She’s right. I’ve never seen her like this.
Two women approached us cautiously. People around a nearby fire watched the spectacle. I kept my eyes on Akira as her body shook. She glanced up at the two approaching women, then gave me a quick look before tucking her head down again to look at Yukiko.
You magnificent bastard.
I could immediately see what was happening – Akira was in pain, but she was still clever enough to channel it to our advantage. I sat down next to her, putting a comforting arm around over her shoulders. The two women stood over us a moment, conflicted about what to do. Finally, one of them spoke.
“You are…you are forty-eights?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, looking up with a furrowed brow, “you want us to leave?”
They both exchanged glances. The one who was talking looked older than the other, her round face becoming wrinkled with time and exposure to the sun. The other looked young, maybe early twenties, but a difficult life gave her an air of agedness.
“We have some food if you need it,” the older woman said, “my name is Luiza and this is my daughter Katia.”
“Eshe,” I said, “and this is Akira with her daughter Yukiko. Akira doesn’t speak Spanish.”
“You speak it well,” Luiza said, looking somewhat surprised, “do you want to come with us?”
I translated for Akira, who gave a weak nod, wiping tears with her jacketed forearm.
“Come,” Luiza said, “people should not watch her while she is like this.”
Akira and I stood up from the ground and began following them. Luiza and Katia walked with quick strides that made it a challenge for Akira to keep up while carrying Yukiko, yet she refused to relinquish her maternal responsibility. The toddler exhibited some semblance of alertness after having heard her mom weeping.
After walking for several minutes, Katia turned around and waited for us in front of a shanty that Luiza entered.
“This is a strange place for you to have come,” Katia said, a look of deep fatigue in her hooded eyes, “given what you’ve done.”
“We’re not asking forgiveness,” I said, “but help. It’ll be good for everyone if we can get out of here.”
Katia said nothing, but waited until we entered to follow us in. It was one of the nicer shanties I’d seen in the refugee camp, just large enough to stand up straight. They had a mattress on the floor, a few books, two lanterns, and a box with what I could already see contained food. Akira saw it too, her eyes immediately drawn to it.
“Where’d you get all this?” I asked.
Luiza and Katia exchanged a solemn glance before Luiza said, “come. Have something to eat and we’ll talk.”
Katia rummaged through a crumpled cardboard box and pulled something out. She held it out with a trembling hand. Akira stared at it for a moment before cautiously taking it. It was tech. An earpiece. She placed it slowly in her ear and looked to Katia again with furrowed brow.
“You can understand me now?” Luiza said.
Akira turned to look at her and said, “Yes. But how did you…”
“You think we are fortunate,” Luiza said, signaling to Katia, who went to the box of food, “but you won’t think so for long.”
“We have mostly preserved foods,” Katia said, “canned beans and stuff.”
“Anything is fine,” I said.
“Can the child eat solid food?” Katia asked.
“She’s old enough,” I said, “she just looks small because…”
Both of us glanced to Yukiko as Akira set her down, the toddler’s unsteady legs barely supporting her. Yukiko held her mother’s hand tight for balance, weary eyes looking about the shack.
“I understand,” Luiza said, forcing a weak smile at Yukiko, “We used to have children, too. Almost everyone who came to this camp used to have children. And that is the dirty secret of this place.”
“That most of them are dead?” I asked.
“No,” Luiza shook her head, “there are people among us. People working for the border guards. People who will smuggle your children across the border for you. They’ll even pay you in food and other supplies. But the children are being brought over…as slaves.”
“Slave workers?” Akira said, tugging her daughter closer, “You sold your children into slavery for food and books?”
“You almost gave your child away for free, didn’t you?” Katia asked defensively.
Luiza shot Katia a dirty look before turning to Akira. “Look around you,” she said, handing me an open bean can and a spoon, “we gave them a better life than this. Slavery north of the border is better than freedom south of it.”
“You were doing it purely for your children’s benefit?” Akira asked incredulously.
“We resisted for three years,” Katia said, “three years we’ve been here, watching other families show up and break before us. And we felt just like you. How could they do that? To their own children? But everyone has a breaking point. So many children have died here because their parents refused for too long.”
Akira looked down at Yukiko. I could see anger seething beneath the surface.
“What age ranges do they take?” I asked.
“What?” Akira asked, looking to me, anger now very much on the surface.
“What if I wanted to sell myself to them?” I asked, “I’m seventeen. Is that too old?”
“They would take you,” Luiza said, giving me a strange look, “why would you willingly sell yourself to slavery?”
“I need to get past the border,” I said.
The anger was replaced by understanding on Akira’s face.
“What about her?” I asked, signaling to Akira, “would they take someone in their late thirties?”
“They would not take me,” Katia said, “I tried to go along with my daughter.”
“But they’ll take anyone, right?” I asked. “Boys and girls?”
“Yes,” Luiza said, “anyone young enough.”
