and about to turn down the track, Valeria said, “I would have liked to take you swimming. Her cenote is very sweet. But there is only an hour left, and I want to show you how my mother lives, too.” She turned for a last look back. “See how happy she is? She works hard, works every day. She hardly has anything. That thin old dress and two more, plus one I gave her that she says is too nice to wear until her funeral. But she is happy. More happy than me, or I bet than you. I know she is happier than my mother. Almost no one lives so simply any more, even here. The deeper you go in the jungle, the more there is peace like this. Old women are mostly left alone. But if I lived alone out here, I would be raped.” As if she heard my silent protest she said, “Even today.”
With that she turned and started a fast walk down the pathway. “I’m not going to tell you more until we see Mom. I want to be able to ask you about it when we talk on the phone tonight.”
For the next twenty minutes, she hummed or was silent, and I smelled the jungle and noticed the unfamiliar sounds of birds and, once, the loud engine of an old gas-guzzler jeep with tires half as tall as me and a green roll bar that had one corner crumpled.
She whispered, “We’re here,” moving her head back and forth slowly as if panning her vision. “No one else is here, so we’re safe. We won’t be long. Watch closely.” It took me a moment to realize she was doing that for me, helping me see what she wanted me to notice. In that moment, it dawned on me how much a host could provide, or hide, from a rider. If she had a gun strapped to her leg—or her machete in her backpack—I wouldn’t know unless she looked at it or someone around remarked on it.
The small house looked slumped. It was mostly white now, but chips of stucco had fallen off, revealing that it had once been green, once brown, and maybe even once yellow. The wooden windows were rotten and one was gone entirely. Three bikes and a scooter stood chained to a post just outside the door. One was missing a back wheel. Three gasoline cars rusted happily to the ground on the potholed street, all of them past driving, and one past having any color at all. If this were a poor neighborhood in America, there would have been litter around the house, too, but the open dirt was so neat it might have been swept. Plants struggled in shady spots.
Valeria slipped through the ragged screen door. The living room was a small rectangle with two chairs that belonged in a dump and a small, neat wooden table with a lamp. “Madre?”
The woman who emerged from the bedroom looked older than Valeria’s grandmother had. Although she moved a little better, her forearms were bruised and the skin under her eyes looked like the opening of a dark cave. Although her Spanish came fast, I caught the gist of it. “Why are you here now? It’s the middle of the day. I thought you were looking for a job.”
“I found one.”
“So why aren’t you working?”
“There’s a schedule.”
I lost track of the next comments from the older woman, a stream of something about food and the neighbors. Her bruises fascinated me. They ran up and down her arms and on the back of one hand. Her eyes and her tone and the way she carried herself tucked inside her hunched shoulders screamed of a hard life.
She raised her voice. Although I couldn’t follow it all, I got the idea the older woman meant to get Valeria out of her house without making her mad. Valeria felt hot and angry and embarrassed. Under the embarrassment, still fear. But for her mom or for herself?
The door opened and a tall young man came in. For a brief moment I expected him to be Valeria’s drug-dealing brother, Raul. But the woman called him Mario and took a step back.
Valeria’s heartbeat sped up and she glanced toward the door.
Mario looked at her and spoke in English. “Valeria. How nice. But you should leave now.”
Even though I felt her hands shaking, Valeria stiffened. She spoke slowly, maybe for my sake, or maybe to counter her racing heartbeat. “This is my home, my mother. I belong here more than you.”
His cold smile exposed brown teeth. He said something that sounded like “not anymore,” and then he reached inside his pocket and handed her a thin package, something wrapped in paper. “Take this to town.”
She didn’t ask what it was but stepped back again, her back now to the wall. She shook her head. “I will not.”
He held it out.
She didn’t want to take it, but she did. I was the problem. If she took what must be drugs, she could be arrested or caught. But she couldn’t tell him I rode her.
He grabbed her hand and shoved the packet in it.
The door behind him opened and two men came in. When they spotted Valeria, they stopped. One of them looked like he wanted to eat her. Really. His eyes were angry and hard and he was not at all happy she was there.
She gasped. I’d had thought she was afraid before, but this was worse.
He hit her. Her/me. I’d never been hit, never expected to feel the whipsaw of human flesh crushing my cheek against my eye and nose, feel the way flesh gives under the force of hatred.
She fell.
I didn’t. I screamed, my body jerked into the cold hard classroom. My heart beat fast. I blinked and touched my smooth cheek, completely disoriented by the fluorescent light mixing with the pale outside light from the one window and shivering at the change in temperature. I had been told to do something if this happened? What? I shivered too hard to remember.
Oh. I finished the fall I’d started—like an interrupted moment—and hit the tile, moaning.
I caught a glimpse of Dr. Peter’s face wearing the wrath-of-god look. It seemed directed at the universe, and not me. The faces of my classmates turned toward me, blinking and shocked.
Dr. Peters jerked his head toward the paramedic, who picked me up and carried me from the classroom. My face scraped against his dirty yellow coat, which smelled of old smoke and sweat. “Send me back,” I whispered. He didn’t respond, except to tuck me in even closer to him and keep going. Down the hall, he punched for an elevator, and kept holding onto me until we stepped inside. He set me down then, and looked into my eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Just send me back. Something’s happening.”
“Not yet.”
I wanted to curse at him, but you don’t curse at paramedics. I bit my tongue and worried.
The old elevator shuddered and slowed one floor above the classroom we’d just been in. We went back down the hall the way we’d come but a little higher. At the end, he let us through a locked door. Dr. Meera greeted me on the other side. He led me to a couch and gestured for me to lay down, and then tucked a pillow under my head. “What happened?” he asked.
