Border Child

by Michel Stone

  Héctor weighed his words but spoke breezily. “I’ve always enjoyed fishing and working outdoors. This work suits me, but…” He hesitated.

  “But what?” Santiago said, putting away the bait and riggings.

  “But I should be getting on to Matamoros soon, and I’d hoped to earn a bit more money before I head that way.”

  Santiago cracked open the last can of beer remaining in the boat and took a long swig, studying Héctor. “Those fat dogs from Mexico City seemed to enjoy their day with us,” he said.

  Héctor nodded and continued scrubbing the bow where fish blood had baked into a brick-red stain.

  “Fair enough, Héctor. I hear you,” Santiago said, as if he’d just made up his mind about something. “Do you recall that spot along the rocks, north of here, that I pointed out to you?”

  Héctor had been anticipating this conversation about the craggy promontory. Santiago had worn an unusual and serious expression when he’d pointed out the spot.

  “Of course,” he said. “I know the spot.”

  “Good,” Santiago said, nodding in approval. “I’m going to send you there for me later this week. Could be tomorrow. Could be in three days.”

  “Okay,” Héctor said, ceasing to scrub the blood, waiting for Santiago to elaborate.

  Santiago peeled most of the money off the stack then passed the remainder to Héctor. “You’ll make a pickup. It’ll be quick. You’ll pull up to those rocks, and you’ll find a wooden ladder fashioned up the southern end of that cliff. It’s not easy to see until you’re within a couple of meters of the rock face. Get to the top, meet a guy who’ll be expecting you. He’ll have a big cooler for you. Get the cooler back here to me as fast as you can. That’s it.” Santiago shrugged as if to emphasize the simplicity of this whole process, but he watched Héctor at an odd angle, as if he were sizing him up anew.

  “And the money for this?” he said without meeting Santiago’s stare.

  Santiago sipped his beer and seemed to mull the question. “If the outing goes well and you get the cooler here with no problems, I’ll pay you three times what you make on a fishing trip.”

  With each of the three fishing charters he’d taken, Héctor had earned more than the previous outing.

  Santiago must have mistaken as doubt Héctor’s reticence while calculating his earnings. Santiago added, “How about eight hundred pesos? If all goes well.”

  “Just tell me when I go,” Héctor said, wondering, among his many unspoken questions, what could be in that cooler.

  Chapter 17

  Lilia

  Lilia heaped a mound of gray clay onto the wide, flat stone where women in her family had worked clay for more than a century. The clay felt cool between her palms and the working of the damp earth soothed her, as if she were stepping onto a pendulum somehow, falling into an ever-present rhythm begun in some primordial time by all the women who’d come before her. Today she would make small decorative jugs, something her grandmother would never have considered doing. Nor would Crucita have experimented with colors. Crucita’s pottery had been beautiful, yes, but always pieces with designated function and purpose, like water jugs and comals for making tortillas or toasting chili peppers. After being in America, Lilia developed an interest in artful, almost whimsical pieces, something her grandmother would never have understood or valued. Lilia began kneading the clay, working in cattail fluff as the clay softened in her hands. The downy cattail, stripped from plants growing beside the river, improved the workability of the clay. The finished pieces would shrink less and would be less likely to crack in the kiln because Lilia, like her grandmother, incorporated cattail.

  An old man named Jaime had traveled through Puerto Isadore every couple of weeks for years, hauling clay in sacks across the back of a donkey. On rare occasions, Crucita had purchased from him, but she swore the quality of her finished pieces to be inferior when she used Jaime’s clay. She had preferred to mine her own material. Lilia’s earliest memories centered around clay and pottery and always Crucita. As a small girl Lilia would go with Crucita to dig clay at their secret spot. They’d travel to the banks of a river that flowed just beyond their village, and together they would pick cattails and dig all the clay they could carry home in Crucita’s wobbly-wheeled goat cart. The clay was dense and heavy and in need of a two-week soak before her grandmother would use it. No less than two weeks, the old woman had insisted, and to this day, Lilia heeded her grandmother’s wisdom and refused to work her clay until she’d soaked it two full weeks in the shaded barrel behind her house.

