by Laura Resau
“Later I ask my mother, ‘How did you find me before the others?’ She says, ‘Hijo, I saw a light over that spot where you were, a light that grew bigger and bigger.’ You know, for a while after that I asked myself: Why was my mother glowing along with my great-grandmother and great-aunt, when she wasn’t dead?”
We camped again the second night. The next morning, on the road again, Ángel leaned over to check on his carved box, which he kept under the seat and checked at least once an hour. I wanted to ask more about the box. Would he clam up if I mentioned it? I mustered up the breeziest voice I could. “Um, Ángel, so there’s probably something important inside that box, huh?”
He nodded, but said nothing.
Pablo started in. “Is animal? Is lizard? Is chicken?” and on and on until Ángel cracked a smile. Then Mr. Lorenzo and Dika joined in. “Hair gel? Drugs? Gold? Dirty magazines?” Ángel laughed, but he didn’t let Pablo shake the box, no matter how much he pleaded.
I loved listening to this silly banter with Pablo, because he seemed, for once, like a normal little boy. This was what we’d been trying to get him to do for the whole past year. Normal little boy stuff, stuff that could be even obnoxious at times. Mom and Juan would be amazed when we got back.
For the rest of the day, Pablo occasionally piped up with “¡Yo sé! ¡Yo sé! Is million dollar!…Is million million dollar!”
That afternoon, Pablo dozed while the road climbed uphill, through rugged mountains spotted with giant agave plants that were taller than me, their wavy leaves like jellyfish tentacles. Wet green leaves and tropical flowers filled the valley, looking mysterious through patches of fog. Ángel whispered to me, “Will Pablo come back to Tucson for vacations ever?”
“He’ll decide to live with us.” My voice sounded defensive. “I’m sure of it. And he’ll go to his village on vacations.”
“What if he wants to stay with his relatives?”
“Well, then he can. But look at him. He’s like a normal American kid now.”
“But this is his land,” Ángel said. “His tierra.”
“You left your tierra to come to the U.S.”
“I didn’t want to.”
He had papers, I knew, papers that made him and Mr. Lorenzo legal in the U.S. Dika had told me they were legal residents, just like her, since they were all three refugees, fleeing violence in their countries. Dika had gotten her visa before she came, but Ángel and his father came to Tucson first, illegally, crossing the desert. At their court hearing, they had to prove they would be killed if they went back to Guatemala. When I asked Dika how you prove something like that, she said, They say us when they want to say us.
“But, Ángel, you live in Tucson now, and you’re there to stay, right?”
He didn’t answer.
“Ángel, you’re at least finishing high school and going to college in the U.S., right?”
He shrugged. “I already made my schedule for next semester. How could I miss calculus?”
Later, at a gas station, while Ángel was filling up the tank, I asked Mr. Lorenzo if they were going to stay in Tucson. Dika pricked up her ears. “Of course they stay in Tucson!” she said.
“Of course,” Mr. Lorenzo said, patting Dika’s hand. He switched to Spanish. “We have jobs and Ángel has school. And there is too much violence still in our town. Even now that there is no war, there are still weapons, and still anger. No, we will stay in Tucson. There is nothing for us in our town.”
“Except for your wife’s jewels,” I said.
“Yes. Except for her jewels.”
“Life is a long, long car ride,” I said to Ángel that evening as we wound up a mountain, past shacks selling fruit and sodas and beer. We sat in the backseat with Pablo, who was wedged between us, asleep.
“Headed where?”
“I don’t know. Death?”
“What do you know about death?” Ángel looked serious.
“I don’t know.” I laughed. I’d meant the comment as something lighthearted. “I’m still in the car ride part.” I didn’t say anything about all the times I’d convinced myself I was on the verge of death.
“What do you know about life, then?”
“Not much. Waiting.”
“For what?”
“School to end, school to start, to go to college, get a job.” To be in love, I thought. To have sex. To stop being scared.
Ángel peered out the window into the growing darkness, where the roadside dropped off steeply, a nearly vertical fall to the valley below. I couldn’t look. It made me dizzy and nervous to think that with one slip, our van could tumble over the cliff and smash at the bottom. All of us dead within seconds.
