But I don’t want to die.
* * *
~~~
Outside my house, he kisses me, right there in the car now with the windows down for anyone passing by to see.
“We are not a secret anymore, understand,” he whispers in my ear. “I’ll be back tomorrow. And by then, you better have told your mami because tomorrow night, you’re coming home with me.”
The day is thick with heat and humidity. But my body goes cold with shock.
“Tomorrow night?” I whisper.
He smiles. “I don’t care if your mami doesn’t like it.” He takes my hand, lifts it. “Look at that ring,” he says. But the world is fading again. My head is thick with fog. “I said, look at that ring.” He grips my hand harder.
Something inside me breaks as I nod, as I look at that ring. “It’s . . . beautiful . . .”
He kisses it, kisses me. His phone buzzes and he pulls away, glances down at it.
“I gotta go,” he says.
I nod and quickly open the car door and get out, eager to escape. “Hey, remember though. Tomorrow night!” he yells before finally driving away.
I stand there, numb. Everything unreal. I stare at the little neighbor girl across the street, peering out at me from the front door. And I wonder if she is real. I stare at the road, waiting for water to come rushing down the streets. To carry me away.
Because this can’t be real.
It can’t.
* * *
~~~
The sound of a motor scooter breaks into my fog and I see it heading straight toward me, zooming up to our patio.
I know it’s Pulga and Chico before they even take off their helmets, and they’re saying something to me, but I have a hard time making sense of it. Pulga shakes me until his words, his voice become clearer and clearer.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “Why are you shivering like that?”
I stare at him, at both of them, trying to understand why they’re here when they’re supposed to be at school. Why they’re riding on a motor scooter I don’t recognize. Why their faces look so worried. Maybe I’m imagining this. All of this.
“Are you real?” I ask him.
“Listen! I don’t have time to totally explain . . .” Pulga says. He keeps looking over his shoulder like he expects someone to come up at any minute. “You were right. Something bad, something really bad is happening, Pequeña.”
The baby cries. My heart races. Everything becomes crisper. “What? Pulga, what’s the matter? What happened?”
“Listen! We gotta get out of here, Pequeña. We have to leave tonight.” His voice goes high and his eyes fill with tears. “Remember what you said? Remember you said we had to run. You were right. We’re gonna run, the three of us, okay?”
“Al norte on La Bestia. To the United States,” Chico whispers.
“What . . . what are you saying?”
“I’m saying we have to go,” Pulga says. I watch as his hand brushes past a gun in his waistband, as he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a bus ticket that he thrusts into my hand.
“Meet us there, okay? Okay? Tonight. It’s the three a.m. bus, you got it? Be there, Pequeña.”
The baby cries, but I nod and look at the ticket. “Okay,” I say.
“It’s not too late,” Pulga says as they jump back on to the motor scooter. I watch as they race away. I stand there listening to the echoing zoom behind them, until it’s gone. Until all is silent again.
The little girl is still peering at me from her front door.
Is this real? I wonder.
I look down at the ticket in my hand.
Yes. It’s real.
Pulga
The room is unbearably silent except for the sound of my heart pounding loudly in my ears.
Don’t, don’t. Don’t, don’t. Don’t, don’t, it says.
Don’t leave Mamá. It stretches and pulls under flesh and bone, it rips and tears apart and squeezes. It threatens to give out if I don’t stay.
I turn to Chico. “Ready?”
“I don’t know.” Chico’s voice is nervous and full of doubt. But we are as ready as we’ll ever be. Our lives have been stuffed into backpacks. Mine holds the picture of my parents in front of my father’s car, a cassette tape with his voice and favorite songs, a Walkman Mamá gave me on my tenth birthday, the money my tía sent that Mamá always meant for me but that still feels like I stole, extra clothes, a toothbrush, water, bread, candy.
“All we have to do is go through that window,” I tell him. I keep my eyes on the pane of glass in the wall. I don’t look away. If I do, I might listen to my heart. I might believe we can stay. I might let myself be talked into not leaving. If I look away, for even a minute, I might lose sight of our escape.
When I said goodnight to Mamá earlier, what I really wanted to say was how much I love her and what a good mamá she’s been and that I’ll miss her and don’t worry, I’ll make it. And to ask for her forgiveness—for lying and for leaving her all alone. I wanted to ask her to pray for me, to pray with me, like we did when I was little. And I wanted her to hold me, one last time, in the comfort of her arms. That’s what I wanted to say instead of leaving it in the letter she’ll find tomorrow.
But all I said to her was “Buenas noches.”
She smiled and said, “See you in the morning, hijo. Si Dios quiere.”
If God wants.
I wonder if she will remember those words when she realizes I am gone. And whether she will blame God, or me.
“Pulga?”
“That’s all we have to do,” I tell Chico. “Go out that window and pedal away from here to the bus station as fast as possible.”
“That’s not all we have to do,” he says. I can hear how he’s trying to hold back tears.
