Border Child

by Michel Stone

  “But you no longer drive the truck?” she said, no hint of judgment in her tone.

  “No.” He looked toward the jungle and the men now napping, sombreros shielding their faces from the scorching sun and biting insects. He waited for her to ask him why he’d returned to this shitty, hot job when once he drove the truck, but the girl said nothing and chewed her last bite of lunch.

  He glanced at her then. She looked not at him but out across the field at the endless blue-gray agave, at the spiked rows extending to the distant mountains. He studied her, took in her slender arms, her thin fingers. Her hair hung in two tight braids, their tips brushing the ground because of the way she reclined against the truck tire, her knees pulled to her chest in the posture of a child. She was a pretty girl, her figure still intact, and Héctor knew she’d never birthed a baby.

  When he’d left their village for the border, Lilia’s hair had been long like that, so beautiful he’d dreamed of it while they were apart, anticipating the day he’d send for her and little Alejandra, the day he could comb his fingers through his wife’s thick mane and bury his face there, inhaling her scent of lavender and honey.

  When Lilia arrived unexpectedly in Texas, hoping to surprise Héctor, she, like her hair, was not as he’d dreamed those many nights they’d spent apart. The coyotes had broken her spirit, had forced her to chop and dye her hair, to better match the identification card they’d provided her, and along with her spirit and hair, the Lilia he’d married had been all but lost to him.

  Only recently could Héctor consider Lilia’s trials, her agony during and after her crossing. He’d been so completely devastated that Lilia had somehow lost Alejandra in transit that his grief had blinded him to his wife’s crippling loss, her unwavering guilt. Empathy for Lilia had escaped him for months following her arrival at the border without their child. Her plan to surprise him had taken a horrible, unfathomable, and likely irreversible turn.

  “I left for a while,” he said. “When I returned, my old job had been given away, as it should have been, I suppose. And so here I am in this dusty field, doing the work I did as a boy.” He lifted his knife where it lay beside him on the ground and aimed the blade toward the field to emphasize his point. “My boyhood dreams were to move beyond this place, yet here I am a man. My situation remains as it was, but I no longer have such dreams.”

  “Have you been to the border, to el norte?” she asked.

  Héctor thought of his job in the north, of the few months he’d actually been given his own farm truck to drive there and the freedom that truck gave him. How long ago that seemed. He’d not driven a vehicle since returning to his country. True, he’d always worried about immigration discovering him in America, but besides that, the work he did on the farm there agreed with him and he’d been grateful. And then one afternoon, when he and Lilia had stopped to check on a victim at the scene of a traffic accident, just like that, they were caught and soon on their way back home to Mexico.

  “I’ve been there,” he said. “Several years ago I crossed and worked in a beautiful place called South Carolina. Like Puerto Isadore, this place was beside the sea. You?”

  “Yes. I’ve been there. We, my father and brother and I, crossed three summers ago. I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave my mother. But my father, he took us and we crossed with a coyote,” she said, looking down at her sores.

  Something in Guadalupe’s past had left the girl’s insides as raw and pained as the wounds on her hand. Héctor could see it in her eyes. He knew well what it was like to harbor a silent agony, one too complicated to express.

  “I’m sure that was difficult,” he said, pulling a pack of chewing gum from his pocket. He offered the pack to her, but she shook her head, avoiding Héctor’s eyes, perhaps seeing pity in them, and began wrapping her fingers with the strip of cloth he had given her. When she had woven the strip between her fingers as he had shown her, she said, “That’s good. Thank you.”

  Héctor stood and said, “Let me help you there,” and tied the two ends of the fabric in a tight knot across the back of Guadalupe’s hand.

  The two spent the remainder of their break speaking of light topics, like new acquaintances do. They talked of their schooling as children in their small villages of Puerto Isadore and Atoyac. They spoke of memories of fishing and of playing basketball, an activity both had enjoyed in their youth.

