Border Child

by Michel Stone

  “Maybe the man Héctor saw wasn’t actually Emanuel,” Lilia said. “Maybe we’ve hoped so long to see him that Héctor’s imagination was at work.”

  Rosa could stand Lilia’s rambling and wavering between doubt and hopefulness no longer, and she said, “The man he saw was Emanuel.”

  Lilia looked at her, astonishment enlivening her face. “How do you know?”

  “I saw him,” Rosa said. “I talked to him at the pier. He was here just a short while, but was soon to return to Escondido.”

  Lilia grabbed Rosa’s arm. “Rosa! Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  Rosa looked down at Lilia’s grip on her forearm, and the girl released her. “I just told you, Lilia. And I’m not sure why you care. I always said he was the better match for you, that Emanuel would make a good life for you, for a family.” She could feel the heat rising in her neck. “You wanted no part of him, and so you left all you knew, the place where the bones of your grandmother and your mother lie in the ground, to go to a place you perceived more worthy than your birthplace.”

  “El norte and our village aren’t the same, Rosa…” Lilia paused, picking at a dry, brown scab on her index finger. “Life can be difficult in Puerto Isadore. Think about that. My mother died giving me life. Childbirth here can be tricky, dangerous. But that’s not even the reason, really,” Lilia said, struggling for whatever she wished to convey.

  “When the heavy rains have come, children have drowned in the river, Rosa,” she said, looking northeast where they both knew the river snaked and occasionally overflowed its littered banks, less than a kilometer from where they stood.

  Rosa shrugged, recalling the bloated body of a toddler who’d been found downstream two years ago after days of downpours and flooding. She’d served as the boy’s mother’s midwife during his birth. “Ah, but that can happen anywhere in the world, Lilia. No man or country can control the rains or the tides.”

  “And the teenagers,” Lilia continued, as if she hadn’t heard Rosa. “The poorest ones, the ones who sniff glue in Oaxaca City, who have no hope and no chance. I’d never want my child to be like that. Teens who’d rather numb themselves, make their brains crazy on glue fumes, because they believe their future, if they’re lucky, will be nothing more than stringing beads or picking vegetables to earn in a week what Héctor and I earned in a day in el norte. Don’t you see?”

  Rosa did see. She saw that Lilia had a skewed sense of things, and she shook her head in disgust. “Why do you care that Emanuel was here, girl? What difference does that make to you?”

  Lilia sat down on a stool and combed her fingers through her hair. She looked wild-eyed, like a goat who’d eaten something he should have avoided.

  “Oh, Rosa. You don’t understand.” She took a deep breath, as if preparing to make Rosa realize the importance of things. Rosa had no intention of making this easy on Lilia. She gulped the last bit in her cup and set it on the table between them.

  “Rosa, Emanuel is the only connection we have to Alejandra. Last we heard he was in Oaxaca City, but Héctor searched there months ago and couldn’t find him.”

  “He’s no longer there,” Rosa said, imagining Héctor roaming the busy streets and lanes of the city, his efforts as fruitless as a mongrel’s hopes of living in a king’s palace eating scraps of juicy beefsteak. “He told me his father passed a while back and so he moved from Oaxaca City.”

  “Rosa!” Lilia said, with such powerful conviction in her voice and eyes that Rosa said, “Go on. I’m listening, Lilia.”

  “My coyote was Emanuel’s uncle Carlos; he got me to the border. He forced me to hand Alejandra over to a woman he used, a coyote for babies, because Carlos told me he didn’t cross with babies but this woman did. He said she was a professional.”

  Rosa knew all these things, had known them since Lilia called her from a telephone somewhere in Norteamérica, sick with worry just days after she’d crossed. She nodded. “Of course I know all this, Lilia.”

  “That horrible day plays out in my nightmares. Héctor tells me I weep in my sleep. The first time my cries woke him he said my arms were outstretched toward the ceiling, my hands clenched in fists. ‘What were you seeing in your sleep?’ he asked me, wiping my wet face with his thumbs. How could I tell my husband of these nightmares, of evils brought on by my own mistakes? But he demanded, ‘Tell me.’ And so I told him everything, the terrible scene still fresh in my head,” Lilia said, looking past Rosa, recalling the horrible memories.

