Night Vision

by Randy Wayne White

  “But do you also understand how hurtful it is to lose your mother in exchange for a bundle of pesos sent weekly from the United States? Children need their parents more than money or food—that’s why I’m here. I have come to lead my family home.”

  Then Tula had asked the woman, “Who did you leave behind? A son? A daughter?”

  The woman’s expression transitioned from anger to uncertainty. “What business is that of yours, stupid child?”

  Tula was aware of the Maiden inside her, exploring the woman’s thoughts, but the Maiden did not share what she was learning.

  “You left behind a husband and children,” Tula guessed, feeling her own way. “You planned to return, but here you are. How many years has it been?”

  It took a full minute before the matron spoke, but she finally did. “Two children,” the woman replied, sounding weary now and a little unnerved. “Our first child, she died, so there were three, not two.”

  The woman looked at the group as she added, “I must stop saying that I have only two children. My third child, her name was Alexandra, but only for nine days. She is with God now. I should have told you this.”

  Tula had glanced at the man with whom the woman had been sitting and knew he wasn’t her husband. The woman was an adulteress, but Tula did not say it. For some reason, she felt kindly toward the woman despite the woman’s sins and respected her sadness.

  Instead, Tula said, “You are a good women, I feel that is true. It has been several years since you have seen your family, yet you have not abandoned them. I know I’m right, I can see God’s own goodness in your eyes. You are a devoted mother. How many times a month do you send money?”

  The woman replied, “Every week, I cash my check at the Winn-Dixie, then pay cash to the Western Union clerk at the cigarette counter. At Christmas, I send three checks. In four years, I have never missed a week. Even though my husband has taken another woman, I still send the money.”

  As an aside to the adults the woman added, “I’ve heard that my children now call this new woman mother. It is something I have been ashamed to share. I don’t know why I am telling you now.”

  When Tula reached to place her hand on the matron’s shoulder, the woman shrugged the hand away, getting angry again—angry not at Tula but because she was so close to tears.

  “Leave me alone,” the woman said. “We are adults, we’ve worked hard all day in the fields. Now we are relaxing, what business is this of yours? Go play with your little penga instead of harassing good men and women.”

  “Maybe you know my family,” Tula had pressed. “My mother’s name is Zabillet. Here, people call her Mary. My brother’s name is Pacaw, but sometimes Pablo. He left home six months ago. I have two aunts and an uncle in Florida, too, but I don’t know where.”

  The woman seemed to be paying attention as Tula added, “My mother came to El Norte four years ago, when I was only eight. Like you, she sent money every week. There is a phone booth outside the tienda in our village, and every Sunday night I was there, waiting, when she called. Two months ago, though, my mother stopped calling. And the number to her cell phone no longer works.”

  “It’s because of the coyotes and the field bosses,” a man sitting nearby explained. “They control us by controlling our telephones. Everyone knows that, unless you’re stupid. You must be stupid. Why does that surprise you?”

  Tula replied, “It doesn’t surprise me. Not now. Not since I’ve learned how the Mexican coyotes cheat us. They charge us pesos to come to El Norte. Then they charge us dollars to provide us with work and a place to sleep, and a telephone that they can disable at any time. But when my mother stopped calling, I knew something was wrong.”

  Sounding impatient, another man said, “We were enjoying ourselves before you interrupted. Now you stand here, asking rude questions. Our Indígena sisters and brothers arrive in Florida every day, but we don’t ask their names. We mind our own business. If you have lost your mother, go to Indiantown and ask the Indígena there. Or go to Immokalee. It is only an hour’s drive in a truck.

  “If your mother is in Florida,” the man continued, “the Maya of Immokalee and Indiantown will know—there are many thousands of us in those villages. Now, please get out of my sight. I did not work all day in the sun to have my beer interrupted by a disrespectful child who criticizes his elders.”

  Immokalee.