  Héctor had not met a new friend in months, and many who knew him had treated him so differently since his return that he often felt a stranger among old friends. Everyone in his life he had known for years and speaking of his life to one who didn’t already know the details felt good. He enjoyed talking of mundane topics and of less complicated times. Héctor thought their conversation had softened the strain in Guadalupe’s eyes, too. Maybe they both could benefit from this new friendship.

  The remainder of the workday went as the first half had gone, as every day went, only the air seemed hotter and drier than usual.

  The workers loaded themselves, weary and sticky-damp with perspiration, into the foreman’s truck—a truck that should have been Héctor’s, along with the job of foreman, but instead was now his old schoolmate Marcelino’s—and headed back to their village.

  “See you tomorrow, Héctor,” Guadalupe said, as Héctor climbed down from the back of the truck in Puerto Isadore.

  “Yes, sure. See you,” he said. “Thanks, Marcelino,” he called to the driver, who tapped the brim of his hat before continuing down the dusty road.

  Héctor turned and began his short walk home to Lilia. He paid little attention to his surroundings anymore, and why should he? His village was as familiar to him as anything could be. The sounds and smells, the pigs and goats in the dirt streets. Of course, they likely were not the exact animals he’d known in his youth, but they looked and stank and shat the same. Such things would never change here. As he turned onto the narrow lane home, he smelled onions and meat frying somewhere nearby, and his stomach rumbled with hunger. And always in everything here the salt air of the Pacific mingled with the smoky stench of burned waste, blanketing his village, seeping into its soul, uniting all Puerto Isadore’s parts, both beautiful and repulsive to him.

  Chapter 6

  Lilia

  Lilia bounced Fernando on her knee and sipped a warm mug of atole, flavored with lemon and mint. Her back ached from bending over her clay late into the previous evening, and she hoped the drink would help.

  Héctor had been home from the fields only a few moments when he left again to walk down the lane to buy a few items from Armando at la farmacia, and when he returned Lilia would tell him what Rosa had said about Emanuel. Héctor had seemed distracted after work, and Lilia had not wanted to deliver this important news until the time felt right. She would never fully shed the guilt she wore like a heavy cloak, and no matter Héctor’s disposition or what he said, she knew he would never completely unburden himself of his great disappointment in her. And so she always chose her words carefully when speaking to him about matters both light and weighty.

  Héctor set the sack of goods from the market on the table and poured a drink of water from the clay pitcher.

  Lilia’s heart had swelled to an unparalleled capacity at Alejandra’s birth, and it grew more with each passing day as the child grew. Lilia couldn’t fathom that her heart’s love could expand any further, yet it had with the arrival of Fernando. What a miraculous thing, the human heart, with its ability to swell and stretch beyond any boundaries. Lilia had discovered her heart had infinite capacity for both love and grief.

  “Did you sell much today?” he asked.

  Fernando chased a small blue lizard across the floor and out the door into the courtyard, leaving his parents alone. He was such a beautiful child with not a worry in this world except what small animal he might next spy.

  “Three pieces,” she said.

  Héctor sipped his water and watched Fernando through the open doorway.

  “How about yo
u? A good day?” she said.

  He pulled out a chair and sat beside her, finishing off the cup of water. “No different than any other. I don’t imagine my days will ever vary much for a long while unless I find better work.”

  “What are you thinking?” she said.

  “Maybe I could get a job in the hills, find work with the coffee pickers. These guys here…I could’ve never imagined the way they’d see us upon our return. Like we think we’re too good for them.”

  She smiled a weak smile, taking his calloused hand in hers. “Well, I doubt you ever imagined you’d be back here, at least not to stay.”

  “No,” he said.

  Lilia considered how far away the coffee fields were and wondered how Héctor could possibly find work there, and if he did, what that would mean for her, for their family. The mountains were too far from Puerto Isadore for Héctor to commute every day. She kept these thoughts to herself and rubbed Héctor’s forearm with slow deep circles, massaging the thick cord of muscle beneath his sun-darkened skin.

