You didn’t need permission to enter the bright America that was Denny’s, which was next door to the little America, the embassy, and everything was in stark relief against the big America just beyond. All you needed was money. It was easy to take part in the Denny’s America, to sit down at a booth and listen to Britney sing “Hit me baby one more time,” sometimes twice, to order an American beer with your very American burgers and fries from a nice waitstaff who wore their names on their lapels. It was easy because they didn’t care when or where you made your money, only that you had it at the time of purchase. Money was your green card, they were selling their green card—“Verde que te quiero verde.”3
I asked for water because I calculated in my head that the bill was already high, but the waiter brought me bottled water, which wasn’t free. If I closed my eyes, I could still taste the iron and clay of the water from Apá’s well tap, back in Tepechitlán. Unlike the cell phone waves, unlike the masses of people trying to cross, unlike even some of the wildlife scrambling through the desert floor at night, the water deep in the aquifers beneath us was one of the only things that moved freely back and forth. The large reservoirs that spanned both cities hundreds of feet belowground had nothing to do with us, with this system of walls, cameras, and paper. I knew that both cities were fighting for that water, and both were trying to claim ownership over it, as if it too could be divided. How flawed we were, and still are, to think that an underground lake could be cut in half like a piece of string.
The bottle sat there on the table, sweaty with condensation. Even in a place as dry as Juárez, there was moisture in the air. It made a ring around the napkin. I felt guilty drinking water, even just looking at it. I remembered Customs and Border Protection’s policy of slashing bottles of water left behind intentionally by aid groups in the desert, in order to discourage more migrants from crossing, to deprive them even of a last shred of hope for survival. How many needed that bottle more than me? How many more were out there, beyond the city lights, in the dark areas that would soon be flooded with light in the morning, so much light that you wonder if one sun alone could be responsible? Out there were families who were just starting the journey we had been on for decades and were hoping to soon end. I twisted the cap and drank it all. It was so cold that it hurt going down, and it turned my stomach to look at the bottle standing on the table, so empty, as our food was set down.
*
Even though he wasn’t paying, Apá spent the rest of the dinner complaining about the price of the food. It looked cold even as the steam was rising. It was Wednesday night, and his appointment wasn’t until Monday, which meant that his complaints would last until Monday. The bill was too much for me to admit. I didn’t want him to know I was counting every peso, careful not to spend too much, constantly looking at my bank account on my phone. I knew we couldn’t afford to eat there every day, so I was relieved that he didn’t like the food.
The check came, and it was almost six hundred pesos. It was Denny’s America, which meant they charged like Big America, too. Rubi took out her small purse that she’d had for years, which was starting to rip. She wrote down the expense on a small notepad and paid. I felt bad for her because all of my family’s troubles were expenses that were paid directly out of her checks as well. It wasn’t her father who was sitting across from us, and yet she treated him as such, perhaps better. She could talk to him in ways that I couldn’t. She could calm him down and make him understand things in ways I struggled with myself. I never liked to look inside her purse because it always reminded me of how much she had deprived herself for me and my family, not because there was never any cash—neither of us ever carried cash anymore—but in the small items she carried. Recycled pens, a small coin purse, a plastic comb, a napkin, a small bottle of foundation, a Lotto scratcher. They were things that said, “I’m doing my best with what I have,” things I found often while going through Amá’s purse as a kid to see if she had an extra dollar anywhere.
Apá refused to let me tip, and called the waiters vultures, zopilotes. I felt bad for the young waiter who stared nervously as we argued. It wasn’t Apá’s money, but he still felt he had ownership over it. I saw a glimpse of the old dad, I saw it in his eyes. I knew he wanted to say something more, but he couldn’t; I could tell that he was holding back because it wasn’t his money. We paid the application fee for his interview years before, we got him there to the border, we booked the hotel, we paid for the food, we dished out all our savings to keep paying the lawyers, we paid for everything.
Time didn’t stand still after he left. It moved and we moved too, we grew. But the more time I spent with him, the more I saw that it was he who stood still. Even all those years before he was deported, when he was going back and forth to Mexico, he was static, he saw the world the same, he dressed the same, talked, thought, and breathed the same. Nothing was different about him. Having to ask for our help, having us pay the tab, the hotel, the fees, was slowly eating away at him because he couldn’t accept that we had grown up without him.
*
Back at the hotel, he went into his room and we went into ours; we locked our door tight, but he left his slightly cracked. He felt comfortable enough to leave it open. The city, and the country, was his home in a way that it wasn’t ours.
“Go talk to him,” Rubi said as she slipped into her pajamas.
“Fine,” I said, reluctantly.
I knocked and pushed his door open. He whistled for me to come in, knowing it was me even before I spoke. I didn’t go to apologize for talking back to him at dinner over the tip. I just wanted to set up the plans for the next day. He was lying on his bed with his shirt off in his underwear. Noted. He looked very comfortable.
