Children of the Land

by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

  Years later, while driving my mother to the doctor, the radio will come on and a special episode on the border will say that a body only lasts a few days in the desert before it completely disappears—no trace of it ever existing, ravaged by scavengers. Sometimes the bodies slowly make their way up a mountain, pulled up little by little by those scavengers moving their hunger in the same direction. And I will quickly turn it off, reluctant to admit a hint of gratitude that she doesn’t know enough English to understand. They said that out there dogs return to their owners with a hand in their mouth and drop it at their owner’s feet. Perhaps the hand just lies there on the ground, waiting for the authorities, because it is a hand, because that is what hands do, pointing in one direction or another.

  They said sometimes dogs will last days out there, like the dog that saved my parents, and come back with nothing in their mouths, wagging their tails with joy at the sight of their owners, licking and licking their salty faces, tugging at their jeans to play. No one asks how it is they survive so long out there.2

  9.

  What had ten years of solitude done to his body? I didn’t really know about his personal life. I guess I never bothered to ask, or better yet, I didn’t want to know. Had he been alone that entire time? Had he taken a new girlfriend that we didn’t know about? I knew general things from other people: he had a dog, he drove a truck, he liked to spend time up in the mountains. I had probably only spoken with him a handful of times in the ten years he was gone. And even then, it was only because my mother pushed the phone into my ear to use up the last few minutes of a calling card. Was his voice still the same?

  He always avoided taking pictures, the only times I saw him was when someone came back from a trip to Mexico with pictures to share. He was there, caught off guard, in the background of someone else’s picture—always in slight profile or walking away, never staring directly at the camera. That was something people did often. They would return and distribute any pictures where a family member of ours happened to pop up, almost like a footnote to their vacation, or perhaps as an excuse to tell us all about their vacation. It was bittersweet. The pictures were always so full of joy. We wondered how we could inject ourselves into that joy.

  “Look, there’s your dad,” an aunt would say, pointing at a picture with my father lurking in the background and her daughters’ enormous heads squished together in the foreground eating a ripe mango sprinkled with flakes of pepper. “Thanks, Tía,” was all I could say.

  I almost preferred to keep our interactions that way, filtered through someone else’s emotions—it was easier to borrow them and give them back. His solitude, and ours, masked by someone else’s joy. He was always caught in the middle of doing something—moving a bucket, crouching down to sit. It was in those rare moments that we got to see how he lived. I could tell a few things about my father’s life simply from the way he leaned back in his chair, the angle of his head, the placement of his arms.

  I liked that he wasn’t taking the picture for me, it felt like I was watching him one frame at a time. In a way, it was like catching him in a moment of unfiltered sincerity, a moment that couldn’t actually exist given his stoic nature, one isolated by circumstance and time. Had I been there during the moment the photograph was taken, I doubt he would be acting the same.

  Sometimes it felt voyeuristic, like I shouldn’t be looking at him without his permission. He didn’t know that weeks later I would be sitting alone on my bed sifting through pictures where he was a small blurry dot behind my cousins smiling on horses. But that moment was ours, it was ours to keep and ours alone. I knew he would never give me anything like it if I asked.

  If he was laughing, it wasn’t for the camera, it wasn’t for us, only for him, only for the moment. But I wasn’t ready to confront him, so I was grateful for that removal of self, mostly because he wasn’t aware that those pictures were coming back to us. He wasn’t posing for the camera like my cousins in the frame.

  [First Movement Before Me as a Tuft of Clover]

  In one of those early trips of the mid-1980s, before I was born, Amá and Apá decided to make their life a little more stable and stay in the States for a while. They brought their two eldest children with them back from Amá Julia and began the slow work of settling down in Northern California. Yes, children are mobile and don’t necessarily tie you to one place, but for Amá and Apá, who didn’t have papers, to have a child born in America meant something different. Amá became pregnant in the States, and she had a home birth inside the doctor’s house, which had thick ivy winding over the windows.

  The child died only a few hours after birth, and they snapped a picture of Amá holding him in her arms, inconsolable.

  The day he was to be buried, they couldn’t afford a gravestone, so Amá spent the entire afternoon memorizing the exact placement of the trees and the bushes in the cemetery, counting how many steps from the path to where her child was lowered into the ground so she wouldn’t forget. She was mapping a gravestone in her head to make up for what others could not see just beneath the surface.

  “There’s a tuft of clover nearby, he’s three steps after the olive tree.”

  *

  He was named Manuel for the four hours he was alive. They would have given him a name even if he had lived for two, or even if he died in her womb; he would always be Manuel. But no one would ever call him that. He would hardly ever be mentioned.

  She wanted to mark it somehow, so that no one would step there, but anything short of a stone would be thrown away. She promised she would mark his grave one day. Soon after, they decided to return to Mexico, leaving the child behind. Besides, it was his land, he was born there. They gave up any hope of settling down, and after that, we never really stopped moving. It was too much to live near the clover, and it was too much to leave as well. Each paycheck she received, she handed over to Apá. There was never any chance for her to set aside a little for a stone. I always wondered, walking through a cemetery, avoiding the marked graves, how many times I was stepping on the unmarked graves of the poor. She didn’t go back to say goodbye to the child; she knew he would be there when she returned.

