White Tombs

by Christopher Valen

  “Talking about the past is difficult,” she said. “But I will tell you if it will help.”

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  WHEN SHE BEGAN SPEAKING, Angelina Torres’ eyes searched Santana’s face, as though looking for some kind of map that might make her journey back in time less difficult. He hoped that the trust and understanding he tried to project would assure her that she was not traveling this difficult road alone.

  “I was with my mother, Maria, and younger sister, Margarita. We rode a bus from our small village of Santa Rosa to Agua Prieta on the Arizona border. The bus had a sign on its side that read Bienvenidos a su Futuro. I remember thinking as I stood behind the bus terminal with only my jeans, T-shirt and the denim jacket on my back, that our future was very much in doubt. My mother had arranged to meet a man named Ramón who would help the three of us cross.”

  Thick smog from the maquiladoras made Angelina cough as Ramón led the three of them along a dusty street past the factories, whitewashed adobe homes and churches, and the concrete shells of buildings under construction. Ramón was tall and light skinned like many Mexicans along the border. He had helped her father cross safely three years before. He promised to do the same for the rest of the family for three thousand American dollars, one thousand dollars apiece.

  Angelina used a hand to shield her eyes from the dry, warm wind that whirled around her while hustlers trailed along beside them like rats looking for food.

  The air smelled of dust, garbage and meat roasting at the stands. Men with new clothes and gold jewelry stood at street corners beside expensive cars with booming stereos calling, “Hay muchas rocas aquí.”

  She wondered why anyone would want to buy a rock of anything, yet some of the filthy, gaunt men who were clustered around the plaza and park benches walked over to the cars and gave the men money.

  “They were buying crack,” Santana said.

  “I know that now. But at the time I was so naïve. I remember seeing pictures of white crosses, shoes and clothes hanging on the metal wall in Tijuana. I did not know until my mother told me that each cross stood for someone who had died in the desert. I prayed to La virgen de Guadalupe that we would not end our lives that way. That night we stayed in a safe house.”

  It was a dilapidated clapboard taqueria with bunk beds in small rooms and cucarachas that skittered across the floor when candles were lit. Patches of cement hung like loose skin peeled away from bone, revealing the skeleton of pine beams that held up the fragile frame.

  “We will cross at eleven tonight when the border patrol changes shifts,” Ramón said. “It has been done many times before. Do not worry. This is how your father, Juan Miguel, crossed safely.”

  Ramón’s smile seemed to be genuine, though it revealed one missing front tooth and gaps between many of the others.

  “There is a full moon tonight,” he said. “But we must avoid the judiciales. The Mexican police will want us to pay the la mordida to let us cross.”

  The house had no heat, and as the shadows along the horizon extinguished the last rays of sunlight, Angelina wrapped herself in a serape and sat on an old mattress on a small bunk in the room and slowly ate a cold tortilla. Through the thin door she could hear whispered voices and occasional footsteps in the hallway.

  She thought of her father and how much she missed him. He had not written because he did not know how, but he always sent a picture with the money he had earned. In the last picture he had sent he looked very thin and very pale. She worried that the work in the grape fields in California with the braceros had not been good for him. If he was sending all his money to them, what was he living on she wondered? When they were all together again, she would help him get strong once more. As the oldest child in the family, she had a responsibility to help. She had to be strong for all of them.

  “Drink plenty of water,” her mother advised them. “The night will be long.”

  Angelina Torres paused for a moment in the story and sipped her wine. The candles burning on the coffee table had filled her apartment with a rich, vanilla scent.

  Santana held her gaze for a time, but then her eyes drifted away from him and focused on some distant point beyond the room.

  “It was ten thirty when Ramón drove us along Pan American Avenue and past the searchlights to the outskirts of town,” she continued.

  The wall had not been completed between Agua Prieto and Douglas, Arizona, and barbed wire was still the only barrier along the border. Another coyote had joined them. Ramón called him Jesse. He sat up front in the Ford Bronco with his back against the passenger door, half-turned, an arm resting on the back of the seat.

  “Buenas noches, pollitos,” he said with a hard laugh.

  Angelina did not know why Jesse called them chickens and she did not ask. El cara cortada, as she would remember him, had a long scar on the left side of his face. A wiry, dark Zapoteca Indian from Huaxaca, she thought he was about thirty-two, the same age as her father.

  Ramón parked the Ford Bronco in a restaurant lot and got out. Angelina saw other trucks and vans unloading groups of people.

  “Ándale!” Ramón said.

  She took one of Margarita’s hands and her mother took the other as Ramón hurried them across the highway and down a steep embankment toward the border road. Her heart pounded as she ran, and she tried to calm the fear that rushed like blood through her body. In the light of the full moon she could see that the desert floor was littered with empty water jugs and discarded clothing as she fell in line behind her mother and sister. Others had joined them now, and she counted ten shadows in the group.

  When they approached the border road, Ramón stopped suddenly and said, “Agáchate!”

  Angelina crouched in the darkness in a ditch and watched as a border patrol car passed by, dragging a tire along the soft dirt road, smoothing it out. Her mother and sister were on either side of her and she grabbed each of their hands and held them tight.

