American Dirt : A Novel (2020)

by Cummins, Jeanine

  •Drugs and alcohol are prohibited. Anyone presenting symptoms of their use will be denied entry.

  •Please remember that this is a place of sanctuary. Here you may rest while God restores your strength for the journey yet ahead of you. Your stay here must, therefore, be transitory, and limited to a maximum of three nights.

  Before he can finish reading the list, two men greet them from the far side of the fence. Only their heads are visible above the green plastic stripping. One is an older man with dark glasses and gray hair, and he does the talking.

  ‘¡Bienvenida, hermana!’ he says. He steps closer to the fence so now Luca can see his shoulders as well, between the strings of barbed wire. He’s wearing a dark blue cardigan and he smiles at them. ‘You’re in need of shelter?’

  Luca nods.

  ‘You are migrants?’

  Lydia nods, reluctantly claiming the word.

  ‘Here,’ the man says kindly, gesturing to his stocky younger companion to open a gate a few feet away. ‘Please come in.’

  Inside the fence sits an unpainted cinder block building with open-air windows covered in sheets of black tarpaulin. It’s ugly, and its bleak shadow steals into Luca and thieves the relief right out of him.

  The older man folds his hands and speaks softly. ‘Are you in any immediate danger?’

  Lydia thinks before she answers. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not right now.’

  ‘Do you have any immediate medical needs?’

  ‘No, we are healthy.’

  ‘Gracias a Dios,’ the man says.

  ‘Thank God,’ Lydia agrees.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’ He turns to walk, indicating that they should follow.

  ‘Yes, a little.’

  They round the corner of the ugly gray building, and suddenly the space opens around them. Luca’s lungs fill up with the rush he’d been waiting for. The chain link fence that surrounds the entire compound is opaque only at the front, so he can see now, beyond its boundaries in the back, across the bare cornfields to the town of Huehuetoca nearby, its houses clustering merrily up the hillside. Large prickly pear plants gather in clumps just outside the fence, their wide paddles cartoonishly green in the golden afternoon. The compound is much bigger than it looked from the road. There’s one white van, a small house, a chapel, a string of Porta Potties, and two gigantic warehouses.

  ‘Welcome to the Casa del Migrante, San Marco D’Aviano. I am Padre Rey. This is one of my helpers, Néstor.’

  Néstor raises one hand in salute but doesn’t look at them. He keeps his eyes on Padre Rey’s black sandals.

  ‘We will get you something to drink right away, and you can freshen up for a few minutes.’

  Luca tucks his thumbs nervously beneath the straps of his backpack.

  ‘Hermana Cecilia will get you registered after you’ve had a little rest.’

  ‘Thank you, Padre,’ Lydia says. ‘God bless you for your kindness.’

  They step inside the first of the two warehouse buildings, and even though it’s well lit, it takes Luca’s eyes a few minutes to adjust. It’s the first time he’s been out of the stark sunshine all day. At a table, a boy and a girl, both younger than Luca, are coloring. The girl turns her head this way and that, admiring her artwork. A group of men and women sit at another table, some cleaning and sorting beans, others peeling carrots. Bright orange shreds collect in piles on the table. In the farthest corner of the large room, more men are watching fútbol. Luca and Lydia choose an empty table and sit on lime-green plastic chairs. A lady with a red coverall apron brings them two glasses of cold lemonade. It has an umber tint, but Luca gulps it gratefully anyway.

  ‘Dinner is at seven,’ the woman explains apologetically. ‘We can’t make any exceptions unless it’s a medical emergency.’

  It’s after three o’clock in the afternoon, and they haven’t eaten since the tortillas beside the tracks early this morning. But ‘No, it’s okay, we’re fine,’ Lydia says. ‘Thank you.’

