by Laura Resau
“Too bad,” he said. “But we can be friends.” He winked. “I’m Rodrigo.”
“Sophie,” I mumbled. “Nice to meet you.”
Then he drilled me with questions—Where are you from? What are you doing here? How old are you?—until finally, I said I was tired, and closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.
To my surprise, I actually drifted off, and it did feel like drifting, floating through the air, as though gravity had been a figment of my imagination all along. Really, it was very easy to fly, if you could only hold on to that lightness. The feeling you got as a kid, running with joyful abandon, like Pablo flying down the hill, his arms outstretched like wings.
When I woke up, Rodrigo was staring at me. He must have been watching me sleep, waiting for my eyes to open. “Excuse me, señorita. Did you have a pleasant nap?”
I nodded and sipped water from my bottle and thought, A whole day next to this guy. The sun was shining through a filmy haze. Outside the window, flat fields stretched as far as I could see. Clusters of banana trees with giant green leaves spotted the roadside. I wished I could pluck a few bananas. My stomach was growling so loudly the whole bus could probably hear it.
“Can I offer you a cookie, señorita?” He held out a packet of cookies filled with red jam.
I took one. “Gracias.”
“Excuse me, señorita. Your boyfriend, is he North American like you?”
“No. He’s Guatemalan.”
“He is? Well, he must be light-skinned then, because you white girls don’t find us morenos attractive, do you?”
At first I looked out the window, chewing my cookie and ignoring what he’d said. But then I said, “Not that it matters, but his skin is darker than yours. His mother was Mayan. Is Mayan.”
“Oh. And you’re going to his town?”
I nodded. “To bring him something. In a town near Tecún Umán.”
“¡Señorita! Are you crazy? Why don’t you meet him in a tourist place like Antigua? There are many beautiful places in Guatemala. Ancient temple ruins, golden artifacts, handicraft markets, elegant hotels, colonial churches. You shouldn’t travel around Tecún Umán. I have a cousin who lives near there, and she won’t leave the house at night. There are bullet holes through her walls.”
“Well, I’m not staying. Just going, giving my boyfriend something, and coming back here with his dad. And maybe him, too.” My fingers wrapped around the old, worn leather of Ñola’s Virgin.
“Aren’t you scared, señorita?”
“I’m used to being scared,” I said. It was true. I’d had plenty of practice. I could very easily imagine all the ways in which I might die on this trip—gunshot, knife wound, strangling—I used to envision these kinds of scenarios every time I walked down an alley in Tucson. But what was happening now felt different. This trip was something truly risky. The pure rationality of my fear felt good in a weird way. Maybe the way to let go of all my pointless, ridiculous worries was to delve into the real thing.
I dozed on and off, while on the bus’s TVs, two cop movies exploded with screams and gunfire and ripped into my dreams. Twice we stopped in huge parking lots with gas stations and fast-food restaurants displaying piles of fly-covered empanadas on the counters. The bathrooms didn’t have toilets, just open drains that you had to squat over. Those were covered in flies too. On the first stop, I took one look at all the flies and ran back to the bus as though they were chasing me. On the second stop, I had to go so badly I just held my breath, zoomed inside, closed my eyes, and peed for so long I had to take another breath. Afterward I wolfed down two empanadas before I could fret too much about whether the flies had first made a visit to the bathroom.
Around six in the evening, I was flipping through The Little Prince when the bus pulled into a parking lot. I shut the book and turned to Rodrigo. “We’re here?”
“Oh, no. Two hours left. The bus usually gets there around sunset.”
“But the ticket man told me six,” I said.
“Those guys don’t know what they’re talking about.”
I took a long breath. Okay, a minor setback. No big deal. At the border I’d just splurge on a taxi to take me right to Ángel’s town. It was less than thirty miles. No problem.
Then, through the front windshield, I noticed the hood propped up. I scrambled off the bus, and Rodrigo followed. The driver and his assistant were staring at the engine, looking puzzled, with a grease-stained toolbox open at their feet.
“What’s the problem?” Rodrigo asked.