  Rosa waited and said nothing.

  “In that nightmare, and it’s the same every time, I gripped Alejandra’s legs, one in each of my hands,” Lilia continued, her voice softer now. “I’d just handed her over to her coyote but this woman turned into a snake as soon as I released my baby to her, swallowing Alejandra headfirst, and I told the snake woman, ‘No, please! I’ve changed my mind! Give me back my girl. I’ll go home now. I want to take her home.’ But the woman’s eyes had turned lifeless, like empty sockets in a living creature, and the harder I pulled Alejandra from her, the deeper my baby went down her throat. My hands were at the woman’s mouth when Héctor woke me. I could feel her snake saliva on the backs of my hands and it burned, like venom. And I knew I’d never see Alejandra again.”

  Rosa sighed, unsure what to say.

  “When I finished telling Héctor of this horrifying dream, I covered my face in my shame, but he pulled the blanket away and he held me. Really held me for the first time since we’d lost our baby girl. And that night I conceived my precious Fernando. So,” Lilia said, wiping her eyes, as if suddenly uncertain how to proceed or perhaps afraid she’d revealed too much.

  Lilia had not spoken to Rosa of America in years, of her and Héctor’s experiences there or of their deportation. Now, with Emanuel resurfacing, Lilia’s emotions and memories seemed fresh, raw, as if she had only just returned and needed to make sense of the happenings in that foreign place.

  “Carlos was an evil man, Rosa. The things he did to me. You don’t know what I went through, what I endured. When he got me to the banks of the big river, I swam hard, leaving him behind me on the Mexican side, and when I reached the shore of el norte I prayed I would never see him again. How could I know that just days later I would pray to find him, to speak to him. But God heard my first prayer, and I never saw that monster again.”

  “If you suffered under this man, then you should be glad he is gone,” Rosa said, wondering what he had done to Lilia.

  “And I waited at the border house, waited and waited for that woman to arrive with my Alejandra, though she never came. Never, Rosa! Héctor showed up to meet me at the border house, so happy and surprised by my arrival in Texas, and then so very angry, enraged that Alejandra had not arrived as I’d planned, furious that I’d entrusted that strange woman with our baby. Only what did I know, Rosa? I’d never crossed, I only did as my coyote had instructed, and what choice did I have then, after everything, after…” She paused and dabbed her eyes.

  Rosa was hearing nothing new, and she wanted to slap the girl for dramatizing her own poor choices as if she were a victim. She would offer Lilia no comfort for this.

  “And then Alejandra’s coyote failed to deliver, failed to show up,” Lilia said. “I thought Héctor would kill me.” When she wiped her nose on the back of her hand, Rosa handed her a dishcloth.

  “Go on,” Rosa said, when Lilia hesitated to take the cloth.

  “I begged the man running the border house to give me information on the woman who had my baby. He finally gave me a phone number, but it never worked when I called it. And then, weeks later we got word that Carlos had been killed in an accident, and with him our only known contact to the woman who’d taken my baby.”

  Rosa had never questioned Lilia about the events of her crossing. Without knowing all the details, empathy failed her. “Why, then, Lilia, did you not go back for her right away, back across the border?”

  Lilia sighed a long, exasperated sigh. “I’ve asked myself
that so often, Rosa. But at the time…” Her voice trailed off and she looked up at the passing clouds as if they might offer clarity. “At the time, Héctor had a wonderful job with kind employers, but his work was in a place far from the border, a place called South Carolina, far from the house where the woman with Alejandra was to meet me. And we were soon to run out of money in Texas. But,” she said, shaking her head as if she’d misspoken.

  “But what?” Rosa said.

  “But that’s not why. Not exactly. Getting across the border was not easy. How could we risk going back into Mexico if our daughter had made it across? Don’t you see? What if, eventually, Alejandra’s coyote arrived in Texas, but Héctor and I were stuck back in Mexico? What if we’d used our one stroke of luck in our first crossing? Then what?”

