Midnight Cactus

by Bella Pollen

  ‘Here, give me that.’ Nora rakes the kids’ stuff across the bedspread and balls the clothing up into the tote again. I pick up one of the photographs from the folds of the sheets and glance at it. A thinner, less time-ravaged Nora with a man, fine-featured and dark. I look closer then closer still. ‘Nora, is this . . . Chavez?’

  Nora dips her head coyly. ‘Good-looking devil, weren’t he?’

  I stare at the snapshot. ‘Were you two . . .?’

  ‘Listen, girl,’ Nora gives a pneumatic wheeze, ‘’bout that time at the rodeo. I’m sorry I pushed ya but I thought . . .’ The bed springs creak. ‘Well who cares what I thought . . . sometimes a person just acts stupid, you know.’

  ‘So you and he . . .’ I can’t quite get the words out. ‘You two were . . .?’

  ‘Gettin’ it on?’ She does a little jiggle with her hips. ‘Hey, spit it out if that’s what you’re trying to say . . .’ Then, seeing I’m incapable of saying anything at all, she sobers up. ‘Yeah, for a time but . . . well, hell, in the end it wasn’t to be.’

  ‘Unrequited love put paid to Nora,’ Duval had said, But Nora and Chavez? It just didn’t seem possible.

  ‘I shouldn’t have kept all this stuff, I know I shouldn’t.’ She knots the bag and slips in a small silver cross. ‘It wasn’t rightly mine, but they was just babies and this crap meant more to me than it ever could to them so . . .’

  The significance of what she’s saying begins to penetrate my sore head. ‘These belonged to your children?’

  ‘Broke my heart when they got taken away.’ She stares at the wall. ‘But I looked after them best I could, I swear.’

  ‘How many children did you have?’ I try to exorcize the note of incredulity from my voice.

  ‘Three girls and two boys, and so help me God, I loved each and every one of them.’

  I feel overcome with pity. Poor thin Nora, abandoned mercilessly by Chavez, her children taken by welfare.

  ‘Didn’t Chavez support you, give you any money?’

  ‘Sure he did,’ she answers defensively. ‘Paid up fair and square. What do you think I bought this place with?’

  ‘But he didn’t mind, he didn’t . . . you know . . . want to keep them?’

  ‘He knew they were going to a better life, and damn him he was right. I couldn’t give ’em the life they deserved. Wouldn’t have been fair. Still, I’d have given anything not to let ’em go.’

  ‘Nora.’ I struggle to say the right thing. ‘It’s not your fault you couldn’t afford to keep them.’

  ‘Keep them!’ she guffaws. ‘That wasn’t the problem, girl, I couldn’t afford to buy ’em!’

  I turn very slowly and look at her. ‘Nora, what are you talking about?’

  ‘What are you talking about, girl? I think that knock on the head’s making you speak crazy.’

  ‘Are you saying these weren’t your children? I mean you didn’t . . .’

  There’s another bark of laughter. ‘Hell, I didn’t birth ’em, if that’s what you’re stuttering over. I was just looking after them for him until the adoptions got sorted.’ She takes in my utterly blank look of shock. ‘They was border babies. Orphaned on crossings. Chavez had a soft spot for ’em. Wanted them to go to a decent home. Always did what he could for them and usually on his own dollar, too.’

  I find I am not breathing. Chavez tidying up his brother’s messes. Keeping his own house in order. I clear my throat. ‘Nora, what happened to them, do you have any idea?’

  ‘How would I know? It was a long time ago.’ She shrugs. ‘Some would have left home by now, some might still be at college, I s’pose, but I lost touch with ’em in the end. For all I know I could be a grandma by now.’ She chuckles. ‘Me, Nora, a grandmother!’

  ‘Border politics comes in murky shades of grey,’ Duval had said. ‘The good, the bad and the ugly can all end up on the same side at different times.’ Reality continues sliding away from me and for a moment I feel light and papery enough to drift away.

  ‘But you were in touch with them?’

  ‘I wrote them.’ Her mouth turns down. I wrote all of them, but I never got no replies.’

  My heart is pounding so loudly it feels like someone must have plucked it from my chest and held it to my ear. I’m almost too afraid to ask. ‘So you have addresses. You know where they are?’

  Nora makes a noise like a horse whinny. ‘Of course I know where they are. I have their files! What do you think? That poor Emilio could keep that kind of shit in his office? You got any idea the kind of trouble he’d have gotten himself in if people knew what he was doing? By rights those kids should have been in Mexican orphanages or living on the streets, and for what? For what? So they could grow up and cross the damn desert and die with cactus spikes poking out of their mouths.’ She heaves herself off the bed and angrily shoves the tote back in the cupboard. ‘Now don’t you go blabbing to anyone about this, girl, don’t you dare go getting him into trouble. He’s a good man and it’s all in the past now. He wanted nothing but the best for them. You do understand what I’m saying, don’t ya? This way they got to be American citizens!’ She plants her hands on her hips. ‘American citizens, girl,’ she says fiercely, ‘and believe me, there ain’t no easy road to that.’