  Now, with her rounded belly and troubling back pain along with the demands of little Fernando and Héctor’s absence, Lilia had resorted to buying clay from Jaime. This last batch she’d purchased a few days before Héctor’s departure for Acapulco. She’d stirred it each day in its water bath, slowing encouraging the clay to release bits of stone and twig and other debris, urging those unwanted parts to sink to the bottom of the barrel. The process had paid off, and the mound she now worked felt pure and smooth to her fingers.

  She pounded the lump over and over against the surface of the stone, as if the clay were a misshapen ball refusing to bounce for her. As the lump rounded, Lilia’s hands found a rhythm: Slap, slap, slap-slap. Slap, slap, slap-slap. The top portion narrowed and the bottom spread until the clay took on the shape of a cone. She hummed a nameless tune as she worked, losing herself in the time-honored tradition of her mother’s people, a mother she’d never known by sight or sound but to whom she felt a connection as palpable as the earth caking her hands.

  She lifted the cone of clay with her left hand and with her right fist began tapping the center of its thick bottom, harder and harder until her rhythmic, dull punch punch punch rounded and hollowed the shape into a bell with her fist inside. She slowly twirled the bell of clay on her fist by slapping the outside with her open left hand until its surface had thinned and smoothed, its walls building.

  Lilia stood and stretched, unable to lean over her work for any extended amount of time. A streak-backed oriole landed on the barbed-wire clothesline above her, and Lilia, watching him hop between one of Fernando’s shirts and a pair of her socks, admired his bright yellow plumage. When he flew away to a nearby treetop, Lilia resumed her seat.

  She placed a shallow plate on top of an overturned bowl and set her upturned bell of clay atop the plate, then she began spinning the plate. This Zapotec wheel was simple but efficient, and, according to Crucita, had been used in their village and throughout Oaxaca since ancient times. Lilia valued her grandmother’s teaching and knowledge more now since Crucita had passed to the spirit world. Crucita had seemed judgmental, even cruel, in her old-fashioned ways and opinions of Lilia’s generation. Now Lilia understood that her grandmother’s sentiments stemmed from a fear that her way of living would be lost, replaced with techniques and objects and beliefs so at odds with what she’d always known that they would be unrecognizable to her, and what a frightening possibility for an old lady to consider.

  But some old practices weren’t without problems. Lilia thought of her mother, dead from delivering Lilia, and how when Fernando was born, Lilia had had to go to the fancy clinic in Oaxaca after Rosa had detected the boy was large and wrong-side-down for delivery. Lilia had assumed that hard, rounded lump in her pelvis to be the unborn baby’s head, ready to dive into the light of the world. But no, Rosa had said, “That’s the baby’s bottom, wedged tight where it should not be, and delivering him could cause you both great troubles.”

  Thinking about Fernando’s birth, Lilia instinctively brought her hand to her lower abdomen where a thick scar from her caesarean section snaked beneath her swollen belly just below the elastic of her underpants. The scar, pink, angry, and jagged, reminded Lilia that she’d likely still have her own mother if Crucita had known or even had the ability to get her to a hospital. How many times had she considered that alternative to history? Perhaps she, too, would have passed to the spirit world had Rosa not i
nsisted that Fernando was breech and made Héctor get Lilia to Oaxaca City on the bus.

  The surgery and Fernando’s delivery in the clinic had taken all of Héctor and Lilia’s savings, including the U.S. currency they’d received from their American employers the day before Héctor and Lilia had been deported. Oh, how kind the American farmers had been to them! Even now, years later, an occasional letter would arrive, postmarked from America, often at Christmastime or on Héctor’s or Lilia’s birthday, containing a twenty- or a fifty- and once or twice a hundred-dollar bill. But more often than not, the envelope would arrive with a kind letter making reference to the farm or the weather or fishing or money enclosed, but the envelope would have been tampered with, and the money would be gone. Héctor didn’t have the heart to tell the gringos that their monetary gifts sometimes never made their way to his and Lilia’s hands.

