Soon, she was hungry again, and just like that, Isabel decided she was ready to go.
In the car, Martin’s phone indicated several missed calls and voicemail from an unknown number; the notifications stacked one on top of the other.
“Probably a telemarketer,” he said, dimming the screen. “Play them, if you want.”
She resisted. If it were an emergency, whoever it was would text. They stopped for fish and chips at a dockside restaurant on their way off the island. It wasn’t until they had been on the highway for nearly an hour, close enough to home and all the routine that came with it, that she began playing the messages on speaker. The first was a young, deep voice in Spanish, likely a wrong number.
“Play the next one,” Martin said.
It was a variation of the first. “Tío. I’m here. In McAllen. They said to call you when I got here, to pick me up.”
The next, more urgent. “I’m right off the expressway and Second Street. At a store called H-E-B. I’m in jeans and a dark blue shirt with a tiger on it.”
The last, as if it had only then occurred to him to say, “It’s Eduardo.”
“Shit,” Martin said. “How could nobody tell me?”
“You know who it is?”
He switched into the left lane and asked her to replay the last voicemail. He was speeding before the boy could repeat his name. “It’s Sabrina. Her son, I mean. I haven’t spoken to him since his thirteenth birthday, but that’s him.”
She tried to remember which one Sabrina was, but it had always been difficult with Martin’s family. There were so many aunts and uncles, she could never keep them straight, and even more who were back in Mexico whom she had never met.
“Sabrina is—”
“My aunt, on my father’s side.”
“Omar’s sister?”
He was too focused on weaving through traffic to answer right away. “We’ll figure this out,” he finally said, and only then did the possibility begin to dawn on her. Behind them she could see the sky was nearly black and misty along the horizon. They had left the beach just in time to avoid the storm.
The parking lot of the H-E-B was clogged with a five-o’clock rush of cars, all idling as customers popped in for last-minute groceries before the weekend. Near the back of the lot, a police tower was perched atop a white crane that lifted it into the sky. It didn’t look big enough to fit more than one or two officers, and there was no way to see inside with its black-tinted windows. Isabel had never given it much thought—she assumed they kept watch for drug dealers or petty car thieves—until now.
“How could nobody tell us?” Martin said again. He stopped at the outdoor furniture display on the outskirts of the market, where a black fence laced with vines cordoned off the sales section. Behind it, once she looked closely enough, was a boy. A teenager, perhaps. His cheeks and forehead looked burned, and parts of his clothing were torn. When he saw Martin get out, the boy picked up a large bag off the ground and darted for the car. There was barely time for the two to hug or say hello before he scooted into the back seat. If he saw Isabel, he didn’t let on. He pulled the seat belt out from underneath him, brushing it aside as if it were a nuisance.
“You have to put it on. It’s the law here,” she said in Spanish, louder than she had intended. He gave her a startled smile. “Do you want a Coke? We have some in the white cooler behind you. There’s a sandwich, too.”
He reached for them and mumbled thanks. Through the rearview mirror, once they had stopped at the exit, Martin finally introduced them. Without staring too much, she tried to take him in; he was full of scrapes and bruises, and she wondered how soon they might be able to get him to her hospital.
“What time did you arrive?” she asked.
“Two, three hours ago.”
She nodded. In the ER, when a child like him arrived conscious, she would ask his name, the year, his birthday, whether or not he had brothers or sisters. She learned long ago that asking the date or what town they were in was too specific. If the child couldn’t say, there was no way to tell if he had a concussion, was disoriented, or just didn’t know. She didn’t ask any of these questions now, afraid to get real answers. She turned away and gave him his privacy.
“Does your mom know you’re here?” Martin said.
Eduardo wrapped him arms tighter around his belongings. “Not yet. But it was her idea. She told me to call you.”
“We’ll call her, then. When we get to the house.” His tone was steady, and his voice, slow; a cadence Isabel recognized. Martin had a tendency to hold the air inside of him whenever he was trying to remain calm.
When they got to the house, Eduardo asked to use the shower. Though they were only a few steps from the bathroom, Martin placed his arms over the boy’s shoulders and walked him to the door. Isabel brought him two fresh towels, a bar of soap, and a set of Martin’s clothes that were on the small side. The shower hissed and the plumbing crackled as it pulsed through the walls. Still, Isabel and Martin kept their voices down, their bodies huddled close in the corner of the kitchen.
“I wish they’d called,” Martin said.
“What does it matter now?” She hadn’t meant to snap at him, but he had been repeating himself since they had gotten the first message. “We just need to talk to his mom,” she added, rubbing Martin’s arm as she spoke.
“He must’ve left months ago.”
Months ago, Isabel had treated a teenaged girl and her six-year-old brother for dehydration. They had spent more than a year hopping the trains, trying to cross not one, but three borders from Honduras to Texas, and were detained and sent back more times than the boy could remember. She hoped Eduardo hadn’t tried to ride atop The Beast, too, but she didn’t mention this to Martin. Instead she started a pot of coffee, while he searched the drawers for the little phone book with his family’s numbers.