“Do you want to go to the warehouse tomorrow instead? Meet up with more guys holding guns to our heads? Do you want to stay here and find out what happens to us? What Rey has planned for us?”
He’s quiet.
“No,” he says finally. The ache in my chest and thumping in my ears subsides.
I hear him take a deep breath. I know he’s afraid. But I have to push him. I have to make him. It’s the only way.
You will never see this room again, my heart reminds me.
You will never see Mamá again.
Please, please, be quiet, I tell it. I don’t need to be reminded of the thing I’ve always known but didn’t want to admit.
Don’t, don’t. Don’t, don’t, my heart tells me, but my mind reminds me if I stay, I will end up dead or like Rey.
The backpacks are in my hand. All I have to do is shove them out the window.
This is our only chance.
So I do it. I shove the backpacks out the window. I put one leg over the sill and climb out of the only house I’ve known. I hear Chico’s heavy breathing as we run to our bicycles and my mind immediately fills with images of someone lurking in the dark. Of someone watching Chico and me making a break for it. I think of Rey in some back room, telling one of his guys to just shoot us if we step out of line.
I wait for the bullet.
I wait for the knife.
For a quick hot slice through my neck, as we jump on our bikes and take off as fast as we can.
We race through the streets of our barrio, past a few cantinas with music blaring and people lingering outside. Every now and then, we come across a car and I worry one of Rey’s guys will be inside, spot us, and come after us. Each time we approach one, I pedal faster. And then I listen—for the sound of it stopping abruptly, turning around, and the engine roaring as it comes racing behind us. But it doesn’t happen.
* * *
~~~
The fluorescent lights of the green-and-white Litegua bus station appear up ahead, and we set our bike
s near the side of the building. I pray that they will still be here tomorrow morning when Mamá undoubtedly comes looking for us, hoping the note we left was a lie, that we didn’t go through with it.
The station isn’t open so we have to wait outside, like sitting ducks, for the bus to show up that will take us out of Puerto Barrios to Guatemala City.
Chico and I are the first ones here. It is dark and I am covered in sweat from fear and from pedaling so hard and so fast.
More people arrive, everyone giving each other the once-over. We sit on the concrete far away from the rest, in the shadows, trying to go unnoticed, trying to blend into the wall behind us. That’s when I notice Chico is wearing his pale blue American Eagle shirt—the one that almost seems to glow.
“Why’d you wear that shirt?” I ask him quietly.
He looks at me like I’m stupid. “For luck. It’s good luck.” He smiles his stupid smile. I stare at him, wondering if he really doesn’t remember he was wearing it the day Don Felicio was murdered. Wondering why he didn’t burn it with the rest of our bloodstained clothes. I stare at it and wonder why Chico would ever think it’s good luck. Chico, who hasn’t cut a break in this life since the day he was cut from his mother’s umbilical cord.
I almost tell him to change it for the spare one in his backpack, but I don’t want to put anything in his head. If he needs to believe in this shirt, then I’m not going to take that away from him.
“Right,” I say. “Luck.”
“You think Pequeña changed her mind?” he asks suddenly.
“I don’t know,” I say. But I keep a lookout for her, hoping she didn’t.
A pickup pulls up and three adults get out. At first I’m wary of the big guy who gets out, but then I see two elderly women get out the passenger-side door. One of them wears gold bangles on her wrist and I know she must be from the States. Even the way she sits. It’s easy to spot them, the people who are from here, but are no longer from here.
More people gather right in front of the station, with suitcases and backpacks. They talk quietly, looking around, waiting for the bus to show up. I look into the darkness, searching for Pequeña, and see the figure of a guy instead.
I blink, trying to focus. I blink again, trying to see if he’s built or walks like Rey or Nestor.
He’s wearing a large, bulky jacket.
A baseball cap, pulled down to hide his face.
Jeans.
Old sneakers.
A backpack.
The guy glances quickly at us and starts walking faster in our direction. I look past him, half expecting to see Nestor’s car turn a corner, where it will park and wait. Wait for this guy to do what he came for, run back, get in the car, and speed away while Chico and I bleed out on the street.
I picture my death. I am always picturing my death.
He closes the space between us so quickly, like time is warped, and I jump to my feet just as he approaches on Chico’s side.
Chico’s face fills with fear. A sound escapes him, like a whimpering dog, and his body tightens as if waiting for a bullet or a blow.
“Pulga, Pulga, relax!” the guy says. My brain tries to connect the familiarity of the voice with the strangeness of the image in front of me.
“It’s me, look! Relax,” he says.
Slowly, it clicks.
“Pequeña?”
“Yes. Shut up,” she says, looking around. Her body is bulky with layers of clothes. Her hair is gone. I reach to touch the cropped edges sticking out from under the baseball hat hiding her face. She shoves my hand away hard, then rushes to Chico, who is still on the floor, scared and confused.
“It’s me,” she says. “Don’t worry.” He shakes his head, unable to speak.
“What the hell are you doing? Why’d you come up to us like that?” I say to her.