  Tula had heard of the town, of course. It was one of the last places her mother had lived prior to her disappearance. Tula had heard of Indiantown, too. Everyone in Guatemala knew of these villages because they were the largest Mayan settlements in Florida. In these places, Tula had heard, the Indígena sang the old songs and spoke the ancient language, not the bastard tongue of the Mexicans.

  Tula said to the man, “I appreciate your advice, but you are wrong about me being disrespectful. I said what I said, but the words are not mine. You do not understand who I am. Look at me closely, perhaps you will.”

  “The nerve of this mericon!” one of the men chided. “He is a dirty little faggot. See how he poses and struts, as if he is more important than his elders?”

  “Doubt me if you wish,” Tula said in a firm voice, “but I will not listen to your profanities. Look at me. Don’t just use your eyes, use your heart also. I have been sent here by my patron saint. I am unworthy, just a stupid child. But I am also an instrument of God. So be careful how you speak to me.”

  There! She had finally said aloud what she had never had the courage, or conviction, to share with anyone. Tula was afraid for a moment how the people would react.

  She could feel the adults looking at her, their faces suspended above the fire as brown as wooden masks worn at festival time in the Mayan mountains. As the men and women stared, Tula felt her body transforming as she stood erect, chin angled, and she wondered if the adults would correctly perceive the changes that were taking place within her.

  It was something that Sister Lionza had been teaching Tula at the monastery, the art of projecting thoughts—the first hint that the nun was preparing her for membership in the Culta de Shimono.

  Thoughts are energy. Our thoughts are sparks from God’s eyes. Devote your thoughts to an image. Picture that image with all your heart. Soon others will see, with their eyes, the image that lives in your mind.

  In Tula’s mind, as she posed by the fire, she envisioned a precise picture of herself the way she yearned to look. Her jeans and ragged shirt were armor molded to her body by firelight. The amulet and medallion that she clutched were now a glittering shield.

  Yes, Tula decided. The adults saw that her body had been transformed. A few of them, anyway. It was in their eyes, both respect and wonder. She felt sure enough to say, “I’m only a child from the mountains, but I have been transformed by my patron saint. Don’t be uneasy, don’t be afraid of my strange dress. The Maiden speaks to me and she speaks through me. She provides me words for you that I believe are words from God.”

  Voices around the fire muttered, asking about the Maiden—what did the name mean?—while Tula continued speaking.

  “The Maiden has told me that this land will never be our home. Our home is in the cloud forests of the mountains. It is in the jungles where our ancestors built pyramids that rivaled the greatness of Egypt. She has told us to think back and remember our home. And the love we have for it. It is true that we do not have shiny red pickup trucks in our yards. Or televisions with large screens. But what good is a red truck when it cannot drive you to your family?”

  Tula sensed emotion in the people her words touched just as she could also hear the whispered grumblings of those who did not see or believe—men mostly, but also a few women who got to their feet, speaking insults and a few whispered profanities.

  The matron, however, was not among them. She had stared at Tula with glistening eyes.

  “You speak to God?” the woman asked. “How do we know you are not lying?”

  Jehanne had been asked this same question many times
by her inquisitors, so Tula used the Maiden’s own words to answer.

  “I do not speak to God. He speaks to me. Any other way would be improper. Who am I? I am a poor, stupid child. The voices that direct me come from Him. I believe this truly in my own heart. I am his instrument; only a messenger instructed by the words of my patron saint, the Maiden.”

  The woman, near tears, replied, “I don’t know why I believe you, but I do. It must be true, for you looked into my heart and told me what I was feeling. I miss my children. I miss my village, and the cooking fires and the odors of my girlhood. What did you say to us about God being in us as children? I can’t remember your exact words—”

  “I asked you to remember how you felt as a child. When you felt the goodness of God inside you. God is still there, alive in your heart. I asked, ‘Why do you fight Him so?’”

