I sneezed. Sneezing, that was something we had not anticipated. If I sneezed when we reached the checkpoint, then what? Getting caught by the Border Patrol would be the end of Sara and me. I’d get sent to a detention center. Hinojosa’s phone would be taken away from me. Hinojosa’s men would find Sara before Yoya and I could stop them.
“I’m going to tap the brakes three times when I see the Border Patrol. You’ll feel the trailer lurch. After that, no sneezing or any other noises that don’t sound like horse. All right?”
I sneezed again.
“Practice squeezing your nose and holding your breath before we get there. The whole thing won’t take but thirty seconds. You won’t die if you don’t breathe for thirty seconds. Either that or practice making your sneezes sound like a snort.”
“I hope he’s okay in there,” I heard my father say.
“Ahh, he’ll be fine.”
Then a door closed and the engine roared. I smelled exhaust, and we were off. I removed some of the hay from my face and placed it by my chest where I could reach for it and cover myself when the time came. The horse breathed on my face.
“Stop it,” I told him. “You stink.”
The horse shook his head and neighed in what sounded an awful lot like mischievous laughter.
It would be a half hour or so before we reached a Border Patrol checkpoint. I put my hand over my abdomen to still the nervous cramps that I was getting. Small pieces of straw somehow found their way into my armpits. Drops of perspiration rolled from the top of my head down my forehead and into my eyes. I knew it wasn’t the heat that was causing the perspiration. You are afraid, that’s what you are. Speaking to myself was another sign of fear. I couldn’t stop thinking of all that would be lost if I got caught. Not just my life, although the fear of losing that was considerable. It was Sara’s sacrifice and my mother’s. My poor mother choosing to be without her son and daughter so that we could live, so that I could be the person God wanted me to be. But I did not believe in God, did I? Something happened to me out there in the desert when I thought I was going to die that made me … what? Believe? Yes, it was a kind of new belief. I started to believe, if not in God, then in the need to do something good with my life.
“Why not?” I asked the horse. “Don’t you think I’m capable of doing something good with my life? I know that my recent past was … well, I made some mistakes. But you probably have too. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not just saying all this because I’m scared. And anyway, you’d be scared too if the roles were reversed. If I get caught, I could die. My sister could die. There are girls who are suffering right now, being forced into different kinds of slavery, who will never get any help unless we get the names hiding in the cell phone. So you have to act normal when we get to the Border Patrol. Don’t prick up your ears like you do when you see me coming.”
The horse only nibbled at the hay on my hair.
Then I felt the trailer slow down and lurch three times. It was Gustaf letting me know that we were approaching the checkpoint. I reached down to the sides and threw as much hay as I could over my legs. The horse sensed that something dangerous was about to take place because he neighed and then I heard the sound of his hoofs on the trailer. I had this incredible urge to pray. I thought of my mother and Sara saying the Rosary together and now I wished I had not made fun of them so often. Suddenly, I realized that we had stopped and the words “Help me” came out of my lips. I buried my head deeper in the blanket, grabbed a few more strands of hay, and placed them over the top of the blanket. The horse’s big head hovered over me. There was a thumping coming from somewhere and then I felt that it was my heart. I inhaled and held my breath. After a silence that lasted longer than I could hold my breath, I heard a strange deep, gruff voice:
“Good morning, sir. Can you get out of the car and open the trailer for me?”
We sat at two school desks facing each other. We laughed when we discovered that we could still fit in them. It was Sunday, one of the two days when women detainees could receive visitors. The dozen tables that crammed the classroom that was now a visitors’ area were all occupied.
“I want to thank you …” I started to say as soon as Sandy sat down, but she stopped me by putting her hand over mine.
“We only have thirty minutes, so let’s use them wisely.”
I nodded. No tears. That’s what I told myself while I waited in line to see Sandy.
“Let me go ahead and say it,” Sandy said, removing her hand from mine and balling it into a fist. “This is ridiculous! This is … I don’t even know what to call it. This is … unbelievable!”
It was unbelievable to me too at first. But it was beginning to sink in that I could be here for a long, long time.
I turned my attention back to Sandy. She was shaking her head as she spoke. “There’s no reason for the ICE officer assigned to this facility to deny you bond. You had a sponsor. You were no flight risk. My dad has been a lawyer in Alpine for forty-two years. I’m a park ranger, for God’s sake. I am so incredibly angry …” Sandy stopped herself when she saw my eyes fill up with tears. “I’m sorry, my ranting is not going to do you any good.”
“It’s doing more good than you know,” I said.
“You’re not angry?”
“I’m afraid to let myself be angry. Anger is not very helpful in here. It doesn’t have any place to go, you know.”
“My father is appealing the decision to deny you bond with an immigration judge. He’s coming over this afternoon so you can sign some papers.”
“Maybe the whole image I had of the asylum process was wrong, naive somehow.”
“How so?”
“I imagined that all I had to do was show the authorities the evidence of actual persecution, of actual threats, as in people machine-gunning our house in Juárez. I had all that hard evidence I had collected in that flash drive I gave to your father. They would see my articles in El Sol about the Desaparecidas, the e-mails threatening my life, the work I did to rescue my friend Linda and the other girls being held by Hinojosa. I imagined I could bring lots of witnesses to testify on my behalf—Special Agent Durand, the FBI agent who helped me, the neighbors who witnessed the shooting of my house. I saw my case as fitting within the legal reasons for asylum under the law of the United States. Was I wrong about the United States?” Be positive, I reminded myself again. You’re not being positive. But I also needed to voice my doubts to someone. Maybe Sandy could help me shore up my ebbing faith.
Sandy shook her head for a few moments and then leaned forward, all business. “Okay, I guess it’s time for me to remind you of the Sara that I found walking quickly, almost running, in Big Bend National Park. Remember how she was determined to get medical help for the wounded man she left a mile or two behind, the same man who had just tried to kidnap her, rape her, and probably kill her. That Sara believed in something. That’s the Sara who needs to be here right now, every day, until she gets out.”
I exhaled deeply. Sandy was giving me what I most needed. “Yes, you’re right,” I said.
“Good. Are you okay? Are you being treated well? That’s a stupid question, I know.”