by Hester Young
Pineapple Guy, it turns out, is not the only thing I’ve got to worry about.
As I’m rinsing out my hair, the heaviness comes, a soporific chill that settles over me like a layer of snow. I look down, see blood spiraling toward the drain. Those blue and yellow tiles hover behind my eyelids, creeping closer with each blink.
Lety’s reminding me of my promise.
“I can’t help you now,” I say, but the words are slurred, dragging against my tongue. Somewhere there’s a rancid smell, an unpleasant rotting odor that worms its way into my nostrils, urging me firmly to the other side.
I turn off the shower. Grab a towel and stagger over to the hotel bed, leaving patches of damp carpet in my wake. I just want to sleep, to nestle up with these plump pillows and give myself over. I plunge into the downy comforter, press my cheek to the freshly laundered cotton.
But something’s wrong. Instead of softness, sharp corners. Rough edges tearing at my skin. Mounds of metal and tire and plastic and old cardboard. Cans and wrappers, discarded containers, soggy newspaper, a broken doll—they’re rising up around me, enclosing me in a fortress of refuse.
I know she’s summoned me here, but I don’t know why.
Lety?
The second that I call her name, she’s beside me, huddled amongst all the junk. Something about her face is fuller, softer than when last I saw her. And her dress—she’s ditched the sexy stripper gear in favor of a shapeless white-and-tomato-colored maternity ensemble. My dress, I think, because now I’m wearing it, too, standing beside her like some taller, paler twin, our big boobs and watermelon bellies a perfect match.
The sight terrifies me.
I’m not like you, I tell her, but she only mouths the words back at me, her hands moving with my hands, her expressions mirroring mine. She’s not Lety at all, but my own reflection. My reflection with Lety’s face.
Around us, the wall of trash re-forms into a single peak. I struggle to my feet and shade my eyes from a blinding sun. Beside me, Lety does the same. We labor uphill, across bumpy, rolling ground that seems to shift beneath us. Lety’s gasping breaths echo my own; she matches me stride for stride. We have to get to the top of this hill, although I’m not sure why.
At last, with a final surge, I reach the summit, survey swelling piles of garbage, wipe the sweat from my hairline. What am I doing here? Why am I seeing this?
A movement underneath my left foot gets my attention. I jump back, sensing that I’m standing on something living—a rat perhaps, or some other scavenger. When I look down, however, I see a person. Brown-eyed, golden-skinned, with poorly cut bangs. A girl, watching me.
I drop to my knees, offer her a hand, try to help her up, but she’s caught in the mess of garbage, her body wedged in tight. I try to brush away the other scraps of trash to unbury her, but as I do, it becomes clear that I’m not dealing with garbage at all.
I’m standing on a tower of people. A mass of human bodies. Stacks of brown limbs in brightly colored clothing, black hair spilling from the crevices. And eyes. Quiet, blinking eyes that fill me with panic. These people are alive.
I let out a startled noise, not a scream, but a strangled exclamation. Feel a hand on my arm, calming me. Lety’s there, small yet strong, no longer my reflection but a flesh-and-blood creature of her own. She stoops down to the little girl that I’ve been trying to dig out. Dips her hands into the sea of bodies, trying to lift her up.
The hill begins to shudder beneath us. From the pile of bodies: hands. So many hands. Palms up, fingers curled. Asking for assistance. Waiting to receive.
Yulissa, Lety says, still tugging on the child. You see? You have to help.
I can’t! I gesture wildly around me. Don’t you get it? There’s too many, Lety! I can’t help them all.
Lety presses her cheek to the child’s matted hair and shakes her head. English is not enough, not enough to reach me, and so she speaks to me with her eyes, wordless and eloquent.
Not all of them, her eyes say. Just this one. You can help this one.
• • •
I AWAKE TO THE SOUND of a text message going off somewhere near my head. The blinking blue numbers on the bedside clock flash twelve o’clock, which can’t be right. I grope around for my phone and determine that it’s Saturday, ten a.m. How did I sleep so late?
