by Hester Young
“Sorry, did you say you’re handing out gloves?”
“The recyclers often cut themselves when picking through the trash,” Albert explains, “and then of course they’re open to all kinds of infection without the money to treat it. So we go out there a couple times a year just to make sure folks have something to protect their hands. The kids, too.”
“Right,” I breathe. “That’s—a great idea.” I pause for a minute, daring myself to make this decision. Tirabichi, a community of garbage people. Lety wants me there, obviously. But do I go back into Mexico? What if Pineapple Guy is waiting for me, ready to make trouble at the border again? How do I know it’s safe?
“You could get some get photographs,” Albert suggests, sensing that I’m on the fence. “I think your readers would be blown away to see how these people live. And honestly, I’m really proud of the work we do there. We’ll be delivering clean drinking water, too. If you come along, I can get you interviews.”
I think of Lety and her baby, shot dead in the shower, their murder somehow disguised as a suicide. And I think of Donna, of Jasmine, shot dead in that putrid-smelling apartment. It’s a violent world, and these events could be unrelated. But I’m starting to doubt that.
“Albert? Did my mother ever do work at Tirabichi?”
He seems surprised by the question. “Of course. That’s where she found Marilena.”
“The woman with the hotel,” I say.
“We really helped her get started,” Albert murmurs. “Marilena is the kind of success story that keeps me in this. And Donna was the one who first connected with her. Donna connected with everyone out there, really. I haven’t been to Tirabichi since she died, but . . . I’d imagine the families are all taking it pretty hard.”
I know then that I’m going. That I can’t stay away, can’t ignore Lety’s message. That it’s probably a good thing Noah’s in custody right now because if he knew what I was planning, he might try to bodily restrain me.
“All right, Albert,” I say. “This afternoon. I’m in.”
Lety was right. This is what my mother would’ve wanted. This is the only path I can see to the truth—not just about Lety and her sister, but about Donna, too. To say I have no misgivings about venturing back into Nogales would be a lie, but my concerns aren’t limited to just one side of the border. Not when I glance out the window a few minutes later and spot a familiar figure peering into the window of my SUV.
He’s gone by the time I make it out to the parking lot, but it’s clear now that Pam’s question earlier was not so far afield. Do I know any reason Sanchez would be following me? Sure I do, and it’s the same reason Pineapple Guy is causing trouble.
I’m getting close to something. Very, very close.
Twenty-One
From the back of a rattling Sonora Hope van, I take in the sun-drenched hills of Nogales. Here, on the steep dirt roads that our vehicle strains to climb, poverty is no longer city-flavored, not composed of shiny merchandise for tourists or tall, crumbling buildings. Instead, the houses are squares of plywood, roofs of corrugated tin, cut-out windows sometimes lacking frames or glass. They look like playhouses, their exteriors still under construction or else painted startling colors—pink, lavender—and edged with stacks of tires to prevent erosion in the perilous sloping land.
Albert sits in the passenger seat, well accustomed to our surroundings, squinting as he cleans the lenses of his sunglasses. Carlos, a retiree-turned-volunteer, drives. The van’s radio is broken, but Carlos sings Spanish songs to us in a cheerful baritone. He has the A/C on, of course, but it barely reaches the back, where I sit cross-legged amongst the boxes of gloves and cases of water that we have come to deliver. I take a long drink from my own water bottle. Peel the thin fabric of my shirt from my sticky skin and try to invite in some air.
Having seen Tirabichi in my dream, I have some idea of what to expect, but it still surprises me when the van pulls up the rocky path and I see it all in three vivid dimensions: the mountains of trash, the human dwellings constructed from waste, the trees adorned with whatever plastic bags caught a breeze, and the strangely pastoral green hills rolling in the valley below. This is the stuff of postapocalyptic action movies, the kind of bleak and gritty setting Hollywood directors spend millions trying to achieve, only with more sunlight, more color.
