North of the Border

by Judith Van GIeson

  Her eyes began to scrunch up in their blue shells. It was bad enough I was there, I was in a hurry besides. She handed the sheets to Henry. “Put these away,” she said.

  He took the sheets and left like an obedient dog, with one last wag of his tail. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “Come see us again.”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  Leona straightened up as Henry walked away. Some people react to Mexico by flexing, some by straightening. She had a stiff back.

  “Nice place you got here,” I said.

  It wasn’t any minor job she had undertaken, making order out of Mexico—and not just Mexico but the real essence of the place, the fertility that was its joy and doom. If she thought she could shape up this country she probably wasn’t going to tolerate any vagueness from me. We’d only just met, but I could see the time had come to declare my intentions.

  “Where did you say you were from?” she began.

  “I didn’t, but I’m from Albuquerque.”

  “I’m from El Paso.” She turned up the corners of her mouth—I wouldn’t exactly call it a smile. “Neighbors.”

  There’s a bumper sticker you see a lot of in New Mexico: IF GOD WANTED TEXANS TO SKI, HE WOULD HAVE PUT MOUNTAINS IN TEXAS. I didn’t believe it; Texans made mountains wherever they were.

  “What do you do in Albuquerque?”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  That did it. Her eyes curled up tight. Lawyers have a way of bringing down the lids. “I have a client who adopted a child in Juárez through Licenciado Menendez-Jimenez. I believe you knew him?”

  She nodded stiffly, like a doll whose rubber-band joints are too tight.

  “I went to see him,” I said. “He wasn’t able to give me any information before the, um, murder.”

  If she had any feelings about that matter, she wasn’t going to reveal them to me.

  “So I traced the adoption records and found the baby was born here.”

  “Those records are sealed.”

  “That doesn’t mean much in Mexico.”

  I am not a Mexican and I’ve got nothing but contempt for the system, her expression said, and that attitude couldn’t have made her life in this country a pleasure. “What is it you want here?”

  “I want to know who the mother of my client’s child is.”

  She laughed. “Really. And you say you’re an attorney? You can’t be serious.”

  “I didn’t think it would be easy.”

  “I can’t be bought,” she snapped.

  “I didn’t think you could, but I could still use your help. This is something of a special case.”

  “Every adoption we handle is a special case. The confidentiality of the mother’s identity is sacred to us, as is the identity of adoptive parents. That is the bottom line here, for the benefit of all concerned.”

  “I understand. It’s just that my client in Albuquerque, Carl Roberts, has suddenly come before the public eye. He is running for Congress and—”

  “Your client is Carl Roberts?” She looked like a clock that had stopped ticking, like someone had just pulled the plug.

  “You know him?”

  “No.” She started ticking again. I didn’t suppose her conscience would let her lie, but she sure wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  “Someone, possibly the mother of Carl’s adopted child, has been making threats suggesting that he stole the baby.”

  “That child wasn’t stolen. It was adopted with the mother’s full consent.”

  “It would still be terrible for Carl, terrible for the child if the mother were to appear.”

  “She won’t. The mother doesn’t know who has her child. We didn’t tell Menendez-Jimenez who the mother was, he didn’t tell us who adopted the child. It’s our system; no one has all the information.”

  “Maybe not, but someone could easily put it together if they had the dates, the mothers’ names.”

  “Not here they couldn’t. Whoever is bothering your client, it’s not the mother.” Spun sugar and gloss on the surface, she was beginning to feel like heavy metal underneath. A mixture of anger and disbelief appeared on her face. It wasn’t anything I’d said, as she wasn’t even looking at me. Her eyes were focused over my shoulder, toward the river. “What the… ?” she began, but before I had a chance to turn around to see what it was that distracted her, I felt my feet leave the ground. I was picked up and spun like a child through the air. The bottom fell out of my stomach. Just as I was about to come down on the ground again, hard, the arms that had lifted and caught me lowered me gently down. It was an attack and an embrace at the same time.