“When I think of life,” Ángel said, “I think of us all hanging by these ropes, feeling we’re safe. But really, we could slip out any time. None of our ropes are safe—that’s what I realized. That coffee-picking season, my bruises and scrapes healed up, and I went back to the coffee fields. This time my father tied the rope so tight it burned. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. I loved it more then. I loved the way the berries tasted in my mouth, kind of sweet and slimy. I loved the sound of people singing and joking around while we picked.”
“I wouldn’t have done that,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to even look at the mountainside again.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe life would taste sweeter.”
Ángel said he was born in the Mayan village where his mother grew up. A midwife delivered him at home, and after she cleaned and swaddled him, she told his parents, “Your son will travel far and do great things.” I wished someone had said that about me. A gem of knowledge to carry around in my pocket, to hold on to when panic welled up. I would step into elevators bravely, without a thought of the doors failing to open and being stuck inside for a week without food or water and dying alone. I would look people in the eye and move with confidence. That was how Ángel walked and talked. He had this clear stone inside him, so solid, this prediction that he would be great.
If Ángel had a gem at his center, what I had inside was a sharp, rusted piece of metal, like the rotting tailpipe on the ancient, beat-up car Mom had when I was little. Whenever it broke down, she had to find someone to give us a ride to get my allergy shots, which was hard when our phone was disconnected. Mom just bumbled around the neighborhood smiling, knocking on doors, asking for a ride, saying it would all work out, thanking everyone in her charming British accent. “Cheers! You’re brilliant!” Meanwhile I worried so much that my stomach ached and then she’d have to take off work and lose that day’s wages. And then my stomach ached even more, as though that shard of metal were digging itself farther and farther inside me.
The third night we slept in the van again, on the side of a dirt road just off Route 15. At some point in the night, Pablo crawled into bed between me and Dika. His head nuzzled into my neck. Light streamed through the window. Moonlight, it must have been, although I couldn’t see the actual moon from my angle. His small hands were tucked up under his chin. Was he anxious about going back to his village? I stroked his hair. It was fine, so fine, so soft. I buried my nose in it.
“Mi abuelita te puede curar, Sophie.” Pablo’s voice was thin and small, like a newly planted seedling.
I opened my eyes and looked at him.
“What? Your grandmother can cure me?”
“Sí.” He looked at me. His eyes looked very old for a six-year-old’s, enough to make you believe in reincarnation. He could have been a wise old monk in a past life.
I spoke to him in Spanish. “¿De veras? Really? Cure me of what? My allergies?” My fears? My curse?
He nodded. “Todo.”
He wound a strand of my hair around his finger, rubbed it against his cheek.
“That would be nice, principito.”
Someone shifted in the bunk over us.
Maybe Ángel was awake too. I pictured him curled around his locked box, smoothing the wood the way a child smoothes the satin edge of a blan
ket. I considered giving him a sign—clearing my throat, coughing, lightly whistling—but then I flushed at the thought, forced myself to close my eyes, and made my breathing match Pablo’s. Eventually I slept.
Picnic with a Cop
The next afternoon, on the fourth day, a huge afternoon storm left the sky streaked with orange and yellow, the clouds glowing like gates to heaven. Ángel was driving, speeding along, winding around hills, past a huge lake and cornfields. It was probably hard to resist speeding, since there were no cars or houses or people on this stretch, and we had only one day of driving left. Suddenly red and blue flashing lights appeared behind us.
Cops. My stomach jumped. Juan had said cops here were corrupt; they would threaten to arrest you, take your license, demand hundreds of dollars to get it back. Never get into a car with a cop, he’d said. You don’t know where they might take you, what they might do. Mom had told us a dozen times, Don’t speed, promise me you won’t speed.
I remembered Ángel’s box. Chances were whatever he had inside was either valuable or illegal. Either way, we’d be in trouble if the cop found it. I leaned over between the front seats to check if it was hidden. But Ángel was already moving his feet against the bottom edge of his seat, making sure the box was safely stashed. He looked terrified.
