Border Child

by Michel Stone

  Chapter 31

  Karolina

  The fan turning and stirring the warm air in the corner of the front office squeaked every time it reached the end of its oscillation to the left, and Karolina swore, not for the first time, to replace it or oil it before the week’s end. She was pouring the last bit of water from her mug into the clay pot on her desk where a short, fat cactus stood guard over stacks of papers, when the buzzer at the front door sounded. She was glad to see the visitor wasn’t a beggar or a starving young mother wanting to give up her child. Instead, a thin man in a red T-shirt and work pants and boots waited at the door. He held his hat in his hands, and dipped his chin to her as she approached the glass. He seemed clear-eyed and deferential with no tattoos or other visible signs of gang membership.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  “Yes, I think so. I believe, I mean I am sure, at least for a while you may have…I think you’ve had my daughter here.” He looked her in the eyes and stood still as if his boots were nailed to the mat beneath them, but his hands fidgeted mightily with his hat.

  “Come in, please,” Karolina said, motioning toward the chair across from her cluttered desk.

  The man nodded and followed her gaze to the chair. When he’d sat, Karolina said, “Okay, tell me what you need me to know.”

  The man cleared his throat as if he were nervous or perhaps preparing to divulge a long, detailed story of great importance. Karolina had had such visitors before, men who suspected a former girlfriend had given up a baby she’d not mentioned to him.

  “My priest called you. From Puerto Isadore, in Oaxaca. Do you recall?” The man spoke softly but in earnest. “He told you I would come when I saved enough money. He told you about my daughter, Alejandra, and that her papers said her name was Ernesto.” The pitch of his words increased as he spoke, the urgency of his message spurring him to rush the words, but his sense of politeness and decorum weighed them and slowed them down.

  The man’s sincerity and the desperation in his eyes drew Karolina to him, to his story. “Ah, yes,” she said. “The baby from the car accident. Of course, yes. I didn’t know when or if you’d get here. But yes, I did speak with your priest.”

  The man’s face hinted at a smile, but his worry tamped it to a mere grimace.

  “So, yes, as I told your priest, I recall this child. Because of regulations I would need some proof of your relationship to the child before we can discuss much else.”

  He looked at her as a schoolboy might look, confused but trying to understand.

  “For the child’s protection. For privacy reasons,” she said.

  “What can I offer as proof besides my story, besides details of her life with her mama and me in Puerto Isadore?” He looked as if he might cry.

  “Unfortunately such details, while important, aren’t as foolproof as science. I’ll need to do a DNA test. Do you know what this is?” She didn’t want to insult the poor man, but she knew from experience that such unworldly villagers knew little about modern medicine and science.

  “No. What is this thing, this test? I’ll answer whatever questions you ask me.”

  “It’s not a test like you would have in school but rather a blood test. We do blood work on all children who stay here. We do it for this very situation.”

  He stared at her, searching her face for a scrap he could comprehend.

  Karolina took a breath and forced herself to smile, to ease the man’s discomfort. “May I get you a cup of water or coffee?”

  The man shook his head. “No. Please, just tell me what I need to do.”

  “We’ll take a small sample of your blood. It’s quick and not too painful,” she said, standing to refill her cup with coffee from the coffeepot on the table at the far wall. “We use a needle to get the blood, then we send the small vial of your blood off to a science lab, a medical laboratory. The people in the lab can tell by comparing your blood with anyone else’s blood if you and that other person are related.” She paused and sipped from her cup.

  “So when we have proof that you and this child are father and daughter, we can proceed with our talks, with the location of her whereabouts.”

  The man was pushing up the short sleeve of his T-shirt, nodding, as if he thought she’d take blood from his shoulder. “From my arm? Yes, get your needle. I’m ready.”

  Karolina had to smile, moved by the man’s innocence and determination. “Hold on. I don’t take the blood. Our nurse will stick you. You don’t want me anywhere near you with a needle.”

  He nodded and let his sleeve drop.

