by Laura Resau
“Will his head get more…normal?” I asked hesitantly.
“¡Sí, claro!” she said. “Just give it a few days.”
“You know, I was a really ugly baby,” I told her. “Even uglier than this one.” I studied its smushed forehead. “Not that this one’s ugly,” I added quickly.
She laughed. “And look at you now. Nothing ugly about you!” She opened the door and I walked into the room. The mother was propped up on pillows, her hair fallen out of her braid, dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. Surprise flashed over her face at seeing me hold the baby. Then her face broke into a smile, revealing a thin line of silver around her front left tooth. She reached out her arms and I handed her the bundle.
She stared at him and pressed her lips to his misshapen head. Tears spilled out of her eyes. Tears of horror or happiness? I wasn’t sure which, until she looked up and asked, “Isn’t he beautiful?”
Now he was awake, waving his little arms in the air like an upside-down bug. “Beautiful,” I said. And once I heard myself say it, I realized I meant it.
Later, back in the bed across from Ángel, I drifted to sleep, thinking how strange that pain and birth—fear and joy—were so close, separated by just moments, by a thin wall, by slivers of chance.
I woke up with a start, this time to shrill voices shouting orders. I heard a panicked flurry of activity, footsteps racing down the hall, metal equipment clanking, voices rising, a woman sobbing.
“¡Accidente, accidente! Six guys! ¡Muy grave! Very serious!”
In the fuzzy blue light of dawn, I saw Ángel in bed lying on his side, breathing deeply, the sleeping pills making him oblivious to the racket. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door, skidding across the floor in my socks. Outside the room, people filled the hallway. The men held their hats anxiously in their hands, and the women buried their faces in their shawls. And then I saw what they were looking at: two unconscious teenagers being half-carried, half-dragged down the hall. Their limbs were bent at odd angles; their heads drooped onto their chests; their mouths hung open, slack. A moment later, two stretchers squeaked by carrying two more boys, both motionless with wide-open stares and gray skin and blue lips.
A nurse rushed into our room and wheeled out the stretcher. I pressed myself against the wall, unnoticed. Blood covered everyone, everything. I’d never seen so much blood. The blood kept dripping and gushing, splattering the nurses’ uniforms, spotting the floor.
I wrapped my hand around the warm leather of Ñola’s Virgin necklace. For a moment, blackness started eating up my vision. I sank down to the cold tiled floor and let my head hang between my knees. I was about to throw up.
“Stand up, gringa.” The command was brisk and no-nonsense.
I looked up. Nurse Reina. The blackness faded, but I still felt nauseated. She grasped my hand and pulled me up.
“We need your help,” she said.
She hurried out and a moment later returned with another nurse, who wheeled one of the guys into Ángel’s room. “Come here, gringa.”
I followed them into the room and put my arms under the boy’s shoulders while the nurses lifted his hips and legs. Together, we heaved him onto the bed. He was weak but conscious, able to help us adjust him on the mattress. His face was bleeding, his eyes half open, dazed.
The second nurse hung a fresh bag on the metal holder and stuck a needle into the back of his hand for the IV drip. She taped the tube to his hand, took his pulse, then moved a stethoscope over his chest. She cleaned and bandaged his wounds with quick, efficient movements, while Nurse Reina pressed her hands all over his body, asking him what hurt. She took off his black baseball cap and his tennis shoes, which had somehow stayed bright white, and stashed them in a cabinet.
Finally Nurse Reina turned to me. “Nothing’s broken. Possible concussion. But breathing fine. Pulse is all right. We’ll be back to check on him when we can. Keep an eye on him, gringa.”
“But I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Then move the trash can over here.”
“I don’t know what to do if—”
“Call for us.”
“But—”
She lowered her voice so that the boy couldn’t hear. “Look, gringa, this one will live. Two are dead already. The other three might make it with surgery.”
“Okay,” I said quietly. “I understand.”
They left, and I was alone with him. I sat on the plastic chair beside the bed and stared at his face, clear of blood now.