“Can you get me in contact with these people?”
Luiza and Katia exchanged glances again, and then Luiza said, “I believe you already have been.”
Akira and I were back at our shanty with Laura, sitting around Masaru. He had been able to awaken enough for Akira to spoon some of the food Katia gave us into his mouth, broth dribbling down his chin as he chewed laboriously. Laura had taken Yukiko from a reluctant Akira, the child curled as comfortably in Laura’s lap as in her mom’s. Laura stared at her with a strange sleepy transfixion, gently running fingers through Yukiko’s hair.
“Even if they agree to take me,” Akira said, “they won’t take Masaru. He’s too old and too weak.”
“I don’t think you’ll be coming with us,” I said, “they know who you are. Or at least they have some vague idea that the whole thing was started by a couple of Japanese women.”
“They’ll imprison us,” Akira said, bringing another small spoonful of beans to Masaru’s mouth as if he were a child.
“I’m counting on it,” I said, “It’ll get you across the border at least.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll come free you,” I said, looking to Laura.
“That’s it?” Akira asked, “You’ll just walk in and get us out?”
“The way I see it, even if we can’t get you out of custody, they’ll at least fix Masaru up and both of you will live,” I said, “but staying where we are, we have no chance of getting anywhere before…well, you know…” I looked back to Masaru as he struggled to swallow.
“And Yuki?”
“I’m going to be honest with you, I have no idea what they’ll do with her,” I explained, “they might send her off with us or keep her with you. If it’s the former, I hope you’ll trust that we’ll do what’s best for her if we fail to get you out...”
Akira sat quietly for some time, spooning a couple more beans to Masaru before wiping his chin. He groaned as she lowered his head to the bunched-up fabric being used as a makes
hift pillow.
Struggling with this decision, between maternal instinct and cold rationality, weighed heavily on her. Both forces were strong in Akira. Giving up a child, possibly never seeing them again, was the hardest thing a mother could do. Yet Akira was intelligent enough to understand the hopelessness of our situation. And the truth. The truth that Yukiko was maybe days away from death. The truth that Masaru was dying here. And that all of us would die here if we didn’t do something soon.
“I…I need to do what’s best for her,” Akira said, a tear trailing down her cheek, “and for all of you.”
“So…”
“Do it,” she nodded, wiping a tear away, “do it.”
Chapter 4
A modicum of health returned to Masaru after a couple days of eating Luiza and Katia’s charity. Some color returned to his pallid skin, his occasional coughing fits became less violent, and he seemed to sleep more peacefully. He was even able to manage a few shaky words and seemed to understand what we were planning to do in order to get across the border. However, he still wasn’t fit to walk on his own, and none of us had the heart to tell him that Yukiko might be separated during the plan. Yet somehow, I knew he understood this.
The toddler had also gained back some of her vigor, occasionally waddling about the cramped shack. She remained silent, not uttering a single word, but her eyes seemed to long for some kind of connection. Rarely did Yukiko find this in my distant gaze, and even Akira was often in too much despair to give comfort to her daughter. Yukiko seemed drawn to Laura, the two of them often locking eyes for several minutes at a time as if some sort of extra sensory perception occurred between them.
“She’s taken a liking to you,” I said as Yukiko lay curled up in Laura’s lap.
Laura sat next to me, our shoulders lightly touching. She turned her head, the red and blond mattes of greasy hair dangling all the way down to the bridge of her nose. She had always been very thin, but now the arms gently holding Yukiko were nothing more than bones. Even with the food we’d been given, Laura continued wasting away. Her bloodshot eyes seemed almost to bulge from the dark circles around them, cheeks sunken, the bones in her shoulders visibly bumping beneath the skin, even through her filthy shirt. Sleeplessness had made our situation hit Laura harder than it did to anyone else.
I might have been wrong about Masaru and Yukiko dying first.
Yet Laura remained stoic, occasionally caring for Yukiko and always taking a round about the encampment in the afternoon without complaint. Except for the occasional deadpan joke about her misery.
“Children have always liked me,” Laura said, “even before I died. It must be my cheery disposition.”
“You have any younger brothers or sisters?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “I had an older half-brother. My mom’s son. I only ever met him a couple times. But I had younger cousins. I babysat them a few times before my dad put a stop to that.”
“You don’t care much for him, do you?”
Laura said nothing for some time. Right about the time I thought she wasn’t going to say anything she spoke, “he made me think everything was a problem with me. That I was unclean, and that it was all my fault for wanting…” a pause, “That was a teenage girl’s worst nightmare. It took dying and coming back to life…to see the world without him…for me to start to realize he was the piece of shit, not me.”
“At least you were able to realize that,” I said.
Laura sat quiet for a few moments and then looked back to me again, “I think children like me because they know I could never be that way to them.”
I gave her a weak smile, “what did you want to do when you were a kid?”