  From the shadows beyond the fire, a man’s voice chided Tula, saying, “Next this boy will be telling us that he also speaks to the goats who bugger him! Why is he wasting our time. Go away, little turd, or I will bugger you myself!” Grinning, the man had stood and pretended to unsnap his belt.

  Tula was surprised that only a few people laughed at the insult, and she was comforted by the realization that very few of these people would ever laugh at her again.

  When Tula had finally left that fire circle, seven nights before, some of the adults had watched her in a silence that was a mixture of fear, awe and longing. On that very same night, someone placed a statuette of the Virgin Mary outside her trailer.

  The next evening, after the day’s work was done, the matron and two neighbor women appeared at Tula’s trailer, seeking to speak privately.

  The next night, a small line formed outside Tula’s door. Each night afterward, the line was longer. Some people came from as far as Indiantown, Miami and Immokalee to speak with the child who was said to be an emissary from God.

  News of the unusual child traveled at lightning speed through the cheap cell phones of the Guatemalan community.

  Sometimes, women and men wept as they asked for Tula’s guidance and advice. Many attempted to kneel and kiss her hand, but Tula refused their adulation, just as the Maiden had refused the worshipping gestures of her own followers six hundred years before.

  “We are sisters?” Tula had questioned Jehanne, hoping desperately that it was true.

  Even when you leave this life for the next, the Maiden had promised.

  Tula was now more determined than ever to be equal to the honor of being chosen by Jehanne.

  To every person who came to her, Tula challenged them with the same parting question: “Do you remember the goodness of God that was in you as a child? He is still there, in your heart. Why do you fight Him so?”

  Much had changed since Tula had spoken to the fire circle a week before. The respect with which her neighbors treated her was beyond her experience, yet she handled it comfortably and exercised her new power only for good—to spread the word that she was searching for her family, and, tonight, to order the adults to help save her patron, Carlson, and also the landlord, Harris Squires.

  Something else that had changed, Tula realized, was that she had lost her anonymity. The eyes of her neighbors followed her everywhere she went. Which is why she had waited long after the ambulance and police cars had left to finally climb down from the tree and retreat to her trailer.

  She didn’t stay long, though, because the memory of Harris Squires’s words scared her. She knew the giant man would come looking for her soon. So she had gone to the public toilet, curled up in a stall and had tried to sleep.

  Too much had happened, though, for Tula’s mind to relax. She fretted about Carlson—would he live?—and also regretted not speaking with the strange man, Tomlinson, who Tula barely knew but who she had immediately accepted as her second patron and protector.

  Early that morning, still unable to sleep, Tula had returned to her tree to speak with the owls and watch the sunrise, she told herself. But it was really to invite that pulsing, trembling feeling into her body. As she straddled the limb, which Tula thought of as a saddle, the Maiden had floated into Tula’s body almost immediately, but only for a short time.

  Suddenly, then, without farewell, the Maiden’s voice was gone. It was replaced by the distant inquiries of morning birds—the owls had remained silent—and then the sound of approaching footsteps.

  Tula had been weeping, as she always did when the Maiden left her, yet she was crying softly enough to hear the crack of twigs and then a man’s voice say, “Lookee, lookee, what I see. It’s getting so I know where to find you. What do you think you are, chula? Some kind of bird?”

  Tula looked down to see Harris Squires staring at her through the strange binoculars that allowed him to see in the night like an animal.

  It wasn’t until the giant had grabbed Tula, clapping his hand over her mouth to silence her, that the Maiden’s words returned to comfort the girl, saying, Stop fighting, go with him. You are in God’s hands. God will show you the way.

  Now, sitting beside Squires in his oversized truck, Tula said to the man, “What do you call these bracelets on my wrists? They’re hurting me. Will you please take them off?”

  Squires made a noise of impatience as he drove. He had been trying to focus on his sex fantasy, but the girl kept talking.