  As the woman returns to the kitchen, Lydia is swamped with emotion. She swallows it with the lemonade. She examines the faces of the people at the other tables, but no one looks at her. Hermana Cecilia soon appears and brings them to her small office. She’s a tidy little woman, and her office is papered with children’s artwork. A pot on her desk holds a pink plastic flower. There are green chairs just like the ones in the big room. Hermana Cecilia’s voice is the most soothing sound Luca has ever heard, a peaceful, uninflected hum of determined protection, so that no matter what words she says, the words Luca hears are You are safe here, you are safe here, you are safe. From a shelf behind her desk, she produces a tub of crayons and a small stack of clean, white paper.

  ‘Would you like to stay here and draw?’ she asks Luca with her hum-voice. ‘Or sit in the big room with the other children?’

  Luca’s hand shoots out and grabs Mami’s.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Hermana Cecilia says. ‘You can stay with your mami.’

  Lydia stands to pluck the backpack from his shoulders. She encourages Luca to sit at the other desk, beside the door.

  ‘This way you can color,’ she says. ‘You won’t have to hold the paper on your lap.’

  Luca sits, and Lydia returns to sit across from the nun, who has some paperwork and a file folder in front of her.

  ‘Before we begin, I want you to know that you don’t have to answer anything that makes you uncomfortable. I ask that you try, because the answers you give will help us assist more people in the future, to prepare for new patterns of arrivals. But all the information we gather here is anonymous. You needn’t give your real name unless you want to.’

  Lydia nods her consent, the nun lifts the cap off her pen, and they begin.

  ‘Names and ages?’

  Lydia gives a little twist of her neck before she responds. ‘I’m thirty-two and my son is eight.’

  Hermana Cecilia writes down: María, 32, y José, 8.

  ‘Where are you traveling from?’

  She hesitates, then asks a question of her own. ‘No one has access to these files?’

  Hermana Cecilia folds her hands and leans slightly forward. ‘I assure you, hermana, whatever, whoever you’re worried about will never see these files. The only copy is kept locked in that filing cabinet, in this office, also locked, whenever I’m not here.’ Her eyes are blue, and they twinkle when she smiles. ‘I’m always here.’

  Lydia nods. ‘We come from Acapulco.’

  The nun returns to her writing. ‘What is your intended destination?’

  ‘We’re going to Estados Unidos.’

  ‘What city?’

  ‘Denver.’

  ‘A friendly city,’ the nun says. ‘Pretty there. Are you traveling for reasons of being reunited with a member of your immediate family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have family members currently living in the United States?’

  ‘Yes, an uncle and two cousins.’ She hasn’t seen that uncle, Abuela’s younger brother, since she was a young girl. She’s never met his children.

  ‘They’re in Denver?’ Hermana Cecilia asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They are expecting you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was your decision to migrate planned or spontaneous?’

  ‘Spontaneous.’ Lydia squeezes her clasped hands together between her thighs.

  ‘Was the primary reason for your journey financial?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was the primary reason for your journey medical?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was the primary reason for your journey domestic violence?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was the primary reason for your journey related to gang violence or recruitment?’

  ‘No.’ Lydia shakes her head.

 
‘Was the primary reason for your journey related to violence by a cartel or drug traffickers in your place of origin?’

  Lydia clears her throat. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. She can hear Luca’s crayon moving rapidly across the paper in silky strokes.

  ‘Are you currently in fear for your life from a specific individual or individuals?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you received direct threats to your safety?’

  Lydia nods. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were the threats violent in nature?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you describe the threats?’

  Lydia scoots her chair closer and places her elbows on the edge of the desk. She folds her fingers together and lowers her head and her voice.

  ‘The cartel killed sixteen members of our family,’ she says, staring at the pen. The nun does not look up from her paper. ‘They came to a family party and they shot everyone. My husband, my mother, my sister, and her children. Everyone. We escaped.’

  Hermana Cecilia’s pen is at a momentary loss. It hangs suspended over the page for a few seconds before the nun can make it move again. She scribbles everything down and then makes her voice go again, too.

  ‘Has your spontaneous migration resolved the immediate threat to your safety and well-being?’