She stands back up, faces me. “You knew I was coming.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Of course she looks like a boy. We all know what happens to girls on this journey. “I wasn’t thinking.”
A faraway rumble and the smell of diesel fill the air. A bus comes from around the back of the station and hisses to a stop in front of us.
The crowd hurries to put their luggage in the side compartment outside the bus, but not us. We climb on and sit down, look out the window. And my heart, as if in one last desperate attempt to make me stay, cramps tight, like it’s just been punched, making it difficult to breathe.
You can outrun danger, it tells me. But you can’t outrun the pain.
I take a deep breath, swallow hard as the bus slowly pulls onto the road.
PART TWO
Donde Vive La Bestia
Where the Beast Lives
Pequeña
Outside the bus window, Barrios rushes by in a blur. The restaurant Mami and I always rode to with Tía and Pulga. The church where Mami and Papi got married. The clinic Mami ran to where the doctor uttered that horrible truth I already knew.
That truth that fluttered in my stomach, that started the day I lifted my head and fixed my gaze on the horizon even though Mami had warned me so many times, so many times, not to.
You have to walk with your head down, Pequeña. Don’t look around, she’d told me ever since my breasts started to develop and my hips started to fill out. And be more aware. Of everything and everyone.
She never explained how it was possible to be more aware of everything, take notice of everything, while keeping my gaze down.
I listened to her. I always listened to Mami. I didn’t want to make things more difficult for her after Papi left, when she’d had to take the job housekeeping at the resort where Tía waitressed.
But that day, when my neck ached from being curved downward all the time, from the vision of feet and dust and rocks—that day, I looked up and I let the sun kiss my face and I dreamed of a future away from here.
It was the wrong moment for dreams.
But it was as if it were destined, as if some invisible hand would have forced my face up even if I hadn’t at that precise moment thought to lift it. There he was, leaning on the counter of Don Felicio’s store with a few other guys, drinking soda, laughing, smoking a cigarette. He blew out a long puff of smoke from a cigarette at the same exact moment I looked up. And his gaze caught mine through the haze.
I heard my mother’s voice in that moment. Pequeña! and I looked down immediately. I quickened my pace, but the whoops from his friends and the sound of his feet came toward me anyway.
“Hey,” he called. I walked faster. “Come on, don’t make me look like an asshole in front of my friends.”
I wanted to run, but I couldn’t.
“Hey,” he said again, and then he was right behind me. “Come on, slow down.”
Then next to me. “Hey, I said slow down.” He grabbed my wrist, squeezed it tight, pulled me to a stop. “I’ll walk with you.”
This is what happens when you’re scared: Your heart takes over your whole body. It thunders in your chest, beating so rapidly that you feel it in your throat and ears and eyes and head. You hear it and feel it, on the verge of explosion.
And then it does, it explodes.
You see a splattering. You wonder how you can still be alive when your heart has exploded. You wonder how you can speak.
“What’s your name?” he said, his voice sweet and full of danger.
“María,” I lied.
He laughed. “Nah, that’s not right. Your name is . . . Bonita.” He nodded and looked me up and down. “Yes, Bonita,” he repeated, then reached up and touched my chin, lifted my face to his.
This is what danger looks like: A smile set in a long face, revealing the slight overlapping of two front teeth. Hair that covers his eyes, but not completely. So you still see a strange kind of vacancy in them. And a smile that is easily, quickly replaced with a sneer.
After that, he found me wherever I went. He didn’t care that I wasn’t interested. I think he actually liked it at first—the idea of making me do something, of making me love him. He bought me gifts and insisted I take them. He told me he loved me, even as he grabbed my face with his dirty hands, dug his fingers into my cheeks and forced me to look at him. He told me his name was Rey and I was his Bonita; he was a king and I was his pretty girl.
I was his. That’s what he said. And one night, while Mami slept on the living room couch the way she did sometimes when she came home too exhausted from work, he made sure I understood what that meant.
“Ssshhhh,” he said as he climbed in through the bedroom window. I’d just showered, I’d just put on my nightgown. He’d been out there for who knows how long, watching me. “Ssshhh,” as he put his finger to my lips and laughed at the look on my face. At how I froze.
I could have screamed. My mother would have come running. Into that room, where Rey stood, staring at me with vacant eyes.
“My mother is in the other room,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Go ahead, invite her, too.” He laughed and I panicked, thinking Mami would come in, not knowing what she was walking into. So when he came toward me, and held me by the back of the hair, kissing me and leading me to the bed, I didn’t fight. Anything to keep him quiet. Anything to keep Mami away.
He told me not to make a sound, not to dare make a sound, or he’d kill me, and as soon as Mami made it into my room, he’d kill her, too. And just in case I doubted him, he showed me the gun he carried in his waistband.
Rey whispered in my ear, but I shut my eyes tight, silently screaming for help as he pressed himself against me, as his hands slid up my legs, under my nightgown.
I lay still. Very still. And I was so quiet, I hardly breathed. And for a little while, I died.
This is what dying is like:
We Are Not from Here Page 10