“So, tomorrow we’re going to do your biometrics,” I said, trying not to look at him but instead looking at the TV, which he put on mute because he hated talking over it. “Yep, God willing,” he said in a reverent tone. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him without a shirt, let alone without pants. Even as a child, around the house, he was always fully dressed. He looked like a different person without clothes. I could see his bony shoulders (noted), his droopy chest with his large nipples (noted), and his thick legs (noted). In my head, he always had thick legs, unlike me. I didn’t want to see how he looked when he was most at rest, when he didn’t have to look a certain way for others. His whole body looked soft, in fact.
I remembered taking a shower with him as a child, and also seeing him in nothing but underwear. I was already taking showers by myself then, with the occasional bath. It was during the time when I was making that transition, when I started to become embarrassed of my naked body and would insist that my sister or mother no longer bathe me, or at least let me keep my underwear on if they did. Puberty was still years away, but I remember I didn’t want to be seen because by then I had already gotten my first erection.
I got in the shower first and he followed, or he got in and I followed. I wasn’t as embarrassed with Apá as I was with my sister or Amá, but he told me to keep my underwear on, as did he, and I was old enough to know why but young enough to not think about it too much, and instead just have fun playing with the water. We let the warm water wash over us and we splashed each other with soap. It was a father being a father, making funny faces and spitting water at me with his cheeks blown out like a puffer fish, which made me laugh and almost slip. When we finished, I stepped out and took off my underwear to dry myself on the mat. It was okay because I was no longer in the shower. I put the towel around my small waist and left him in the shower. He had closed the curtain and was drying himself. It was a side of him that I had never seen even in my young life, and one that I would never see again. Something remotely tender. It was just that one time. Even a few more months would have made me too old for that. Perhaps he realized too late that he’d lost the chance for moments like those, and so was only allowed it once before I began to grow.
As he lay on his bed in the hotel room,
I almost felt sorry for him. His eyes were starting to become milky with cataracts and other soft smoke-like tissue. His actual lens was turning opaque; it was doing it to itself as a way to protect the eye from the harsh light. He was making himself blind out of his own stubbornness; he refused to wear sunglasses in the intense sun of the High Sierra. He always said sunglasses were for women, and I thought of the saying “chíngate pues,” which roughly translated to “Well, go fuck yourself then,” which he did, which was why he could only see clearly out of one eye, chíngate pues. Seeing him watch the muted TV on impeccably white sheets, obviously ignoring me, it was almost difficult to imagine him as the same person I remembered as a kid, holding my hair tight in his fist above the bathroom sink, saying “Look at me, look at me, goddamnit.”
After staring at the TV for a minute or two, I walked over and gave him a hug and said good night. Though his skin still looked tight around his shoulders and arms, it was loose when I touched it (noted). He was warm, and he patted me on the back as if, again to say, “Ok, son, that’s enough, that’s enough.”
I went back to my room to take a shower because after traveling all day, I felt dirty. On the mat I slowly pulled my underwear down and took off my shirt. There was so much pressure from the shower head that I had to turn it down a little. I waited for the water to get warm, and eventually the mirrors began to fog over. I stepped in. One foot, then the next. I stayed there for a long time. I knew I shouldn’t have kept the water running for so long. And yet I let the water pour over me. Gallons and gallons of water. I wasn’t even scrubbing anymore, just standing there with the water on my face. It was such a waste, and rather than make me speed up, the guilt made me linger in shame. I wondered how many people I could have saved in the desert with all the water that was wasted in that shower. I felt like punishing myself. I turned up the heat until my skin could take it no more, until it was pink and tender, like the burger I left half eaten on the table.
[Third Movement as Migration, a Streetlamp, a Fruit Stand, and My Uncle’s Mistress]
The butcher went to the other side. His son, the one with the amputated leg, also went to the other side. They settled in Georgia. The middle-school math teacher went to the other side—her cousin swore she could make forty dollars in a single day picking oranges if she was fast enough. No math required.
She wouldn’t be fast enough.
The priest went to the other side, and left the believers to wander through the church, blessing everything they touched. The Virgen de Guadalupe and the Pale Christ abandoned the altar and went to serve food in a Denny’s on the other side. They went by Chuy and Lupe, they took English classes at the library at night. The neighbors to our right went, but only half of the family; the other half sat anxiously every day, waiting for the mail to arrive. The mayor went to the other side to enroll his children in school.
*
Every Sunday the crowds that gathered at the plaza shrank by one or two. It was hardly even noticeable at first. The sheriff went to the other side and left his uniforms in the street to whoever would claim them. No one claimed them. The drunks who spent their mornings in the cantina went to the other side, as did their bartender, serving them drinks along the way, all lamenting the women who had left them. The young man who went to the national track-and-field championship tried to go to the other side but died in the crossing. His running was only good for circles.
The dogs went to the other side. The women waiting on the corner for their bus to the market went to the other side. The markets went to the other side.
The debts all went to the other side—the only things that death could not touch. All the paper in the town was taken to the other side, so people reverted to memorization. The stonemasons, their tools, the trees, the money, the nuns, have gone to the other side.
