Midnight Cactus

by Bella Pollen

  ‘But that’s ridi—’

  ‘I’m aware of the irony of your situation,’ he says gently. ‘You cannot get your passport if we don’t allow you access to it.’ His fingers brush the photograph frame on the desk. ‘A sick child is a frightening thing for any parent.’

  ‘May I?’ I turn the frame towards me. Three children, in Sunday best, photographed against a backdrop of an azure sky and fluffy cumuli.

  ‘Ana, Rosa and Alfredo. They live with their mother in California.’

  ‘Oh . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be, I see them quite often.’ He indicates the sleeping Emmy. ‘What was wrong with your little girl?’

  ‘Just an ear infection, but she had a fit, I panicked.’

  ‘She’s pretty,’ he says. He opens the drawer in his desk and brings out a sweet which he hands to Jack.

  ‘I’m told there is nobody you can contact who will bring your passport here, but do you have someone local who might vouch for you?’

  I think of Duval, the heckler’s wrist twisted in his hand. ‘What about Jeff Hogan,’ I remember suddenly, ‘would he do?’

  ‘Jeff Hogan?’ Emilio Chavez looks surprised.

  ‘He’s my neighbour at Temerosa. He asked me to come to the meeting in Ague you spoke at last week.’

  ‘So,’ Chavez looks thoughtful, ‘you are the new owner of Temerosa.’

  ‘Do you know it?’ I take the sweet from Jack, who is struggling to pull off the wrapper.

  ‘I know it well. My agents used to drive up that road quite often before it was closed.’

  ‘What road? The road isn’t closed.’

  ‘There’s an old mining road out in the desert. It’s not much more than a track, but it used to take you round the mountain and almost to the border. Unfortunately, a car was washed away by flash flooding a couple of years ago. A whole family died in the accident. They closed it after that.’

  ‘How awful.’

  ‘The road was treacherous. Built across several old mining washes. There were other incidents. It should have been closed years earlier.’

  ‘And it originates in the town?’ I try to picture where Chavez means, distractedly delivering the sweet back into Jack’s waiting hand.

  ‘Not any more. It’s been reclaimed by the desert, but we think the mountain track is used by coyotes, drug smugglers—’

  ‘Oh yuk.’ Jack spits the sweet straight out of his mouth.

  ‘Jack!’

  I hastily pick the chewed mess up off the floor. ‘Jack!’ I hiss.

  Chavez chuckles.

  Emmy stirs and opens her eyes. ‘My throat is wrinkled.’

  Chavez pushes back his chair, his face softening. ‘Take your children home, Mrs Coleman, and get some sleep. Please bring your passports, along with your green immigration forms within forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I push myself out of the chair. Grab Jack’s hand.

  ‘Park in the gas station on the US side of the border, come through on foot and then ask for me downstairs.’

  ‘I will. Thanks again.’

  ‘You’re a long way from anyone out there,’ Chavez remarks. He hands me a card. ‘If you need help of any kind, I want you to know that you can call me.’

  17

  It’s nearly four a.m. by the time we pass Benjamín’s cabin, but there is still no truck outside. I get the children into bed and throw myself down beside them, falling quickly into a fitful sleep. A face looms at the window of my consciousness, the American girl with her slashed handbag. ‘I’m Ezme Santega,’ she says, ‘help me.’ She drops her eyes with a shy smile, but when she looks up again her features have changed and now it’s my daughter who is stretching out her arms to me. ‘I’m Emmy,’ she begs, ‘help me,’ then her mouth twists evilly and she throws a bucket of dirty water straight at my face. I wake with a start.

  Emmy lies next to me, arms and legs spread across the sheets like a starfish on the beach. Her head is still hot to touch. I press the thin thermometer to her skin. The first few windows turn yellow then slowly green. The last square remains reassuringly black. I close my eyes again but the events of the night keep playing out behind them on eternal loop and eventually I give up and wander down to the kitchen, taking a blanket off the bed to keep warm.

