Between Yoli’s money, which had come from David, and Papa’s money, which had come from the mayor, Amparo had nearly a hundred thousand quetzales. Esperanza offered a slice of her tiny savings, as did her brother Fernando and his wife. Amparo accepted each contribution in silence. She thanked God for giving her such a generous family. She rolled the money into the rabbit god blanket and hid it in Inés’ room. She paced the tiles. Finally, taking out Ricardo’s cellphone, she called the number.
“This is Amparo Ajuix,” she said. “To send two children north . . . I have the money.”
She heard the drone of an engine. “Tomorrow,” the voice said at last. Then he said: “They can leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes. I have two spaces.”
“All right,” she gasped. “Tomorrow.”
“At one o’clock in the afternoon. One hundred thousand in cash.”
“Come at three,” she said. “They’ll be back from school.”
A puzzled silence. She imagined the man wondering why a final day of school could matter. He agreed to the time. She hung up, ran to her bedroom, and cried on her bed with long, inconsolable gasps that were like giving birth in reverse.
She got up, went to the children’s bedroom, and weighed in her hands the infant toys in which they were losing interest. She washed her face in the bathroom. Her heart continued to flutter. Digging an umbrella out of the corner, she walked out of the house and the compound. When she reached the square, she knocked on Raquel’s door.
Raquel answered with her daughter at her ankles. Now that the girl was eighteen months old, her features had taken on a blunt, oblong quality. She had tanned skin, wispy brown hair, Willard J. Franklin’s tray-like jaw and little of Raquel’s enticing delicacy. Dressed in a red corduroy jump suit, the girl greeted Amparo with a loud bleat of greeting that sounded as though she were trying to say, “Sakar!”
“I need to talk,” Amparo whispered.
“I’m about to put her down for her nap,” Raquel said.
Amparo watched the girl parade across the floor on her long legs. She wondered whether her grandchildren would look like Raquel’s daughter. Miserable guilt clawed at her. She sat down in a chair.
When Raquel returned fifteen minutes later, easing the door shut behind her, she gave her a hug. “What’s the matter?” “Tomorrow,” Amparo said, “I’m sending away my children.”
“What do you mean?”
As Amparo explained, she remembered the village where they had met: the Evangelical girl who spoke Spanish and the Catholic girl who spoke Cakchiquel. For all their differences, they had never doubted that they would bring up their children together around this dusty park.
Raquel shook her head. “I could never send her away.”
“You should think about it. Do you think your gringo will let his daughter go to school here?”
“He wants her to speak Cakchiquel.” Raquel made one objection after another to Amparo’s plans, their conversation weaving between Cakchiquel and Spanish. “Pablo needs his culture. He has real potential as a daykeeper. If he leaves . . . ”
“He’s a weak boy, Raquel. Life is hard here. He’ll be better off . . . ”
“And what are you going to do after your children are gone?”
“Earn my living and promote my culture,” she said. “I’ll sell my weaving. If the mayor’s defeated in the next election, I might get my stall back.”
“You won’t be here then. You do realize that, Amparo? You won’t be able to stand being separated from your children.”
She herself in the north? She shook her head.
“You don’t realize how lonely you’re going to feel.” Raquel leaned forward. “Don’t leave, Amparo,” she whispered. “I won’t be able to stand it!” She faltered. “When I left the Evangelicals . . . you have no idea how important your example was to me. You’re vital to those girls in your club . . . You don’t see the role you play in keeping our culture alive here. Tab’ana utzil, tab’ana utzil . . . I beg you, I beg you . . . I know it’s horrible when a husband leaves . . . Re’n ninna utz lo ke ret xa q’ax . . . I’m very sorry about what happened to you. But don’t leave.”
“I’ll never leave, Raquel.”
“You will if you send your children away! But when you go, you won’t travel like them! Your family is out of money, your father’s getting too old to work as a piloto. The rest of you are poor. You’ll have to travel with a cheap coyote. You’ll be locked in the back of a truck and raped by the Mexican police and jailed by the gringos. Don’t do this, Amparo.”
Amparo stared at the Mayan calendar on the wall. “Our culture tells us that the world has been created and destroyed many times. We live in the future only through our children.”
“And your husband? If your children go north and your husband looks after them, won’t you want to resume your marriage?”
“By sending him the children, I’m showing him we’re no less married because we live in different countries.”
“You don’t have a man here? You’re not getting rid of your children to be with your lover?”
“Raquel! I’m not like that!” Not like you, she almost said. She saw Raquel’s thin features tighten. She got to her feet. “Your daughter will wake up soon.”
“Think carefully before you do this, Amparo.”
“I’m thinking . . . ! Xaj.”
She tried to make the evening perfect. She barely responded when, after supper, Sandra reeled off the names of the good secondary schools her classmates would be attending. “Señora Machojón says I could go to one of those schools, too, but she doesn’t know if my parents have enough money.”
“I don’t know if we have enough money either,” she said in a mild voice, determined not to let Sandra lure her into a fight. She hugged and squeezed her. The girl was almost as tall as she; the hardness of her immature breasts made Amparo feel that her own body was becoming soft. Pablito ran over and battered his hands against their hips. “Let me hug you, too!” Amparo embraced her children; she drew a long breath. Then Sandra pulled away, ordering Pablito to help her wash the dishes.
When they went to bed, she thought about phoning Eusebio. But she still wasn’t sure. If she decided to go ahead with this, she would send the children to Rafael’s house.
In the morning, she listened to the rain on the roof. She cooked Sandra and Pablito a breakfast of fried eggs and toast. “Just like the gringos!” Sandra said, as she brought the plates to the table.
Amparo turned away.