I imagined us rotting in a dungeon cell with only amoeba-infested water to drink and no limes to squeeze over unsanitarily prepared morsels of food. My head felt hot and prickly.
This is it. I’m going to die. This time, I’m really going to die. Either I’ll die in prison or I’ll just pass out right now and never regain consciousness and we’re probably hours from a hospital and even if we made it to a hospital it would probably be unhygienic. Oh, God, this is it.
Dika patted Ángel’s knee. “Don’t worry, Ángel, it is okay.”
In the side mirrors we watched the cop swagger toward us, one slow step at a time. He looked around, over the fields, as he walked, and saw what we saw: that this place was deserted except for a few falling-down shacks in the distance. Finally his head appeared at the driver’s side window. He was a young cop with baby-smooth skin, not much older than me and Ángel. Before he could say anything, Dika leaned across Ángel, smushing her giant bosom in his lap, and began talking loudly in Spanish.
“Oh, m’hijo, you’re just in time for our picnic. We’re having roasted chicken and tortillas and fruitcake. Come join us! Watch the beautiful sky with us and share our food.”
Before he could answer, she flung open the side door, climbed down clutching a bag of food, and spread a blanket in a dusty clearing next to the road. “Son, go turn off those lights and come have a picnic. You must be hungry.”
He obeyed. Maybe he had a bossy mother who’d trained him well. Or maybe he was bored. “You are too kind, señora,” he said when he returned. He stood by the blanket, grinning.
Meanwhile, the rest of us climbed out of the van, keeping our mouths shut. Mr. Lorenzo was dripping with sweat. Ángel left the box under the seat. Outside, he positioned himself so that he could keep a close eye on the van. I clutched Pablo’s hand and whispered, “It’ll be okay, principito,” more to calm myself than Pablo, who was just watching everything curiously.
“Sit down,” Dika commanded. “Sophie, Ángel, sit down and eat. Pablito, you like the drumsticks best, don’t you? Now what about you, son, what’s your name?”
“Jorge.”
“Jorge, what would you like? A thigh?” She slapped her thigh. “A breast?” She gave a bawdy laugh.
I flushed.
Embarrassed, he said, “Anything is fine, señora.”
Dika dug her fingers into the chicken and tore out a chunk of breast meat. She arranged it in a tortilla, sliced open an avocado, scooped out green flesh with her slimy chicken hands. Then she cut up a tomato, threw a few slices in, and handed the taco to the cop. “And here’s salsa, mi amor. Use as much as you like.”
She made tacos for the rest of us and handed them out. My panic subsided, and my hands stopped shaking enough to drench my chicken with lime.
“Would you squeeze some of that on mine, please, señorita?” the cop asked me.
I leaned over and squeezed some on his chicken.
“You like lime, eh?”
I nodded and smiled, embarrassed. I waited for Ángel to make a lime-girl comment.
But he kept his eyes cast down, on his food. Once in a while, he glanced at the van, where his box sat hidden in the shadows under the seat.
“Look at that sky, Jorge!” Dika said. “What a good job you have, driving around all the time. What a beautiful land you live in!”
Jorge relaxed after a warm Corona. He grew talkative and told us about his childhood. He’d grown up in the town where we’d bought the chicken. He felt it was a good omen that we’d stopped at Pollo Crispy because his parents owned the place. Plus, he was hungry since he’d skipped lunch—he was covering the shift of a sick cop. Our picnic invitation was a miracle, he said. He reclined on his elbows, working on his second beer. He stared at me. I felt conscious of the way I was chewing the chicken.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Sophie,” I said. He didn’t ask anyone else’s name.
“Look, Sophie, do you see the form of la Virgen in the sky? Do you see it?”
“Sort of,” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh, there it is,” I lied. I didn’t want to disappoint him. When you’re used to guys ignoring you, and suddenly someone—an older guy, in a uniform at that—is flirting with you, it’s hard not to go along.
“I see it! I see it!” Dika shouted. “There she is, in that cloud!”