  “Why don’t you answer me?” the girl said, irritated. “I have every reason to be angry at you. Instead, I am speaking to you politely. You should at least answer when I ask you a polite question.”

  Squires made another groaning sound.

  She didn’t stop. “If I had wanted to run from you, God would have given me the strength. Instead, He told me to come with you. That’s why I am here. There’s no need for you to chain my hands.”

  Squires was aggravated, but also surprised by the girl’s calm voice, her matter-of-fact manner.

  “They’re called handcuffs,” he told her, because it was obvious that she wouldn’t shut up until he answered. “It’s a safety precaution. If you did something stupid, like open the door and jump, who’d you think would get the blame?”

  “I just told you,” the girl replied, “God wants me to be with you. God must care about you or He wouldn’t have told me to save you from the alligator last night. I wouldn’t be with you this morning. Do you remember me ordering my people to help you?”

  Her people? Who the hell did she think she was?

  The girl had something wrong with her brain, Squires decided. Maybe she was some rare variety of retard—he had seen things on TV about kids like that. Or maybe just crazy. It had to be one of the two because of course Squires remembered the girl yelling at the crowd of Mexicans, ordering them to help him. He also remembered the little flash of hope the girl’s voice had created in him as that big goddamn gator swam toward him fast with those devil-red eyes.

  Why would the little brat try to help him? It made no sense for her to save his life after he had forced his way into the bathroom, then played around with her while she was naked.

  Crazy. Yeah. She had to be.

  As Squires drove, he looked at the girl, who was fiddling with the handcuffs, acting like they were hurting her skinny wrists. Close-up, she was a tiny little thing, her fingers long and delicate with dirt beneath the nails. The vertebrae on the back of her neck were visible beneath the Dutch-boy hair, like something he’d see on skinny dogs.

  Compared to Squires’s own bulk, the girl was a sack of skin and bone, which Squires found galling. The weirdo was nothing but a worthless little chula, yet there was also something oddly big about her, too, the way she handled herself, full of confidence. It was disconcerting.

  In a bar, Squires could flash his shit-kicker monster face as fast as any other brawler, but, truth was, he’d never felt confident about anything in his life. Not compared to the way this little kid acted, anyway.

  What really burned his ass, Squires realized, was that all the women in his life were the same way. Frankie and his ball-b
usting witch of a mother both had that same know-it-all confidence.

  No . . . not exactly the same, because the girl didn’t use the same nasty-mouthed meanness that his mother and Frankie both used to make him feel like a pile of shit most the time. But even though the girl was different, in her way, she was just another bossy female.

  Tula said to him now, “You do remember that I helped save you. I can tell. Just now, you were thinking about the big alligator coming to eat you. But it didn’t eat you because we all helped you. So you should trust me. I’m not going to run away. I’m here because God wants me to be with you. Perhaps He wants me to be your protector every day, not just last night. It’s possible.”

  “My protector!” Squires laughed. “Take a good look at me, chula. Why the hell would I ever need your help?”

  He glanced away from his driving long enough to touch his right bicep, which he was flexing. “You ever seen another man in your life built like me? Not down there in some Mexican shithole, you never did, I’d bet on that. I don’t need protecting from nobody because there’s not a goddamn thing in the world I’m scared of.”

  A moment later, he said, “Okay, in a minute or so I’m going to pull up to a garage and I want you to do what I tell you to do.”

  They were in East Fort Myers now, bouncing down a long driveway toward the river, horses grazing in a pasture to their right.

  The giant man continued, “We’re gonna switch vehicles—it’s where my mom lives, but the bitch isn’t home. She’s off on some cruise someplace with one of her boyfriends. But if you see someone coming down that goddamn driveway, you honk this horn, understand? I’ll leave the truck running until I get it in the garage.”

  No one came. Leaving Tula chained in the truck, Squires even took some time to go inside the house, make a protein shake and pack a bag of ice for his sore leg. He also found a pint bottle of tequila, which he kept on the seat next to him.