  She thought of the early days of their courtship, of the late afternoons they’d spent sitting on the rocky promontory beside the bay watching the boats, the tide, the gulls, and whatever else came along as day melted into the half-light of dusk. How simple life had been then and how instantly and deeply they’d loved each other. By her sixteenth birthday, she knew she’d marry Héctor, and by her seventeenth birthday they were betrothed. Married at eighteen and a mother at nineteen, Lilia could now hardly recall the carefree nature of her youth.

  “I’ve often wanted to tell Rosa about the soapy-smelling restrooms and the sparkling toilets in Norteamérica, you know? I’ve considered it, telling her about the stores larger than our entire lane, and the rows and rows of vegetables and racks of clothes in those stores. But I haven’t. I haven’t told anyone,” she said.

  “Why not?” he asked, studying her eyes, searching in an earnest way that told her he cared, that her thoughts mattered to him.

  “What good would telling Rosa do? She’d either think I’d imagined such things, or she’d feel jealous or misunderstand my intentions in sharing what we’d seen. She could never comprehend the gringos’ kindnesses to us or that the seabirds in South Carolina are the same kinds as here in the bay.”

  He closed his eyes, enjoying Lilia’s touch. His obvious pleasure encouraged her. She stood, moving her hands to his upper arm and shoulder.

  Lilia had never left her home state of Oaxaca before her crossing, and she could not have known then how very different Norteamérica would be from Puerto Isadore. And even in South Carolina, she could not have imagined how dirty and poverty-stricken Puerto Isadore would seem to her upon her return. She’d been ashamed of her disdain, and she’d prayed to God to forgive her, to set her thoughts as they should be, but her friends and neighbors read in her face the disgust she could not hide, and her eyes revealed her disappointment in what she saw in their ragged clothes, their dirty feet in tattered sandals, and their humble shacks.

  “People are people,” he said. “That’s what I learned in el norte. Some good, some bad. Their birth country matters nothing where their hearts are concerned.”

  She knew he thought of the kind farmer who’d employed them in South Carolina, and of the immigration officials who’d deported them to Mexico. She, too, thought of these people daily still.

  “Rosa had big news for me today,” she said, working her fingers into the dense tissue of Héctor’s neck.

  He grunted.

  “I mentioned your having maybe seen Emanuel. She said he’d been here, that she talked to him. He was here, Héctor. You did see him.”

  To her surprise nothing changed in his slumped, relaxed posture beneath her hands. “I know I saw him. I told you that,” he said.

  “But we couldn’t have been sure the man you saw was actually him. But it was! Rosa said he lives in Acapulco now, that he’s been there several years. He works there, Héctor.”

  Héctor said nothing as Lilia continued to knead his neck and shoulder muscles. She feared he was falling asleep, though she knew he’d heard her. She felt her skin would split, unable to contain her anticipation and excitement, if Héctor didn’t speak, didn’t tell her his plan. Héctor, the old Héctor, always had a plan, always considered his options and how to make life better.

  She reached for the small jar of lavender oil beside the window and dabbed a drop in her palm. She rubbed her hands together then worked her fingers, slow and deep, into the meat of Héctor’s upper back and shoulders.

  Lilia wasn’t sure who benefited more from her touching Héctor this way. Surely his knotted muscles softened like dough under her massaging hands, but Lilia, too, felt her stress lessen when her skin and Héctor’s touched like this.

  “What do you think Acapulco’s like? I’ve always imagined it to be so fancy. I’ve seen the postcards, you know, the ones in Armando’s shop.”

  He folded his arms on the table and rested his head there as if he were either relaxed or bored with the conversation. Or maybe he was just too exhausted from laboring in the hot, dusty fields.

  “I went there once as a boy,” he said, not lifting his head.

  Lilia imagined Héctor as a small boy and wondered how much like their delightful Fernando he had been. Had Héctor’s skin been as creamy soft as Fernando’s? Had his downy head smelled as rosewater sweet? She waited several moments for him to say more, to tell her of the fine things he had experienced there, but when he did not, she said, “How far away is that place from here, Héctor?”