“It’s been so warm this summer.” Outside the kitchen window, in the yard next to theirs, the wind spiraled a gust of dry dirt into the air, and the setting sun colored the sky blood orange. She thought of Eduardo’s burned cheeks, how the baby fat on his face seemed misplaced on his skeletal body. “How many miles between here and there?”
A pause, and then the frantic, manufactured click of fingertips tapping a touchscreen. “Six hundred seventy-three miles,” Martin said.
She took a deep breath. “Remind me again. Sabrina is the middle one?”
“The youngest. Of the seven, and the only sister.”
She tried picturing the family tree. Martin’s paternal grandparents were buried in McAllen, though he had never expressed interest in visiting their graves. All she knew about Sabrina was that she was the only one of his father’s siblings he had ever met. “Wait . . . that makes Eduardo your cousin, not your nephew.”
“I’m old enough to be his uncle. That’s how he sees me. That’s what he calls me. You know how it is.”
“Not really. You’re always assuming our families are so alike.”
“Right. I forget.”
“Forget what?”
“Nothing.” He had found the phone book and leaned back into the kitchen counter as he flipped through its pages. “I know my family’s messed up, but that doesn’t make yours better than us.”
“I never said that.” She wished he would look at her so he could see how much she meant it.
“But you think it. Every time people ask you where you’re from, and you laugh and say your family’s been here since Texas was its own country.”
The shower shut off.
“It’s a joke. You know that’s not what I mean.”
They could hear Eduardo’s small movements in the bathroom; the scrape of the shower curtain being pushed open, the rustle of a towel against wet hair. Martin lowered his voice and pulled her close. “I’m sure everything will make sense after we’ve talked to his mom.”
“Ready?” he said when Eduardo came into the kitchen.
He dialed the number and pressed the phone to
his ear, then pulled it away to check the screen. He pushed end and dialed again. When that didn’t work, he began turning the pages of the little book again. “This is the number, right?”
Eduardo shook his head. “That’s the restaurant. She had to close it years ago.” He scribbled another number in the phone book, in handwriting that made him seem far younger. “That’s our neighbor.”
They tried it three times, but no one picked up. “We’ll just try again later. No big deal.”
She wished Martin hadn’t said that. He was a terrible liar.
“We would’ve called sooner, but my mother didn’t want to worry you.”
“It’s fine,” Isabel said.
“The important thing is, you made it here safe.” Martin embraced him, and the sides of their heads came together, their bodies stiff and unyielding.
It occurred to her, as he asked after Eduardo’s mother as if he had seen her only yesterday, that this was the baby Martin had held when he was just a newborn. Martin would have been seventeen then, the first and only time he and his sister visited Michoacán with his mother. Isabel remembered the trip well because when they got back, Claudia had shown her the pictures of them playing with Eduardo. She told Isabel all about their aunt, who was unwed and had just given birth to the child of a man who had abandoned her. She said their mother tried convincing her to come to the US, but she refused. “My home is here,” Sabrina had said, over and over. That was fifteen years ago, not long before everything between Claudia and Isabel changed.
“You must be tired.” She searched Eduardo’s light green eyes, glistening like marbles against leather, and tried to see herself and her home through them.
“We have an extra bedroom where you can rest up,” Martin offered.
Rest up, she thought. The words seemed newly foreign. Rest up before you’re on your way again? Rest up in this extra room that might become yours for nights, weeks, years?
There was so much to discuss, but it wasn’t yet the time. As a nurse she knew trust was earned not by the words she said, but by silencing those her patients didn’t want to hear. How and why things happened, how they would deal . . . these were things they eventually shared of their own accord. The patients who told her everything were the hardest to say goodbye to. “I like you, so I never want to see you again, got it?” she would say. They would always laugh as they left.
Without staring too much, she tried to assess his wounds. “I have bandages and ointment in the bathroom. Why don’t you help me set up the room, and I’ll clean you up?”
She led Eduardo down the hall and stacked the first-aid kit on top of the clean linens. He offered to carry them as they made their way to the guest room.
It was a simple ten-by-ten-foot space, with nothing new except the carpet, which the previous homeowner had replaced. Since they hadn’t had guests yet, this room was their last priority. The walls were painted beige, and the mattress stood naked in the center of the room, on a metal frame that jiggled if you tossed around too much.
“It’s not—” She stopped herself. Maybe this room was much, compared to where he had been staying before. “It’s not every day we get guests, so we haven’t had a chance to make the bed or anything.”
Placing the comforter and first-aid supplies on the floor, Eduardo tossed the fitted sheet over the mattress. They stood on opposite sides of the bed, watching as the linens filled with air, parachuting over its surface.
“My mom used to let my sisters and I jump on the bed to push the air out,” Isabel said.
“Mine, too.”
When they were done making the bed she asked him to sit.
“Roll up your sleeve for me, please?”
She warned him it would sting, but he didn’t flinch. The cut was fresh but not deep. The blood had yet to dry so it looked bright and sugary, like a jam sandwich sliced down the middle. It ran about five inches across his triceps toward his elbow. Isabel cut a square sheet of gauze in half and asked him to hold it in place while she taped it against his skin.