  “She’ll draw it from the inner part of your arm, at your elbow joint. Can you read and write?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, and Karolina thought she detected something prickly in his tone, as if her question had offended him.

  “Then I’ll get you some papers to complete, giving us permission to draw blood and to submit the DNA test. After that the nurse will see you. We’ll have to mail the sample off, and we likely won’t hear anything for up to a week.” She turned to go to the back office to find the necessary forms.

  “A week? Can I do nothing for a week?” He’d grabbed his hat from his lap and had begun fidgeting with it again.

  “Well,” she said. “You can wait here at an inn in Matamoros. We have several nearby. Or I suppose you could go back home to…was it Oaxaca? And we could call you with the results.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I can’t possibly travel all the way back home. Not yet. When the blood results come in, proving that my daughter was here with you, I’d just have to come right back to get her next week, and the journey is not so easy. I’ll wait.”

  Karolina nodded and left the man worrying his hat as if it were a living thing in need of attention. She found the consent forms easily enough. Finding an available nurse would be more difficult.

  When Karolina returned to the front office the man stood at the barred window, his back to her, peering through the glass. The front office was accessible to the street, but the bulk of the facility lay hidden behind her office protected by a tall fence, rimmed with barbed wire. A security guard kept watch there, manning the gate. Stealing one of Karolina’s babies would be no easy task, though that had rarely been as issue. Most people visiting this place, aside from clergy, nuns, caregivers, and a few administrators, came to deposit babies, not to claim them.

  When the man heard her return to the office he said, “Do you like living here?”

  Karolina said, “I don’t live here at the orphanage if that’s what you mean,” as she handed him several sheets of paper, a pen, and a wooden clipboard.

  He took the papers and sat down. “I mean in Matamoros. It’s just so different than my village. Mexico is so big, you know?” He’d begun rifling through the papers, and she wondered how well he could read.

  “Let me know if you have any questions. I mean, about the paperwork. As far as Matamoros,” she said, “living here is not so bad. I’ve been here a few years. I come from Mexico City, and I’m glad for the change. So much smog and pollution there. Have you been there?”

  “Yes, a couple of times,” he said. “The sky was like something burned, and I couldn’t figure that out. How can clouds burn? But that’s what they looked like. Very different from storm clouds. Not gray but actually brown, like chocolate.”

  Karolina sipped her coffee, now much cooler than she’d prefer it. Perhaps this man before her was better traveled than she’d suspected. Most people coming to this office were poor locals. She didn’t recall anyone else ever arriving from somewhere as remote and distant as Puerto Isadore down in Oaxaca. Only recently she’d read in one of the American newspapers that often made its way across the border from Brownsville that Oaxaca and Chiapas were the poorest parts of Mexico. If this man’s blood work proved his paternity, she would question him about Oaxaca and how his child came to be separated from him. But for now, she would not concern herself with what-ifs. In her line of work, what-ifs could wear a
woman down in an instant. She hadn’t energy or time for that.

  But then he added, “Both times I visited Mexico City briefly on my way north. The second time was this week on my way here when the bus passed through there. My first time was a few years ago as I traveled to the border. I guess I can’t say I know your hometown very well.” He smiled as he said this, then returned his focus to the papers in his lap.

  He seemed a gentle, genuine man. She wondered if that trip he’d mentioned to el norte had something to do with his losing his child. Such nastiness was not unheard of. When he’d completed the forms, Karolina led him back to the nurse’s office where he offered his arm without a flinch. Karolina then sketched out directions to the nearest, cheapest inn that would be this man’s home until the DNA results came back.

  When he’d gone, Karolina went to her files to look up the child Alejandra/Ernesto/Esther, whom the man claimed was his daughter. Karolina hoped he was the girl’s father, indeed, and that she could locate his child easily. Reuniting them, if all the pieces fit together, would be a sweet reward for her work among these orphaned and abandoned babies. She’d not bothered to actually look into the child’s whereabouts after the priest’s call, thinking she’d deal with that if the supposed parent from Oaxaca ever actually showed up to claim parental rights. Having a village priest make a phone call was far different than following through and showing up, submitting your DNA for proof. Karolina never expected anyone to surface in this case. Yet he had, and what a simple, kind man he seemed to be.

