I was too tired to ask.
“Fifteen hundred,” he said. “Not all of them made it, but I was paid for each. My share. Never mind,” he said, when he saw that I wasn’t going to talk about my money. “We must go on.”
He started away. I closed my eyes, prayed, and started after him. About an hour later, he held up his hand for me to pause and be quiet. I could hear voices off to our left. I drew closer to him and waited.
“It’s all right,” he said after hearing more. “It’s a group heading across to the United States.”
“Maybe we can tell them about Ignacio. Please,” I begged.
“They can’t go out of their way. Listen. Don’t you hear the bebés pequeños? There are families crossing. If they make mistakes because you ask them to look, little children will die. Do you want that?”
“No, but…”
“Walk,” he said, and started ahead.
I listened to the voices. They seemed closer. For a moment, I debated running to them, but then I would lose Pancho for sure, and if I didn’t find them, I would be alone with nothing. I didn’t have the strength to walk all the way back to America, either, even if I did find them, and he had made it sound as if we were not that far from our destination. I hated myself for it, but I rushed after him and not after those who might have looked for Ignacio.
Hours later, Pancho said we were at the rest stop. It was another opening in a hill.
“What if more bandits come?”
“You want to sleep out here in the sun?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. We entered the smaller cave and settled down for another long day’s rest.
“This is the last of the water and food,” he said. “We must make it to Sasabe as soon as we can today after the sun goes down.”
He gave the water to me and more beef jerky. Then he broke the remaining bread in half, and I saw a roll of bills. Slowly, he unraveled them.
“A little pocket money,” he said, smiling. “If those two vermin were hungry back there, I’d have none.”
He thought a moment and then handed me some of his money.
“I don’t know if you have any money for the buses or not, but here.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking it.
“Why would a young girl like you, pretty, too, want to risk her life to go back to Mexico? You can tell me now. It will pass the time.”
I told him why I had been brought to America and what had happened to me and how Ignacio and his friends had sought to punish Bradley and what had happened. He listened and nodded.
“Ignacio was right to run off, but for you, I don’t think it would have been that serious.”
“I wanted to go home,” I said.
He thought and, for the first time, showed some emotion.
“I have not been home for many years. I do not even know if my brothers and sisters live.”
“Why don’t you go visit?”
“It’s better to remember them than to learn bad things about them now,” he said. “No more talking,” he snapped, as if I had peeled off a scab. “Let’s go to sleep.”
He sprawled out, using his knapsack as a pillow. I wondered what sort of a man made his living guiding desperate people across the desert to work as illegal aliens, knowing that some of them would die trying. Was he doing a good thing or a bad thing? As he had said, he made a very good living doing it, but was he driven by any higher reasons? Did he see himself as someone leading people to a better life, to a better dream, to hope, or did he not care? Was he afraid to know his pollos, afraid to feel sorry if one fell too far behind or got injured? How many had died walking behind him? How many would in the future? When would this migration of illegal birds end?
My body was too tired to ache anymore. Even the pain was exhausted. This time, I slept so deeply and so hard it took him a while to wake me, shaking me so hard he nearly broke my shoulder.
“It’s time to go,” he said. “This is the shortest portion, but it’s the hardest, because we cannot stop, and we have no more water. You understand, Delia? Draw upon all the strength in your well.”
I nodded, scrubbed my cheeks with my dry palms, and stood up. For a moment, I wobbled. He looked at me, concerned.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Walk.”
“Good.”
He started, and I followed. Where I found the strength, I do not know. It was as if my legs had developed minds of their own and my upper body was long gone and was simply being carried. Two hours into our walk, we again heard voices. This time, they were very close.
“Wait here,” he said, holding up his hand. I stood, but my legs felt as if they were still moving. He disappeared through a bush toward the voices. I waited and waited, nearly falling asleep on my feet. I was too tired even to worry about being deserted.
And then he returned, carrying a jug of water.
“The fools sold it to me,” he said. “I offered them too much for them to refuse. They’ll be sorry when they run out. Here, drink,” he told me.
For a light moment, my conscience complained. I was drinking what might be needed to keep someone else alive, maybe even a child, but the rest of me screamed so loudly against any remorse that I grabbed the jug and began to gulp.
“Slowly, Delia,” he warned.
It felt like life itself rolling down my throat and into my body. I took a deep breath and nodded, thanking him and handing back the jug. He drank.
“We’re definitely going to make it now,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We walked on. I had long since lost track of time, of when an hour or so had passed, but suddenly, he cried out and pointed, and I looked and saw the lights.
“Sasabe, Mexico,” he said. “We’re almost there. You’re almost home.”
I was so happy I couldn’t speak. It wasn’t until we drew very close that I even thought about Ignacio again. I felt guilty having forgotten about him. Neither I nor Pancho had mentioned him during the night. To Pancho, he was just another pollo, I thought, easily forgotten. I wasn’t about to forgive him, but it did occur to me that if he didn’t forget the ones he lost, he would be haunted and unable to do what he did.