  By late afternoon Lilia had completed four pieces. She polished them to a shine with an ancient lump of quartz that had belonged to Crucita and to Crucita’s mother before her.

  If Lilia could make at least that many pieces tomorrow and again the day after that, she would load them all into the pit behind her house, then seal the opening of the cavity with moss, whole cattails, mud, and broken shards of old pots. She’d fire them there below the ground where heat and smoke would transform the pieces into pottery, black as coal chunks, both beautiful and useful.

  The shadows had grown long when Lilia heard Rosa’s and Fernando’s voices from inside her house. Fernando emerged from the house first, rushing into his mama’s open arms.

  “Easy, boy,” Rosa called to him, just a few steps behind. “You’ll knock your mama off her stool.”

  Lilia kissed Fernando’s head, inhaling the scent of her son, a unique mixture of sweat and sugar and fish. Fernando’s unabashed greetings were the best part of any day, and Lilia squeezed him in her tired, swollen hands. “My boy,” she said, looking into his bright, smiling eyes.

  “You made good work today?” Rosa said, pulling up a plastic chair that had been leaning against the house. She sat and took a pipe from her pocket and lit it with a match.

  “I did, thanks to your entertaining this fellow.” Fernando had climbed onto Lilia’s knee, nestling into her arms and sucking his dirty thumb. He began to twirl a lock of his hair around and around his left index finger, a sure sign that sleep would soon find him.

  Rosa puffed her pipe, looking up at the bright oriole that had returned, now sitting in Lilia’s mango tree. “That boy’s good company. My grandchildren enjoy him, too. The important thing is that you don’t do too much in the coming weeks. Sitting here making pots in the shade is probably a good way to pass the time. You feel okay today?”

  Lilia never felt very good anymore. Her back always hurt, though some days the pain bothered her more than others. Walking aggravated her body, and even standing for any length of time brought shooting pains across her back and down her legs. But sitting here, shaping her pottery from lumps of gray clay, she could do that. And so she said to Rosa, “I’ll be glad when this baby arrives, but I’m okay.”

  “Don’t rush her or God,” Rosa said, tapping the pipe against her chair, emptying its contents onto the ground, before placing it back into her pocket. “I should get home. Do you need anything before I go?”

  Lilia eased Fernando from her knee and took her time working her way up from the chair to a standing position. Sticky from sweat, her bottom and legs stuck to her skirt, and she suddenly felt bone tired and in need of bathing and her bed. She turned toward the house where Fernando had already begun walking, as if he, too, craved the bed that awaited them there.

  “Lilia!” Rosa gasped.

  Lilia turned to her friend. “What?”

  Rosa pointed at Lilia. “Your skirt, Lilia.”

  Lilia looked down, grabbing the back of her skirt, lifting and twisting the fabric so she could see what Rosa saw, though, by the expression on Rosa’s face, Lilia already knew what she’d find and what trouble the crimson stain portended.

  “Let’s get you inside,” Rosa said, grabbing Lilia by the elbow.

  Chapter 18

  Ana María

  A fat American family had just been seated in Ana María’s section. The husband and wife looked alike the way husbands and wives often resemble each other after many years together. She hoped if she ever got married she’d marry a handsome man, lean, with full lips and smooth skin. That is how she’d like herself and her husband to appear in their later years, the beautiful envy of everyone who saw them.

  She greeted them with “Hello. How are you?” Four of the approximately fifty English words she knew. Like many American tourists, they replied “Hola” and commenced to chat her up in indecipherable Spanish mixed with English that she could barely understand.

  These Americans chose this restaurant, Señor Juan’s Texas Rib Shack, in Mexico and spoke bad Spanish to a waitress who tried to greet them in their native tongue, English. Ana María would never understand people. Why not eat Mexican food when in Mexico? They could eat Texas ribs back home. Americans intrigued her. Still, she longed to visit America, to see American rock-and-roll bands and American football players like the Dallas Cowboys and to visit huge stores like Macy’s that held a parade with giant floats in November, which always showed on the televisions in Acapulco. One day she would get there, and so she worked every shift she could grab at Señor Juan’s Texas Rib Shack to save her pesos.

