by Sylvia Nobel
In the breathless silence following their dramatic exit, Lupe and I exchanged a look of stunned horror. It took several minutes for me to regain my composure and, as my erratic breathing and thundering heartbeat began to subside, it was not lost on me that my association with Lupe had now made me a target of the animosity that prevailed in this highly-charged atmosphere. Word spread swiftly in small close-knit communities. There was no question that inquiries on my part regarding the disappearance of her relatives would place me on the wrong side of prevailing sentiment. This latest demonstration of hostility was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before in my life and it shook me to the core.
I turned to her. “You okay?”
Pasty-faced and visibly shaking, she nodded and spat, “Hijos de puta!”
I’d picked up a couple of Spanish phrases in the past six months and recognized this one as highly uncomplimentary. For Lupe, who rarely swore, it revealed her extreme distress. And who could blame her? “Still want to stay?” I asked, thinking that we’d already wasted almost two precious hours of our short trip. “Or should we get the hell out of here now?”
She pressed fingertips to her eyelids for a few seconds then said with a catch in her voice, “I can’t. I can’t leave until I find out what happened to Gilberto.” She paused and turned to face me, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “But…I also don’t want you to have any more trouble with these…stupid bigots. I was wrong to bring you down here into this awful situation.”
It was indeed awful, and I had a feeling things could get even worse, but I had no intention of breaking my promise to her. There was no point in dwelling any longer on the incident, so I started the engine and turned onto the main road. We traveled in glum silence for a few miles and then in a move designed to lighten the mood, I flashed her a playful grin. “Why do you suppose these guys all want to look like Humpty-Dumpty?”
Her mouth sagged open. “Who?”
“Humpty-Dumpty. You know. The shaved head thing? It’s supposed to be intimidating, but I think they look kind of silly, don’t you agree?”
She seemed to be thinking it over and finally edged me a sly look. “The big guy, the one that looked like a moose? I especially liked the earrings he was wearing, didn’t you?”
“Loved ‘em.” It was heartening to see the tense lines around her mouth relax. The rest of the trip to Sasabe was uneventful. Pushed by the steady wind, the milky glaze of clouds that had coated the sky all day was breaking up into lacy puffs of white. As we skimmed along the recently patched two-lane road, a bright golden nugget of late afternoon sunlight peeked through and I felt my spirits lifting. When we swung onto Route 286, I wondered if the craggy collection of tilted buttes to the south of us lay in Mexico. We couldn’t be too far from the border at this point. Several large yellow signs announced that we were entering the Buena Vista Wildlife Refuge and a smaller one advertised that the Rancho de la Osa Guest Ranch was only a few miles ahead.
“What does osa mean?” I asked Lupe.
“Bear,” she answered in a distracted tone. We’d only traveled another mile when she shouted, “There!” Pointing towards a strange-looking fence constructed of stones and old truck tires, she directed, “Turn right on that dirt road. The mission is maybe half a mile from here.”
As we buzzed over a cattle guard and headed towards the foothills to the west, my stomach growled. How could I be hungry again so soon? Was it the pristine air and wide-open spaces, or perhaps being removed from all the daily pressures of work? Whatever the reason, I found myself wondering where we were going to find dinner out here in the middle of nowhere. I had a few sodas and apples in the cooler, but that wasn’t going to cut it.
“Is there a place in Sasabe to eat?” I asked Lupe, carefully avoiding the carcass of a dead skunk lying in the middle of the road. The lingering stench of its perfume had us pinching our nostrils for a few seconds as we crept past.
She turned to me, looking uncertain. “I don’t know. The last two times I was here the Sister was kind enough to let me eat in the kitchen with some of her…guests.”
I caught her meaningful glance. “Sounds good to me.” I was looking forward to meeting this woman. And although I had mixed feelings about her questionable motives in regards to her assistance of undocumented immigrants, I could not deny that she must possess a heart of gold to risk the possibility of arrest in order to carry out her convictions.