  “They will come back every half hour looking for footprints,” Ramón said when the car had passed. “Tie these around your shoes.”

  Out of a burlap bag, he took pieces of carpet and rope.

  Angelina helped her mother and sister before tying the carpet around her own shoes.

  “We must cross through the barbed wire now,” Ramón said. “Be careful of the camera.”

  He pointed to his right. “It moves like magic and has the eyes of an owl.”

  About a hundred yards away, Angelina could see the tall pole where a camera was mounted.

  “When it is time,” she whispered to her sister, “stay low.”

  “Vamos,” Ramón said in a hard whisper.

  Bent double at the waist, she led her family to the barbed wire fence. The one called Jesse put his foot on the lower strand of barbed wire and lifted the upper strand with a hand.

  “Cuidado, señorita,” he said to her.

  She smelled the tequila in the open bottle he held in one hand as she passed carefully under the wire and stepped into the United States. Jesse cut the rope holding the carpet on her shoes with a large knife while she waited for her sister and mother to cross.

  Then Ramón said, “Ándale, ándale. We have many miles to go.”

  Stumbling along, trying to find the ground that seemed to drop away from her with every step, Angelina occasionally heard the low whirring noise of a helicopter in the distance.

  “Remember,” Ramón warned, “lie down in the bushes and do not look up at the helicopter if it comes. Your eyes will reflect in the searchlight, and they will know we are here.”

  Thorns from the mesquite and creosote bushes snagged her jeans. A branch of lightening lit the belly of dark clouds that crested the mountains to the northeast. Finally, at the top of a hill, she saw the lights of a city in the distance.

  “Are we in California?” Margarita asked loudly enough that others in the group heard her and broke out in laughter.

  “That is only the town of Douglas, Ar
izona,” Ramón said. “We have come only three miles. There is a van waiting for us, but it is another eighteen miles. You will see. We must circle the city first to avoid the vigilante patrols. We will rest later.”

  Angelina’s legs began to ache as they continued walking for hours through riverbeds and barbed wire fences and up and down sloping foothills, though she refused to complain.

  “I am tired,” Margarita said.

  “Are you planning to have us walk all the way to Phoenix, señor?” Maria asked.

  “No, no, señora. We can rest here for a short time.”

  The desert sand felt cool to the touch as Angelina sat down beside her mother and sister. Though it was May, her breath floated like smoke around her, and the three of them huddled together trying to protect themselves from the night air that was as cold as ice water against the skin.

  “It was my fifteenth birthday,” Angelina Torres said to Santana. “My mother promised me that when we reached California and were reunited with my father, we would celebrate my quinceañera.”

  Santana knew that fifteen was the most important age in a Mexican girl’s life. But instead of a beautiful dress and a big party with very special gifts, her mother had bought a one-way ticket to hell.

  “I remember we were sitting in the moonlight near a tall saguaro cactus filled with white flowers,” she went on. “The flowers had blossomed in the darkness. It was so beautiful and so strange. I learned later that the flowers bloomed only for a single night before they withered and died the next afternoon.”

  The one that was called Jesse was drinking from the bottle of tequila. Angelina watched as the beam of light from the flashlight he carried swayed back and forth like a scythe with each step that he took. He came up to her and squatted down beside her.

  Momentarily blinded by a bright flash, she heard Ramón say, “Idiota. Apaga esa linterna.”

  Jesse flicked off the flashlight. “Would you like a drink, señorita? It will keep you warm.”

  He smelled as if he had not bathed in a week.

  “Estas borracho,” her mother said.

  “Maybe I am drunk, señora. But I could keep you warm. And your daughter, too.”

  “Vamos! Deja a mi hija sola.”

  Jesse laughed as he stood up and stumbled off into the darkness calling, “Señorrrritas!”

  “I do not like that man,” Margarita said.

  “Stay close to me,” Maria said. “He cannot be trusted.”

  Ramón came around and gave them a drink from a jug. “Es tiempo de irnos.”

  Angelina was happy that it was time to go. The water had refreshed her. She was ready to walk again, ready to walk forever if it would bring her to her father. She led her sister and mother to the cactus where they rejoined the others. Somewhere in the darkness, she heard the plaintive whistle of a train.

  They walked through the night until the rising sun lit the clouds on the eastern horizon and heat began rising in waves off the desert floor. As they neared a sign that read U.S. 80, Angelina glimpsed a maroon and gray van parked in the tall grass near a set of railroad tracks that ran parallel to the highway.

  “Get in and stay down,” Ramón said as he slid open the side doors and the group clambered into the back of the van whose rear seats had been removed.

  Hot bodies pressed against Angelina as she lay down on her stomach under a blanket. The unwashed odor of fear and sweat was a living presence in the van. She grabbed Margarita’s hand and gave it a squeeze, letting her know that as long as they were together, her little sister would be safe.

  “It took us four hours to get to the safe house in Phoenix,” Angelina said to Santana. “We had to stay off the highway to avoid the checkpoints.”

  She drank the last of the wine in her glass. Filled it half full again.

  Santana noted that her words were slightly slurred now. He didn’t mind. Maybe she needed the alcohol to continue her story, to deaden the pain.