The text, I see, comes from Pam: where r u?
Nogales, I reply. Where are YOU? I sit up in bed and try to remember what I did with my prenatals. Life may be going to hell in a handbasket, but my daughter still needs her vitamins.
My phone chimes loudly, heralding the arrival of another text. on a date, Pam writes, and I have to read it twice to make sure I understand her. Pam? On a breakfast date? Is she about to embark upon the most ill-advised rebound relationship ever? And why is she telling me this?
Congrats? I type as I fill the hotel’s plug-in coffeepot with water. Seems a little soon.
def too soon, Pam responds, and then posts a digital photograph to our exchange. I squint down at what looks like a random picture of a man and woman in a Starbucks, their heads bent together in intimate conversation or perhaps just nuzzling. An unremarkable photo and inelegantly shot, but I can see what she’s getting at. Although only the back of the woman’s head is visible, the man is without a doubt McCullough. Pam’s on a date, all right—someone else’s.
This raises a number of questions, not least being when Pam went from thinking McCullough was “a decent guy” to worthy of tailing. I don’t for a moment imagine she just bumped into these two.
Think he was cheating? I ask.
probably. Pam doesn’t dwell on her discovery, significant as it may be. what r u doin in nogales?
I tear open a packet of coffee and load up the coffeemaker. Sonora Hope stuff, I answer, intentionally vague. I prefer not to explain Noah’s arrest, not to a cop, not if Carmen can make it all go away.
Pam’s next message gives me serious pause, however. u know any reason sanchez would b following u?
“Sanchez?” The suggestion is so strange I find myself saying his name aloud. Where does Pam come up with this stuff? Before I can inquire further, though, someone knocks on the hotel door. I set down my phone. It has to be Carmen—she’s the only one who knows I’m here. Still, I look through the peephole for confirmation. Can’t be too careful.
Sure enough, Carmen’s standing in the hall yakking on the phone. I throw open the door.
“Any news?”
She holds up a finger, the ultimate in cheap power moves. Make me wait, just to show that her time is more valuable than mine.
Whatever, Carmen, I think. Get Noah out of jail, and I’ll play all your little games.
I finish fixing my cup of badly brewed coffee, all the while covertly assessing how attractive she is. Minus the baby gut, I’m taller and thinner, but she has better hair, a more curvaceous figure. While my face is comprised of angles and cheekbones, hers is round and youthful, her makeup strategically applied to make her look older. I guess “young” is not a look that works in your favor when you’re a defense lawyer.
She continues to yap away on the phone, even giving me a faux apologetic look at one point. A work colleague, from the friendly banter and legal jargon. I get the feeling that she works with a lot of men. There’s a toughness she adopts, a coarse keeping-up-with-the-boys sense of humor that says she’s learned to navigate a male world.
“So,” she announces when she’s finally ended her call, “I just met with Noah.”
I take a sip of terrible coffee and try not to imagine them together in the close confines of a jail cell, Carmen heroically arriving to free him. “Well? Can you get him out of this?”
“They’ve got everything they need to bust his balls,” she says. “This isn’t going to be easy, but I think I can swing it. Unless, of course, there’s something you aren’t telling me.”
“Me?” I bristle. “Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She studies a fingernail, feigning indifference. “It’s a little weird, the sudden appearance of weed in your personal belongings. Any idea how it got there?”
“That sounds like an accusation.”
She gazes at me appraisingly for a few seconds. Without waiting for an invitation, she brushes past me into my hotel room and settles herself in the mango-colored armchair. I shut the door behind us, wondering what I’m in for now, what wild allegations she’s going to throw at me. Yet Carmen doesn’t lose her cool. She props herself up on one elbow, slouchy and casual.
“Look,” she tells me, “I’m a defense lawyer. I don’t usually like to know too much about my clients. But this is personal. I don’t want anything bad to happen to Noah. So please, I have to ask . . . what were you guys doing in Mexico?”