“When I grew up?” Laura said, “I certainly wouldn’t have said dying in a Mexican refugee camp.” She paused again for a minute and then said, “when I was locked away in my room by my dad, I used to just take things I had laying around and make…I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“What did you make?”
She shook her head, the mattes of hair swinging lazily in front of her, “I made sculptures. I always liked putting things together and building something. I had tape and glue and paper clips and I’d just make things.”
“You liked doing art?”
“It was stupid.”
“It wasn’t,” I said, “I’ve often used art to deal with everything I’ve gone though. Sketches. Paintings. Poems. Music. It’s a good way to cope.”
Laura gave me a hopeful look.
“I’ll tell you what,” I smiled, “when we make it across the border, you and I will make some art together.”
Laura allowed a brief smile, keeping her gaze down at Yukiko as she leaned more of her diminutive weight on my shoulder.
“I’ve talked to the border patrolman,” the man told me, looking reluctant to meet again after what happened last time, “they are making a final shipment.”
“Final?” I asked.
“The Brazilians,” Luiza said solemnly, all of us crammed into her shanty.
The nameless man nodded in her direction, “I’ve had it confirmed so far that the Brazilians landed naval ships in Altamira, Alvarado, Guaymas, and Mazatlán. The Brazilian air force have taken over airports in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Hermosillo. They’re apparently running into less resistance than they expected.”
“That’s not all,” Katia said as she sat on the mattress, doing her best to clean her change of clothes, hands working at the fabric so hard it looked like she might tear it.
The nameless man gave her a strange look before turning back to me, “more weapons have been showing up along with the new wave of refugees.”
“You think the Brazilians are arming friendly insurgents?” I asked.
“That’s the rumor,” he shrugged, “nobody is quite sure where they’re coming from.”
“I take it the border guards are getting nervous,” I said.
“Right,” he nodded, “they’re taking one last shipment, and even paying double, hoping to get as many as they can before they have to figure out a way to work around the Brazilian occupation.”
“When is this last shipment?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
I looked at him in surprise, “such short notice?”
“The Brazilian military is moving fast,” he said, “there isn’t enough time to waste.”
“And you didn’t tell them about…the nature of our people?” I asked.
“No,” the man said, “but I do not think this is a good plan for you. Seeing your other people will spook the patrolman. They might call the whole thing off or even do something to hurt you.”
“We’ll be okay,” I said, hoping it was true. “If they knew who was coming beforehand, they would probably just send a team into the camp and stir up trouble. I want them in a position where they have to take all of us at once.”
“You don’t know them that well,” Luiza said, “the border guards are very cautious.”
“That’s kind of what I’m planning on.”
The nameless man furrowed his brow at me, looking as if he was trying to catch my angle.
“You’re afraid this is going to get back to you,” I said to him.
“I don’t think you appreciate the situation,” the nameless man said, “This is a very sensitive operation. The incident from before has people on edge, only made worse by the arrival of the Brazilian military.”
“So, you think catching forty-eights is going to draw too much attention,” I said.
The man grinned, “I’m almost more worried about what the border guards will do when they find out you had been here under their noses all this time,” he said, “but yes, it could potentially be a scandal. It will at least get the attention of the Anonymous Knights and Enduracorp.”
“Enduracorp?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
“The newest partner to the Brazilian government,” he said, “it’s an open secret that the Brazilian military coming in her
e is to serve Enduracorp’s interests.”
“So, are you saying you’re not willing to help us do this?” I asked.
“Not personally,” he said, the grin widening on his face.
“But you’ll make sure there are spots opened up?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll have one of my…associates, show you to the transport,” he looked at Luiza, who gave me a look of defeat.
Once the negotiations were over, the nameless man was quick to leave the shanty. I looked out after him, seeing him walk nonchalantly in seemingly no direction at all, the other people milling about ignoring him. He blended right in with the crowd.
“Who is he, anyway?” I asked.
Luiza gave a shrug, “he said he worked for the cartel government before Sachi’s insurgency began. Never specified what he did, though.”
A teacher. A government official. A smuggler. A mole. Which one of these is the real person?
I pushed the thought out of my mind. Luiza was willing to part ways with one more can of beans. I thanked her and started back out toward our own shanty. As I strode, I looked to the large wall constructed on the Mexican side of the border. I hoped some better way to cross presented itself. Some way that wouldn’t require a complicated plan that might split us all up and ruin everyone’s life even further. There was less than twenty-four hours for anything better to come to me, but I was at a loss for-
“Please help me,” someone said as a hand grabbed my shoulder.
I turned around, startled, seeing Katia staring into my eyes.
“Huh?” I asked, desperation in her eyes approaching madness.
“You have to take me with you,” she pleaded, her grip on my shoulder almost painful.
“Your children…”
Desperation was overtaken with shame. Her fingers loosened, no longer pinching into my flesh as she looked down at the packed earth.
“I haven’t thought much about them,” she said, unable to make eye contact with me.
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