“The fan first, girl. You can show him later after he’s cooled down.”
“I’ll get the fan.” It’s so dark in the shack that Emiliano did not see Javier’s middle sister, Marta, sitting on another cot. She reaches for a small electric fan on top of the only dresser in the room and brings it to the table, her arm shaking. She climbs up on a chair and tries to plug the fan’s cord into the outlet with the room’s only lightbulb. Every person in the room, it seems, holds their breath until the fan starts to whir. Mrs. Robles leads Emiliano to a chair in front of the fan.
“Look.” Rosario presents him with a rag doll dressed like a Mayan princess. The doll has a white dress with purple embroidered flowers on the hem and a white blouse with intricate pink designs on the sleeves. The head is covered with a scarf lined with tiny blue stars. The doll’s face is primitive looking but friendly, warm.
“I didn’t know you made dolls,” Emiliano says, admiring it. “I really liked that jaguar mask you made. This is pretty amazing.”
“You think someone will buy it?”
“Yeah, definitely,” Emiliano says, squeezing the doll. He imagines a little girl hugging it for comfort.
Mrs. Robles takes a jar from a plastic cooler on the floor and fills a glass with water. “It’s good water,” she assures him. “We always boil it first.”
“I’m making stuff too,” Marta says. “Javier’s teaching me to make papier-mâché animals. Want to see?”
“Let’s not bother Emiliano with all our handiwork,” Mrs. Robles says. Then to Emiliano, “The girls enjoy making things for you.” Nieves, standing next to Mrs. Robles, pulls at her mother’s dress. “What is it, little one?”
“I made something,” Nieves whispers to her mother.
Before Emiliano can say anything, Marta drops some kind of multicolored creature on his lap. “A leopard,” she tells him. “Only the spots are different colors.”
“It’s different,” Emiliano says. Something’s not right with the leopard, but he doesn’t know what.
“It’s the tail. The tail’s too short. And he doesn’t have any ears,” Rosario says, reading his mind.
Marta sticks her tongue out at Rosario, even though the words were said with kindness. “If the tail was longer it could be a rat. And he does have ears. He’s a baby leopard, so his ears haven’t grown.”
Now Nieves is tentatively presenting him with an ordinary piece of cardboard. She turns it over. Bottle caps have been glued on to form a picture. “Wow, you did this?” Emiliano asks her, taking the cardboard from her hands. She nods and hides behind her mother.
“Nieves and Marta collected the bottle caps and glued them,” Mrs. Robles explains. “It gives them something to do while Javier is in school and Rosario and me are out working.”
“I don’t go to school,” Marta says, a note of sadness in her voice. An assortment of her medicine bottles sits on the table. “It’s the Popocatépetl, see?” She points at a volcano in the center of the cardboard. To the right of the volcano there’s a sun. Marta sniffs and says, “It still smells like beer. The only yellow caps we could find for the sun were from beer bottles.”
Emiliano can’t imagine how five people can live in this minuscule space they call home. The inside of the shack is clean and there is no clutter. Everything seems to have an essential purpose. The floor consists of wooden pallets covered with remnants from various rugs. Two cots are joined together in the far end of the room where, Emiliano supposes, Mrs. Robles sleeps with the three girls. He can tell that Javier sleeps on the remaining cot because he can see three piñatas on top of it. The red plastic cooler with the white top sits behind the door. A wire stretches between two nails, holding dresses and flimsy jackets. Emiliano can see cracks of light between the walls of the shack. How do they keep warm in winter? How does Javier work on the piñatas at night with only that dim lightbulb? How do they not roast to death in the summer months, with only one window high up in the back wall? Against the other wall stands the dresser, with an iron crucifix on top, and a bench with a double-burner petroleum stove, where a pot is gurgling with something that smells like his mother’s stew.
“We were waiting for Javier to eat. Will you join us?” Mrs. Robles says.
“Thank you, no. I have another stop after this. And then I have to go downtown to sell the merchandise. I’m late already.”
“Oh, and here we are detaining you with our chatter. Rosario, can you help Emiliano with the piñatas?”
“I got them,” Emiliano says, standing. He goes over to Javier’s cot and reads the note on one of the piñatas.
Hey, Emiliano. Sorry I missed you. Can you bring whatever you get for the piñatas tomorrow? We need to get some medicine for Marta. Thank you. Javier.
Emiliano puts down the piñata and takes one thousand pesos from his wallet. He brought the money from his savings at home to buy Perla Rubi’s mother a birthday present, but he can figure out something else for that. “This is for the piñatas,” he says to Mrs. Robles. “I’ll give Javier the rest tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll get at least four hundred for these.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Robles says, taking the money. “God bless you.”
He takes two piñatas and Rosario takes the third. The whole family walks out with him.
“I’ll come and get the doll next Saturday,” Emiliano tells Rosario. “It’s really beautiful.”
“What about my leopard?” Marta asks, pouting.
He smiles at her. “Your leopard also. But see if you can get the ears and the tail to grow. And your volcano too,” he says to Nieves.
“Thank you for all you do for us,” Mrs. Robles says, taking his hand in hers. He squeezes it and lets it go.
Now it’s time to fly. After Emiliano says his good-byes, it takes him thirty minutes to reach the commercial district where the Taurus nightclub is located. Thai and Indian restaurants line the streets, and boutiques with dresses so flimsy Emiliano can’t imagine anyone wearing them. The six blocks surrounding Taurus are what everyone points to when they want to show that the old Juárez is gone and a new one has arrived. No one wants to think about Javier’s neighborhood just forty blocks away.
Taurus has a hot pink facade with black music notes popping out of saxophones. There are no windows anywhere, and inside it’s all black leather, chrome, and mirrors. It’s the hot spot in Juárez, Emiliano knows, where all the kids with rich parents come to drink and dance. Some day, he imagines, he’ll drive up to the club on his motorcycle with Perla Rubi behind him. But right now he is here for business and not to fantasize about the future.
The owner’s son, Armando, is kind to him. He always asks about his mother. Likes to talk with him about soccer. Emiliano wants to ask him now about the empty beer cans he’s seen in garbage bags at the back of the club. There must be at least one hundred cans in those bags, and that’s just from one evening. Taurus is open six days a week. If Emiliano can take all those cans to the recycling center and keep a percentage of the fees, he could be making serious money. Armando is a friendly guy. He might go for a fifty-fifty split.