It’s two p.m., and we’re approaching the worst of the day’s heat. I spot a couple people working their way through one of the trash piles. “They’re up at dawn,” Albert says, waving to someone through the window. “Seven days a week, whenever the trucks come, there they are. It’s not a life for the lazy.”
Carlos guides the van down a trail well worn by municipal vehicles and parks. He comes around to open the back and helps me jump down. The smell is everything you’d expect from a landfill in August. I breathe through my mouth. Take stock of the people I see scattered about, foraging for the dump’s hidden treasures. No one looks particularly happy or despondent, I decide. Just focused, like anyone with a job to do.
A few of the residents have already spotted the van and come to say their hellos. A white-haired woman ducks out of a little house made from sheets of metal and blankets, her thin lips rising up in a smile when she sees Albert.
“Buenos días, guapo!” she calls, and Albert grins.
“Doña Imelda! Cómo le va?”
They aren’t as dirty as I anticipated. I was picturing tattered clothing, faces blackened like coal miners, and while their hands are stained, the T-shirts and shorts and loose dresses on Tirabichi’s inhabitants are no more ragged than what you’d find in any Goodwill or Salvation Army store. I wonder if they receive their clothes from another nonprofit or if they scavenge these, too.
About half the folks we encounter know Albert. They greet him with smiles, waves, warm exclamations in Spanish. Heat and a lack of running water mean that no one here smells too good, but Albert doesn’t seem to notice. He asks how everyone is doing, listens to their answers with concern or pleasure, and I detect no condescension, no superiority or ego in his interactions. His eyes tell the people of Tirabichi that they are important, that they are his equals, and his respect for them is so natural, so unaffected, I want to cry.
Hang on to this, I tell myself. Good people really do exist in the world.
Maybe, I think, my mother was one of them. Maybe, after all those years of living in the darkness, she became a candle, doing her best to light the way. I wish that I had known her, this woman she became.
Albert introduces me to people as we go, switching effortlessly in and out of Spanish. I’m particularly fascinated by the children I meet. Victor, Graciela, Pablo—no longer nameless kids inhabiting a dump, but bright-eyed, wisecracking young people who speak readily with me while Albert translates. A teenager, Victor has lived in Tirabichi for nearly a decade. It’s what he knows, he says, his home, and he never wants to leave. Graciela, a girl about Micky’s age, proudly shows me her collection of dolls, each one salvaged from the depths of the dump. Pablo, a student at the local school, describes a surprisingly normal life of schoolwork, friends, and squabbles with his siblings.
I didn’t know it would be like this. Not sad-sack charity cases, just people living here.
“So where’d you learn Spanish?” I ask Albert when we finally get a minute to ourselves. For a pasty redhead, he boasts some impressive language skills.
“I lived in Honduras a couple years after college,” he tells me. “Peace Corps.”
If I weren’t nearly eight months pregnant and in love with another man, I would likely be crushing over Albert. He’s not much to look at, but he’s so kind. I wonder why Pam chose Teresa as the target of her jealousy. If you look past Donna and Albert’s age difference, surely Albert was the one to watch: divorced and lonely, a close friend who shared a mutual passion for her work.
“What do you think?” Albert asks, pushing h
is sunglasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “Are you getting enough material for your article?”
“Definitely.” I watch a man in a Diamondbacks cap haul several scraps of metal over to a pile. The article I never meant to write takes shape in my mind so swiftly and clearly I can almost forget the real reason that I’m here.
“Albert!” The man deposits his final load of metal and approaches us. “You come to visit?” He wears jeans and a pair of beat-up cowboy boots, and his leathery, sun-darkened skin speaks to a life spent laboring outdoors. He’s the first person here to speak English, I note. “How you doing?”
“Doing fine, Duardo,” Albert replies. “This is Charlotte Cates. She’s a journalist. Una periodista,” he adds when the man squints at the word “journalist.” “She’s writing a story about Sonora Hope.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am.” Duardo smiles, but he stares at the ground as if he doesn’t quite dare to look me in the face. I wonder if he dislikes the idea of American journalists sniffing around or if he’s simply uncomfortable around pregnant women. “You see Marilena lately?” he asks Albert.
