by Sam Hawken
The office door was painted bright pink and had three locks. The word justicia was stenciled at waist height in rough black. Self-adhesive numbers marked the address, but no sign or label announced the occupants.
Kelly knocked once and let himself in. Two desks and a trio of battered filing cabinets crowded the small front room. The back of the office was used for storing paint and paper and wood and signs. Once a month the members of Mujeres Sin Voces – Women Without Voices – dressed in black and gathered near the Paso del Norte International Bridge crossing into El Paso. With posters and banners on sticks, they paraded silently along rows of idling cars waiting to enter the United States. They reminded the turistas that while they came to Mexico for a party, women were dying.
Paloma used the desk closest to the office’s single window. She was here four times a week, sometimes alone, sometimes with another member of the group. When Mujeres Sin Voces marched, she marched with them. A dusty box fan turned in the window, circulating warm air. The group had one secondhand computer with an internet connection and a bulky, hideous IBM Selectric typewriter, the kind with a golfball-shaped element. Ella Arellano was the group’s typist, though she could only hunt and peck with two fingers.
The women looked up when Kelly entered. Ella was younger by a few years than Paloma and skinnier. Her sister was one of the dead women of Juárez, gone for more than ten years. She smiled at Kelly. She spoke no English. “Buenos días,” Kelly told her.
“Buenos días, Señor Kelly,” Ella said.
“What are you doing here?” Paloma asked Kelly.
“I thought maybe we could get something to eat.”
“We’re busy right now; the president’s coming next month. We have to be ready for him.”
The walls of the office were like the pink telephone poles, littered several layers deep with flyers demanding justicia, justicia, justicia. By tradition, missing women were never referred to as dead, but this was just a way of keeping the faith. Sometimes families kept on the charade even after the bodies were found. Some part of that annoyed Kelly, but he couldn’t say why.
“I just want an hour,” Kelly said. He sounded more irritated than he meant to, and the swelling in his nose pitched his voice up a notch.
Paloma frowned at him. “¿Tú tendrá todo razón sin mí, Ella?”
“I will be fine.”
“One hour,” Paloma told Kelly sternly.
She got her purse. They left the office. Out in the sun, Kelly saw she’d put dark red highlights in her hair. She wore a bright yellow pullover that blazed against the color of her skin. Kelly realized he loved her, but he couldn’t say so; Paloma wouldn’t want him to.
“You should call first before you come,” Paloma said.
They walked up the block to a restaurant popular with the locals. The place and the neighborhood were too far off the beaten track to draw tourists.
The restaurant had no menus for the big meal. The inside was too crowded, but they found a place outside in the semi-shade, sharing a picnic table and benches with a quartet of men wearing street-construction vests and hard hats. They talked to each other in rapid Spanish. Kelly and Paloma used English.
“I wanted to surprise you,” Kelly said.
“I know.”
“Sorry,” Kelly said, though he wasn’t.
“I know. Forget about it.”
A short, apple-shaped woman brought them deep bowls of pozole. Mexicans had plenty of different ways to make the stuff, but the base was always hominy. This cook prepared pozole with pig’s feet, slices of avocado and raw onion and a garnish of chilis. A wedge of lime took away the heat when the spice got to be too much.
They ate in silence for a while. The men at the table seemed to sense the tension and they left as soon as they could. No one took their place, though the restaurant bustled.
“You look better today,” Paloma told Kelly at last.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But your nose isn’t going to heal right. I can see it now.”
Kelly resisted the urge to touch his face. He shrugged. “It was fucked up already.”
Paloma sighed and shook her head. Kelly didn’t have to ask what she was thinking; they had argued over it enough times.
Empty bowls were replaced by a serving of tortilla soup. The heat and the spice of this and the pozole made Kelly’s nose run and he could feel his bruised sinuses opening up. Food like this was good for the belly and good for healing. Watching Paloma eat was a pleasure because she ate heartily, but still like a woman. It was the same way she made love.