“Nothing major,” the driver said quickly. “Just a ten-minute repair.”
“This happens sometimes,” Rodrigo assured me. “We’ll be on the road again soon.”
We stood under a tree at the edge of the parking lot, watching the men tinker around. The air pressed on me, steamy and thick, and soon sweat started trickling down my face. The ten minutes turned into forty minutes, which turned into two hours, and by then the sun was already dropping below the edges of the sugarcane fields beyond the parking lot.
Back on the bus again, I counted only seven other passengers, all of us sweaty, our clothes glued to our skin. We still had two hours left to drive, which meant we’d get to the border at ten at night. Trying to stay calm, I thought of my options: taking a bus back to Huajuapan? That would mean a wasted trip, but at least I’d be safe. In the rearview, I watched the driver mumble a prayer and rev the engine.
As he was turning out of the parking lot, I suddenly grabbed my bag and stumbled to the front. “Excuse me, señor, I—I need to get off. I need to catch a bus back to Huajuapan.”
He shook his head. “No buses until tomorrow.” And then he turned onto the road, nearly empty of cars. “Too late to turn back, güera.”
We reached the border town at 10:10 p.m. Even this late, the air was hot and dense. When I stepped out of the air-conditioned bus, my skin grew sticky, instantly coated with sweat. Outside, streetlights in the parking lot cast an eerie green glow in the mist. Stretched before us was a wide bridge with a low building at the entrance where three guards in uniforms paced, loaded down with machine guns and rounds of bullets strapped across their chests. It looked like the set of a cop movie.
“What now?” I asked Rodrigo. My mouth felt pasty.
“This is the bridge that takes you from Mexico to Guatemala, señorita.”
Four people from the bus were already crossing over the bridge. The others had mysteriously disappeared into the night. I headed toward the bridge with my backpack slung over my shoulder and my passport growing damp in my sweaty hand.
Rodrigo gestured to the building lined with clouded windows, dingy and nearly empty inside. “Go in here. I already have an ID to cross the border, but you’ll have to show them your papers.”
Papers? I needed papers?
Rodrigo saw my confusion. “Señorita,” he said hesitantly. “Your boyfriend will be waiting for you on the other side, right?”
For some reason, I didn’t want Rodrigo to know quite how clueless I was. Pride, maybe, or maybe I was scared to admit it to myself. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be all right.” I would just stick to my plan of finding a taxi. It wouldn’t be ideal traveling at night, but it was a short distance. I could handle this.
“Well, good luck, señorita.”
“Thanks.” I watched him go. He flashed an ID to a guard who waved him through. The other people from the bus had IDs too, and walked quickly across the bridge, where cars waited for them. I was the lone tourist.
I took a deep breath, tried to smile, and walked into the room. It was mostly bare except for two metal folding chairs, an ancient computer, and some dented filing cabinets. Two men in uniform stood behind a counter, one barely older than me, the other middle-aged, his gut hanging over his belt. Looking amused, they watched me walk inside. The heavy man asked, “What’s a gringuita like you doing out alone at night?”
I considered whether I should trust them. But in the end, I didn’t have a choice. “
I’d like to cross the border,” I said in the most confident voice I could muster. I offered my passport to the older man and prayed he wouldn’t ask me for anything else.
“You’re all alone?” His eyes moved from the passport photo to my face.
“Well, uh, someone’s meeting me, just on the other side,” I lied.
“You are very brave, you know,” the younger one said. He smoothed a finger over his wispy black mustache, a couple dozen sparse hairs, not enough to shave.
“Why are you coming to Guatemala?” the older man asked.
I bit my lip. “To visit my boyfriend. He’s Guatemalan.”
He raised his bushy eyebrows and stared at me. Then he shook his head. “Be careful, señorita. That’s ten quetzales.”
“Are dollars okay?” I flashed a hopeful smile at him.
“Of course. One dollar fifty cents.”
I dug some change out from my backpack and dropped it into his hand.
He stamped the passport and handed it to me. “Fortino, escort this señorita to the other side. Stay with her until her boyfriend arrives.”