“I was going to stop by Marilena’s place when we finished up here, actually.”
Duardo tilts the visor of his baseball cap down toward his eyes, a vain attempt to block the sun. “She have the baby last month?”
“No,” Albert says, heaving a sigh. “I don’t think she did.”
My ears perk up. Marilena didn’t look like someone who’d just had a baby when I saw her at the presentation last weekend.
“Three babies now, eh?” Duardo shakes his head. “Bad news. She visit a doctor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Living here do it, man. I bet they throw the chemicals here, you know, the maquiladoras. Maybe they kill her babies, those chemicals.”
Albert raises his hands palm up as if to indicate his complete lack of knowledge on the subject. “She hasn’t even lived here the last couple of years,” he says. “I don’t know what it is.”
“Regina’s baby, too,” Duardo murmurs. “And now Ysabel. She tell you? She say she going to move away from here. And Doña Imelda with the cancer.” He removes his cap and wipes his hairline. Settles his hat back on his head. “Maybe something in the water.”
“Yeah, I don’t trust the water around here,” Albert agrees. “That tank you guys use—it doesn’t look that clean.” He gestures to the contents of the van behind us. “Make sure you grab a couple cases before we go, okay? And gloves.”
“Thank you.” Duardo nods at me, too polite to ignore me outright, but not quite making real eye contact. “Señora.”
Albert has drifted off to confer with Carlos about something, and Duardo moves as if to join him. I pounce before he can make his escape. “Maybe you could help me, Duardo.” This is my first and probably only chance to speak to someone without requiring a translator. “You live here, right?”
“A little while.” He nudges a flattened soda can with his shoe, unenthused about speaking to me. “I hope I leave soon.”
“Your English is great,” I tell him. “Where’d you learn?”
“I live in Phoenix eight years and take classes at a church. I come here in February.”
Why on earth did you come back? I want to ask, but the question seems rude. “Did you . . . miss your family?”
“My family is in Phoenix,” he says. “They are waiting for me.” He gazes at a nearby pile of garbage, his eyes cloudy. “I have no papers. Immigration find me, and they send me back.”
“Oh.” I should’ve seen that one coming. “I’m sorry. That’s rough.”
“Yeah,” he acknowledges. “I try to cross the border in May, but . . . I run into some trouble in the desert. So. I have to save money and use a coyote next time.” He lifts his eyes to mine, suddenly defiant. “You can write that in your newspaper. Write how I have a little boy in Phoenix and his mama need my paycheck.”
“I’ll write all that,” I tell him, and I mean it. “Can I ask . . . why’d you pick Tirabichi?” With English skills this good, surely he has better options.
“Everything here is free.” Duardo shifts awkwardly, and I see something in him that I didn’t see in any of the other residents: shame. “When they deport you, they leave you in Nogales with nothing. You have a few nights at San Juan Bosco, maybe some meals. But you are alone in the city. No money, no job. I have no family there. Tirabichi is . . . a place to go.”
My face must betray my feelings.
“Here is not so bad.” He shrugs off my pity quickly. “I make money recycling, more than at the maquiladoras.”
I heard him tossing around this word earlier with Albert. “You mean the factories?”
“The American factories pay five dollars a day. But I have days here I make six or seven dollars. So this is better.”
I don’t ask how much he earned in Phoenix. It would be cruel, like asking him to measure how far he’s fallen.
“I hope you can be with your son,” I say.
“Me too.” Duardo wipes the back of his neck. “He have his birthday next month. Five years. I want to be home.” His lips come together in a thin line, and he adjusts his visor low over his eyes so that I can’t see his face. “Buenas tardes, señora.”
Albert returns from his powwow with Carlos, and together we watch Duardo shuffle through the dump, his skinny shoulders slumping. For a moment, I think he’s the saddest man I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t just live in garbage. He feels like garbage.
“Nice guy,” I say, swallowing back the lump in my throat. “You think he’ll make it back into the States?”