“There it is,” Lupe announced, pointing towards a white cross perched on a red-clay roof. It was just barely visible above the thick fields of ironwood and mesquite. Her pinched expression and tightly clasped hands conveyed her growing agitation. I could hardly blame her. What news awaited her? Would this lost child confirm her worst suspicions?
I turned right into a rutted driveway lined with unevenly spaced boulders and got my first look at the whitewashed walls of the Guiding Light Mission. Enclosed behind a fence fashioned from the long spiny branches of the Ocotillo cactus, the simple Spanish-style building, adorned with a gracefully curved bell tower, stood alone and rather forlorn-looking in the middle of a weed-choked dirt lot flanked by a few thirsty-looking palo verde trees. But my eyes were drawn to the rambling house to the right of it. It was painted the brightest, most garish pink color I’d ever seen. And the paint looked fresh. To our left, the hulking remains of several abandoned cars of early 70’s vintage lay in a jumble of trash beside a dilapidated garage that housed a dented brown Bronco. The only other dwellings were three tiny sun-bleached shacks on the north side of the church.
I parked the car in front of the wide arched doorway of the mission and got out. What a godforsaken place to build a church, no pun intended. There were no other houses in sight and the place looked abandoned. “Are you sure she’s here?” I asked Lupe, as we trudged through the gate.
“She’s probably in here,” she replied, pulling on the brass handle. The ancient hinges emitted a grinding squeal as the carved wooden door opened and a draft of cool air welcomed us inside the sanctuary. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim light filtering through smudged stained-glass windows and falling in multi-colored slats over the dark rows of low wooden pews.
“Sister Goldenrod?” Lupe’s called out, her voice tentative.
There was no echo and the sound of her words vanished as they left her lips, almost as if the thick adobe walls had absorbed them. She called again, but there was no response. Lupe’s brows dipped in concern. “How strange. She’s knows I’m coming today.”
We backed out the door and I pointed to the garage. “Is that her Bronco?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she’s obviously around here someplace.” I grinned at her. “Why don’t you check out the Pepto-Bismol house and I’ll look over by the garage.”
“Okay.”
The strong gusts of wind rushing around the side of the little church whipped my hair into a tangled mass and stirred up little puffs of dust behind Lupe as she walked across the sandy parking lot. I took off towards the garage and spotted another structure behind it that I hadn’t noticed on the way in. The long one-story building looked as if it might once have been a stable. There were piles of rubble everywhere, including the remains of several other dwellings with only the stone chimneys standing. Had there been a whole community here at one time?
As I wandered among the glass and trash-strewn foundations, the significance of the piles of blackened timber and charred remnants of furniture penetrated fully. I ran my finger along what looked like the remains of a mangled steel window frame and it came away blackened with the sooty evidence that there’d been a fire here and it appeared to have been fairly recent.
The deep silence surrounding the whole place was disturbed only by the moan of the incessant wind. I doubled back towards the garage and followed a pair of rolling tumbleweeds into the three-sided structure. There had been a fourth wall at one time, but it lay to one side, collap
sed into a heap like giant dry matchsticks. Inside, against one wall, cardboard boxes of all sizes and shapes were piled high. I stepped closer to investigate but froze in my tracks when a terse voice behind me ordered, “Stop right there and turn around real slow!” Cha-chunk! The unmistakable sound of a shell being chambered turned my insides to mush.
Hardly daring to breathe, I did as the voice bid and found myself staring down the barrel of a shotgun. To my amazement, the bearer of the weapon was a pint-sized woman wearing a grimy ball-cap turned backwards over a haystack of graying blonde hair. Well, who was this? My voice seemed to have deserted me as I gawked down at her, dumbstruck by her odd appearance. I had a height advantage of a least a foot, and the situation might have been comical except the deadly expression in her hazel eyes told me that she meant business.
“I’ve warned you people about trespassing on church property,” she growled, aiming the gun right at my nose, “and I damn well meant it.”
My muscles tensed when she waved the barrel within inches of my face. Jesus, she had her finger on the trigger. Better say something, I urged my frozen vocal chords. “Ma’am, if you’ll let me explain….”