“Estéban wants to know what you’re doing tomorrow night,” Paloma said.
“I’ll have to check my calendar.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Okay, I’m not doing anything. What does he want to do?”
“Get drunk. Smoke hierba. What else?”
“Weed pays the bills,” Kelly said. He used his napkin to wipe his lips. A fresh throbbing started in his nose, but it was the good pain of swelling going down; he’d been through this often enough to know.
“He should sell it, not smoke it.”
“I’ll tell him that.”
“I said don’t be an asshole.”
Kelly finished his soup. He changed the subject: “I saw a new flyer today.”
“Rosalina?” Paloma asked.
“You know about her?”
“We heard.”
“Do you think—”
“Kelly,” Paloma interrupted, “you don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to.”
“I’m just trying to be interested.”
“I know, and that’s good, but it’s… don’t worry about it.”
A shadow passed over Paloma’s expression and Kelly realized it had been there all along, only he hadn’t noticed. She seemed distracted, but not by the food or his condition. He was angry at the office and the flyers all over again; Paloma was meant to shine.
“I was thinking about Mazatlán,” Kelly said. “Maybe next month we could go together. Get a room at that one hotel on the beach. You remember that one? It has those two swimming pools by the restaurant?”
Paloma reached across the table and took Kelly’s hand. Kelly imagined he could feel her darkness in her touch. “I remember,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to be too long. Just a couple of days if you want.”
“I’d like that.”
“You would?”
“Yes, okay?”
“Good.”
The little fat woman came to their table with the main course. The corrida comida wasn’t called “the big meal” for nothing. Paloma pulled away from Kelly and for the rest of their time together they were more concerned with eating than talking.
SIX
ESTÉBAN CAME BY EARLY, DRIVING a dusty white truck with a flat bed. Kelly rode shotgun and they started drinking cold bottles of Tecate from a Styrofoam cooler before they got to where they were headed.
Kelly didn’t know whose idea it was to build a massive skate park in Ciudad Juárez, but it was built and the skaters came. It was a broad, open space at the edge of the city that looked like a moonscape of cement craters. A massive tower of concrete stood at the center, looming sixty feet into the air alongside a winding framework of metal and wood steps. All day long climbers mounted one side while others rappelled down the other to the echoing sound of clattering skateboards and shouting.
White concrete blinded and reflected heat. In the middle of the day Parque Extremo was punishingly hot. It was possible to lose pounds just sweating it out in the half-pipes and skating ponds.
Neither Kelly nor Estéban skated, but this was their drinking spot. The politicians who celebrated the park’s grand opening had a lot to say about health and safety and keeping kids off drugs, but the smell of motivosa was as common as the odor of wholesome perspiration. Skater punks from the US came to show off their skills and score at the same time. Sometimes Kelly and Estéban sold here.
They bought some tamales from a snack vendor and sat underneath a metal awning to watch a trio of Mexican kids run their BMX bikes up the sides of a nine-foot practice pond. The kids hit the upper lip and caught big air before crashing down wheels-first for another run. Kelly liked the rubbing buzz of the bike wheels on cement, but not the bone-jarring rattle of metal returning to earth. That took him back to something he would rather forget but could not. A part of Kelly wondered whether he agreed to come here for the reminder.
The tamales were good: spicy and filling. Kelly and Estéban ate with their hands, spinning the packed, corn-meal cylinders of the tamales out of their cornhusk jackets. Some people liked to pour sauce over theirs, but Kelly enjoyed a tamale eaten plain and Estéban shared his tastes in most things, including this.
They filled up and had some more beer. The BMX kids moved on. Kelly and Estéban stared at the empty practice pond. “Why did you tell Paloma I wouldn’t come with you to Mazatlán?” Kelly asked at last.
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t, or I wouldn’t ask,” Kelly said, and he looked right at Estéban.