“I have to go back. There’s a man who hates her.”
“Tell me.”
He wasn’t going to let me go back until I did. I could see that in his eyes, even though they looked kind. He was a firm man. I told him fast, just about the visit to her mother’s, and then he took my hand. It felt good, his hand. Like support. “Are you sure you want to go back?”
I nodded. “I have to. I can’t abandon her.”
He glanced down at his watch. “It’s been twenty minutes. That’s a long time”
“Send me.”
“Good luck. Observe closely. Help will come. Pray it comes in time.” To my surprise, he gave me a small dark button, and closed my thumb over it.
“How do I find the button on the other side?”
“Don’t let go of it.” He helped me push it. The give was soft and easy, and there was a little click I’d never heard before.
Valeria lay on the floor. Her right hand cupped her cheek and her hurt leg felt hot and sharp.
Noise and tension filled the room. Valeria’s mother cried and pleaded with Mario in Spanish. The dark-eyed man ignored them all, speaking rapidly into his all-in-one. It was the only modern thing in the room, a model more expensive than I could have afforded.
The button felt hard in my palm.
I wondered if she knew I was back, or even that I had gone.
The house was already full, but one more person came in the front door anyway.
“Raul,” Valeria whispered.
Raul was a bit taller and broader, and his belly had settled outward some. Her brother should help her, shouldn’t he?
He reached a hand down, pulling her upward with enough force to send pain shooting through her shoulder. Unlike the rest of the people in the room, he spoke in clear English. “Are you ridden?”
Oh god, he knew. He knew I was here.
She shook her head. “No. No. It is only for two hours. The time is past.”
“I told you never to come back here if you let them make you a spy.”
“I’m no spy!”
“Prove it.”
“How?”
He stared at her, his dark eyes angry and appraising. I wanted to flinch away from the blow that seemed inevitable, but he let out a long breath and said, “Take some stuff in. Get it to Jesus on Fifth. Don’t get caught. Then go quit that stupid job today. If you do all that, I might let you live.”
Over Raul’s shoulder, the dark-eyed man glared at him, then at Valeria. It felt like another near fight.
“Go,” Raul said, shoving her out the door, slamming it behind her.
She stood outside, quivering, her leg sending pain up her back, her cheek and shoulder sore. Then she swore in Spanish. I knew most of the words.
Her mother was in there with those brutes. But surely Raul would protect her. These were my thoughts, of course, not Valeria’s. Valeria was scared and mad and embarrassed all at once. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I did not expect them during the day. These are my fears.” She paused. “My worst fears.”
No kidding.
Then she was running, her heart rate increasing, her leg slowing her down a little.
Two black cars with insignia on them passed us. Mexican Police. She looked behind her, watching them stop at her house.
She stumbled forward, crying, and for a long time I was sure she had forgotten me. She ended up on the beach in one of the tourist areas of Playa, sitting on a bit of grass in front of a hotel, the hot afternoon sun sending sweat down her back. She pulled her backpack off and shoved the package Raul had made her take into its outside zipper pocket and reached into the bigger middle section and took out a flask of water. She drink slowly, shuddering and moaning. It took a long time for her calm to return.
Finally she spoke. “I wanted you to see what Mexico has done to women. That is what I’m afraid of. Not my brother, not now anyway, since I am far from him and he will probably be in jail a night before he gets out. I am afraid that I will not be anything more than my mother, and the doorway to my grandmother’s life is closed. I wanted you to know what it’s like to have nothing. That is my fear. That I will be less than nothing.”
She paused and ran the hot, white sand between her fingers, letting it fall onto the grass in a small cone-shaped pile.
“I’m afraid I’ll take the drugs he gave me. I was addicted once.” He mouth grew dry at the words, and she shook a little. But she didn’t reach into her backpack. “I need to make the delivery or they will hurt my mother again. So you need to leave me now.�
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I wanted to hold her, to talk to her, to do something, anything to help.
I hadn’t understood anything.
I slammed my thumb down on the button and jerked back to Seattle. Dr. Meera had let go of my hand and had pulled up a chair by the couch. He rose and helped me sit up, then handed me a cup of tea and a chocolate bar. I shoved the button in my pocket and took the doctor’s offerings, although I couldn’t quite sip the tea or open the candy yet.
“Tell me.”
I told him from the beginning this time, the story taking so long I missed lunch. From time to time Dr. Meera made notes on his all-in-one, and once he took a call. When I was done, he said, “So, what did you learn?”
“She wasn’t . . . what I thought. She really was willing to run the drugs, but she was smart enough to try to show me her real fears, and . . . desperate enough to hope I could help her.”
“So?”
“So I guess I didn’t expect her to be so . . . subtle. Or to break the law.”
“Do you want to know what happened next?” he asked.
I nodded, finally opening the chocolate bar.
“They arrested all of them, even Valeria’s mother. But she’s out. Raul won’t get out in a day, not this time. We’ll use what you saw.”
“Do I have to go to court?”
“Yes.”
I flinched at that. But it was part of doing this for real, if that was what I wanted to do. “What about Valeria? Can I call her tonight?”
“I’m sorry.” He licked his lips and looked sorry.
I tensed, waiting for it.
“We had to arrest her.”
Damn. I chose my next word carefully. “Damn.” And then I said, “Hey, let her go.”
He ignored me. “This was a chain. We’ll have stopped a whole drug ring. They’ve killed two people. I don’t know if Raul would have ever let them kill Valeria, but he let them kill one of his friends. We have been watching them a long time.”
“You need to let her go. She was trying to show me things that mattered. She’s sweet.”
Cracking the Sky Page 8