Into the Beautiful North

by Luis Alberto Urrea

  “In the garage,” he said.

  They shuffled into the garage and found a delivery van standing there with its back door open. They were startled to see, through the one small window in the garage’s side door, that it was dark outside.

  “In,” the man said.

  They climbed up.

  They made themselves comfortable among rolls of carpet. He reached up, grabbed a leather strap, and slid the door down with a loud crash. They were thrown into darkness. The girls reached for one another. Atómiko clutched his staff firmly, though it didn’t seem likely that he could break the van’s cargo doors open with it. They heard the door latch click into place. The driver got in the front—the springs squeaked. He started the engine. They heard an electric door opener lift the garage’s big door, and they rolled. Down the slope of the driveway, then settling onto a smooth flat street. They made several turns, fell over when he stopped at red lights. They could hear traffic sounds from outside. He was listening to Mexican radio in the cab. Suddenly, they could feel acceleration, and they were on a freeway. They drove and drove, and they merged to the right and swooped.

  None of them could tell how long they’d been driving when the van rolled down a ramp and made an abrupt stop. The driver honked his horn, shouted something rude, made a left turn and a right turn, drove for a few minutes, and made another, more abrupt, right. They heard gravel crunching. He stopped but left the engine running. The door latch rattled and the door shot up. Cold night air rushed in.

  “Out,” he said.

  They jumped down from the back of the van, and before they could say anything to the driver, he was back in the cab and driving out of the big dirt lot.

  They stood in the darkness, looking around. They could see, at a distance, a lit Spanish mission on a hillside on their right. Before them, a wall of oleanders and scraggly trees, and on the other side of that, rushing traffic. If they craned to the left, they could see some hills. One of them had a lit cross on the top. Behind them, they sensed a void—it was pitch-black and smelly. But that seemed to be the way out of the lot, so they walked in that direction. A street cut across their path; they turned right, toward the hill with the cross and away from the old church on the other hill. San Diego seemed to be offering them lit beacons, each one promising that Jesus was watching over them.

  They came to a small low bridge, and as they crossed it, they saw the turgid dark water of a slough beneath them, and they smelled the heavy odor of old seawater. On their left, they saw an expanse of lawn and water—they were walking along a great bay. It was lit by streetlamps on tall poles. When Vampi saw a playground across the street, she ran to it and jumped on the swings and started to push herself back and forth. Yolo and Nayeli felt old and serious—far too old to play on swings. But Atómiko surprised them by joining Vampi. He actually put down his staff so he could swing.

  Nayeli followed.

  “Children,” she muttered.

  Yolo walked beside her.

  “Look,” she said. “The United States has grass.”

  When the sprinklers came on with a loud PFFFT and began their automated spit-spit-spit-glide, spit-spit-spit-gliiide, they ran.

  Giddy with the Good Old USA, everybody laughed. The air smelled great, smelled of salt water and jacaranda trees. The air was cool—too cool for the girls, but running had heated them a bit.

  Clean little sidewalks wandered among small green hills with strange little barbecue stands and even more playgrounds. Vampi had to swing at every one. Atómiko climbed a monkey bar igloo and stood atop it, holding his staff over his head and bellowing.

  “Es King Kong,” Yolo noted.

  They were delighted to find well-lit public bathrooms. Clean, too. The girls took up three stalls and chattered as they did their business. Atómiko entered his bathroom with his staff extended before him, ready to smite muggers. But there was no one there. He availed himself of the urinal, then surprised himself by washing his hands. He could not believe he could wash his hands in steaming-hot water. He had some trouble managing the blow-dryer, and finally simply wiped his hands on his pants and stood guard outside the girls’ door. Their laughter and gossip echoed inside. They could be heard all over the bay. He felt it was a terrible security problem, but you couldn’t dampen high spirits at a moment like this. Their happiness would get them far on their journey before despair slowed them again. So he planted his staff and struck an ominous pose.

  The notorious girlfriends exited the bathroom and set off at a brisk pace. They looked at the stars. They watched the bright white cross atop the hill. They looked around them at the many house lights on the slopes of Clairemont.