  Lydia hesitates, because everything she’s ever thought about protecting Luca has changed now. She doesn’t want him to be afraid. But she needs him to be very afraid. And in any case, how can anything she does or does not say make any impact on him after what’s already happened? She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she admits. ‘We are still in danger.’

  ‘You feel the threat has followed you?’

  Lydia nods very slightly. ‘Yes. I mean, he doesn’t know where we are right now. But it was a very powerful man who did this. His influence extends all the way to el norte. And he won’t stop looking until he finds us.’

  ‘Do you know which plazas belong to him, or who his allies are in other organizations?’ the nun asks. ‘Do you know which routes are safe for you to travel without his halcones?’

  Lydia feels that this room has the sanctity of a confessional. ‘No,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  ‘You are a long way from home,’ the nun says. ‘He cannot find you here. You are safe here.’

  Luca’s crayon makes no sound behind her. The nun puts her pen in the cup beside her phone and tucks the paperwork into the folder. Then she stretches her hands across the desk toward Lydia, who takes them in hers, and bows her head. When Lydia closes her eyes, she realizes her hands are trembling. Hermana Cecilia’s fingers are cool to the touch.

  ‘Padre nuestro, bless these children with your love and grace. Protect them from any further harm, God, and provide them with comfort in their time of unspeakable grief. May Jesus walk the road with them and repair their broken hearts. May Mother Mary sweep all dangers from their road ahead and lead them safely where they’re going. Padre nuestro, these two faithful servants have shouldered more than their share of life’s burdens already. Please, God, may you see fit to relieve them of any further torment, yet not as we will it, but as thy will be done. In Jesus’s name, Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ Lydia says.

  Behind her at the little desk, with closed eyes and clutched crayon, Luca is moving his lips.

  Hermana Cecilia leans forward one last time. ‘Be careful who you talk to,’ she says.

  That night Lydia wakes to the sound of raised voices in the corridor. She sits up in the half-light of the bunk room and notices several other women popping up from their beds as well. They move silently to check on their children, who sleep through the ruckus. Luca is above her in the top bunk, so Lydia has to disentangle her leg from the backpack strap she wrapped around it before she fell asleep. She stands, her bare feet cool against the tile floor, and reaches for his rumpled covers. Luca is not there. Panic rises in her throat.

  ‘Luca!’

  She checks her own bed again without meaning to, and then the surrounding beds as well. As if her child is an item she’s unthinkingly misplaced. A cell phone, a book. A pair of glasses. There’s a window on the door that leads to the corridor, and a rectangle of light shining through it. Lydia, without shoes or a bra, bolts toward that patch of light.

  This is Luca’s third trip to the bathroom since they got into bed a few hours ago. The murky lemonade returns. Being on the top bunk has made his frequent sprints to the toilet extra challenging, but Mami’s so exhausted that she never wakes, not even when he nearly steps on her shoulder as he clambers down, not even when he lands with an indelicate thump just inches from her head, not even as he runs – the prickly, imbalanced gait of the diarrhetically infirm – from bunk to bathroom and back again.

  He’s just washed his hands and returned to the fluorescent light of the hallway when he sees Padre Rey and Néstor talking to a young man in the doorway of the men’s bunk room. Luca recognizes the young man as a migrant who arrived late that afternoon, before dinner. He’s wearing long, red shorts and a white T-shirt, socks but no shoes, and he’s carrying his backpack in front of him, unzipped. There’s a pair of clean, expensive, white sneakers on the floor beside him.

  ‘At least let me get dressed first,’ he says. ‘Man, this is bullshit. You’re supposed to help people.’

  Néstor steps behind him into the darkened interior of the dorm room, between the man and the sleeping migrants beyond.

  ‘We can talk further, but not here. You are disturbing the whole facility,’ Padre Rey says calmly. ‘Please, just come with us to the main room, where we can talk without waking everyone.’