“Hey, don’t to make me feel bad, man. You know I love you. But nuestra familia, they got some – how do you want to call it? – they got some old-fashioned ideas in their heads.”
Kelly turned away. He looked over to the next practice pond, where a group of skateboarders, Mexican and white, traded stunts on steep concrete walls. He considered getting up and moving closer, but there was no good shade there and he was comfortable already.
Estéban continued: “I see you, I see a good guy. Paloma, she loves you. But you know how some vieja gente can get with white boys. And my sister is una mujer fina; she deserves the best.”
“I know,” Kelly said, and he knew before Estéban explained. He wondered why he asked in the first place, knowing the answer was just going to make him feel lousy. The tamales didn’t sit right anymore, huddled in the pit of his belly.
“Maybe next time,” Estéban said.
“Next time. Sure,” Kelly replied. It was as though he were talking with Paloma about it all over again. He stood and stretched, but put his hands on the wooden crossbeam rather than on the corrugated aluminum roof of the awning; the metal was hot enough to sear meat.
“I tell you one thing,” Estéban said after the silence grew too long, “you got to stop putting your face in front of those young boxeadores. Ain’t you ugly enough?”
“I got to be handsome now?”
“No, but you can’t get nobody’s respect looking like you got hit by a truck. I don’t know how Paloma can look at you. I wouldn’t kiss nobody look like you do. People talk, man. They call you ‘Frankenstein.’”
“That’s funny. What people?”
“Ain’t no joke, homes. Just people. Paloma, she has respecto. More than you or me.”
Kelly nodded, but said nothing. He finished off his bottle and rooted around in the slush of the cooler for a fresh one. Bending over he felt the booze in his head, a good kind of sleepy and stupid that a strong batch of motivosa could bring on in a hurry. It was where he liked to be.
“But I tell you,” Estéban said, “you two get married, no matter what no one says on their own, they won’t disrespect you on your wedding day. That’s not the way we do it.”
“You won’t take me to see some cousin get married, but I can be your cuñado?” Kelly asked.
“No, no, listen to me: that will show them: when you put on a white suit and get your blessing from the padre under the eyes of God, you’ll be as brown as my ass,” Estéban said.
“That’s pretty goddamned brown,” Kelly said. He sat down again.
“Fuck you, man,” Estéban said without malice.
“Yeah, fuck me,” Kelly said.
SEVEN
HE WOKE BEFORE THE SUN CAME up and lay on his bed in the dark thinking about everything and nothing. Usually when he stirred out of sleep this early he’d bumble around with the lights off, and smoke a cigarette (or something stronger) until the day really started. This time when he rose, he brushed his teeth and washed his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. “Frankenstein,” he said out loud.
Kelly put on some sweats and went outside.
Mexico is hot and the border is no exception, but Ciudad Juárez is a city in the desert and deserts grow very cold at night no matter what the season. The dirty exhaust of the maquiladoras trapped heat and grit close to the ground, but even dozens of smokestacks couldn’t defeat the forces of nature; Kelly saw his breath in the air.
Stretching made his legs and back hurt, but not so badly that he felt like stopping what he was doing… whatever he was doing. His calves were especially tight. He had muscle from walking, but no flexibility. He couldn’t remember the last time he could touch his toes without having to bend his knees.
Lights were on and people were on the street. There were many women traveling together for safety as much as company. Some wore surgical masks, an echo of the swine flu scare. Occasionally a maquiladora bus rumbled down the main thoroughfare splitting Kelly’s neighborhood. In the States the buses would be lit up from the inside, but this was Mexico and pennies mattered, so riders sat in the dark.
Kelly sucked in deep lungfuls of air through his busted, healing nose and blew out through his mouth. He did this twice before a coughing fit snaked up from the bottom of his lungs and doubled him over. He hacked up a glob of something nasty and spat it on the sidewalk. The sky in the east turned red.
This time when he breathed deep he didn’t cough. His lungs felt shallow, and though Kelly tried to let the air fill him up from belly to sternum, he could tell he’d lost a lot of his capacity. Five years seemed like ten.