  A man walking three pugs on leashes came along and said, “Good evening.”

  “¡Adios!” Vampi chirped.

  Nayeli nudged her.

  At the visitors’ center, they gathered and stared into the soda machines. More lights. Moths battered themselves on the neon tubes. Two policemen in shorts and bike helmets pedaled by on their mountain bikes. One waved. Vampi waved back.

  “¡Adios!” she called.

  “Shh!” Yolo scolded. “You want to be deported again?”

  Atómiko laughed.

  “Those are city cops!” he said. “¡La Placa, esa! They don’t care if you have papers or not!”

  Vampi crossed her arms and said, “See?”

  “I love America,” Nayeli sighed. “The policemen ride bikes and wear shorts.”

  “This was a good idea,” Yolo said. “I didn’t think so, but now I do. It is so clean!”

  “It’s too damned clean,” Atómiko complained. “Where are the bonfires? How can you party with no bonfires?”

  Vampi pointed across the water. Bonfires burned on a low island. They could see fat men in lawn chairs drinking from cans.

  “I stand corrected,” Atómiko announced. He raised his staff and called, “Party!”

  “Maybe we can find some dead dogs, too, so you’ll feel at home,” Yolo said.

  “You are very humorous,” the Warrior replied.

  A VW Bug circled the round driveway. It was full of American girls. The bass was bumpin’, and the girls laughed as the car circled. Nayeli could smell them from this far away—shampoo and perfume and cigarettes.

  “Eminem!” Vampi shouted.

  The girls waved and sped off into the night.

  “It is the sisterhood of music,” Vampi intoned.

  Yolo and Nayeli shook their heads.

  “This chick is too much,” Yolo complained.

  Vampi was so happy, she threw her arms around Atómiko.

  “Do you love it here?” she asked.

  “It’s peachy,” he said.

  “Ooh, you’re so tough!”

  “I love you, though,” he offered.

  “Me and every other hot girl.”

  “You are hot,” he agreed. “Muy, muy caliente, mi chiquita.”

  “All right, buster,” she said.

  She let him go.

  “¡Morras!” she shouted. “What do you want to do now that we’re in Los Yunaites?”

  Nayeli: “Find my father.”

  Yolo: “Find Mateo.”

  Nayeli: “That, too.”

  Yolo: “Find Tacho.”

  Tacho! They all started crying again. Darling Tacho!

  Atómiko hawked up some phlegm and spit.

  “I want to go to Disneyland,” he said.

  They goggled at him—everyone expected he’d say something like I want to go to a strip club and see hardbodies, or something like I want to get into a gang fight and kill a hundred men with my bare hands. He felt self-conscious, the way they were staring at him and sniffling, wiping their eyes and noses on their sleeves.

  “What!” he demanded.

  They giggled.

  “Disneyland, Atómiko?” Nayeli said.

  “Hey,” he said. “I just want to whack Mickey Mouse with my pole!”

  The girls burst out laughing.

  �
�Your pole!” Yolo cried.

  “You could have whacked Tacho with your pole if you were lonesome!” Vampi said.

  Then they thought about Tacho and felt weepy all over again.

  Nayeli banged on the phone one time.

  “Tachito,” she said.

  “Food,” Atómiko proclaimed, saving face.

  He pointed with his pole at a Jack in the Box across the freeway.

  “Did you bring money?” Nayeli asked.

  “Nel.”

  “I suppose I’m buying you a meal?”

  “I am earning my keep, guarding you on your journey. I am—”

  “We KNOW who you are!” Yolo blurted.

  The girls all crowed: “You are Atómiko!”

  He shrugged, looked away inscrutably.

  Nayeli pulled out her Missionary Matt card.

  She and Yolo stared at each other.

  “Should I?” Nayeli said.

  “You have to.”

  “I’m nervous.”

  “Just do it.”

  Nayeli picked up the phone, then laughed and hung it up.

  “You coward,” Yolo said.

  “No!” Nayeli replied. “I don’t have any American coins left! We spent it all. I have pesos, and it won’t take pesos!”