That’s when I noticed it: on his cheek, peeking beneath a bandage, a small tattoo. I couldn’t tell whether it was a cross, but it looked like a homemade job, with blurry blue ink leaking outside the uneven lines.
My pulse quickened. I glanced at Ángel. He was still asleep on his side, facing the wall. Was this one of his attackers? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe lots of guys here had tattoos on their cheeks. For the moment, he was just a confused, banged-up kid.
I studied his face. It was clenched, his eyebrows knitted. Tentatively, I touched his hand. He squeezed hard for a moment, and then his muscles relaxed. Still, he held on to my hand.
A shiny pink scar slashed across his forearm, a mark of some old injury, maybe a knife fight. His fingers were elegant, the nails filed into ovals, the tiniest slivers of dirt underneath.
“What’s your name?” I whispered.
“Mercurio.” He tilted his head and eyed me sideways. His lashes were long and curled upward like a doll’s. If his face hadn’t been black and blue and spotted with bandages, he might have been good-looking in a gangly sort of way. “Where’s Raúl?” he asked, his eyes scanning the room. “He’s all right?”
“Who’s Raúl?”
“My buddy. In the truck with us.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What happened?”
“Stupid truck.”
“Did you crash?”
“Beto ran it into a tree. The truck was cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“Cursed. And Beto had too many beers.” He searched my eyes. “Where’s Raúl? Is he all right?”
“I don’t know, Mercurio.”
“He’s just a kid.”
“Shhh, just rest.” I tried to make my voice soothing. “It’s okay.”
He drifted in and out of sleep. At times he squeezed my hand and his breath grew quick and choppy. “Mamá? Mamá?”
My gaze rested on his tattoo. With my other hand, very softly, I pulled the bandage down.
A cross. I snatched my hand away. I tried to pull my other hand from his, but he hung on stubbornly. This hand might have beaten Ángel. Punched him and cut him with glass and held a knife to his neck.
Still, I wasn’t sure. Maybe lots of people here had tattoos on their cheeks.
Time passed and it grew lighter outside and the streetlamp flicked off. Outside, there was a misty drizzle. From time to time, I glanced at Ángel, but he stayed asleep, in the same position. Mostly, I watched Mercurio’s face. He looked about my age. His face still had the soft curves of a boy’s—a delicate chin and the faint beginnings of a mustache. He didn’t look like someone who would attack a random stranger. After a while, his eyes opened and focused on me. “Who are you?” he asked. “An angel?”
I gave a halfhearted smile. “Maybe,” I said.
His eyelids floated closed again and he turned to face the other way. In that movement, the neck of his T-shirt opened, just enough to reveal a flash of gold. I couldn’t resist. I reached over and pulled out the chains. One was a heart with wings, which I hadn’t seen before. Another was La Virgen de Juquila—the Virgin of Oaxaca, the very miraculous one.
Ángel’s Virgin.
My heart pounded. But maybe lots of guys had that necklace. For some reason, I wanted Mercurio to be good. Steadying my hand, I pulled out the third chain.
The third chain I could not argue with. The third held an old-fashioned silver key.
Ángel’s key.
I ripped my hand from his, jerked
my chair back. A sick feeling sprouted in my stomach and spread outward. It was worse than the nausea from seeing all that blood.
Mercurio flopped his head back toward me. “Raúl’s not hurt bad, is he? He’ll live, right?”
I said nothing.
“What about me?” he asked. “Will I live?”
I looked away, stared at the silvery sunrise out the window. What would Dika do?
I drilled my eyes into his. “Can you live with yourself, Mercurio?”
He looked confused. “What?”
“Where’s the money you stole?”
“What money?” He tried to lift himself out of bed, but my hand was already at his neck, my fingers still interlaced with the chains. I pushed him back down.
“The seventy-three hundred dollars. And don’t lie to me.”
“I didn’t steal any money.”
“Maybe if you’re honest, you’ll live.” I was thinking of karma, when you do a good deed and the universe gives you something good back.
His eyes widened. I noticed my hand had tightened a little around his neck. He must have believed my karma comment was a threat.
“We spent it on the truck.” His eyes flickered anxiously around the room and then rested on me again. “Who are you?”