He took us through an opening in the barbed-wire fence at the border crossing and into the village. I stood looking at the lights, the people, the cars, and listened to the noise, the laughter, horns beeping, music from the cafés, and thought I had landed on another planet. How could all of this be going on while we were out there struggling to survive, while hundreds were doing so right that moment?
“There is the bus station.” Pancho pointed. “You can find out the schedule.”
“Is there no one we can tell about Ignacio?” I asked him.
“You can go, but it will be a waste of time, and you might miss a bus. No one will listen or do anything. No one will want to go out there to search for him, Delia. He is one of so many who are out there, and you don’t have enough money to pay anyone. You cannot do any more, Delia. You must do for yourself now. Buena suerte,” he said. “So much is luck after all.”
I watched him walk off, looked back into the desert from where we had come and where Ignacio might lie injured or dead, and then I walked to the bus station, where I bought a second-class ticket to Mexico City. I had nearly four hours to wait for a bus. I bought myself some tortillas and beef and a cold soda that was to me at that moment what the most expensive wine must be to my aunt, I thought.
After I ate and drank, I sat in the station and fell asleep for an hour despite the hard wooden seat. I was anxious to get onto the bus so I could continue sleeping. I would have plenty of time, since the trip would take more than thirty hours. There was a bathroom on the bus, but there would be stops along the way at terminals where passengers could get off and buy food. No one wanted to guarantee any time, not even the bus driver, when other passengers asked about destinations. At this point, I almost didn’t care. I was in Mexico, and soon I would be walking down the street to my family home and my grandmoth
er.
I’m sure I looked pretty bad. My hair was filthy, and so was my dress. I had no money for any new clothes, but I did the best I could cleaning myself in the terminal bathroom. I found a brush someone had left on the bus and cleaned it when we stopped at another station. I was still so tired, however, that I really didn’t care how I appeared. Sleep was all I craved. All of the muscles in my body were still very angry. The aches and pains actually grew worse while I was traveling on the bus. I was sure those who saw me wondered how someone so young could sleep so much, but the blessing was that it made the trip seem that much shorter.
When we arrived at the terminal in Mexico City, I searched for the best way to get to my village. The ticket agent told me I would have to change buses three times, but the last bus would take me home. I was anxious and excited, even though I had hours and hours to go.
It was just after midday before I reached my village. As the bus drew closer, my heart started to thump. I wasn’t sure how Abuela Anabela would greet me. Would she be so angry that even the sight of me would not calm her? Had my aunt sent word of my running away, with all that had happened? If she had, I was sure she had made me look terrible. Knowing my aunt, she would send it through Señor Orozco, the postmaster, so that everyone in the village would hear the story.
The bus stopped in the square. As soon as I stepped off, I stood gaping at everything. I felt like someone who had been blind for a while and had suddenly regained her sight. Everything looked beautiful; nothing looked too old or in too much need of repair. The church steeple loomed higher than ever, and the elderly people I saw sitting and talking no longer looked pitiful or lost to me. I wanted to run up to each and every one of them and hug him or her.
No one seemed to take much note of me. For a moment, it made me question whether I had actually been away. Had it all been some horrible nightmare? Did I just wake up in the square? The blisters and the aches were quick to tell me otherwise. I started for home, walking the streets I had walked all my life but never noticing as much as I did now.
When I turned the corner for our street, I paused. The great heat had not come there, I thought. It was comfortable. The sun didn’t burn, and the breeze was soft and refreshing. In the distance, I saw the smoke spiraling from someone’s garbage fire. I smiled at the dogs that lifted their lazy heads while they sprawled in the shade. Their curiosity was not enough to get them to rise to sniff around me. They had begun their siesta, and that was too holy to be violated.
I laughed to myself, eager once again to embrace this simple, unsophisticated, honest life. I gladly would sleep in a room smaller than Sophia’s closet. I would lie on a bed she would consider a joke. I would sweep and scrub floors that would never look rich and clean. I would work beside my grandmother, making our traditional foods and never thinking about gourmet cooking, and I would not regret a single moment. I even looked forward to seeing Señora Porres and hearing her warnings about the ever-present evil eye.
“I have looked into that eye, Señora Porres,” I would tell her. “I have looked into it as you never have, and I have left it blinded behind me.”
My elation filled me with new courage. I walked faster toward our home. No matter what Abuela Anabela had been told or thought, I would soon make her happy again. Tonight, we would say our prayers together, and we would fall asleep listening to each other’s breathing and be comforted.
The sight of our dry old fountain and the angels was never as wonderful, nor were the stubbles of grass, the shrubs, and the lean-to of a kitchen. I couldn’t take it all in fast enough and again heard Pancho’s warning to drink slowly, for this was to me like water in a desert. I was home.
I rushed up to the front door, paused to catch my breath, and then entered my house.
“Abuela Anabela!” I called. It was so quiet. Why wasn’t she preparing her midday meal? “Abuela!”