“Shopping,” I say tonelessly.
“That would be a great answer, except that neither one of you bought a damn thing.”
I leave my nasty coffee on the counter and sit on the edge of the bed, stone-faced. “What did Noah tell you?”
“See now, that’s the thing.” She works her fingers through a long strand of her hair. Tilts her head to one side. “He sounded a little crazy, to be honest. He said you were trying to find some girl. Some girl you dreamed about.”
“Huh.” I can feel my jaw tighten. Really, Noah? You told your ex-wife about this? “That sounds pretty crazy, all right.”
“Maybe it’s not. He said you see things. Dead children.” Carmen’s watching me with the easy, open face of a therapist, but I don’t trust her. Not for a second. “Is that true? Do you think you have, like, special powers?”
“Why? What does it matter?” I want to punch her. She’s making me sound like some total head case.
She puts her hands in her lap and bends toward me, still in therapist mode. “We both want what’s best for Noah, right?” she asks. “If the pot is yours, maybe you should own up. You don’t want secrets like that between you. And they’d go easy on a first-time offender. I’m sure we could find medical uses to justify—”
“Screw you, Carmen. It wasn’t mine.”
“Okay.” She extends a nyloned leg and lets her designer pump dangle from her toes. “It’s just that the whole story is . . . kind of fishy. You can see how it might look to a judge.”
I can see how it would look to a judge, all right.
“Listen,” Carmen tells me, “I can get Noah a good deal, no problem. He’d be out of there faster than a sneeze through a screen door. It would go on his record, but he’s got his own company, so it’s not like he’ll be scaring off employers.”
“All right. Then what do you need me for?”
She exhales, a slow hiss through her teeth. “He told me today he won’t accept any plea deals. You know why?”
“Micky,” I murmur. “They’d never let us adopt Micky.”
“Exactly.” Carmen flops back in the chair. “He’s being totally irrational about this. You need to talk to him. Get him straightened out before his court appearance on Monday.”
“Straighten him out how? Tell him to accept blame for something he didn’t do?” I knead my forehead with the tips of my fingers, trying to stave off the headache that’s coming. “Somebody slipped us that bag, Carmen. Either they were using us to run drugs, which seems unlikely, or they were deliberately trying to get us in trouble.”
“That also seems unlikely.”
“But it happened. And I’m pretty sure I saw the guy who did it. He pointed us out to the CBP agent. He knew what we were carrying.”
She studies me. Frowns as if I’m describing some paranoid hallucination. “You saw this?”
“Yes! He had a Mexican passport and he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with pineapples. The agent he talked to seemed to recognize him. For all I know, he’s got some racket going with CBP.”
“You’re sure he picked Noah out of the line?”
I nod. Know that my certainty doesn’t mean jack to her.
“Well,” she says, not exactly brimming with confidence, “I guess I could ask for the footage. Look for people who crossed the border yesterday around the same time you did.”
My heart jumps at the thought. “Please. Please do that. I want to know his name.”
If we can find out who Pineapple Guy is, figure out why he’s gunning for us, we just might discover a connection to Lety, to Yulissa. Maybe even to my mother.
Carmen stands up and takes a few steps toward the door. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises.” She pauses in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, squinting at a point somewhere behind me. “This Micky kid. You guys are really going to take her?”
“We might.”
“But you’re already . . .” She chews on her lip. “I mean . . . isn’t one kid enough?”
“She’s my niece,” I say. “Her mother was murdered. I’m her only family.”
Carmen doesn’t speak for a moment, and I’m both curious and scared of her thoughts. “So what makes you think Noah will be a decent father?” she asks at last. It’s a fair question.
“I don’t know. The fact he wants to be one.”
“I just don’t get it.” She folds her arms, hugs them to her chest. “He was always so against having kids. We both were, you know. Him with a dad who ran off, and me, one of four. We always said just the two of us, that was enough. And then suddenly . . . it wasn’t.”