“Possibly,” Albert says. “But not legally.”
The subject is too depressing to pursue, so I move on to another bummer. “I didn’t realize Marilena was pregnant.”
“She isn’t. Not anymore.”
I glance at him. “Has she really lost three babies? Because that’s a lot, Albert. And it sounds like she’s not the only one.”
“Yeah.” Albert rubs his face, and I know it’s bothering him, too. “There have been some problems,” he says. “Stillbirths. I don’t know exactly. These aren’t families that can easily afford another child, so at first I thought maybe the women were having, you know . . . abortions.” He lowers his voice when he pronounces the word. “But these seem to be problems very late in pregnancy. Or complications in birth.”
I imagine carrying my baby to term only to lose her in labor. Suddenly I want out of here. Don’t want to inhale the foul air. Don’t want to imagine the harm that it could be causing my daughter. “So these issues might be environmental?”
“Maybe. Marilena lived here for several years before we helped her purchase the hotel. It’s possible that prolonged exposure could cause some kind of long-term damage. Hard to be sure, since people here aren’t getting much in the way of health care services, but look around us.” He gestures with one hand. “There’s no way of knowing exactly what these trucks are dumping.”
We watch silently as a pair of boys wrestle a tireless bike frame out from one of the trash piles. It looks like a disfigured hunk of paint-chipped metal to me, but they see potential in it. Possibility. Together, they carry it over to one of the makeshift dwellings and begin discussing their plans in excited tones.
Albert smiles a little and trudges back toward the van. He pulls out a case of bottled water. “Doña Imelda?” he calls. “Tengo el agua. You just show me where you want it.”
• • •
IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG to figure out that I am not as strong and selfless as Albert and Carlos. Skipping lunch was definitely a mistake. An hour of heat, dizzying stink, and low blood sugar leaves me light-headed. Stubborn as I am, I’d push myself until I drop, but Carlos sees me wobbling on my feet and intervenes.
“Your skin is clammy,” he says, touching my forehead. “You’re going t
o faint if you keep on.” He digs the keys to the van from his pocket. “I’ve got crackers in the glove compartment. Go sit in the van for a few minutes, okay? Eat something. You’ll feel better.” He sees me about to protest and holds up his hand. “You won’t get material for this article if you’re passed out.” Carlos slips into the driver’s seat of the van and starts the air conditioner for me.
Embarrassed, I settle into the passenger seat and put my head between my knees, let the rushing blood bring clarity. The blowing air has finally started to cool somewhat when I feel good enough to sit fully upright again. I fetch a half-opened package of stale saltines from the glove box and force myself to consume a few. This is probably no worse than what the residents of Tirabichi eat every day, after all.
Through the windshield of the van, I watch Albert and Carlos hand out gloves to a cluster of kids outside one of the shacks. The children range from three or four to around twelve, and their use of the gloves does not entirely align with Sonora Hope’s lofty health and safety goals. They dangle gloves in one another’s faces, slap at each other, or, in the case of one child, fill them with bottle caps. I’m starting to question the efficacy of this whole program when I hear someone shouting, a word both unexpected and familiar.
“Yulissa!”
At first I think it’s Lety’s voice, that in my semi-delirious state, I’m having another vision. But when my head snaps left toward the source, I find that it’s Doña Imelda herself, standing in the doorway of her ramshackle home, hands on hips.
“Yulissa!” she yells again.
Over in the ring of boisterous children, a wiry girl with uneven bangs looks up from her glove-slapping assault on a friend. She rolls her eyes in annoyance, shouts over her shoulder in Spanish. “Momentito!”
It’s her. I’ve found her.
I crane forward in my seat, trying to get a better look. Memorizing her choppy, short haircut, her knobby legs and scabby knees. Her clothes are too big for her. The yellow cotton shorts fall halfway down her calves, and her sleeveless shirt covers her bottom, drapes loosely at her not-quite-budding breasts. I turn the key in the ignition to stop all the unnecessary gas consumption and clamber quickly from the van.
