We arrived at nightfall. The campground smelled of shit. It was full of drug addicts, goats, thieves, and migrants hoping to enter the United States. Marcos insisted it was safer here than in the city, which was full of la migra and every other sort of problem and depravity.
Marcos would leave in the morning—he had the money to pay a coyote to get him over the river and past the immigration authorities. He would bring along his family, and perhaps Ernesto. But this place, with the soiled mattresses and trash, was where I would remain. At the edge of the trail, I leaned over and tried to throw up. There was nothing inside me, but still I heaved.
We sat around a campfire. In the middle of an awful place, the flames were hot and beautiful. I stared at them. I held my hands out. Marcos explained the ways to get into America. You could try to swim the river, but you would drown. He had seen bloated bodies float past in the water; he had seen people stopped halfway across by American police, then put in jail, then sent back to the country they had started in. Even as we sat by the fire, people were trying to make it through the rushing water. INS agents with bullhorns stood on the far shore, telling the swimmers to turn back in both English and Spanish. It was like having a campout in the middle of one of the action movies we used to watch through the window of the PriceSmart electronics store. I imagined that the loud, disembodied voices were Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger (who had also been an immigrant, I knew). The idea made me smile. It is helpful to pretend a horrifying scenario is not your real life.
Marcos said that some rode inner tubes to a resting place covered in vegetation, an island in the middle of the water, halfway to America. They waited there, sometimes all night, for a split second when they were not watched. If that moment came, they might make it across. “But then they are on a muddy bank in wet clothes, surrounded by police! This is stupid, and it is foolish, though your hopes will tell you otherwise.”
Marcos knew what he was talking about, and I nodded. Across the water I could see American houses. I could hear cars at the border checkpoint. I was so close, and Marcos was right: a part of my brain said, Just go, Carla! Just swim across!
“There is a Catholic church in Nuevo Laredo,” Marcos continued. He told me how to get there—it was not too long a walk from the camp. “At the church, you will get food cards worth fifteen meals,” said Marcos. “Are you listening, Carla?”
I turned to him, the man who had helped me so much already. I took a breath, then made my plea. “Please,” I said. “Take me with you.”
He shook his head sadly, impatiently. “My employer pays our fee to the coyote,” he explained. “He takes it from my first paycheck. If you are not coming as a laborer, he will not pay for you. Juliana will cook for us while we are there, and if Ernesto wants to work very hard, he can join us.”
Ernesto looked up, wonder in his eyes. He looked younger than the day I had met him. He was smitten, I saw now, if not with Juliana, then with her family. He had someone besides a gang to love him now.
“Is there something I can do there, in Texas?” I asked, desperate not to be left at this place on my own. In the firelight, I saw waves of red ants along the ground, the kind that sting.
“Listen to me,” said Marcos. “I will introduce you to the coyote—he is trustworthy. I have used him before. He knows the way across, and he has contacts to get us to the truck. He costs two thousand U.S. dollars a person, but he will not take the money and leave you dead.”
“How will I get two thousand dollars?” I asked.
“You will call your mother,” said Marcos. Solemnly he whispered, “Give me your hand.”
Marcos was sitting next to me. When I let my hand near his, he put a card inside and closed my fingers around it. “You are in danger now,” he said very quietly. “You have a possession many others want. Use this as soon as it is light. Tell your mother to wire the money before your fifteen meals run out.”
I nodded, too frightened to speak.
I felt surrounded by menace from that moment on. We had no food, so did not eat. I lay down on a soiled blanket near the fire. I did not open my hand. Sometime in the night I felt a kiss on my forehead. I sat up, terrified, but it was Ernesto.
“Adios, Carla,” he said. He knelt by my side.
“Ernesto,” I said, “please. Don’t tell anyone what happened to me on the train.”
He nodded seriously. “I promise,” he said.
“Do you love Juliana?” I asked.
“We are leaving,” he said.
In the shadows, I could see Juliana, Marcos, and their brothers. Beside them was a very thin man with a beard. “This is El Serpiente,” said Marcos, approaching. “You will pay him when your money arrives. Until then, he will keep you safe.”
I was too scared to respond. I cowered on the blanket. The Snake lit a cigarette and said, “Marcos, let’s go.” They followed him along the water, out of sight. I could sense men watching me, and I felt sick.
It was not yet morning, but I stood up anyway. I ran the way I had come, up the path, to the city. I ran for maybe an hour, maybe longer. Finally, I collapsed on a bench and opened my hand to see that Marcos had given me a phone card worth fifty pesos. I saw an old woman walking quickly down the dark street and I asked her where a phone was. She looked at me as if she, too, were afraid. I knew that some migrants were not kind, and robbed or stole to get what they needed to survive. The old woman shook her head and hurried away.
I found the church Marcos had told me about, and on its steps I curled into a ball to wait for morning. I had come so far, and I did not know what to do. I knew I was in danger. I knew my mother might not have the money. And I knew she might not send it; she had left me, after all. Did she love me two thousand dollars’ worth?
The good news here is that I had no more tears left. So I sat on the steps of Parroquia de San José until God brought the morning to me.
40
Alice
AS SOON AS I stepped off the plane in Montrose, I could feel the chill of impending winter. It was only September, and yet the light was low and gray, the sky steely outside the airport windows. In the baggage claim, my father waited, his summer tan worn off, his expression miserable. When he saw me, he nodded, unsmiling. I ran to him, saying, “Dad,” as I tucked my arms underneath his and held him.
“Come on now, honey,” he said, disengaging himself.
At the baggage carousel, he leaned in to grab my duffel. “I can do it,” I protested, but he ignored me. We walked across the parking lot. Montrose was flat, and the sky seemed stretched too thin to cover the distance from the clouds to asphalt. My father started the truck. “Chilly,” I commented.
He did not respond.
“How’s Jane?” I tried.
“Better today,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”
“I wish she’d get the test,” I said. “The test for the gene that …” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t say the word: cancer.
“Got a new boy in the stockroom,” said my father. “Bill Fernandez’s boy.”