  I opened my eyes to find myself lying in the dust and a man leaning over me laughing. Sam. “Hi, Nellie,” he said, smiling. “How you been?”

  “Just great,” I said. “You’ve got a weird idea of what’s fun.” Our third meeting. They say once is chance, twice coincidence, three times an enemy action. If Sam wasn’t the enemy, it was beginning to look like he must be working for him.

  “I didn’t hurt you did I?” he said helping me up and brushing me off in places where there wasn’t any dust.

  “I wouldn’t exactly say I enjoy being snuck up on and attacked from behind,” I replied, moving away from his brushing hands.

  “Sorry about that. Just a little trick I learned in Vietnam. I’m a black belt in karate, did you know that?”

  “I do now.”

  “You were standing there so serious like, I knew you hadn’t heard me coming. I thought it would be fun to surprise you.” He grinned.

  “You two know each other?” Leona asked, as incredulous and angry as her self-control would allow, which was just angry enough to make her spun sugar hairdo quiver.

  “We’ve met,” I said.

  “What a coincidence,” Leona remarked snidely. “How did you get here anyway?” she asked Sam.

  “Just crept up along the riverbank and came around behind the trailer. You could use some water in that river.”

  “It’s always like that at this time of year. You know that,” she snapped.

  “Pleasure to see you, too, Leona.”

  “What do you want, Sam?”

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by to say hello.”

  “You’ve said it. Now you can get out.”

  “Hey, Lee, you and I go back a long time, remember.”

  “The girls were off limits, Sam, you knew that from the very beginning.”

  “I fell in love. What can I say? I wasn’t the only person to ever fall in love here, either.”

  “Love.” She sniffed.

  “You’re all heart,” Sam said, “you know that? I know some girls now in trouble; they need you, you need them. I can put you together, just like the old days.”

  “No. You and Los Niños are through. Now I suggest you get out of here before you fall in love again.”

  “Now, Lee.”

  “Get out. I’m warning you.”

  “Okay, okay,” Sam said. “I can take a hint.”

  “Why don’t you give your friend here a ride when you go. I believe we’ve said all we have to say, too, but in case there’s been a misunderstanding, I’ll repeat it. We do not reveal information about our adoptions to anybody. Ever.”

  “Swell lady,” Sam said as we walked down the driveway past the white mushroom chapel.

  “She’s tough,” I said.

  It was more than toughness, it was conviction, an absolute conviction that she was right. I’d seen it before. It had to do with religion, a certain kind of Protestant fanaticism. Catholicism was more tolerant. We had reached Sam’s vehicle, the red Mazda pickup with racing stripes on the side and New Mexico plates. We got in, he put it in gear and gunned it down the long, dusty road, careening off ruts, obliterating any footprints. He drove as well as a Mexican and was proud of it. The time had come to find out why he kept turning up in my life, so I asked him.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” was his reply. “We’ve been t
raveling in the same circles.” He tapped his forehead, revealing the Satan’s Sinners tattoo on his forearm and smiling with snaggle-toothed charm. He was charming, all right, friendly as a pup, cute as a scorpion, a combination some women can’t resist I was glad I wasn’t one of them.

  “I suppose this was the church you were involved with, the one that got you off drugs,” I said.

  “That’s the one. We lived right here in the dorm and in tents and trailers, and the U.S. Government paid for it. Most of us was on Vietnam disability. It was a good place to get off drugs, way out here. Henry was a real fireball in those days, saving people left and right. You see him?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s a wreck of himself; started drinking. Maybe it was us, maybe it was Leona. She could do it to a man. You know, she was a real sweet lady when they moved down here, but the drunker Henry got, the tougher she became. When they got us cured, Leona wasn’t ready to quit. They got involved with some rich guy up north and started taking in the girls. Some of those girls have been saved so well, they been back here four or five times.” Sam grinned and raised his eyebrows in a Jack Nicholson leer. We had reached the end of Callejón Río Lindo and turned onto the highway.