When the children had left for school, she packed their bags, choosing the essentials: underwear, T-shirts, bluejeans, a jacket each against the cold northern nights. As three o’clock approached, she carried the bags out of the bedroom and dropped them on the couch. She walked across the deserted compound to wait for the knock on the gate. When it came, the coyote slouched in, the heel of his right foot dragging soft slurs in the mud. They walked in silence to the house. She made him wipe his feet before he came in. She invited him to sit on the living room couch next to the children’s travel bags and went to Inés’ room for the money.
“One hundred thousand,” he said, when he had counted the money. “When will the children be here?”
“Any moment now. Can I ask you, señor, how my children will arrive at the appropriate place?”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“I don’t want them to suffer!”
“They won’t suffer. They’ll cross the border in a car with documents that show them to be the children of a wealthy Chicano family.”
He smiled at his lapse. Her glance plunged to his right foot, which splayed outward like a fawn’s cleft hoof. “What did you do before you were a coyote?” When he didn’t reply, she said: “We’ve met before.”
“When I came for your husband,” he said.
“Not only then.”
His eyes opened to a wideness brimming with hostility. She should never give her
children to this man.
He counted his money and put it in his pocket.
The murmur of voices, the rattle of the doorhandle, and Sandra burst in, waving her schoolbag. At the sight of the stranger she fell silent. She circled the couch, sidled up to Amparo’s chair, and stared at the man again. Pressing her lips against Amparo’s ear, she whispered in a breath of hot air: “Mama, is that your boyfriend?”
Amparo seized Sandra’s wrist and hustled her into her bedroom. She closed the door and, in the same swing of her arm, slapped her daughter across the cheek. Sandra looked too stunned to cry. Amparo gripped her wrists. “I want you to remember something for the rest of your life: marriage is forever! It doesn’t matter how far away she is, a woman is always loyal to her husband. That’s what it’s like for Papa and me. And that’s what it will be like for you when you’re grown up.”
“But Raquel — ”
“Raquel is a bad example.”
“But she’s your friend!” Sandra said.
Her daughter needed her; she couldn’t trust her upbringing to chance. She hugged Sandra. The girl began to sob. Amparo spent so long comforting her that she wondered whether the coyote would still be there when they returned to the front room.
She opened the door to find Pablito sitting on the couch. “Mama!” he said. “This man’s taking me to see Papa!”
The coyote looked down at his tiny hands with a smile that stoked her confidence in him.
Sandra turned on her. “Pablito’s going to see Papa and I’m not?”
She glanced in the direction of the coyote, wondering whether he would give her back half the money.
“I want to go, too,” Sandra said.
“All right,” Amparo said. “But you must promise me that you will always remember what I just told you.”
“I promise, Mama.”
Amparo waved at the bags on the couch. “Go and change out of your school clothes.”
They whooped, ran into the bedroom, and changed in record speed. Their enthusiasm raked her with pain; she remembered Eusebio’s wisdom in refusing to say goodbye to his children.
Pablito returned first. He fumbled with the zipper of his travel bag.
“Don’t worry,” Amparo said, leaning forward. “Everything you need is in there.”
“Can I take the jaguar?”
“The jaguar?” For a moment she didn’t know what he meant. She went to her bedroom and lifted the bag off the hook. She rubbed her fingertips over the bunched threads. Returning to the front room, she displayed the bag; Pablito nodded in satisfaction. She unzipped his satchel and slipped the bag inside. Pablito smiled. “B’alam.” He took a breath. “Re’n jin Pablo,” he said. “I am Pablo.”
The coyote was pacing. Her children hugged her as though they were leaving for the afternoon. Her heart burned in her chest. She told herself they must not see her misery. As they walked down the path on either side of the coyote, she thought: I’ve given my children to a criminal.
She closed the door and watched them out the window. Across the sodden blossoms of the bougainvillea, she saw the coyote open the metal gate and wave the children forward. Sandra and Pablito left the compound without looking back. Dragging his maimed foot, the coyote closed the gate.
Her fingers clutched. She would have to work hard to pay back her debt. This evening she would phone Rafael, then she would bundle up her weaving. At five o’clock tomorrow morning she would go to Antigua, where she would change to the bus that would take her to Guatemala City, and from there to the market in Escuintla.
She stared out the window until she was certain it was too late to run and pull her children out of the car.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Among the many Guatemalans and Canadians working in Guatemala who have contributed to my eternally unfinished apprenticeship in the country’s culture, I would like to thank Anabella Acevedo Leal, Kurt Annen, Margarita Asensio, Kalowatie Deonandan, Candace Johnson, Kris Inwood, Lisa Maldonado, Carlos Mendoza, Arturo Miranda, Lilia Pérez Marín, Tomás Rosada, Julio Serrano, and James Sim.
I am very grateful to Al Forrie and Jackie Forrie at Thistledown Press for their support over many years. I am also enormously grateful to my editor, Seán Virgo, who improved my prose here, as in four earlier books, with an insight and perception that I wish I had myself.
A section of this novel originally appeared in Numéro Cinq.
STEPHEN HENIGHAN is the author of three previous novels, including The Streets of Winter. His short stories have been published in more than 40 magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. A columnist for Geist, Henighan has published articles and reviews in The Times Literary Supplement, Toronto Life, The Walrus, Guernica, The Quarterly Conversation, The Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette, and The Literary Review of Canada. He has translated novels into English from Portuguese and Romanian; books by him have been published in German and Romanian translation. He has been a finalist for, among other prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Canada Prize in the Humanities, a National Magazine Award, a Western Magazine Award, a McNally Robinson Fiction Prize, and the Malahat Novella Prize.
Stephen Henighan teaches Spanish American literature and culture in the Hispanic Studies section of the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Guelph.
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