“I should thank her for giving me the opportunity to meet you.” He used the singular, informal form of you. To meet me, just me.
“What color are your eyes, Sophie?”
I shrugged. “Gray?”
“They’re blue!” Dika said. “Blue!” She wanted to get in the conversation. “Here, have some fruitcake!”
“I can see the light coming through the sides,” he whispered. “Like glass marbles.”
I blushed. Jasmín might have called him a slimeball, but she was used to guys hitting on her. She had that luxury. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dika smile mischievously. Her plan was working out even better than expected.
I snuck a look at Ángel. His sunglasses hid his eyes, so it was hard to read his face. His fingers, though, were nervous, rubbing the pendants around his neck, bringing them up to his lips. Mr. Lorenzo was sweating like crazy, mopping his forehead with a faded red handkerchief. The thick flannel shirt wasn’t helping.
“Let me see,” Pablo said, coming closer to me, examining my eyes from all angles.
The cop ruffled Pablo’s hair and drained the last few drops of his second beer. “I have to go now. But on your way back, you’re welcome to stay at my house. Do you have a pen, Sophie?”
I went to the van and pulled out a pen and paper from the glove compartment, conscious of his eyes on my back as I walked, as I bent over to reach inside the window. He came over to the van and stood next to me, so close his flowery cologne made my nose itch.
“Here.” I handed him the pen and paper.
He wrote his name and number in curly script, then folded the paper carefully and handed it to me. He stepped even closer and looked pointedly into my eyes. “Call me.”
I gave a smile as if we shared a secret, the kind of smile I’d seen girls give to guys in the hallway, saying goodbye before the bell rang and the next class started. Kind of tilting my head down but my eyes up. The soppy way he looked back at me made it clear that the last thing on his mind was throwing us in jail.
He shook hands with everyone. Ángel and Mr. Lorenzo kept their eyes down and forced polite smiles.
And then the cop drove off in a cloud of dust.
“Well,” said Dika, stuffing a piece of fruitcake into her mouth. “No ticket.”
“Impresionante,” Mr. Lorenzo said. He smiled
and wiped off the last remnants of sweat with his handkerchief. “Muy impresionante, señoritas.”
I laughed. It was impressive. And kind of fun. There was something I could learn from Dika. Just when you’re sure you’ll end up in an unhygienic dungeon, you figure out how to turn the situation on its head. For a moment I caught a glimpse of how life could be if the sharks turned out to be dolphins. If fear went out like the tide and confidence rushed in to fill its place. If I believed that my bony elbows actually were nice, that maybe there was a shiny stone of greatness buried somewhere inside me.
Back in the van, Ángel picked up his box and ran his hands over it, as if relieved it hadn’t grown legs and run away. He let out a long breath and slouched down in the front seat. “Saved again by a woman. Two women.”
That evening we all wanted showers, except for Pablo, who didn’t have his bath toys, so what fun would it be? In the next town, we stopped at a motel—a low building with peeling blue paint and bars on the windows. When we opened the door, shiny cockroaches skittered across the tiles and disappeared into holes in the walls. The beds were metal, painted to look like wood grain, and covered in fuzzy mud-colored blankets with beige peacock designs. Across from the beds stood a wardrobe of lacquered plywood that looked as if it could collapse at any moment.
I volunteered to shower first while Dika and Mr. Lorenzo walked to a corner grocery store to stock up on bottled water and salty peanuts. Ángel and Pablo played outside in the parking lot with a tiny, superbouncy rubber ball. The shower was tiled with cracked green porcelain and had only one faucet, for cold water. A foul odor rose from the drain—probably a dead rat or a heap of cockroaches, I guessed. Luckily I had flip-flops to wear in the shower to avoid picking up fungus.
I stepped under the shower spray, my lips pressed together tightly to keep out amoebas. At first, the shock of water was so cold it made me shudder and almost jump right out. But my urge to be clean won. With frigid fingers, I rubbed soap over my pale, purple-tinged skin and shampooed and conditioned as fast as I could. After a few minutes of pain, my body got used to the cold, until it actually felt kind of refreshing, like a snow cone on a hot day.