  *

  Out of everyone in the family, it was Manuel who remained in place. And over the years, they kept coming back to that town where he is buried like distant moons orbiting a planet. It’s where we eventually settled again somewhat, where the children had children. Something magnetic pulled us closer and closer to him.

  Every time someone asks how long we have been here in this town of Marysville, California, they follow it with “why.” “We don’t know,” we tell them. Thirty-six years after he was buried, Amá still lives within five miles of his grave. She has never forgotten how to find him.

  There’s a tuft of clover nearby, he’s three steps after the olive tree.

  We don’t know if the olive tree is still there; surely the clover is gone. And still, no one has gotten a stone for him; afraid that in looking again, we wouldn’t know where to find him, or that another marker would be there instead, placed by another family due to a small clerical error, always small clerical errors. We prefer to leave things the way they were, exactly as they were. We couldn’t do anything then, so we won’t do anything now.

  10.

  The Guadalajara airport seemed urban and rustic at the same time because it was the only choice for people from the city as well as people from the surrounding rural villages. I began looking at the faces of every older man I saw. I didn’t know how long it would take me to recognize my father. Maybe it would be instantaneous, or I would look at him and keep looking in disbelief as if I was looking at myself for the first time through a dirty mirror. Streams of travelers spilled through two large double doors into the lobby where family members lined a pathway behind a metal barricade. It looked like a parade of weary travelers walking down the aisle with families cheering on either side, as if we had just finished a marathon. There were smiling faces, and people hugging, and tears. Wa
s it always like that? How many other people on my flight were coming home for the first time too, how many were seeing some relatives for the first time in years? The mood in the air was one of joy. The workers, who had to witness this parade every half hour, seemed jaded, unfazed. Reunions only meant more trash for them to pick up. The salespeople standing beside their kiosks of lotions and perfumes straightened up for the newest arrivals.

  That is the nature of airports. It is in airports where two countries actually meet. It is in the embrace between two people, wherever they might have been, that countries collide.

  *

  Rubi had seen Apá in pictures but wasn’t really sure what to look for. I knew what to look for. In the distance I saw a white palm sombrero and a man beneath its shadow, waving at us. I immediately recognized Apá. I didn’t know if I should hug him or punch him in the face, but my body took over, walked up, and embraced him.

  Up close, I could see the changes in his face. He was much smaller than I remembered. His eyes were a little sunken, but his large potbelly still hung over his belt. He was clean-shaven except for his large mustache, which curved at the tips. It was the longest I had stared at my father directly. I had always been afraid to look at him in the face. I used that moment as an excuse to do so, to examine every wrinkle, every scar. I knew I would never again be able to look at him straight in the eyes for that long. It wasn’t like us.

  It would either take another ten years of separation or death to be able to concentrate my vision on him completely, to take him in and hold him there. I was looking to see what ten years of solitude had done to him. I was looking for regret in his face—in his eyes—but I wasn’t sure what regret looked like, only that Apá smelled like dried sweat and blackberries.

  *

  “Apá, this is my wife, Rubi,” I said to him, and pointed to Rubi, who had been standing to the side. She shook his hand and gave him a hug. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you,” she said, and wiped her eyes. On our wedding day, just two years prior, Rubi asked to speak with Apá. I never knew what she said to him, and never wanted to ask. She sat by herself in her long white wedding gown in a far corner of the room and cried on the phone before hanging up and had to touch herself up for our wedding pictures.

  I thought we would be leaving immediately after finding each other, but to my dismay, the “friend” my father paid to drive him three hours from Zacatecas to the Guadalajara airport decided to get more bang for his buck and include another pickup, so we had to stay and wait for those people to land. A bus would have been easier and cheaper but Apá insisted that a personal car was better for reasons unknown to me. I was very hungry, but I didn’t want to eat in the airport. I wanted to save my appetite for some good home-cooked meals. I wanted my first bite to utterly destroy me. I had more confidence in food to welcome me home than in my father, so I had saved my appetite. I hadn’t eaten all day. We decided to wait for the other passengers at the Burger King. Rubi got some fries, and I tried my hardest to resist them but I couldn’t, I was too hungry. I carefully ate one and then another, hoping that would stave off my hunger until we got home—or my father’s home, I still wasn’t sure what to call it.

  I didn’t know what to say to my father. Could I show him love and anger at the same time without one erasing the other? I couldn’t look at him for long anymore. That moment came and went. Now I could only examine him in short spurts and had to quickly look away. How quick, the moment his face opened for me before it disappeared beneath the shadow of his large hat again.

  Five long hours passed before the other passengers arrived—a man with his son, who was a little younger than me. All six of us, along with our luggage, finally left the airport and headed toward the car. As I was walking, I heard someone behind me grab my bag and shake my hand. He asked where our car was so he could help us with our luggage. Apá quickly grabbed the bags out of his hands and waved him away. “Trucha, mijo,” he said and took my suitcase himself. I felt bad for the man. I wanted to give him something, but my father refused. He knew this country more than I did. We crammed into the car as best as we could. I was irritated that we had to wait so long for the other passengers and even more so when I found out I had to sit on Rubi’s lap the entire way, hunched down. The other father’s son took the front seat so we squeezed into the single back seat and headed off. It was almost midnight. By the time we reached Tepechitlán, it would be close to two in the morning.