  Duval stands at Nora’s grill, his brow furrowed in concentration. He plunges a fork into a piece of steak and turns it. Fat spits and he rubs his eye. I sit on the wooden boards halfway down the stairs and watch him. It’s early still and the sun is on the move. It steals through the bar’s window spilling hard and white onto the floor and lighting up a path almost to my feet. I hug the files in my lap. He does not know yet. It’s a curious feeling. It’s a wonderful feeling – to have something so big to give him, and it makes it all okay. Duval looks up to find me watching. His mouth breaks into a smile and I think that if I can just hold on to this moment, if I can find a place to keep it deep inside me where nobody can ever touch it, then I can be the great Night Flowering Cirrus, the Midnight Cactus that will bloom forever. I smile back at him. Somewhere across the great swelling rolls of an ocean, Jack and Emmy wait for me . . .

  Author’s Note

  I’d like to believe that I can track the inspiration for this book all the way back to the beaches of North Uist, a windy, barren island off the north-west coast of Scotland where my family spent their holidays and where, as a moody fifteen-year-old, I was first given a copy of Frenchman’s Creek.

  Almost from the moment of opening it, I became – as I imagine so many fifteen-year-old girls had before me – Daphne du Maurier’s heroine, the wilful Dona St Columb, in love with her pirate, dressed as a cabin boy and outwitting boorish aristocrats. I spent that summer feverishly reading in the shelter of the sand dunes, dreaming of all manner of escapes and searching the sea in vain for the white sails of La Mouette on its stormy breakers.

  Dreams of escape tend only to flourish under the weight of real life and a few years ago, using the excuse of writing Midnight Cactus, I took my children to live in the mountains of Colorado – where, some time later, in the thrift shop of our local town, amongst the old glass bottles and broken watches, I came across a battered copy of Frenchman’s Creek.

  Turning the pages that night several things struck me. First, that here, in the wilds of America’s south-west, I was once again in Dona St Columb’s shoes, though this time for real, with the dark and furtive world of the Mexican border my own secret creek. Secondly, that the driving themes behind Midnight Cactus – the possibility and impossibility of escape, the tug of war between freedom and duty – had been as resonant back in the seventeenth century as they still were today. There’s a truth which underpins both these books – one that presumably Daphne du Maurier had known all along and one that I had taken a lot longer to discover for myself – that, at one point or another, life can make fugitives of us all.

  So I’d like to dedicate the book to the Dona St Columbs of both the past and the future, and indeed to every fifteen-year-old girl w
ho dreams of becoming one.

  Acknowledgements

  I am indebted to my friends and co-border-jumpers, John and Emily Sutcliffe, for so many things that I hardly know where to begin – so in no particular order: thank you for braving the snitches, the pimps, the drug dealers and that coyote with the bad skin. For not getting us shot in Du Quesne or having our truck, money and passports stolen in Nogales. For not being washed away in the slot canyons or arrested scrambling under the wire. For springing me from the Customs Building and for all those glorious dinners in La Roca – especially the one where the enormous Mexican with the gold bling put his hand round my ankle. Thank you for every charming Super 8 Motel and Best Western (free ironing board included), not to mention the scary lesbian B&B lady and the indecisive Mormon receptionist. Thanks for the old men singing in bars in Guadelajara, and for our enforced dormitory in Juanajuato. For Operacion Michoacan. For agent 66 and those nine-hour drives to the border I wished would never end. For sleeping in the back of the pickup and the story about the gluey mouse sandwich. For getting the giggles in the lay-by and informative tips on how to kill a man with a fire extinguisher and/or remove his kidneys when drunk. My thanks for all the margaritas that made us sick and the ones that didn’t and here’s to all the tequila we will drink together in the future. Above all my thanks for the humour, friendship, the shared experiences and observations, all of which I’ve ruthlessly plundered in my quest to get to ‘The End’. This book could not have been written without you.

  I am equally indebted to Carole Van Wieck, for her lifelong friendship and unflagging moral support, her constant flow of brilliant ideas, and the sheer generosity which allowed her to spend a substantial amount of her day coming up with them in order to work through my many plot holes and twists. This book would have been equally impossible without you.

  My thanks also to the following:

  The Castillo family: Sonja, Marlene, Jésus, Nayzeth – and particularly Pancho, whose grit, determination and goodness have given his family the right to stand up and be counted.

  Jack Richmond for the hardback photographs.

  Billy-Joe Moffat for the paperback photographs.

  My children Mabel and Finn for posing for them in the scorching heat.

  Dr Nora Price of the Samaritan Patrol.

  Russell Ahr, Mario Villareal, Mike Bermudaz and Amy Thornton of the Border Patrol.

  ‘Uncle Fester’ representing the California Minutemen.

  Barbara Walker and Stewart Steves.

  Stacey Workman for Tijuana.

  Katrin and Cristoph for their ghost town.

  Fernanda Goncalves, Donalda Dewar and Sarah Richardson for their loyalty and kindness.

  Jack and Emmy Harries for the use of their names.

  Last but so far from least – a thank you to my wonderful editor, Maria Rejt, and my equally lovely agent, Sarah Lutyens, surely two of the most patient people in the world. That either of them still take my calls is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.