  “What do you know about Menendez-Jimenez?” I asked.

  “I know he was murdered just when him and me was getting down to talking business. Leona ain’t the only one who knows girls in trouble. I don’t know for sure who did it, but I got some ideas.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Who do I know that you know except me and Leona, and it wasn’t me.”

  I could see that line of questioning was leading nowhere, so I started another.

  “What do the girls get for giving up their babies?”

  “Help for their families, some money to get started again, things like that.”

  A hobbled burro stumbled onto the road and stared at us with sad brown eyes. They hobble the burros here to keep them from wandering off, but it doesn’t help their odds any on the open highway. While Sam swung out to avoid him, I did some figuring. Say there were fifteen girls at Río Lindo, all of them close to giving birth. Fifteen girls a month at twenty thousand dollars a baby; that was a lot of money. Some cottage cheese and peaches, some palms to be greased, Licenciado Menendez; it still left a nice profit.

  “Who is behind this place anyway?” I asked.

  “A very rich man, a gringo. I can’t tell you his name.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wouldn’t like it.”

  “He’s the one who fell in love too?”

  “I can’t tell you that neither.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Sam. I didn’t come all the way down here because I wanted to visit with Leona. There’s a reason why I need to know.”

  “You tell me what that is, I might tell you his name.”

  “I can’t. It’s a matter of client confidentiality.”

  “Well then I can’t tell you who owns this place, Nellie, but a smart lady like you could probably figure it out.”

  There were a lot of rich gringos out there with interests in Mexico, not so many that I knew, and even fewer who called me Nellie. What was that one doing—sending me out to gather information and following me to make sure I did it? Were there subtle sneaky depths to Carl that even I hadn’t discovered yet? “There’s a place where I got that name Nellie, you know, and it wasn’t the cab of a Mazda pickup.”

  “Any place you want, I’ll call you Nellie there too.”

  “What I want is to know where you got that name, why you keep turning up in my life, and who is paying you to do it.”

  “If someone was paying me, I couldn’t tell you anyway, because they’d be my client, right? Client confidentiality.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “You think your clients are more important than mine?”

  “It better not be the same client.”

  “Nobody has to pay me, Nellie; I’d do it all by myself,” he said with a ragged grin, and then he lit up suddenly like he’d had a brilliant idea. “Are you lookin’ for a baby? Is that what you’re doin’ here? Because if you want to adopt a baby I can get you one, cutest thing you ever saw, and it won’t cost you no twenty thousand, neither.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “Whatsa matter?” he asked. “I say something wrong?”

  “It’s just you, Sam—you’re wrong. Babies aren’t something you buy and sell like toothpaste.”

  “You want it, someone else don’t, I can put you together. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I don’t want a baby.”

  “You’d make a good mother, Nellie.”

  “Not that good.”

  If anything I’d said offended him, it didn’t show. By the time we reached San Miguel he was telling me about his trip back to Juárez, where Maria was waiting for him, and offering me a ride. I told him I had a round trip ticket on Three Gold Stars. I figured my odds were better on the bus. The drivers drove about as well as Sam, but I’d rather have a bus around me than a Mazda pickup, and it didn’t look like I was going to get any more information out of him unless I gave him some, and I wouldn’t do that. Besides, it was Semana Santa, Easter week, the most celebrated of all of Mexico’s holidays. Maybe I’d find something to celebrate here.

  He dropped me several blocks from the hotel; a crowd was already waiting for the Holy Saturday procession and the only way to get through it was to squeeze.

  “Nice seein’ you again,” he said.

  “Next time you might give me some warning.”

  “If I got it to give you I will.”