“Shut up!” Her sardonic grin revealed a row of uneven yellowed teeth. “Back to finish the job, huh? Very clever sending a woman in plain clothes instead of the usual assortment of thugs. But you’re not fooling me. I know who you really are.”
I swallowed the lump of fear clogging my throat. “Who do you think I am?”
“Sister Goldenrod! What are you doing?” Lupe’s sharp inquiry and the thud of running footsteps sent a wave of relief pouring through me. Sister Goldenrod? Not exactly the way I’d pictured her. My brother Pat would have pronounced her facially challenged, but for me, the combination of her irregular horse-like features and pudgy body rekindled memories of my childhood toy Mrs. Potato Head.
The woman’s gaze flickered to Lupe as she sprinted into the garage, and then swung back to me. “I caught another one of these damn undercover Border Patrol agents snooping around here again.” She shoved the barrel against my right shoulder. “I ought to wing her just to make my point.”
Wide-eyed with fright, Lupe gasped out, “No, wait! This is Kendall O’Dell. She is my boss. She’s here to help me find my brother and my uncle.”
The woman’s bushy charcoal brows, badly in need of plucking, dipped lower. “What do you mean she’s your boss?”
“She’s the editor. You know, from the newspaper where I work.”
The woman fired her a look of outrage. “Are you nuts? You brought a goddamned reporter with you?” She grabbed Lupe by the arm and shoved her out the door, snarling back at me, “You! Don’t move an inch!” Walking with an odd crab-like gait that rolled her body from side to side, she squired Lupe towards the rusted-out remains of an old Pontiac where someone had spray-painted the side of it with the warning: THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY! IF I CATCH YOU HERE I WILL SHOOT YOU. Wished I’d noticed that sooner.
The sheer relief of not having a loaded shotgun pointed at me left my knees softer than overcooked noodles. I’d certainly had more than my share of adrenaline for one day, I decided ruefully, leaning my body weight against a pile of empty crates while I assessed this very un-ministerlike woman whose girth almost exceeded her height. Trying to picture her in the pulpit preaching to a congregation strained my imagination.
Now out of earshot, she proceeded to give Lupe a thorough dressing down. I could tell by the pointed finger jabs in my direction that she was discussing my fate.
A full five minutes passed before they turned and began walking back towards me. I pushed to my feet. The look of cautious expectancy on Lupe’s face indicated that she had prevailed, but Sister Goldenrod was still evil-eyeing me as they re-entered the garage.
Sister Goldenrod said, “I’m going to take Lupe’s word that you’re going to keep your yap shut about my little visitor, is that right?”
I mustered a placating smile. “That’s correct. I am a reporter, but rest assured that I’m here unofficially. I don’t plan to do or say anything that would jeopardize her situation or yours, or his for that matter.”
She looked uncertain, but inclined her head toward the pink house. “I hope I don’t regret this. If the Border Patrol or INS gets wind that I’m hiding this child, my ass is grass and he will be deported to God knows where. You got that?”
“Got it.” For a supposed woman of the cloth, she sure had a foul mouth.
The three of us fell into step. “Has the boy been able to tell you where he’s from or how he got here? Was he traveling with relatives?”
Sister Goldenrod’s breath came in wheezy gasps as we crunched along the gravel driveway. “I don’t think the little guy even knows what country he’s from,” she replied with a sad shake of her head. “Probably Mexico, but he might have come from someplace in Central America, El Savador, Costa Rica, who knows? All I’ve been able to gather so far is that he and his family lived high in the mountains and that he and his mother came here to find his father. He also keeps babbling about bright colored lights and horses chasing him. At least I think that’s what he’s saying.” She turned to Lupe. “You’ll probably have better luck than me understanding him. That is, if he’ll even talk to you.”
“Lupe told me about his weird abduction story,” I put in. “Has he been able to furnish any more details about that night?”
She pursed her lips as if debating whether to answer me or not, and finally said, “Not many. You know how it is with kids and their imagination. It’s hard to tell fact from fiction, dreams from reality. But something strange must have happened out there in the desert to make him so traumatized. I mean, it’s taken me days to get him to come out from under the bed. Now he insists on staying in the closet because he’s afraid these sky people will find him, whoever they are,” she said hitching her broad shoulders. “He sneaks out to use the bathroom, but that’s it. He won’t even come to the kitchen to eat, but that’s fine by me, because I haven’t even shared this with my staff. Loose lips sink ships and all that.”