Fortino smiled. “With great pleasure,” he said, and adjusted his machine gun. He didn’t look old enough to be out of high school, much less wielding weapons. He made a movement to carry my backpack but I snatched it up first. “Thanks, I’ve got it.”
He walked slowly, trying to stretch out the five-hundred-foot walk. Juan had told me not to trust anyone in a uniform. I wished Juan were here now, his snake tattoos rippling. He could make instant friends with anyone. By now, he’d be joking around with the guards like old buddies.
“Want to touch my gun?” the guard asked. His voice cracked. He hadn’t even finished puberty yet.
I shook my head and tried to pick up the pace, but he dragged his feet.
“I could take you out sometime, señorita, show you around this area. There’s a lake you’d like.”
I tried to estimate how many more footsteps to the other side. We were utterly alone now, the building back in the distance and the parking lot on the other side, deserted. That was when I noticed someone standing beneath the streetlamp on the other side. Rodrigo. “Oh, see, that’s my boyfriend now. Thanks.” I jogged to the other side, my bag bouncing against my thigh.
Rodrigo looked nervous. “You all right?” he asked.
I nodded, breathing hard. I held Ñola’s necklace in my hand, rubbing the leather between my fingers. And then, out of the blue, a voice inside me spoke. An old lady’s voice, maybe what Ñola’s would sound like if she could speak Spanish. Sophie la Fuerte, the voice said. Sophie the Strong.
I turned to Rodrigo. “Listen. Can you just tell me where I can find a taxi or a bus, please?”
“Your boyfriend’s not picking you up?”
“No. He’s—he’s in the hospital.”
“But there won’t be any buses or taxis until tomorrow. The transportation companies don’t let their drivers work here at night. Too many robberies on the road. The thieves make roadblocks so you have to stop and then they take your car and sometimes kill you.”
Oddly enough, I didn’t feel like crying. Things couldn’t get any worse. There was a certain relief in this.
That was when a group of five guys came out of the shadows and swaggered toward us.
They wore baggy jeans and bright white tennis shoes, gold chains, and baseball caps. The same kind of clothes as Ángel’s, only on Ángel they made me smile, because underneath was something very tender and good. These guys made the hairs on my arms stand up.
“¡A la chingada!” Rodrigo said under his breath. “Get ready to run.”
They came close enough that I could see their zits and moles and scars. We were surrounded. “Good evening, gringuita. What’s in your backpack?” “Hey man, what you got in your pockets?” They were moving in, closer and closer. “Show us what you got.” “Why don’t you walk over here with us and show us everything? Everything.”
I tilted my head back, looked at the sky. The moon was a sliver of white. I closed my eyes and let the moment sink in.
It’s strange, what you think about in the pinpoint of a moment when you might die. And I mean really die, not imagining poisonous gas seeping into the basement or toxins in your food or smallpox germs coating your alarm clock. I saw Mom’s smooth face over me, felt her hair brushing against my cheeks. I heard Juan humming softly, the way he always did when he made green chile tamales. I felt the warmth of Pablo’s body against mine while we slept with the chickens. And I thought, Even if I die now, I will know I’ve lived a good life.
I opened my eyes just in time to see a guy with a crooked nose reach his hand out for my upper arm. I took a deep breath and got ready. To scream, to run, to kick, anything.
But now he was looking over my shoulder toward the bridge.
Fortino, the guard, was heading toward us, his machine gun raised. He called out in his squeaky adolescent voice: “They bothering you, señorita?”
I tried to say yes, but my mouth wouldn’t move.
Fortino yelled, “Okay, cabrones, hands up.”
The guys cursed under their breath and held up their hands. “It’s cool, it’s cool, man. Just trying to help the señorita. It’s cool.”
“I’m going to count to ten. If you cabrones aren’t gone by then I’ll blow your heads off.”
The guys backed up slowly toward the tree shadows at the edge of the parking lot.
I waved to Fortino. “Thanks.”
“No problem, señorita. And don’t forget about the lake offer.”
“Okay,” I called out as he walked away.