  He exhaled sharply, and she could tell he considered the question. “Less than half a day by bus, I think.”

  Half a day! The answer to Alejandra’s whereabouts may have been so close all this time.

  “Then we’ll go, yes? We’ll go to Acapulco and find Emanuel,” she said, her fingers working deeper and more rapidly into Héctor’s muscles.

  He moaned under her strong hands and the good pain of the massage.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “You’ll stay here. You’ll never go near that bastard Emanuel again.”

  She rubbed his neck and shoulders until the angle of the sinking sun blinded her through the window, and even then she turned and continued to work on Héctor’s forearms in silence. Héctor had made his thoughts clear concerning his journey alone to Acapulco, and this time, she would not defy her husband, not only because to do so would disrespect him but also because her trust and faith in him had become stronger than her trust and faith in herself since her crossing.

  Chapter 7

  Emanuel

  Emanuel knew if he were to sit motionless, the air around him would be still and humid, nearly suffocating, but he sped without pedaling down the hill of the narrow, potholed street, and the temperature of the breeze as he sliced through it felt perfect against his face and bare arms. The window air-conditioning unit in his grimy apartment hadn’t worked since he’d moved in, and the coolest part of his day was on his morning commute out of the hills by bicycle to work.

  He passed a couple arguing, their angry voices disturbing the otherwise tranquil dawn. The woman’s hands flailed about as she screamed at the man, who interrupted her, shouting back. Emanuel whizzed by them on his bike, making sure to show no interest in their dealings. Just as he passed he heard the unmistakable smack of open hand to skin, but he couldn’t be sure who had slapped whom, his eyes steady on the street in front of him.

  He considered how lovely some parts of his adopted town of Acapulco could be, and how frightening other sections were.

  Emanuel arrived at work just as Diego arrived by bike from the other direction.

  “Crazy people up at this hour,” Emanuel said.

  “What’s that?” Diego said.

  “I just saw some stupid shit,” Emanuel said, shaking his head.

  “Welcome to lovely Acapulco, my boy.”

  “Up the hill there, outside my neighborhood. Some guy and his woman shouting in the street. I think he s
macked her good, too. Nobody wants to hear that before they’ve even had their coffee,” he said, trying to make light of his irritation at the scene.

  Diego unlocked the storage building. “Last summer I saw three headless women, their bodies stacked and twisted like some strange orgy. Only difference was their skin. It was almost translucent, you know? A sick gray color, like all the blood had been drained from their bodies, and you knew, even before you realized their heads were gone, that they had to be dead.”

  “You saw that? You serious?” Emanuel said, loading the day’s neatly bundled linens into the delivery truck parked inside the small storage building. How had their conversation turned to this?

  “I saw it,” Diego said. “Stick around here long enough…” He shook his head as if words couldn’t convey the rest of the images he’d seen, or, perhaps, he simply suspected Emanuel couldn’t comprehend them if Diego tried to explain.

  “People are crazy, man,” Emanuel said, inhaling the light scent of clean linens and laundry soap as he worked to fill the truck. “I know people who do some things others may not approve of. Like my uncle was a coyote for years before he died, but that’s harmless. That’s nothing. Beating and killing women? Not cool.”

  “Hey,” Diego said. “You know what a desollado is?”

  Emanuel didn’t answer Diego, instead focusing on the pleasant, breezy scent of the linens. He wondered if the man in the street had hurt the woman, and who started the argument.

  “One time my neighbor’s cousin had the skin peeled off his face. That’s what a desollado is: a person who has their face peeled off by the bad guys. He’d worked for this cocaine distributor, and the boss man didn’t like something my neighbor’s cousin did. I never saw the guy, but I hear about this kind of shit all the time.”

  Emanuel had heard more than he cared to hear, though Diego seemed to enjoy the horrible details.