“Where are the jewels?” I asked, my voice even.
“What jewels?”
“The jewels from the box.”
“They weren’t worth mierda. They were just glass.”
Glass? No emeralds or sapphires or rubies? Was he lying? I moved my face closer to his, keeping my hand at his neck. “Where are the jewels, Mercurio?”
“Who are you?” he croaked.
“Where are they?”
“Beto threw them in the river.”
From my pocket, I took a napkin—emergency toilet paper—and turned it over and handed it to Mercurio, along with a pen. I propped him onto the pillows. “Draw me a map.”
He sketched a network of shaky lines and three puffball trees and tiny square houses and a bridge over a wavy river. “Go down this road,” he said. “The one the bus comes in on. Turn left here at the purple house next to the plantain stand. Go to the bridge at the edge of the forest. Look to your right. They’re at the bottom of the river.”
He had drawn an X over the spot, like a treasure map.
“Thanks,” I said.
He swallowed hard. “That woman I saw, while my cuates were beating up the guy, was that you?”
“A woman?”
“A woman in white. So pale you could almost see through her. It looked like she was floating off the ground. That’s why I called off my cuates.”
I let this sink in. Ángel’s magical woman.
After a pause, I said, “You can rest now, Mercurio.” At least he was the one who had called off the others. Maybe he’d saved Ángel’s life.
Raindrops dotted the windowpane, like tiny diamonds, like clear beads of glass. I tried to imagine Ángel’s mother’s jewels underwater. For a moment, I saw them as rubies and emeralds and sapphires. Then they became red and green and blue glass, and then I saw Dika staring at the sky through her pieces of glass.
“Please,” Mercurio said in a thin voice. “Tell me how Raúl is.”
I spoke without a hint of softness. “Two of your friends died and three might make it with surgery. That’s all I know.”
He swallowed hard and turned his face away. For a while, all I could hear were faint sniffles.
At midmorning, Ángel coughed and turned over in bed. He rubbed his eyes and gave me a groggy smile. “Morning, lime-girl.”
“Morning.” I willed my heartbeat to calm. “Listen, Ángel,” I whispered. “There was an accident last night. Six guys got into a bad crash. Some of them died, but this one made it.” I was trying to keep my voice quiet, but Mercurio must have heard me. He rolled over and looked at me and then at Ángel. Mercurio’s long doll lashes were wet, his eyes rimmed with red.
Ángel sat up slowly, like a stiff old man. Between his gashes and cuts, pillowcase lines crisscrossed his face. “Who’s this?” he asked, stretching and rubbing his neck. “A roommate?” He stood up slowly, steadying himself with his hands on the table. He shuffled toward Mercurio, his hand extended. “Welcome—” And abruptly, he stopped.
“Ángel,” I said. “Let me explain.”
He surveyed Mercurio’s chains, the tattoo on his cheek. “You?” His voice was cold, sharp as a blade.
A flash of recognition in Mercurio’s eyes. And then panic. “Wh-what are you doing here?” He tried to sit up but I pressed his chest back to the pillow.
Ángel took another shaky step toward him, narrowing his eyes.
Mercurio struggled to sit up in bed and fumbled frantically with the IV tube.
Ángel took a step closer.
In one desperate movement, Mercurio ripped out his IV and stood up, backing against the wall. Ángel walked toward him. It was obvious that every step was an effort.
“Ángel, let him go,” I said.
He glanced at me, then at Mercurio, then he put his hand to his head and closed his eyes. He took a few steps backward and sunk onto his bed.
I touched his arm. “I have a map, Ángel. Of where they threw the—the jewels. We can get them together.”
He jerked away, clenched his fists until the knuckles turned white.
“Please, Ángel.”
He lay facing the wall. I sat next to him, but he scooted farther away, his muscles rigid. “Get him away from me.” He pounded the cement wall with his fist. “Get him away or I might kill him.”
“He has to be here,” I said quietly. “There’s no more space in the building.”
“I’ll smash his face in.”