  “Un rib platter con Tejas toast, por favor, y una cerveza fría,” the fat man said, grinning at Ana María with pride at his use of Spanish.

  His wife ordered the green salad with fried chicken strips, “And una cerveza for moi, too,” she said.

  Ana María didn’t think moi was an American word, and her suspicion that the woman had butchered her Spanish was confirmed when the husband laughed and the wife turned red in the cheeks but giggled, too.

  The couple’s two fat sons ordered Cokes, barbecue sandwiches, and french fries. The bigger of the two boys said, “Are they called Mexican fries here?” And his mother said, “No. french fries are french fries all over the world, sweetheart. Even in Meh-hee-co.” She smiled at Ana María, and Ana María smiled back then left to prepare their drinks. That’s when she saw Emanuel enter and sit at the bar. He winked at her before she slipped into the kitchen to turn in the food order. She’d not heard from him in several days, and she wondered if that guy from Puerto Isadore was still sleeping on his floor.

  The American family reminded Ana María of flan, soft and gelatinous. After she delivered their plates of food and refilled the boys’ soda glasses and brought the parents each another beer, she joined Emanuel at the bar. They were her last table, and for now they seemed content, so she would visit a few minutes with Emanuel.

  “They are like custard, those people. If you cut them I bet they would bleed thick cream.”

  “Maybe they’re big tippers, you know? Keep their drinks filled and food in their mouths, and you’ll have your beer money for the night. You can buy my drinks,” he said, running a finger down her forearm. His touch tickled.

  “You still have your friend sleeping at your place?”

  He sipped his beer, and she wondered if he were thinking of a way to get his houseguest gone so he could take her home with him when she got off work. “He’s still there. But not much longer and he’ll be gone from here.”

  “Why’s that? You going to kill him?” She teased him. Ana María had sensed Emanuel’s irritation with the guy a while back, like they weren’t good friends but Emanuel seemed to owe him a favor.

  “No, no killing. He’s got plans to move on, that’s all.”

  “You never told me why he’s here. He’s your cousin or something? Family?”

  “No, no relation. But his wife’s an old friend of mine, and, you know…” He paused and studied the beer can in his hand like he’d never seen a beer can before. “I’m helping out a friend of a friend.”

  Something about his e
xpression, the way he hesitated when she asked about his connection, told her Emanuel had a history with his houseguest’s wife.

  “His wife, you dated her?” Ana María shouldn’t care, but she wanted to know. Life is all a matter of figuring out angles, of uncovering slight particulars that can make big differences in the way a person goes about her dealings. So if Emanuel and his guest’s wife used to have something between them, she needed to know. Ana María wasn’t sure of Emanuel’s intentions with her, but she wasn’t sure of her intentions with him, either. Some days his interest in her, desire for her, shone as clear as air, but then he’d become scarce, and she’d not see him for days. She liked having her own space, and as long as he treated her with respect and smiled in her company, she enjoyed the gaps when he’d not come around Señor Juan’s for a few days or, occasionally, weeks.

  He looked at her like he was holding back a smile. “Don’t you worry about that, beautiful.” He ran his finger down her arm again, but this time his touch didn’t tickle. His finger felt like a cat’s tongue, rough and annoying, as if by flirting with her he could soften her edges.

  “I’m not a worrier,” she said, taking the rag from her hip where she’d tucked it into her shorts. She wiped the bar in front of them where Emanuel’s beer can had made a wet ring.

  “So this guy and his wife are going through a tough situation,” Emanuel continued. “Héctor is a straight-up gentleman, but he needs money quick, and I’m not even going to go into that whole story with you right now. But I’ve hooked him up with some fellows.”

  Smugness hung about Emanuel this evening. He’d come into Señor Juan’s Texas Rib Shack like he was Señor Juan himself, though Ana María often wondered if Señor Juan even existed. The man who owned the restaurant was named Charlie, and he was an American who came down six months out of the year. Emanuel looked good. He always looked good, with his strong arms and quick smile, but a bigheaded man had no place in Ana María’s life. She’d had enough bigheaded men to last her three lifetimes.