  *

  It took us about forty-five minutes to drive through the industrial city. There was a serene quiet to the gated yards full of commercial trailers illuminated beneath the orange lights of the city. It looked like everyone immediately dropped what they were doing as soon as night fell, and the hum of enterprise would pick up again in the morning.

  I was already tired of hunching over, so I adjusted my body one way and another but couldn’t find a good position. Apá and I were elbow to elbow, but I didn’t know if it was okay to touch him. It was nice to be that silent, and to be that close to Apá, though I dared not lean my head on his shoulder to sleep. We left the city behind us and began the ascent over the mountain pass. The driver rolled down his windows and they got stuck. The night air was cold against my face as we drove through the winding road. I wanted to see the world outside, but it was too dark and the wind blowing in my face made my eyes water and my vision blurry.

  By the first hour, the wind was unbearable. The driver said he could sometimes get the windows to work if he turned off the car, but then he ran the risk of the whole car not turning back on. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in the middle of the Sierra at night. I wanted to be home already, but fate seemed intent against it. I changed positions with Rubi so that she was sitting on top of me, but I still felt a growing claustrophobia. I felt weak because I hadn’t eaten or slept in almost twenty-four hours. The road was narrow and wound around sharp turns as we edged closer to my town. My father whispered to me that the driver had had a few drinks on the way. I wrapped my thin jacket around my head, mostly because I was cold, but also because I wanted to scream.

  *

  With each mile, I felt like I was going into myself, toward a point of singularity. I was afraid of both scenarios: that all of my questions would be answered and none. I asked my father the names of all of the towns we passed along the way: Santa María, García de la Cadena, La Ceja, El Teúl. I’d heard those names before, and though I couldn’t see them from the road, I imagined their town squares, and their churches all the same. I imagined the prayers of their mothers for all of the children stuck in El Norte and I realized that we were who people referred to when they said Norteños, we were the same shape of a mother’s prayer in one of those small towns, except it wasn’t really us whose return she was praying for.

  My world was getting smaller. What I dreamed about was right in front of me, out there, hidden beneath the blanket of night.

  The car began to slow down at the edge of a town that looked defeated in the orange haze of streetlamps. All around us were half-finished homes and empty lots. “We’re here,” said my father, probably just as relieved to be home as I was. I would have to wait until morning to see the rest of the town, hoping it was better than what I was able to see nearby. I was too tired to eat or take a shower. My father’s German shepherd greeted us from the rooftop. At last I had arrived.

  We made our bed in the spare room, and I told Rubi to shake the sheets to check for scorpions and look underneath the bed for snakes. It was a habit I didn’t know I had. It came back to me unannounced but just as strong as if I had been doing it all my life, as if I had never even left.

  [First Movement Before Me as Niños de la Tierra]

  They used to say that there were children living beneath the rocks on the west side of mountains. If you looked at their faces you would go blind, so you had to look up at the sky to avoid their stare.

  This was a myth brought back to Mexico from the U.S. by braceros like my grandfather Jesús. I liked to t
hink of these myths crossing the border as well, returning to their origin from thousands of miles away.

  I remember climbing a hill the adults told me not to go near because Los Niños de la Tierra lived there. I looked up to the sky as I walked, careful not to look down at their faces, afraid of going blind.

  Maybe those children belonged to someone, trapped in the north like everyone else, unable to return to the land of their birth. Or maybe that was the land of their birth, and they looked up because that’s where all the mothers and fathers were.

  11.

  I woke up confused and groggy, with mosquito bites down my legs. It took me a moment to remember where I was and why I was there. The air felt damp and cold, as if I had slept beneath the stars and was glazed with a film of morning dew. Rubi, lying next to me, stirred but did not wake as I stepped off the bed onto the cold cement with my bare feet. Unlike me, mosquitoes never really bothered with her. In Spanish, there’s a phrase for those who get bitten a lot: they call them sangrón, which means “bloody” (thus their attraction to mosquitoes), but it also means someone who is generally unpleasant.

  I didn’t want Apá to think that I was delicate; I thought I could pick up where we left off the day he left ten years ago, when I was his “little hawk.” Mostly, I didn’t want him to think that I was too good for unfinished cement floors, mud walls, and old creaky mattresses. I pretended I wasn’t terrified of going through my luggage, which I accidentally left open on the floor, or the blankets in the corner of the room, piled three feet high, which I was certain were covered in scorpions. I recognized those blankets as the same ones we had sent to him over the years. We mostly sent him jeans, wool socks, and blankets because we thought there was no better gift than to keep our old man clothed and warm. Seeing the blankets tossed in the corner of the dirt floor for what seemed like years, with the most recent ones on top, made me think of everything I could have bought instead with the little extra I had.