  ‘This is bullshit, Padre, that puta is lying,’ the man says, raising his voice to a shout. ‘Bullshit!’

  Inside the dorm room, several men get out of their bunks and stand alongside Néstor, creating a kind of wall. They cross their arms, plant their legs wide. Luca stays frozen in his spot beside the bathroom door. He should turn and go the other way. He should scoot down the hall and back to the women and children’s room, he should climb back up past Mami’s head and settle himself into the covers, where he should allow his body, temporarily relieved of stomach cramps, to rest. But he’s paralyzed, transfixed. He’s unaware of his own racing pulse, his shallow breath, his fingers scrabbling into the smooth seams between the painted cinder blocks of the wall behind him.

  ‘¡Chinga tu madre!’ the young man yells.

  ‘Let’s go, hermano.’ It’s the first time Luca has heard Néstor use his voice. It’s as solidly built as his body. ‘Don’t make it harder than it has to be.’

  The young man stoops and grabs his sneakers with one hand as Néstor and the other men close the distance behind him, encouraging him into the hallway without touching him. When he straightens to follow Padre Rey down the corridor, Luca notes the shape of a sickle tattoo with three bloodred droplets on the blade jutting out from the man’s sock. It’s carved into the calf muscle of his right leg. Luca doesn’t know what the tattoo means, exactly, but he doesn’t need to understand it for it to amplify his sense of dread. That bloody sickle unsticks Luca from the wall and sends him dashing down the hallway back to the women’s dorm. He runs bang into Mami as he barrels through the door.

  ‘Luca,’ she says. ‘Oh my God, Luca, where were you?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer. Her hands are on his shoulders, and she places him farther inside the room before sticking her head out into the hallway to see what all the noise is about, but all she can see is Néstor and a few other men following Padre Rey toward the front of the building. She goes back inside and allows the door to click shut behind her. Luca is trembling.

  ‘What happened?’ she whispers.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘But what was all the shouting about?’

  He shakes again, and his face looks all carved up with worry.

  ‘It�
�s okay,’ she says. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’

  She pulls him into her arms and crushes his head against her chest. His little arms reach around behind her and cling. They stay like that until she lifts him under the armpits. He’s too big for it, and his weight is enough that she struggles beneath it. But he wraps his legs around her waist, and she carries him back to their bunk. He doesn’t go up to the top bed this time. She makes her body into a shield behind and around him. She wraps one arm and leg over the top of his small figure, makes her breath deep and slow for him, so that his breath will line up with hers, so that he’ll rest and sleep. But Lydia stays vigilant until morning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The first time a head turned up by itself on the street in Acapulco, it was a big deal. It was a twenty-two-year-old head, with curly black hair shaved close on the sides and left long on top. It had a small gold hoop earring in its right ear. Its eyelids swelled and its tongue protruded from its mouth. It was left on top of a public phone booth outside Pizza Hut, right next to the Diana Cazadora fountain. Rolled up and stuck into the corner of its mouth like a cigarette was a note that read: ‘Me gusta hablar.’ I like to talk.

  The woman who found the head as she walked home from her shift as a night nurse at the Hospital del Pacífico was not a woman ordinarily horror-struck by the sight of blood. But that day, just as dawn tipped its westerly light across the pavements of Acapulco, causing the head to throw its queer, bodiless shadow from atop the phone booth and toward the feet of that weary nurse, she screamed, dropped her purse, and ran three blocks before retrieving her phone from her pocket and calling the police. The officers descended; the media swarmed. People passing through the area on their way to work or school were aghast. They took the time to get down on their knees and bless themselves, to offer up some thorough prayers on behalf of the anonymous soul who had once belonged to that head. It was famous.

  Until the second one.

  By the time the head count reached a dozen, a shameful, self-protective apathy began to spread in the gut of the city so that, in the mornings, when a call would come in that a head had been found, on the beach or at el zócalo or on the green of the ninth hole at el club de golf, the dispatcher answering the phone would sometimes make a joke.