I went through the house in seconds but did not find her. The kitchen looked untouched, not a dish out of place, nothing in the sink, the table clear. In our bedroom, both beds were made. Her nightgown was folded as usual and lying on her bed, something that made me smile. Perhaps she had gone off to deliver some of her mole, I thought. I drank some water and pondered what to do. Search for her or just wait?
Then I heard the sound of footsteps and the front door opening.
“Abuela Anabela!” I cried, hurrying to greet her.
I stopped.
Señora Paz was standing there alone. “My sister said she thought she saw you walk up the street,” she told me.
Because she wasn’t smiling and showing her happiness at seeing me, I assumed I had been right to fear my aunt sending the news back here. The whole village thought badly of me. I would have to work at turning them around.
“Do you know where my grandmother has gone?”
She crossed herself and looked up. “She has gone to God,” she said.
Somewhere back in the desert, a coyote was howling over a fallen man, a buzzard was circling, scorpions crawled quickly toward the body, and snakes rattled and hissed nearby.
It wasn’t only in the desert where mercy was a stranger. It was everywhere there were hearts made to be broken.
The weight of my struggles, the weight of my dead hope and happiness, was too great to be ignored or resisted.
I folded to the floor like a flag bearer in a great battle, once full of determination, brave and strong, defeated in the end by the enemy he could not see.
His flag floated down over him, burying him under what were once his dreams of glory.
23
Homecoming
“Five days ago, she just didn’t wake up, Delia. She passed on in her sleep, dreaming of you, I’m sure,” Señora Paz told me.
She had called for her sister, and they had put me on the sofa and placed a cold washcloth on my forehead. The two of them looked down at me with similar expressions of pity and sorrow. They were two years apart, but they were like twins in the way they reacted to things. If one had a headache, so did the other. One didn’t laugh without the other joining in, and any complaint one made, the other seconded.
“They’re twins, all right,” Abuela Anabela would tell me after they left us whenever they had visited. “One was just born later.”
It was a funny thing for her to say, but Abuela Anabela used to say neither of the sisters needed to look into a mirror. Each could look at the other and see herself.
“The whole village attended her funeral, Delia,” Señora Paz’s sister, Margarita, said. “Señor Lopez attended and gave the church a good donation. While you were away, your grandmother often sent him things to eat, her wonderful lemon cakes, her chicken mole, or whatever she happened to make that day.”
“She was very proud of you and what you were doing in the United States. She read us your letters as soon as she received them,” Señora Paz said.
“She read them to anyone who would listen,” her sister added, smiling.
“Why did you not know of her passing, Delia? Señor Diaz sent news to your aunt. He sent it through one of those fancy machines,” Señora Paz said, those beady eyes of hers filling with suspicion.
“It’s called a fax,” her sister told her.
“Whatever, it is supposed to be very fast.”
“I left before my aunt received it,” I told them. It was, after all, the truth.
“Why did you leave?” Señora Paz asked pointedly.
“Since you obviously did not know about her passing, you have come just for a visit?” her sister followed, jumping on my words like a detective.
Grandmother Anabela would tell me they were getting all the information they could so they could spread it firsthand in the square tonight. They were our town criers, the town’s radio and newspaper all wrapped into one. It was clear that no news about me having run off had preceded my arrival. No one back in Palm Springs had made much of an effort to find me.
“I have not come back just for a visit. I have come home to stay,” I
told them.
They both looked shocked, their eyes similarly wide, their mouths opened equally. I nearly laughed at how perfectly they resembled each other. Then Señora Paz nodded at her sister.
“Margarita said it was odd that a big car didn’t bring you here, that you had come back on a bus,” Señora Paz said.
“What about su tía Isabela? Did she want you to leave?” Margarita asked. “Was she sorry she had taken you in to live with her and her children?”
One thing was absolutely sure about the sisters, I thought. They had to know everything as quickly as possible. It would be terrible for someone else to have even the slightest information ahead of them. I turned away and closed my eyes.
“I need to rest a little and then go to the cemetery,” I said.
“Of course. But you should know Señor Diaz has arranged for the sale of this house. Your grandmother gave him the right to do so in the event of her passing,” Señora Paz said. “The house was sold to Señor Avalos just yesterday. The money was set aside for you, I’m sure. You will have to see Señor Diaz so he doesn’t send it on to your aunt for you.”
“The house is sold?”
“Sí, Delia,” Margarita said. “No one expected you would come back here to live, least of all your grandmother, who was receiving the wonderful letters from you.”
I had no more parents, no grandmother, and now no home.
“Maybe you should take your money from the house and go back. Will your aunt take you back?” Señora Paz asked. They would get the nitty-gritty details one way or another, I thought.
“I cannot think about it now,” I said, bringing disappointment to both their faces.
“I’m sure Señor Avalos will let you stay here a day or so, but I heard he has plans to do some repairs and changes,” Señora Paz said. “We’ll let him know you are here. You can come and have something to eat with us when you are ready, Delia,” she added. “And until you decide what to do, you are welcome to stay with us as well.”