  Atómiko coughed, spit.

  “Food,” he repeated.

  They walked over the bridge.

  Chapter Twenty

  The girls had never eaten tacos made with hamburger meat.

  “American food,” said Yolo.

  Vampi slurped a Dr Pepper.

  “Doctor Pimienta,” she translated. “But I don’t taste any pepper.”

  “Let me taste it,” said Nayeli.

  She scrunched her nose.

  “I think that’s prune juice,” she said.

  “Let me taste! Let me taste!” demanded Yolo. She took a pull.

  “Cherries,” she said.

  They had been lucky. All the employees in the burger stand were undocumented Mexicans except for one Guatemalan. They exchanged pesos for dollars at a bad rate, but at least Nayeli could buy food and get change for the pay phone.

  Atómiko had acted out a violent attack of nausea and retching when they ordered tacos. He wasn’t falling for that. He ordered two Jumbo Jacks with cheese and large fries and a chocolate milk shake. And a piece of apple pie.

  “Enjoy your diabetes,” Yolo muttered.

  “You’re in America now, cabronas,” he noted. “Apple pie!” He pronounced it appo pize! “That’s what they eat!”

  “If we keep you here very long,” Nayeli noted, “you will spark a famine all by yourself.”

  “All the paisanos will come home on their own,” Vampi said, “just so you don’t force them to die of hunger.”

  They slapped her high fives, always eager to reward her for saying something witty or pithy.

  “Let’s get some onion rings,” Atómiko recommended.

  Ma Johnston was one of those good, invisible, hard-luck women who lived along the tougher low-rent sections of Clairemont Drive. Her duplex was in a line of duplexes that were set face-to-face across small yellow strips of lawn. They turned their sides to the main street, and their large living room windows had peered at one another for forty years. The occasional palm tree shot into the sky like a frozen firework and seemed to be caught as the trajectory of its ascension started to decay, curving a bit before it fell back to the ground. Pigeons and palm rats rattled the dry fronds. Ma’s place was the rear unit, back off the street, beside the alley that ran between Clairemont and Apache. She had two bedrooms and a small kitchenette and a bathroom with a fiberglass tub. She liked to keep her plants on a table by the living room window. Matt used to sleep in the back room, separated from her by the bathroom.

  She was the first mom of any of the boys from the high school to have HBO, and though she knew they were coming over to see naked girls, she liked their company when they piled in on Friday nights. She didn’t even mind it if they smoked or snuck a beer, though if they smoked dope, they had to go out to the alley, and she’d pretend she didn’t know.

  Matt’s crazy surfer friends always brought her presents—sand dollars or starfish, a bag of doughnuts or some beer. The ZZ Twins were wild-haired long-boarders of the old school—so old-school they still wore Hang Ten shorts, though everybody else was wearing high-tech neon-colored threads. Zemaski and Zaragosa. When they became born-again, they brought her Bibles and CDs of Christian singers. She still had her Rick Elias and the Confessions CD in her little stereo beside the TV.

  The ZZs were her favorites, and even when Matt had gone missionary on her, run off to Mexico to save the Mexicans, the ZZ Twins had hung around her house, keeping her company in his absence, keeping the bad guys at bay. They spoke that weird surfer talk she had never quite translated. Once, when she’d asked Zemaski how he was feeling, he said, “I’m creachin’ the bouf.”

  She had laughed for weeks about that one.

  Two years later, she’d been hunting through the library’s cast-off$1.00 sale table when she glanced at their computers and ventured to access the Internet. The librarian helped her search the phrase “creachin’ the bouf.” The best translation they could come up with was “I am a fool for the light comedic opera.” She liked to think that’s what Zemaski meant, though she knew it wasn’t.

  It had been rough since Matt had returned from his missionary days, unsure of his faith. He had questions. Well, she was never happy with his Bible-thumping phase. He had come home from Mexico and lost his friendship with the ZZs when he’d fought with them about the Rapture. Matt was of the opinion that there was not going to be a rapture, and nobody would be “left behind” to battle evil demonic hordes because nobody was going anywhere, no matter what the Twins’ favorite books said. The ZZs might have forgiven this theological breakup, but Matt had also become, heretically, disinterested in surfing. The boys could not believe it. To abandon the waves was truly abandoning the Lord. “Dude,” Zaragosa had warned, “Satan’s whispering in your ear!”