  13

  A PARADE IS one place where it’s an advantage to be a gringa in Mexico—you can see over everyone. You knew they were serious about it because the town had been draped in purple: purple banners hung from the streetlights, purple bunting was draped from the roofs; a dark, muerto purple. Street vendors were selling jicama and corn on the cob sprinkled with red chile to eat and papier-mâché replicas of devils and beasts to blow up. I bought one for five hundred pesos for luck, a strange pink beastie about a foot tall with a bird’s head and a man’s body, fingered hands and webbed feet, and tufts of feathers sticking from its head. It wasn’t wired, but most of the demons were sold with explosives tied to their backs. On Easter Sunday Mexico celebrates the ascension into heaven by blowing things up. They like things that go bang in the morning or night, but Saturday is the day of sorrows, the Spanish day. Supposedly in some remote mountain villages, the Crucifixion is actually reenacted, crosses are lashed to men’s backs and they carry them through the streets, others flagellate themselves with whips in the square. But in San Miguel they carry the saints from the San Francisco Church to the Paroquia. It’s another form of penance, as the saints are heavy life-size wooden statues and it takes eight men to support one on a litter.

  I found myself a spot in front of the hotel, leaned against the wall, and waited. The crowd was very subdued, no mariachi bands serenaded under the portal, no newsboys cried, “News,” no vendors yelled, “brocoli, espárragos.” Even the sky had turned gray. The clouds seemed to draw the colors out of the town; the walls lost their terra-cotta pink glow. It was a scene of neutrals, purple and black.

  The first sound of the approaching parade was a slow, thin drum and marching feet, then a high-pitched flute. A little child led them, a flutist no more than ten years old. He was dressed in white, intent on the playing of his flute and on each small step. He was followed by three young drummers and then rows of young ladies in white stockings and shoes and confectionery confirmation dresses. “They are all children in Mexico,” Peter Esterbrook had said, but there were people here who were older than Peter Esterbrook would ever be. Old ladies with beautiful and wise faces marched along with middle-aged matrons. All the ladies wore black dresses with black lace mantillas and carried prayer books. They were the moral backbone of San Miguel, and their carriage showed it. Next came the wooden sai
nts, the royalty of the parade, bobbing regally above the men who bore the litters. The men’s heads were bent; they marched slowly with the patient step and sad eyes of burros. A lot of nights of pulque-induced meanness had to be atoned for. Carved and painted with loving care, the saints were decorated with lace and gilt. They had beautiful complexions and serene expressions. The Virgin, Queen of Sorrows, was last, following a bloodstained effigy of her dying son. She wore a blue wooden robe and her suffering was her ornament and her pride, one pear-shaped tear forever embellishing her cheek. After she was carried up the stairs of the Paroquia and disappeared within, the crowds dispersed. Those there was room for squeezed into the church. The rest slipped silently down the cobblestone streets and back into the callejóns and callecitas from which they had come.

  ******

  No one is as sad as a Mexican; no one is as happy, either. On Sunday they celebrated by blowing up a gringo in the jardín. It was hard to find a live one to submit to wiring with explosives, so they used a papier-mâché replica. A town as beautiful as San Miguel sees a lot of gringos; gringos dressed in Guatemalan huipiles, huaraches with tire soles, the clothes of the poorest of the poor; gringas with peaches-and-cream complexions hardening like crustaceans in the sun. They see old gringos on Social Security, young ones on tour; they see northern European girls in short shorts, no bras, blond hair flying. It’s their prerogative to strip naked in the sun, the Mexicans to misinterpret the gesture. After a while in this country, a sane woman learns to cover up, to hide anything that might attract attention.

  On Sunday I was awakened early by the sound of a Roman candle whizzing by my window and landing with a thud on a neighboring roof. Cherry bombs were bursting in the street. Mexicans love a parade; they love an explosion even better. By the time I had packed up and eaten one last bolio in the hotel’s patio, the jardín was filled with the same mourners who had been there yesterday, only today they were in a celebrating mood. The sun came out, and with it the colors. Three mariachi bands competed for space under the portal. Vendors sold chicharones and Chiclets. A little boy caught my arm, his eyes bright as diamonds, his face dirty as the mine they came from.