  I wait for the water to boil, staring listlessly out of the window. How differently this could have all turned out. How close to disaster we had been. I press my forehead against the cold glass feeling numb with exhaustion and anticlimax then, for want of anything better to do, pull the brimming garbage bag from its bin and open the back door. The sky is the colour of pewter, the trunks of the trees like charcoal sketches beneath it. In an hour or so the sun will be up. I stow the bag in the big trash container and squash the lid back on top – and then I hear it. The growl of an engine. I stiffen, paranoid suddenly that we might have been followed home. Kalashnikovs, kidnap, blood on the floorboards and Emilio Chavez shaking his head sorrowfully: ‘I don’t suppose anyone will ever find the bodies of those poor Colemans.’

  The noise of the engine grows louder. I press quickly against the wall as a truck rattles by then stare after it through the rising dust. Maybe it’s Benjamín, heading home, a six-pack of beer on the seat beside him. Maybe it’s Duval, once again steering along the curves of the Temerosa road at an unsociable hour. But either way, why from the direction of the boarding house? There is nothing beyond Temerosa but mountain and desert except . . . except, of course, that’s not true, is it? There’s an old road through those mountains, Chavez had said, one used by coyotes and smugglers, and I picture Duval’s tail lights disappearing towards the boarding house the night of the Ague meeting. Maybe Duval had left something behind, Benjamín had suggested, and maybe he had, but in retrospect I wish I’d investigated further, taken action of some kind.

  So now I do.

  I pull on my gumboots and run after the truck, rank with suspicion. Round the first corner, then the second. I can taste the dust in my mouth, feel it stinging my eyes. The sound of the engine cuts out and I freeze then glance back towards the cabin. I dare not leave Emmy more than a few minutes, but I have to see, I have to know. I creep towards the next bend, keeping close to the trunks of the oaks, and peer round.

  My heart pounds against my ribcage. The truck is at a standstill, its driver’s door open and serving as a partial screen for the figures standing behind it. Two men, one wearing a cowboy hat. They seem to be arguing over something and I realize there is a third figure between them, shorter – a woman, I think instinctively. I strain my eyes to see better in the half light. Yes, Duval and Benjamín, unmistakably, and whatever their argument they appear to be settling it. Duval gently pushes the woman over to Benjamín. She stumbles, but Benjamín catches her arm and, pulling a backpack onto his shoulders from the bed of the pickup, he pushes the woman quickly in front of him along the track to his cabin. I wait, still motionless, until Duval climbs behind the wheel and rolls off, then I turn and run back along the road, my head whirling.

  What the hell were they up to? Drugs? Prostitution? Smuggling? But apart from tonight’s clandestine meeting, what was there tangible to go on other than the tension that has been building up in the town like a storm that will not break? It’s the Mexican workers with their whispers and veiled looks that have made me the most uneasy. It’s the fear of the boy with the cut finger. I close my eyes and remember touching him on the shoulder, my shock at the different face under that red baseball hat – and then something catches in my throat.

  Back inside the cabin I check on the still-sleeping children, then scoop the packs of photographs from the kitchen drawer and lay them on the table, making a line for each individual worker. They’re all there, Black Jeans, Gold Bling, Bank of Texas T-shirt, Red Baseball Cap, stacked in rows like a game of patience, all as normal and familiar as can be, except, except . . . not.

  I begin to feel sick. It’s not the fact that the faces of the workers have changed over the weeks. Bu
ilders come and go, different expertise is required, other jobs beckon. What’s making my stomach churn is that the clothes these different men are wearing have remained steadfastly the same.

  ‘Ola, Alice.’ Benjamín hovers in the doorway.

  My eyes graze over the woman standing beside him. She’s short and heavy-boned, with a full mouth spread with red lipstick and a face directed at her feet.

  ‘This is Dolores,’ Benjamín says. Behind them the morning is hot, blue. The distant mountains blurred in haze. A bird is croaking somewhere near by. Upstairs the children sleep on. It’s Saturday today. No school, no Duval, no workers.

  ‘She is my cousin,’ he adds, hopping from one foot to the other.

  Of course she is, I want to say; and please refer to the ‘Idiot’ tattooed on my forehead.

  ‘Alice?’

  I’ve still not spoken at this point and Benjamín has noticed – oh, not that I’m angry and feeling betrayed by him, just that I’m not my regular nice-as-pie self, and it’s making him twitchy.