Mercurio had found his tennis shoes and was heading for the door when it swung open and Nurse Reina appeared, looking haggard. Spots of dried blood speckled her uniform, and hair fell loose from her bun. Her eyes swept the room, taking in the scene. “What’s going on here?”
No one said anything, so I spoke. “Mercurio’s part of the gang that beat up Ángel.”
Understanding flashed across her face. She grabbed Mercurio’s arm. “Now you, back in bed,” she said in a voice so firm he didn’t dare protest. Her expert hands stuck his IV back in place. “I am sick of you boys killing each other. Killing yourselves. You hear me?”
“Is Raúl all right?” Mercurio asked weakly.
Nurse Reina moved the stethoscope over his chest, her head tilted in concentration. “Raúl,” she said. “The youngest one? Only thirteen?”
He nodded.
“Dead,” she said. She picked up Mercurio’s limp wrist, checking his pulse and watching the clock. “And you’ll be with him soon enough if you keep this up.” Nurse Reina gave him a long, hard look, then moved over to Ángel. He had turned away from the wall, and was watching Mercurio sob into his pillow.
Nurse Reina ignored his crying. “Now you,” she said to Ángel. “Justice has been served. Let this be and move on.” Silence as she moved the stethoscope over his chest and back, as he breathed in and out deeply, as she held his wrist and watched the clock and counted. “Perfect heartbeat,” she said. “Perfect pulse.”
And then, like a leaking balloon, she deflated, leaning against the wall and pressing her face into her hands.
I tried to think of something nice to say. Something hopeful. “There’s that new baby,” I whispered. “The beautiful one.”
“Yes.” She lifted her head. “La muerte y la vida,” she said. Death and life. “You know, my mother used to tell me, ‘Death is at your side from the time you’re born, m’hija. You need to be friends with Death. That’s what makes you love Life. And when it’s your time to die, you won’t be scared. Because, m’hija, Death is your friend.’”
Remedios
Nurse Reina left and came back an hour later with two plastic booklets. The passports. She tossed them onto the bed beside Ángel. He flipped through the pages, ran his fingers over the brown spec
ks of dried blood.
“Found them in one of the dead boy’s pockets,” Nurse Reina said. “Evidence.” She looked hard at Ángel. “Want me to call the cops?”
Ángel glanced at Mercurio, whose sobs had turned into quiet gasps and sighs. “No. We have what we need.”
Nurse Reina nodded brusquely and disappeared into the hallway.
A minute or two passed, and then Ángel scooted behind me and smoothed my hair between his fingers, from the roots to the tips. He parted it and divided each part into three sections. Gingerly, he braided, his hands moving rhythmically, over, under, over, under. Finally he spoke, in a hoarse whisper at my ear. “I’m glad you’re here, lime-girl.”
“Me too.”
He finished the first braid and moved on to the second. “How did you find out where they threw the jewels?”
I smiled secretively. “I have my ways.”
“I can see your chispa now,” he said. “Your spark.”
After the second braid, he let his arms fall around me and laid his hand over my chest, on the left side, in the space between my neck and shoulder and breast. His hand spread heat through my chest, and I melted back into him.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Mercurio staring at us with the dazed, naked expression of someone stepping out of a dark place into brilliant sunlight.
While Ángel was taking a shower and changing his clothes in the bathroom, Mercurio told me, “I didn’t think he was a real person. When we jumped him.”
“He’s as real as your friend Raúl.” I smoothed my fingers over my braids. They felt strong, like two thick, silk ropes.
Mercurio pushed himself up in bed. “I mean, I thought he was just some pendejo showing off his money, you know?”
“He worked hard for what he has. He spent a long time saving that money.”
Mercurio squeezed his eyes shut. “Why am I alive and Raúl’s dead? I’m the one who got him in the gang. I should be dead.”
“Maybe sometimes we get a second chance.” I thought of the flower Ñola had given me, its new, tender bud inside, waiting to open. “Maybe we can choose a different path.”
Ángel came back into the room, his bare feet leaving wet tracks on the tiles, his hair dripping and his skin still moist. Pale, wet light shone through the window, giving him a hint of iridescence, like an opened-up mussel shell.