“Are there any others?” she asked.
A nod. He rolled up his left sleeve and brought his hand to his shoulder, lifting his elbow toward her face. It was a small scrape, the kind that exposes not blood but white, stinging skin that refuses to heal. She dabbed it with hydrogen peroxide but said nothing as she smoothed on a Band-Aid. He turned around and raised the back of his shirt, exposing a gash similar to the first. Twisting his neck back, he looked at her face.
She simply nodded matter-of-factly and got to work. One piece of scarred skin after the other, he showed her the souvenirs of his journey. He kept his eyes on hers, looking for a reaction. When the fresh wounds had been tended to, he showed her the others: yellow-greenish bruises, weeks old, a spot of skin on his head where hair would never grow again, a half-torn toenail inching its way back.
Isabel knelt and held his bare foot in her hand, spreading the toes apart to examine them.
“It’ll take a while, but it’ll grow back,” she assured him.
Eduardo shrugged. “The cops raided The Beast when it slowed down outside of Monterrey. Even took my shoes. I just ran. I didn’t notice the nail was gone until I saw the blood on my sock. It didn’t hurt,” he added, as if to comfort her.
CHAPTER 6
MARCH 1981
Back home they called her gorda. Vieja. Fea. Because when your husband calls you these things in front everyone, you become the joke. And everyone loves to be in on a joke.
She almost wished he could see her now. This fat, old, ugly body, walking away from him. Walking for miles and days and weeks, crossing mountains and rivers, putting space between them that was even bigger than his rage. The only thing she regretted was missing the look on his face the day he would finally wake—probably well past noon, his face sticky from drool, his breath and sweat still dripping alcohol—and realize she had left him.
Finally. Gone. Basta.
It still hurt, though. Not just the gash in her abdomen, but the thought of him, this man for whom she had endured so much. It would have been easier if she had grown to hate him, but Marisol couldn’t help that she still loved him. Most painful of all were moments when she missed him. When she would daydream that he was out getting groceries or flowers, instead of puteando like he always was, dipping himself in dirty women and then coming home to force himself on her, like she was nothing more than a toy for him, always open. And then, when she had blacked out a few times from his pummeling, thinking she would finally die, she would wish he would join her.
What kind of love was this? What kind of woman dreams of killing her man? Sometimes she would look at her daughter in fear that what she felt for her husband and what she felt for her child came from the same place. What if the devil inside consumed her, and there was nothing pure left for Josselyn? She would never forgive herself then. She would not become the worthless shit her husband said she was.
Except now, along this invisible trail, she wondered if there was no escaping it. For the first five days of their journey, they had taken three different bus routes. On the sixth, as she realized she needed to ration her money, they stopped at a church for food and rest. The nuns sent them off with full bellies, prayers, and two and a half gallons of water. Two gallons had been all she could carry, so she had to ask her daughter to carry the extra half.
On the tenth night, on the bus that would carry them halfway across the country, Marisol felt a man’s body begin to push against her, his cracked fingers pulling at her scalp. Everyone was asleep, even Josselyn, who was curled under the blanket they shared. No one would have thought Marisol’s cries beyond the ordinary, but she feared the struggle would wake her daughter into a nightmare she would never recover from. Quietly, like a beetle turned upside down, she writhed. She had at least learned quickness from her husband: when there’s no protecting yourself, make it harder to catch you, to hurt you, to hold you down. This had backfired, obviously, the day her husband took a machete to her stomach.
She had been lucky that he was drunk and too weak for the blade to penetrate more than her skin. A neighbor sewed her up and told her next time, the stitches wouldn’t be enough to save her.
How could she have known that the next time, the attack would come not from her husband, but from some monster on that bus? How could she have known that all the strength she wished she had had years ago would finally manifest in the moving darkness?
It happened faster than she could process. Even now, all she could remember were the man’s eyes, how in trying to pin her body down he had pulled the blanket away, and his hungry gaze had shifted to her daughter. And then how his eyes had felt, warm and rubbery, as Marisol pressed them deeper into his skull. No one stirred as the man stumbled away from them, stunned and in pain. Sometimes she wondered if she’d dreamed it, this nightmare still beating in her chest.
That had been the first ten days of their journey. Now, with the desert stretched before her, time sank back, stagnant.
“Mamá, I’m bored,” her daughter said, tugging at the old shirt she’d tied around her waist. This had been Josselyn’s chief complaint since they had left. Not, “How much longer?” Not, “I’m thirsty,” or, “I’m scared,” or, “When will we eat?” Josselyn was only eight and already wise beyond her years. Her greatest pain came not from hunger or danger, but from having nothing to do. Perhaps her daughter was right. Perhaps pointlessness was the most life-threatening of all. To live but have no purpose. To exist without being visible. To leave everything you’ve known and risk everything leaving you.
She looked down at the ground. Her ankles and calves were swelling. Her feet felt as if they could burst out of her canvas shoes. All she could hear were her own breaths and gasps.
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