  “Ah, there you are!” she said aloud, after fifteen minutes of digging through a thick file. Ernesto, she read, had arrived the twenty-fourth of January, in healthy condition, the lone survivor of a car crash. Karolina continued reading through the notes, scrawled by hand the week of the child’s admittance. As she read, her faith in the priest’s story and the nurse’s memory grew exponentially. What each of them had said matched what the file stated.

  Karolina reached for her cold coffee and turned the page to read the last two sentences in Alejandra’s file.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “No, no, no. This can’t be.” She closed the file and rubbed the bridge of her nose, dreading the poor man’s return, hoping his DNA didn’t match this child’s after all.

  Chapter 32

  Héctor

  Héctor found a room at a small motel several blocks from Casa de Esperanza. The woman at the orphanage, Karolina was her name, had said the rooms were affordable, but perhaps that word meant different things to different people, and Héctor worried his money would run out if he were not prudent. He needed to have enough left at the end of the week to purchase bus fare back to Puerto Isadore. He certainly couldn’t hitchhike or travel any other less safe way, especially if, somehow, his little girl were by his side.

  The walk to the motel had taken less than ten minutes, but the heat bore down with an intensity Héctor had not known in Puerto Isadore. His shirt dripped with sweat by the time he’d arrived in the lobby.

  The clerk, a squat man with a shaved head and thick glasses, watched a soap opera on a tiny television set on the far side of the desk. He eyed Héctor with a hint of suspicion, and asked him to pay in full for the five nights Héctor requested. The clerk assured him rooms would be available if Héctor decided he needed to stay longer. Héctor lifted his shirt and counted out the bills from a money pouch he’d strapped to his waist. The man passed him a key and motioned to a narrow hallway to his right.

  “Far end of that hall. Toilets and showers at the near end of the hall,” he said, before turning his attention to the grainy image of a beautiful woman speaking in a hushed but urgent and breathy sort of way on the television.

  Héctor found his room right where the clerk said it would be, grateful the key worked. He imagined such clerks, intent on television programs, could on occasion mix up keys. In his travel bag, Héctor carried an extra shirt, one pair of socks, one pair of underwear, and one pair of pants, along with a toothbrush and toothpaste and a photo of Lilia and Fernando.

  Karolina had warned him of bandits and thugs who populated the streets of Matamoros. “They’re bad, and they prey on visitors such as yourself. Walk around like you know where you’re going. Don’t ever look lost, even if you are. The criminals will more likely leave you alone if you look confident.”

  Héctor sat on his motel bed, staring out the barred window, listening to traffic and wondering how one could look not lost if one were, indeed, lost, and how one could look confident, even when he wasn’t sure about anything in his life.

  He pulled his boots off and lay back on the bed, studying his surroundings. The floor was orange tiles, the walls comprised brown plywood, and the threadbare bedspread a pink floral. A lamp with no bulb sat on the bedside table, along with a Bible and a book about northern Mexico. Two framed works of art hung on the wall opposite the bed. The top frame held a painting of a black horse in a green field of orange flowers with snowcapped mountains in the background. The bottom frame held a picture of Jesus with a bright red heart flaming in His chest as Jesus looked skyward.

  Héctor peeled back the tape holding a square of gauze to his inner arm. A dot of dried blood marred the white bandage, but otherwise no sign of his having been stuck remained with him. He folded the sticky tape around the bandage and dropped it to the bedside table, wondering how someone in a laboratory could look at his blood and Alejandra’s blood and tell that he was her father. The thought took his eyes to the inflamed crimson heart in Jesus’s chest. He wondered if the Virgin Mary knew Jesus’s blood when she saw the stains on the shroud, or if she questioned and doubted.