It seemed like there was hardly anything left except the mothers who sent their sons ahead of them.
Eventually, all that was left was a street post next to a fruit stand where Angelica, my uncle’s mistress, sold mangoes to anyone passing by. No one passed by anymore, but she still waved the parched mangoes in the air, yelling, “Dos por diez pesos.” She bit into a mango and spat the pulp on the road. There were still roads, yes, but no signs, so she might as well have been anywhere. She picked her teeth with her nail, trying to pry loose the small fibers lodged in her gums.
The streetlight turned on, and the mangoes got sweeter and sweeter in their box.
11.
I didn’t sleep very well our first night in Juárez. I opened the curtains and flooded the room with morning light, making Rubi squint and turn over. Outside, Juárez was already bustling. I could see old buses stopping for students dressed in black oxfords and blazers. I could hear their groaning engines all the way from our room as they churned down the boulevard, transporting people to the factories called maquilas to make goods that would be used in other countries.
The air was fresh and slightly chilly as Rubi, Apá, and I walked out of the hotel after leaving three soggy paper plates with lukewarm eggs untouched at the breakfast bar. Even though it was still early, all of the sprinkler puddles had dried up by then. Apá looked different in the morning light, almost as if the light alone made him larger. But the difference was that he wasn’t cowboyed up. He wore slacks and loafers, which I had never seen him wear. We walked conveniently across the street to the clinic for his doctor’s appointment. The first step to getting his green card would start with a doctor looking inside him. The application required an archaic physical to screen for diseases, to determine if he was fit to enter the United States.
*
In the doctor’s office, we sat quietly with our legs crossed. Everyone was either looking at the floor or trying to quiet their children. It was a new building, very modern. The metal benches were bright blue and looked even brighter against the chemical whiteness of the walls, which were still free from scratches and scuffs.
Maybe it wasn’t a new building, but rather a building in which people did not touch anything. We were almost certain that the workers there were also employed across the street at the embassy. Or if not, we wondered how deep their channels of communication were. And so out of that wondering came stillness, followed by slow, calculated movement. We quickly took our seats and sat up straight, looking dead ahead as if our interview had already secretly started, as if there were spies reporting to the immigration agents across the street. If there was any conversation between the patients, it was simply a mumble, nothing beyond the occasional comment on the weather, or the waiting, always the waiting.
Each person was hypervigilant of the others and how much space they took up in the room, even if the room was empty, or especially if it was.
I looked for signs in the faces of the others waiting with us in the lobby, signs that could reassure us that our specific uncertainty and fear wasn’t unique. Everyone in that room would be interviewed or was accompanying someone to be interviewed. Eventually others would come in to replace us as soon as we left, coming to a halt on the same blue benches, being careful not to peel any of the paint. I wanted to turn to my neighbor and beg him to tell me why he was silent, and perhaps he wanted to do the same. But we both just sat there, not touching anything.
Despite having arrived at the clinic from our own unique circumstances, places, and histories, whether we said it or not, at that moment, everyone in the waiting room was the same helpless person with the same helpless prayer. We had everything in common. We were all smelling the same sterile air coming in from the vents. We were all shuffling our feet and fidgeting with our hands—all leaning to one side and then another when we got tired. And that’s all we did, waited. We were good at it.
I recognized one family who was staying at the same hotel as us. We looked at each other and nodded, as if trying to reassure each other that things would be okay. Despite our mutual uncertainty, and fear, it was a triumph to be in Juárez. For so many years, to sit at a table for an interview was not even an o
ption. It was our version of the Emerald City. We had made it that far. But unlike Dorothy, we had been disillusioned long before we arrived.
12.
Shortly after entering World War I, the U.S. passed the Immigration Act of 1917, also known as the “Asiatic Barred Zone Act,” which prevented immigrants from Asia and its adjacent countries from entering. The law also introduced a literacy test to screen and further exclude immigrants deemed “imbeciles, idiots, feeble-minded persons, persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority (homosexuality), vagrants, [and those with] physical defectives.”
It was around this time that Juárez implemented what the Germans would later call “the El Paso solution.” Mexican migrants were subjected to screening practices at the border that were later believed to have partly influenced the Nazi gas chambers. They were forced to remove their clothes, wait in lines naked, and be bathed in a shower of different chemicals to kill the supposed lice, ticks, or typhus-spreading rat fleas they wrongfully believed the migrants were carrying. Although the war was over and the typhus scare ended, even though the outbreak never existed, the practice of “delousing” continued up until the 1950s.4
A living uncle of mine still remembers vividly the time he migrated in 1950 through Juárez and how they stuffed his clothes and shoes into large industrial dryers to “kill” any infestations. He remembers walking naked through the line to retrieve his clothes and the bad taste of whatever powder they poured over him. He said it tasted like grapefruit rinds, just like the bitter citrus of the fields on the other side, ready to be picked.
Children of the Land Page 14