  Oh, well. It was a crisis of conscience for poor Matthew. Ma Johnston knew how thoughtful he was. She knew he was given to liberal ideas. She was a Reagan Republican all the way. But she knew that young people had to search. Hadn’t she searched? It had brought her from Virginia to San Diego and Matthew’s father. Ah! She tossed her coffee. Ancient history.

  Ever since she’d retired, things had been tighter than usual. Being a low-level secretary for the school district had not provided them with lots of money. She had to admit that Matt’s missionary phase almost broke her. But between her retirement and her late husband’s Social Security, she had done all right. The rent was low and she could manage, even though Matt had gone to San Francisco to work in some store, selling “art pins,” whatever they were. They sold a ceramic nipple pin that you apparently wore on your breast. Ha ha. He sent her fifty dollars, sometimes hundred-dollar checks, stuck inside funny greeting cards. The kind that had kittens hanging on to the ends of ropes and said, “Hang In There!” Matt… he was a good boy.

  She maintained his room for him, at least for the few times he came home to visit. All his Steve Miller albums were stacked up in there, in order, the way he liked them. His black Jimi Hendrix banner hung above the bed. Matt liked the old stuff—he said new music didn’t speak to him.

  Instant coffee, Rice-A-Roni, dry cat food for the alley cats she fed, strawberry jam. She walked out of the little shopping center and thought about buying some doughnuts at the Winchell’s, then remembered they’d torn it down. Why did everything good have to be destroyed?

  It was a little over a half mile to her house. The next day was trash day. She put away her things and was seen by skinny Carla who hung out in the alley hoping to score some ice off the bikers that lived next door to Ma. Carla was sweet. She always waved at Ma Johnston.

  That was a Thursday.

  By Saturday, Ma hadn’t come out to collect her empty garbage cans. Carla wandered
across the alley to see if she was okay. And she found Ma Johnston, dead on the kitchen floor, a broken jar of jam beside her.

  Matt was through crying, really.

  His mother’s sad last effects—used books, little doilies and figurines. Albums of photographs of people he did not recognize. He had given her clothes to Goodwill and had thrown out her bras and underwear. Carla was majorly stoked to get the nipple pin. She laughed out loud when she saw it. The Mongols who lived next door came over with beer and sat with him for a while. They scared the hell out of him, but they were decent and spoke highly of his mom.

  Carla ventured over and spent the night with him, their sleep asexual and melancholy. Even naked, he felt nothing for her—she was all ribs and butterfly tattoos. It was mostly about body heat.

  She fancied his Hendrix banner, so he gave it to her.

  How was he hanging with bikers and naked dope fiends? In San Francisco, he was learning to eat sushi and dating a ballet dancer. He went to art museums. But who was he kidding? The ballet dancer was over before Ma passed away. Driving home had been almost easy.

  He kept the windows open to air the place out. This stinking duplex was as depressing as anything he could imagine. He’d choked on its hot air all through junior high and high school. He was going to get out of here, wasn’t that the plan? Some kind of success story. Anywhere but San Diego. San Die Go. Sandy Eggo. He’d played that Hendrix song over and over to his red-haired high school girlfriend, Rockie Lee. “Come back and buy this town,” Jimi sang, “and put it all in my shoe.” He hadn’t seen her in ten years.

  Matt thought he’d get Ma out of this place somehow, before it was too late. He used to tell Rockie Lee that Hell was located in Clairemont. You died and drove into Ma’s neighborhood and just went in circles, from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac, with those dead palm trees above your head, and you never found your way out. Another mission aborted.

  He sat on the couch, staring at the TV.

  Now what?

  He drank another beer—Tecate.

  He’d left his job in San Fran to get her cremated and her “cremains” scattered in the ocean. The man at the funeral home made human ashes sound like breakfast cereal.