  “She was your blood, Lilia. I would think a mama would do everything in her power to find her child,” Rosa said.

  “Rosa, don’t you see that I did?” she said, pulling clenched fists to her temples. “Second-guessing myself now is easy, sure, but at the time Héctor and I were sick with fear and worry. I was so young, practically a girl myself. We held out hope she would show up.” Lilia shrugged. “Hope was all we had. And besides, I had no idea where to find the woman if I had gone back into Mexico.”

  Neither woman spoke for a full minute.

  “I doubt Emanuel can offer you anything helpful, Lilia,” Rosa said. He is a hardworking man, an honest man. Though Carlos was his uncle, I doubt Emanuel has any other dealings with border crossings, with coyotes. He’s proud of his heritage.”

  “But he may know something, Rosa. Don’t you understand my desperation? Wouldn’t you do anything if one of your children were missing?” Lilia had begun rubbing her left palm over and over with her right thumb as if she wanted to wear a hole clear through to the thin bones beneath the skin there.

  “Lilia, I’d never be in such a situation.” She looked out the window. “Lupita’s here for her girl.”

  “Rosa, do you know where Emanuel went?” Lilia pleaded.

  “Up the coast. Acapulco. He’s been there a few years now, he said. He makes deliveries of some kind. The job provides a truck. That’s all I know.”

  Rosa walked outside to greet Lupita and to tell the child goodbye. Lilia stayed behind in the house until Lupita and her girl were gone. Rosa imagined Lilia wiping her eyes and nose on the kitchen rag, hiding traces of her grief before resurfacing into Rosa’s sunlit yard.

  Later that evening as she lay in bed beside José, listening to his soft snores and the Pacific breeze blowing in through her open window, Rosa considered the possibility that Alejandra was alive and the more doubtful possibility that Emanuel could provide a link to the child’s whereabouts. Allowing herself such thoughts was not her nature, but in the dark quietness of her room she pondered the likelihood. She never doubted Lilia’s love and devotion to Alejandra, but, rather, often questioned Lilia’s decision and her youthful folly. As she lay there considering these things, an unfamiliar heaviness settled deep in her breast. She’d always kept her babies and grandbabies near her. Why would any mother not do so? She tried to imagine how Lilia must feel every day, every moment, wondering if the child to whom she’d given life still lived, somewhere unknown, being raised by strangers. If the child were dead, well, then her spirit would be somewhere lovely where the spirits of dead children go. But, even then, where were her bones? The alternative, the idea that the child lived and walked this earth, stirred Rosa in an unexpected way. Her breath caught in her throat, and she made a small gasping sound that startled her. Only then did she realize she was weeping.

  Chapter 5

  Héctor

  Héctor sat on the ground, seeking the little shade offered by the truck. He opened his sack with fingers that were sticky, brown-green, and nicked from his work. His nails, dirty and stained, were caked with a mucky mixture of dust and agave juice. Héctor’s throat was dry and he filled his jug with water from the cooler on the back of the truck. Worse jobs existed in the world, he knew, but they were not for him. Just a few years ago he’d been a driver working his way to foreman, delivering to buyers the agave picked by the field hands, but since his return from el norte, such work was considered by his employer too good for him. Héctor was a deserter who’d believed himself above this work, these people, and the other workers, the ones who’d remained in this village and now shunned him.

  When he’d first returned he’d begun sitting alone, and now, even though the others had warmed to him a bit, he still chose to eat in solitude, thinking about the man he’d believed he would become but never did. He envisioned the daughter his wife had lost at the border and the man who’d raped his Lilia. The others must have seen his shadowed expression, a bitterness so thick within him that he imagined he smelled of its poison, the venom oozing from his pores so that all around him understood Héctor to be toxic and someone to be avoided.

  Some of the men sat under a tree in a group, a few ate with their wives, while some of the women sat apart resting in what little shade they could find up against the jungle’s fringe. A young woman Héctor had not seen before this week approached the truck where Héctor reclined against the front tire. She squatted beside the back tire and Héctor felt her eyes on him.