  ‘Dolores came on the bus yesterday!’ He begins overcompensating furiously. ‘She has been to see her family in Mexico! She lives in California!’ He pulls on his moustache and scratches the back of his neck. ‘But now she will stay with me for a while, and she will work for you!’

  ‘I’m sorry, what?’

  ‘Yes. In the cabin. For a while,’ he confirms.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘She will clean for you.’

  ‘I don’t need a cleaner.’

  ‘Ah, but she will clean, she will cook, she will work very hard.’ Benjamín is stumbling a little now. ‘Dolores is a good worker.’ At the mention of her name, Dolores creeps behind his back.

  ‘She has no English,’ Benjamín explains.

  ‘I thought you said she lived in California.’

  ‘She is very timid. She doesn’t go out much.’

  ‘Uh-uh . . .’

  ‘Yes, Alice, you can pay her four dollars fifty an hour.’ He speaks quickly to Dolores who nods her head. ‘And she can start now.’

  ‘What a surprise!’

  ‘Yes,’ he agrees uneasily. ‘She will clean the house today and cook something for tonight.’

  ‘Is she as good a cook as you, Benjamín?’ I say drily.

  Benjamín forces out a laugh. ‘Ha ha ha, Alice. You like my sopa de pollo, yes?’

  But I don’t laugh with him and Benjamín finally loses his confidence.

  ‘There is a problem, Alice?’

  ‘I came by your cabin last night, Benjamín, I tried to find you.’

  Benjamín’s mouth forms an ‘oh’. When I tell him about Emmy, he looks appalled.

  ‘She was sick?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘She is okay?’

  ‘Well now she is.’

  Benjamín shakes his head woefully. ‘Little M-E. I tell you bad luck will come.’ He puts his finger to his eyes. ‘Mal de ojo . . . Mal de ojo’

  Dolores crosses herself and takes one superstitious step backwards.

  ‘It wasn’t the evil eye, Benjamín,’ I say, deeply irritated. ‘She has an ear infection. I had to take her to Nogales, to a doctor.’

  Benjamín sucks in his breath. ‘El médico?’

  ‘I told you, she was very sick.’

  ‘You went to Nogales?’

  ‘I came to find you but you weren’t there.’

  ‘I pick up Dolores in Nogales,’ he says. ‘From the bus station.’

  ‘The bus arrived in the middle of the night, did it?’

  ‘Si,’ he says emphatically. ‘The bus was very late. I wait and wait. And when he doesn’t come I go to the church and light a candle for Dolores.’

  ‘So you were in Nogales and I was in Nogales, what a coincidence!’

  He looks at me anxiously, not understanding the sarcasm, but recognizing the anger driving it. Dolores touches his sleeve and whispers something with a timid look to me.

  ‘What is she saying?’

  ‘She thinks you don’t want her. She says she won’t come if you don’t want her.’

  I know that Benjamín is lying to me, I know that Duval has been lying to me and I think of all the things I should do. Confront them both, ring Chavez and have him send a posse of his finest agents over to arrest everyone in sight, but I look at Benjamín’s crooked face and I look at Dolores’s shiny red lips and the pistachio nylon blouse which I know she’s got herself all dressed up in to come over here – and the only feeling I can squeeze out is one of wretched middle-class guilt.

  ‘No, Benjamín,’ I sigh. ‘Tell her she can clean for me. Tell her it’s fine.’

  I wait. For the dust to settle. For Emmy to get well. She’s pretty subdued for a day or two, but once the antibiotics kick in, she improves fast, morphing in an inordinately short time from adorably wan Camille, stoically suffering life’s injustices on her deathbed, to Idi Amin, issuing ever more outrageous demands and holding the entire household in the grip of a three-day reign of terror. I leave nice, mute Dolores to change her sheets while I take Emmy to the medical centre in Ague, where the cute bearded resident delivers exactly the same diagnosis as Louis. Yes, she has an ear infection. No, it’s unlikely she will have another fit. No, I’m not to worry, but she must be kept quiet and encouraged to drink plenty of water. I manage to purloin the doctor’s home number for future emergencies then drive to Nogales and present Chavez with our passports. He makes a big fuss of Emmy, showing her his Degas ballerina and giving both her and Jack more of those little wrapped sweets which he keeps in his drawer and which the children again spit out, much to my embarrassment, straight into their hands.