  Karolina had told him that the orphanage took blood samples from all children admitted to their care, so that if Alejandra had lived there, her sample would be on file. He wondered, but had not asked Karolina, what “on file” meant. The blood would dry up. Nothing would be left of the sample if it were kept years, would it? He considered the spot of blood on the gauze. Even that bit, barely an hour old, had started to turn from red to a rusty color.

  How accurate were DNA tests? Most of Héctor’s mind felt excitement about the news Karolina would have for him in a week, but no small part worried and wondered about a multitude of potential mistakes. What if the child named Ernesto wasn’t Alejandra? Maybe Alejandra was only one of a thousand infants who’d used smugglers’ papers naming them Ernesto. Perhaps the girl Ernesto that the orphanage had had was a different girl, someone else’s child. Perhaps Alejandra had never been at this orphanage. He would never understand the scientific processes regarding blood work and DNA, but he knew he must trust the orphanage’s methods. He had no alternative plan.

  Would he know Alejandra when he saw her? When their eyes met would she recall something in him, something lingering in her small brain that told her he mattered in her history, in her very blood and being? Or would he and she look at each other the way two minnows passing in a stream might blandly acknowledge each other as nothing more than two bodies, no more or less meaningful to each other’s existence than any other minnow might be. How often he’d considered these questions, but never had he felt closer to discovering the answers.

  A week? Héctor had never been anyplace a week without working. How could he possibly occupy the next five or seven or more days and nights? He picked up the book about northern Mexico and flipped through it. When he came to a section about Matamoros he stopped and studied the pictures, reading their captions. He considered for the first time how very close he was to la línea. For so many years dreams and images of Norteamérica possessed him, haunted him, and taunted him, begging him like some enchantress from a fairy tale to come to her. Now, since his return to Mexico and the loss of Alejandra, the voice of that magical place had been all but silenced for him. He could never dream of leaving Mexico again, not as long as Alejandra’s whereabouts remained a mystery.

  Beneath a photo of a fancy municipal building was the sentence “The Matamoros-Brownsville metropolitan area comprises the
fourth largest metropolitan area on the Mexico–U.S. border.”

  Héctor wondered what the other large metropolitan areas along the border were, though he doubted he’d ever get to any of them. He read about the special fiesta days here and wished this were February instead of August so that he might attend the Sombrero Festival. He’d not heard of this festival before, but such a fiesta sounded joyful and light. As a boy he’d always anticipated fiesta days in Puerto Isadore, when the entire village burst with music, dancing, laughter, costumes, banners, and parades to honor Isadore, their patron saint. He and the other children understood from the earliest age that such celebrations mattered, and the more celebratory the community became, the more their fishing and their livelihood would be blessed by their patron saint. Somewhere over the years Héctor had lost his enthusiasm for the fiesta days, and he knew his lackluster attitude bordered on sin.

  Despite Karolina’s warnings, the book on northern Mexico told many wonderful and impressive facts about Matamoros, and if he and Alejandra were reunited he would share with her the fascinating bits of information he’d learned while awaiting their reunion. He would teach her their country’s national anthem and say to her, “My darling Alejandra, did you know that our anthem was played for the first time in public at the Opera Theatre in Matamoros?” His beautiful girl would say, “No, Papa! Tell me more of the things you learned while you waited to save me and return me home from Matamoros to Mama and Fernando and the baby!”

  “So,” he said, jutting the book toward the opposite wall and the red-breasted Jesus, “this is how I’ll spend my week.”

  He would read this book and he would explore this place so that one day he could share all he’d learned with his children. He could not possibly know if he’d ever pass this way again, though he doubted so. He’d use his mind when he had no physical work to occupy this time of waiting. He’d wander the streets and take in all this new scenery, careful to look like he belonged here, whatever that meant, so as not to be robbed by the street thugs of which Karolina had cautioned him.