  “It was late when I awoke to the sound of loud voices coming from the blackness surrounding me,” she continued. “At first I thought I was in the bedroom that I shared with Margarita in Santa Rosa. But then I remembered I was in a safe house somewhere in Phoenix.”

  She could not hear exactly what was being said, but it was clear that Ramón was arguing with the one called Jesse. She listened for a time, straining to hear, when suddenly the voices grew quiet and she knew that the two men were coming.

  Her mother awoke now, too, though Margarita continued to sleep soundly beside them in the large bed. The bedroom door swung open and the lamp on the nightstand next to the bed lit up.

  “What do you want?” her mother asked.

  “Señora,” Ramón began with a nervous laugh, “there has been … a slight change in plans.”

  “What do you mean? We paid you the money.”

  “Si, señora. But you know there is much danger, much risk in what we do. The money you paid, it, ah, will not be enough to get all of you tickets at the airport.”

  “We have no more money, señor. We have nothing.”

  “Señora,” Jesse said. “You do have something of value.”

  “No, you are mistaken, señor. We have nothing. We …” her mother’s voice trailed off. Then with a determination that Angelina had never heard before her mother said, “No! This is something you will never have, señor. Never!”

  Margarita awoke with a start. “What is it?” she asked, her voice heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

  “Shh, chiquita,” Angelina said, wrapping her sister in her arms. “We are fine.”

  “Señora,” Jesse said, in a voice that was a hoarse whisper. “I know you and your daughters want to get to California so you can see your husband again.”

  “Give us our money and we will find a way,” Maria said defiantly.

  “I’m afraid that is not possible, señora.”

  Maria glared at Ramón. “You!” she said with venom in her voice. “Hijo de la chingada tienes dos caras.”

  Jesse gave a small laugh. “So, now you are a fucking two-face, Ramón.”

  Angelina had never heard her mother use this language before and she told herself to stay calm. She did not know what Jesse wanted and fear began to crawl like a scorpion up her spine.

  “Take me, señor,” Maria said. “But not Angelina, por favor. I will do whatever you want.”

  “Señora, please,” Ramón said. “You must do what he wants. Let your daughter go with him. She is old enough and it will not take long and in the morning we will take you to the airport and you will soon be with your husband.”

  “No!”

  “I could always take the little one?” Jesse said.

  Ramón gave him a hard look. “You will not do that, amigo.”

  Jesse shrugged his shoulders.

  “I will go with him, mamíta,” Angelina said.

  “No! You will not!”

  “It will be okay.”

  “No, Angel,” her mother said with tears in her voice. “You do not understand what will happen.”

  “But if we want to see father again.”

  Angelina got out of bed and stood up, but her mother grabbed her by the wrist.

  “No, por favor.”

  Angelina suppressed the fear in her voice. “It is what I must do,” she said.

  Ramón stepped between them. “Señora, please.”

  He pried her mother’s fingers off Angelina’s wrist.

  “What is wrong?” Margarita asked, beginning to cry. “Angel, what is wrong?”

  With a scream, Maria sprang from the bed and threw herself at Ramón. Tried to rake his face with her fingernails.

  Angelina instinctively moved toward her mother to help, but Jesse came up behind her quickly and locked her in a chokehold. The pressure of his forearm against her throat kept her from moving or speaking.

  “Stop, señora,” Jesse yelled, “or I will break your daughter’s neck!”

  Ramón had her mother’s wrists and back p
inned against the wall. He kept a hip pressed against her legs, so that she could not kick him. Margarita was sitting on her knees in the bed, crying loudly as she watched what was happening to her mother and sister. Maria made one last attempt to free herself, but Ramón was too strong. She let out another scream, but this one was a scream of anguish.

  Angelina saw the tears running down her mother’s cheeks. She knew that in order to protect her mother and younger sister, she had to do what the men wanted. As Jesse led her out into the hallway, she could hear her mother weeping and her sister’s cries of “Angel, where are you going?”

  Under the glare of the ceiling light in another bedroom, Angelina stood facing the one called Jesse. She watched as his eyes fondled her body and a half-grin of expectation played across his wet, thin lips. There was a musty, feathered mattress with yellow stains on the bed, and as he pushed her down upon it, she had a feeling that what was about to happen to her had happened here before, that this was not the first time a family crossing the border with him had suddenly been short of money.

  He was breathing heavily as he pulled off her jeans. Yanked her white T-shirt up over her head. His breath smelled as though something had died and was rotting inside him.

  “I will never forget the smell of his awful breath,” she said, looking at Santana.

  Angelina Torres had spoken dispassionately about all of it, as if it were a bad dream she had once had. But Santana could see the lingering pain in her eyes.

  She said, “Ramón took us to the airport in the morning.”

  “And the one called Jesse?”

  She gave a weak, little shrug.

  “He didn’t go to the airport with you?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  Santana studied her eyes. Tried to read them to see if she was lying.

  “Tell me what happened,” Santana said.

  The color drained from her complexion. Angelina Torres looked down at her hands and then at the darkness outside the window. When she looked at him again, tears glistened in her eyes.