  Dolores cleans the house. She keeps out of my way and says little, and, except for buenas tardes and gracias, I say little back to her. As a housekeeper she’s a disaster. Unable to grasp the idea that removal of dirt as opposed to relocation of dirt is where it’s at, she pushes the broom in front of her as though it’s a lawn mower that has run out of juice. She moves so slowly and dreamily round the house that having never had the least desire to become a domestic goddess, I itch to snatch the brush from her hands and furiously clean the floor with quick efficient strokes. I don’t even bother to ask her to cook. She doesn’t know why I’m angry. Possibly she thinks that all gringa employers are equally cold, unsmiling and ungrateful. Possibly we all are.

  Of Duval and the workers, I see very little. I use Emmy as a reason for eschewing our daily meetings and I don’t allow the children to go to Benjamín’s cabin any more. When they ask why, I make up excuses. Benjamín is tired, he’s busy, he’s redecorating with a particularly noxious paint that’s only poisonous for the under-ten age group. The children argue his case vociferously but I’m adamant. There might be nothing but affection for them in his face, but I don’t know the man behind that face any more. A little bit of suspicion is a dangerous thing; a drop from a pipette of poison into a bucket of otherwise clean water. Now, twitching at the curtains like the most busybody of neighbours, I watch with bitter suspicious eyes as Duval’s truck drives in and out of town. I hate this new cynical reincarnation of myself, but I can’t do anything about it because out here nothing and nobody holds up to close inspection.

  As soon as Emmy returns to school, I begin searching the desert beyond the boarding house. Exactly what I am looking for – the old road, a secret shack, a car full of marijuana? – I’m not sure, but every day I throw a couple of litres of water into my backpack and head south out of the town. Dozens of trails look promising, only to peter out into dead ends. I hike deep into the hills, standing on different points and staring fruitlessly at the landscape until finally, one day, I spot something. A thin chalky line in the distance cutting through the green of the scrub. A road, indisputably. I try to trace it back to where I’m standing but am thwarted by the impenetrable expanse of oak that belts the town. Still, it occurs to me that if I were to cut round the mountain at an even steeper angle, circumvent the oak altogether, then drop onto it
from above, it should be possible to follow it back to Temerosa.

  On Thursday I inform Benjamín I’m going to Phoenix for the weekend. On Friday I ring Sharleen and Candy and arrange to drop Jack and Emmy off at Prestcott’s after school – having promised the children a great deal of latitude with regard to hamburger eating and television watching – then on Saturday morning I set off.

  I climb steadily for the first hour, zigzagging up the side of the hill, keeping the chalky line of the road in the corner of my eye. Climbing isn’t so easy in spring as it is in winter. Plants and shrubs are sprouting everywhere and, wary of lethargic snakes and even warier of the spiky cactus cities dotted around underfoot, I keep my eyes glued to the ground, so much so that when I reach the cliff edge I nearly step straight off into the abyss. I walk along the spine of the mountain until the belt of oaks below me swings far to the right, then scramble down and set off again. I can no longer see the road, but according to the compass it should now be directly south.

  Distance is misleading. It plays tricks on you. The sun, the heat, the sheer scale of the surroundings all conspire to swindle you out of your sense of time and perspective. I had figured on reaching the road within a couple of hours, three max, but after a further hour of flat hiking, I seem to be no closer. Uneasily, I check the compass, then shake it disbelievingly. Somehow I’ve lost due south and now appear to be heading west, with no way of judging how long I’ve been off track. It’s getting hot and my backpack is rubbing against my shoulders. I stop and drink some water, shielding my eyes from the sun and for an instant, sensing that I’m being watched, check the immediate bushes, but there’s nothing out here. Just a great stretch of rock and scrub. The landscape is empty of people, apparently empty of threat, but of course that, too, is just an illusion. Even with the glitch in direction I can’t be more than a few miles off the Mexican border and where there’s a line there will be people crossing it. At any moment our paths might meet and how safe will I feel then? Still, I bolster myself with the thought that this is merely a hike. No different from any other I’ve been on over the last few months. Just because it’s a hike with intent shouldn’t make it any more dangerous. I hitch up the backpack, correct course and press on.