I don’t know what she wants me to do. Express sympathy? Apologize? Explain the change of heart that ended their marriage?
Carmen hugs herself a little tighter. “I always figured if he could change his mind so quickly, he’d eventually change it back again,” she says. “But now, with two in the works . . . well, there’s no going back, is there? Once you’ve got ’em, they’re yours. Whether you want ’em or not.” She blinks, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a jerk. And I don’t want him back or anything like that. It’s just . . . weird. After so many years, you think you know someone.”
She seems genuinely flustered, not malicious, and that makes her comments all the more worrisome. What if she’s right? What if he does change his mind about children? There’s no Undo button. Our baby is coming, however he feels about it.
I’m not about to share my doubts with Carmen. “Where do we go from here? Legally, I mean.”
She shrugs. “If Noah gets his head out of his ass, I’ll get him a sweet deal. I’m pretty good at what I do.” She smiles faintly. “‘Slicker than pig snot on a radiator,’ that’s what Daddy Jack used to say.”
I’m acutely aware that I’ll never get to meet Noah’s grandfather, never get to reminisce about his cute Southernisms.
“The way I see it, Noah has two options,” Carmen says. “Suck it up and plea, or keep spouting this little conspiracy theory of yours and hang his hat on a jury trial.”
I look up. “You think he’d have a shot with a jury?”
“Nope,” she says. “Not a prayer. So if you’ve got some sway with Mr. Stubborn, now would be the time to exercise it.”
And then she’s off, leaving me with only the discomfiting memory of her high heels, glowing skin, and trim, baby-less figure.
Oh, Charlie, I think. What have you unleashed?
• • •
DESPITE LETY’S COLORFUL ATTEMPTS at communication, I’ve pretty much forgotten about her when Albert calls. My head is full of Noah as I squeeze into a maternity tank top and grab my phone.
“Hi,” Albert says. “Just thought I’d check in about your article.”
“Oh. Yeah.” The article, of course, is barely on my radar at this juncture. I consider spilling the beans to Albert about our troubles at the border but decide against it. Drug arrests aren’t something you advertise. The fewer peo
ple who know, the better.
“I don’t know if you’re still interested in Lety’s story,” Albert begins, “but I grabbed her file yesterday.”
“You did?”
“I got curious after we talked,” he admits. “Donna didn’t always keep up with her field notes, but there was some information in there you could probably use.”
“Lay it on me. You never know what could be helpful.”
“Looks like Leticia Medina came to Sonora Hope in April as a referral from Marilena. Lety was about five months pregnant.” The unborn baby hangs for a second in the air before Albert continues. “Donna immediately arranged for medical care. Lety had several doctor’s visits, some prenatal tests. Everything looked good.”
“Then why would she kill herself, Albert? If she was being so well cared for, why would Lety end her life? And her baby’s, for that matter.” Does he know it was murder? Does he suspect?
“I have no idea,” he says. “She must’ve had . . . outside pressures. That’s the whole point of your article, right? The everyday realities these women face. Sometimes Sonora Hope can help, but sometimes . . . well, there’s only so much one organization can do.”
“Was there anything in Lety’s file about her family?”
“It didn’t say where she was from originally,” Albert replies, “but according to Donna’s notes, Lety lived in Tirabichi for a few years before she got the dancing gig.”
“Where’s Tirabichi?”
“Up in the hills. Tirabichi is a Nogales garbage dump. There’s a settlement there, about thirty families who make their living sifting through trash and collecting recyclables.”
Garbage. Of course. I collapse sideways onto the bed, phone still pressed tightly to my ear.
Lety tried to show me. She wanted me to know where she came from.
“It’s hard to imagine literally living in a dump,” I tell Albert, and my voice sounds remarkably normal for someone feeling so shaky. “This could be . . . a powerful angle for the article.”
“I thought you might say that,” Albert says wryly. “That’s why I’m calling. I’m going up there with a few volunteers this afternoon to distribute protective gloves. Would you like to come along?”
