“Number!”
La Treinta Y Cuatro sat behind a table, pen poised over a sheet of paper, glaring at me.
“What?”
“Your number?”
My number was written on a piece of tape attached to my chest. At Fort Stockton, we were called by the number assigned to our bed. “A-125,” I said meekly. I knew from experience and from prison wisdom that submission was the best way to respond to La Treinta Y Cuatro. The A in my name meant that my bed was in the converted gym. The 125 meant that my bed was in the middle row of bunks where the air from the four corner fans never reached.
“Garbage.”
“What?”
“You deaf? You sorda?”
“No. But I was interested in the interpreter’s job. I saw the note outside the legal services room.”
“Do you want to work or not? Because if you do, garbage is what we got.”
I knew about the garbage job because I had seen women go around all areas of the FDC with giant, gray plastic garbage cans on wheels. I decided to try one more time. “There are very few women here who speak English. I could be more useful …”
“I could be more useful …” La Treinta Y Cuatro mimicked me. “Who do you think you are?”
“I don’t think …”
“Work is a privilege. You want it or not?”
“I want it,” I said, resigned.
“Go see Elva in the cafeteria. She’ll tell you what to do.”
That afternoon, Elva made the garbage rounds with me, and I became acquainted with the incredible amount of waste generated by people who do nothing all day except hope and wait and pray. My job encompassed emptying all waste receptacles in the facility, including kitchen, bathrooms, dormitories, and offices. I took the contents to a dumpster in the back. The strange thing is that as Elva showed me around, I couldn’t wait to get started. I understood a little of what my brother must have felt back in Ciudad Juárez when he took off with his bike and trailer to collect cans on weekends. Yes, Treinta Y Cuatro, you were right, work is a privilege.
And work, I hoped, would keep my faith from breaking.
The horse started trotting and circling around the corral as soon as he saw me. I walked toward him, talking to him as I went. “You’d be free right now if you hadn’t stopped for me. Estarías libre.”
“That horse no habla Español. Or English. Or horse language for that matter,” Gustaf said, coming out of the barn. He was carrying a bucket of oats, the horse’s favorite.
“He doesn’t like the corral.”
“That running around? Nonsense. He’s glad to see you.” Gustaf hung the bucket over one of the posts. We both moved back to give the horse space to eat. “I ought to sell him for dog food except no dog would have him.”
“You went looking for him when he ran away.”
“Yeah, hope that wasn’t a mistake.” Gustaf grinned at me and then spat tobacco juice in the direction of the horse. “So, there’s another message from your father. He wants to know when he can pick you up. I’m guessing you still haven’t called him.”
I turned to look at the Sierra Madre mountains behind me. Out there, when I thought I was going to die, I was ready to go with my father to Chicago if I somehow managed to live. And now? When did the old resentment for my father abandoning us creep in? Why this reluctance to go live with his new family and act as if nothing had happened? Or maybe my doubts came from the peace I found here in Gustaf’s ranch. The hard work during the day and the exhaustion at night didn’t leave room for thinking or remembering. That kind of hard yet simple life, free of confusion, was just what I needed. I knew I couldn’t go back to Mexico, not now. Hinojosa and his men would find me and kill me for sure. But why couldn’t I stay with Gustaf? Wouldn’t that be better for all concerned, including my father and his new family? I couldn’t imagine his new wife was very eager to take in a stranger, an illegal stranger.
“Look,” Gustaf said, reading my mind. “You know you’re welcome to stay here. I could use your help. Got plenty of room. My Gertrude died last year. My son’s happy with his job and family in Austin. You like to work. But …”
“I’m illegal. You could get in trouble.”
“Shoot! This thing about who can come into this country and who must stay out is all new to me. Gutierrez, the guy who helped me for thirty years, never had any papers. He used to cross the Rio Grande and then go back to see his family every month or so and no one cared. And when we needed more hands here at the ranch, he’d bring his cousins. The border looks different down here than it does up there in Washington. So, papers or no papers, if you want to stay, you can stay. But you need to decide now, and your father needs to know.”
Gustaf’s stern tone surprised me. But he was right. I could not avoid a decision or talking to my father any longer. He was staying thirty miles from Gustaf’s ranch in a motel in Sanderson and he had left three messages since yesterday.
Gustaf continued, his voice softer. “I can’t tell you what to do, but I’ve lived long enough to know that sometimes we find where we belong from the places we don’t.”
I thought about that for a while. Was Gustaf telling me to give Chicago and my father a try? Maybe I owed it to myself to find out what living with my father was like. The horse was done with the oats and was now moving his head up and down in the direction of the house.
“What’s he saying now?” I asked Gustaf.
“About the same thing I told you.”
“Yeah.”
“Your father’s number is on my desk in my office. You might as well use the phone in there.”
I started toward the house, wondering what I was going to say to my father, and then I remembered Hinojosa’s cell phone. “Can I use your computer? I need to send an e-mail.”
“Yeah, sure. You’ll need my password. GERTRUDE. All caps.”
“Of course.”
Why wouldn’t Gustaf’s password be the name of the one person he loved and missed the most?
It was crazy, but there, sitting at Gustaf’s cluttered desk, I actually had the urge to call Perla Rubi. It was crazy to want to call her because I knew that, accidentally or on purpose, she told her father where Sara and I would be crossing into the United States. She was the only person other than Brother Patricio or my mother who knew the location. She knew because I told her. And I told her because I trusted her and because I … loved her. It felt very strange to put that word in the past tense.
Gustaf had written down my father’s number on a white napkin. I recognized it as my father’s cell phone number from the times he called my mother and Sara. He even tried calling me directly a few times, but I just let it ring and then erased whatever message he had left, without listening to it.
“You have to admit that he never totally abandoned you,” Sara used to say to me. “He writes you, he tries to call you, he sends you money.”
I exhaled. I picked up the receiver, held it against my ear and mouth, and then put it down again. Besides not calling my father, I had also been avoiding contacting Yoya, the hacker in the United States who would help us open Hinojosa’s phone. There was something evil and scary about that cell phone and everything connected to it that made me want to stay as far away from it as possible. But I could no longer put off the promise I’d made to Sara. Quickly, I turned on Gustaf’s computer. It was an old desktop with an oversize screen. It looked as if the Internet connection was through a cable outlet on the wall beside the desk. I typed in the password and then maneuvered my way to Gmail, where I had an account. I had Yoya’s address memorized. I took a deep breath, then panicked. What was Sara’s friend’s name. The IT colleague at El Sol who told her to call Yoya about Hinojosa’s phone? Ernesto. But what was Ernesto’s last name? I tried to regain some kind of calmness. I didn’t need the last name. Ernesto would have told Yoya about Hinojosa’s cell phone. Just keep the message short and to the point, I told myself.