Lupe and I exchanged a contemplative glance as the woman heaved her bulky body up the three steps leading to a rickety screen porch. With time and gravity working against her, the cut-off overalls she wore emphasized the blue-veined rolls of thigh fat jiggling above her knees. Swinging like pendulums, her enormous boobs drooped almost to her waist. Not a flattering getup to say the least.
Once inside, we walked through a small living room furnished with a jumble of frayed castoff furniture that looked like it had come from a thrift store, past a spacious kitchen and then followed her down a long narrow hallway surfaced with brownish-red Saltillo tile. The sound of our footsteps was drowned out by the continuous squeal from the evaporative cooler on the roof as it puffed gusts of moist air through rusty overhead vents. The place was much larger than it appeared from outside, the rambling hallway opening into a series of small rooms that gave me the impression of a rabbit warren.
When we reached the last door, she put a finger to her lips and edged it open to reveal a tiny cubicle hardly bigger than a walk-in closet. The bed, a cot actually, filled most of the room and the sloping concrete floor suggested that it might have been an outside storage area at one time. A blanket hanging from a narrow window blocked out all but a hint of the late afternoon sunlight and it took a minute or so for my eyes to adjust to the murky twilight.
“You stay here,” she whispered hoarsely, pointing to the spot where I now stood. “Too many visitors at once might scare him.”
She switched on a dim floor lamp and motioned for Lupe to accompany her. To keep the peace, I did as she asked, but I was more than a little irked by her brusque behavior. This woman could definitely use a personality transplant.
“Let me talk to him first,” Sister Goldenrod said, pulling a door to my right open. She bent down and said softly, “It’s just me, Javier. I’ve brought a pretty lady for you to talk to.”
>
One pretty lady, not two. She cast a backward glance to make sure I’d caught her little dig and then switched to Spanish. I heard the sound of a muffled voice, high and tense. She continued to converse with him in soothing tones before turning to face us. “He says he’s hungry, so I’m going to get his dinner. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She waddled past and then turned to glare at me. “Make sure you don’t do or say anything to upset him.”
A hot flash of anger warmed my face. I had half a mind to tell this infuriating woman exactly what I thought of her, but I squeezed out a strained smile instead. After she left, I whispered to Lupe, “What’s her problem anyway? Are you sure she’s really a minister? She’s got a mouth like a cowhand and has a gigantic cob up her butt!”
Her wan smile was apologetic. “She just needs some time to learn to trust you. She’s really very sweet when you get to know her better.”
I grimaced. “Are we talking about the same person?”
She waved away my remark and edged the closet door open further. I moved the floor lamp closer and peeked in. Illuminated by the soft halo of light sat little Javier, huddled in the closet beside a stack of boxes. A thatch of shiny black hair framed his perfect oval face and I thought he had the biggest, most beautiful cocoa-brown eyes I’d ever seen. But they were frightened eyes. Haunted eyes. What on earth had happened to create such an expression of abject terror? The stuffy closet smelled like a combination of food, sweat and old shoes. I bent down, smiling. “Hi, Javier, my name is Kendall,” I said, pointing to my own chest, “and this is my friend, my amiga, Lupe.” I knew he didn’t understand me, but was hopeful that he’d respond to a friendly face.
He pulled what looked like a ragged stuffed bunny closer and stared at me with suspicion. Sensing his unease, I pulled back, motioning for Lupe to take my place. She was cracking her knuckles and appeared anxious as she sank to her knees without pretense and began to question him. I could tell by the taut set of her shoulders and jaw that she was fearful of the little boy’s answers. I heard her mention her brother, Gilberto, and, obviously frightened by the subject matter, Javier began to shrink further and further behind the clothing. I wished then that I’d taken the time to learn more Spanish. I knew some of the usual phrases and enough to order Mexican food, but not much beyond that.