  “May I sit here? It’s the only shady spot left.” She spoke so softly Héctor thought the voice to be that of a child.

  Without speaking he nodded and turned his attention to his lunch of tamales with dried shrimp Lilia had prepared last night for their supper.

  “I’m Guadalupe,” she said, biting into what looked like a bean tortilla. Héctor watched her as she took a sip of water, and he was certain he’d not seen her before.

  “Héctor,” he said, nodding again.

  He thought she would say more, but she did not, and so after several minutes he said, “How long have you worked here? I don’t recall seeing you before.”

  “Three days,” the girl replied, her eyes large and sad.

  She was beautiful in her sadness, and Héctor wondered what troubled her. Her worries could be anything, he thought, with so many wrongs in this world, so much pain and injustice. He wondered what one as young as Guadalupe would possibly know about such things. But then, as always, he thought of Alejandra and knew that injustices happened every day around the world to anyone, regardless of age or size or best intentions.

  The thought of raising Fernando and the baby Lilia now carried in a world harboring these things pained Héctor, though he realized these thoughts were ridiculous. A world without pain and sorrow was not a real world.

  “Where was your home before?” Héctor asked.

  “Atoyac. Do you know it?” Guadalupe said.

  He nodded. “Heard of it, but never been there. Beside the sea, yes? Like Puerto Isadore?”

  He took a sip from his water jug, grateful for the drink though it was warm. In the fields in South Carolina he’d kept ice in the watercoolers so that even in the hottest part of the day, cold water was available to quench his thirst, to pour on his sweaty head. He knew that no one among this group of field hands could imagine such a luxury. He considered telling this young girl about the ice, and he wondered if she’d believe him, or if she’d think him a liar and reject him like all the others who now saw him as an outsider.

  A hot breeze blew from the west and offered no comfort, and Héctor pondered what to say next to this girl.

  He stood to refill his jug with water from the truck and asked Guadalupe, “Would you like more?”

  The girl handed Héctor her cup and thanked him. It was then Héctor saw the sores on her right hand, blisters worn through, red and raw from her new job in the fields. Héctor’s hands, calloused and rough, had never been as Guadalupe’s were now. Perhaps boys’ hands are naturally tougher. But he remembered a time when Lilia had just begun working in the fields, cutting agave, and how Héctor had wrapped them for her that first week, so long ago the memory was almost gone, like maybe someone else had experience
d it and told Héctor about it.

  He filled Guadalupe’s cup, returned it to her, and said, “Your hand, it looks painful.”

  “I’m okay,” Guadalupe said, and waved Héctor’s concern off as if she were fanning away one of the many insects that buzzed this field. “This is nothing.”

  “Well, nothing or not, let me help you.” He took his knife and walked to the edge of the field, where the bushes were dense and the jungle began. He cut a chunk from an aloe plant growing wild, its leaves thick with its healing salve and its yellow flowers dotted with insects and an occasional hummingbird. Héctor then cut a strip from the edge of his T-shirt. “Let me see that hand of yours,” he said. He squeezed the thick aloe leaf until its juice dripped into Guadalupe’s open wounds. Héctor extended the strip of cloth to the girl and said, “Wrap this around your fingers when you work. It’ll cut down on the friction. You don’t want those holes to wear any deeper.”

  Guadalupe smiled, seeming genuinely grateful for Héctor’s concern and friendliness. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Nothing,” Héctor said, waving off Guadalupe’s thanks as Guadalupe had done to him.

  Héctor recalled the attention he’d given Lilia’s tender hands years earlier when the two of them had begun working these fields together, before he’d been promoted to driver. How bittersweet were those memories of times when their mutual attraction was still more than they could contain, when crossing the border had been nothing more than a subject of their late-night whispers before sleep.

  They ate in silence a few moments before Guadalupe said, “Have you worked here a long time?”

  He told her of his early days in this field, how he’d begun cutting agave when he was thirteen and how he had done so until he’d begun driving the farm truck, delivering the crop for the farmer who owned this field.