Just then, a seventies sedan with tinted windows zoomed into the parking lot and screeched to a stop, rubber burning, smoke pouring from the tailpipe, hip-hop salsa beats vibrating the car. Rodrigo grabbed my arm. “Get in,” he said, pulling me toward the car.
I strained to see inside the windows but they were too dark. Rodrigo opened the back door. “Get in the car,” he said.
I hesitated. “But—”
He motioned to the edge of the parking lot, where the figures of five guys still hovered, watching us, waiting. “Sophie.” He wasn’t messing around with the señorita crap anymore. “Get in.”
Following the Moon
I clutched my backpack on my lap while Rodrigo locked my door, slammed it shut, and hopped into the front seat. In the driver’s seat sat what looked like an aging prostitute from a movie. She wore a sequined halter top that barely contained her massive breasts and stomach rolls. Her fingers, draped casually over the hot pink fur of the steering wheel, were bedecked in gold rings and two-inch-long sparkly fingernails. She eyed me in the rearview and raised one eyebrow, a hairless black sliver of eyeliner. Then she slammed her foot down on the gas and sped down the deserted street.
“So, Rodrigo,” she bellowed. “Tell me, who is this? Your girlfriend?”
Rodrigo glanced back at me and grinned. “She’s from the North. Her name’s Sophie.”
“Welcome to Guatemala, Sophie!” She made a screeching hairpin turn around a corner. “I’m Marta, this crazy kid’s aunt.”
“Nice to meet you.” I wondered where we were going, where I would sleep. We passed some small motels and I considered asking Marta to drop me off, but changed my mind once I noticed the gangs of guys slouched on the street corners and the women in tight leggings and four-inch heels leaning against the concrete walls.
Being inside this car with two almost-strangers seemed safer than being on the street. A pair of baby shoes and a cascade of gold crosses swung from the mirror. In their midst dangled an orange flower deodorizer, which made the air smell like a gas station bathroom. Barbie-doll pink fur carpeted everything—the dashboard and front seats and steering wheel.
Marta shouted over the pounding music and broken muffler: “You will stay with us tonight, Sophie! Here you have your house. It is humble and not what you’re used to in your rich country, but all that we have to offer is yours.”
&nbs
p; “Thank you,” I called back. Maybe she wasn’t a prostitute after all. She seemed too motherly.
The brakes screamed again and more rubber burned and we lurched forward. And then stopped. “Here we are!” Marta announced.
Rodrigo hopped out and ran to open the tall metal gates. He unlocked a thick chain, clanked open the doors, and after the car was inside, locked them quickly behind us. Two dogs bounded up to me, growling and foaming at the mouth, until Rodrigo kicked them away. There would be no sneaking out of this house once I was inside, that was clear.
We walked through a weedy lot piled with concrete blocks and metal pipes, into a kitchen that felt like an unfinished basement. A single bare bulb lit the raw cement walls and floor. Marta whirled around the kitchen, fixing us tortillas with beans and cheese. When I asked for limes, she was very apologetic that she had none. I devoured the food anyway.
She asked me a million questions about my country, as though she’d been waiting a long time for an expert like me. “Now tell me something,” every question began. “Now tell me something, why are there so many bald men there in the North? What will happen to your blond hair when you get old? What color will it turn? Is your hair really this color or do you dye it? Really, you don’t dye it? Well, how did your eyes get this color? You didn’t dye them either? Really? Do things look the same to you or is everything blue?”
After every answer I offered, her eyes widened for a moment, as if she was deeply impressed. Then she made a joke and slapped the table. Even though I didn’t get half her jokes, I laughed anyway, because it was the middle of the night and it felt a little like a slumber party and I was giddy at the idea of still being alive. Her loud, bawdy sense of humor reminded me so much of Dika, I felt as though I already knew her.
Meanwhile, Rodrigo had given up on trying to get my attention and turned to the small black-and-white TV in the corner. First there was a rerun of Los Seeeempsons, with “Marrrrge” ’s voice extra-raspy and “Barrrt” ’s voice extra-high-pitched. Next, a talk show about cheating husbands, where wives and lovers onstage were screaming and punching the men.