He forced himself to breathe in and out, hard and full, until his ribs ached and early-morning colors grew vivid at the edge of hyperventilation. When his lungs were as saturated as he could get them, Kelly ran.
Compared to his memories of running, this was nothing; he picked up an earnest, low-speed shuffle that wasn’t much faster than a brisk walk. Almost immediately he began to sweat and his body demanded more air to feed his rapid heartbeat, but he knew he had to keep his breathing even for as long as possible, or everything would spin out of kilter and he’d have to stop sooner rather than later.
The pink telephone pole came up quickly, aglow in the first rays of the sun. The numberless flyers demanding justicia fluttered as Kelly passed, as if trying to draw his attention away from silly pursuits and into their world of the dead. Kelly managed to make it to the end of the block before he had to stop, the telephone pole twenty yards behind him and a broad street busy even at this hour with the traffic of business.
Kelly put his hands on his knees, his sternum throbbing with his struggling heart. A wave of nausea passed over him, but it wasn’t as bad or as long as he feared it would be. A few feet away in a concrete bus shelter a dozen woman in maquila uniforms – neat, plain blouse and pants and rubber shoes – watched him as the sun chased away the veiling shadows. They didn’t laugh or point; Mexicans were not as rude as gringos.
He straightened up and ran some more, past the bus shelter and along an uneven sidewalk in the shade of apartment blocks just like Kelly’s. Again he had to stop, this time in the parking lot of a tiny convenience store beside a taquería. He coughed like he had before and spat up another gooey mouthful of something foul. The taste made him gag.
Three more times he pushed himself to run until he felt his pulse beating in his gums and everything hurt too much to continue. He finally came to rest on a low bridge crossing a broad concrete flood ditch. Sitting on a cement buttress, he let the wind from passing trucks whip him. The sun was free of the horizon now and the night chill evaporated.
If there was a constant in Juárez, it was trucks: going to the maquiladoras or coming back from the maquiladoras. When the streets jammed up with American cars trying to escape north from their holiday destination, the trucks were always with them, spewing
black diesel smoke as they idled, sweaty drivers behind the wheel, lungs turning to asphalt with every breath.
From where Kelly sat he could see the same line of factories just visible from his apartment. From a distance they were all the same, but stamped on the boxes in the backs of all those trucks were American names. Kelly had GM practically on his doorstep. Out there it was easy to find General Electric, Honeywell, Du Pont, even Amway. Kelly thought maybe this was why he stayed here; so much of America lived right across the border that it was possible to be in two places at once. Kind of.
In the end his pulse stilled and his stomach settled. His lungs no longer burned. Kelly hopped down from his perch. The urge to run had passed, so he walked like he always did, aware of new pains in his joints and muscles that hadn’t been there before but feeling better about having them. He wondered whether this was what giving a shit was like; it had been so long, he didn’t remember.
EIGHT
THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS QUIET when Kelly returned. He heard a radio playing norteño somewhere. Kelly recognized the song: “Un Rinconcito En El Cielo,” by Ramón Ayala y sus Bravos Del Norte. The song was called in English “A Little Corner in the Sky.” It was about a man separated from his woman, and because they could not be together they would look on the same spot in the stars and be together in spirit.
Kelly thought it was sappy as hell, but Ayala and his band were huge in Mexico and in the States. They did their recording Stateside and lived there, too. Mexicans bought their own music back from American companies. Kelly didn’t understand that, either.
He climbed the steps to his apartment and heard the voice of Eliseo Robles, Ayala’s singer during the band’s boom years, crooning over the bouncy accordion:
Un rinconcito en el cielo
Juntos, unidos los dos
Y cuando caiga la noche
Te daré mi amor…
Breakfast was as burly as if Kelly had fought the night before. He’d forgotten how ravenous he got after running. He ate to fill the hole in his belly and even washed dishes afterward.
