“Yes,” he acknowledged with a glint in his eye. “And I am walking to Mexico City where el presidente is waiting for me. He has planned a fiesta in my honor.” He crossed his arms and waited.
After a moment of silence, both he and Rosalba began to speak at the same time. He nodded his head, indicating she should proceed. She glanced at me and then lifted her gaze to meet his.
“Where we are going is not your business,” she said. “As for our food, we have very little. Please, have mercy on us and let us go on with our journey.”
He sighed, slid the gun in his back pant waist, then seated himself on a wooden crate near the wall. He spoke slowly and with the weariness of an old man. “I am trying to get to el norte. My brother is working in a place called Temecula. He said when I turned fifteen, I could join him. That was over a year ago, and I have tried three times,” he said, nodding his head. “I almost made it across the U.S. border without a coyote, only to be chased by la migra back across to Mexico. The other two times I was caught here in Mexico and sent back—to Guatemala. This is number four, and there will be five, six, seven: whatever it takes to get there.”
He glanced at the boys who had squatted beside him. One had a runny nose; neither had bathed in quite a while.
“They have no mother or father, nadie,” he said. “Their grandmother died two months ago, and they hope to find their aunt, who lives in Texas.”
He turned his gaze on me and paused. Our eyes locked, and he kept them there in silence. I felt like he could see through me, beyond the Alma I pretended to be: stubborn and defiant with my mother, cold and unyielding to Tito, bossy with my brothers. Did he hear my pounding heart?
He turned back to Rosalba, allowing me to exhale. “We are hungry. Tenemos mucha hambre,” he said. “Please have mercy on us and share your food. We can help you get to Oaxaca or wherever you are going. Believe me, you’ll need protection.” I knew Rosa’s answer before her lips parted to speak.
His name was Manuel, and he told us that as the second oldest of ten children, he had worked picking coffee beans at a young age to help his mother and father. But then his brother left with friends to work the fields in California and sent back more money than the family together had made in one whole year—enough to allow their mother to stay home with the youngest instead of working the fincas herself. So, Manuel had set out to join his brother.
I watched him slowly eat his tortilla, bit by bit, as he watched the boys devour theirs in two bites. He told us he’d met Chuy and Benito on his last deportation from Mexico, and though he had tried to convince them to return to their village, they had insisted on trying one more time. Apparently, they had evaded placement in an orphanage by claiming to be the sons of another man in their group. This man had gone along with their story, but when they reached the border of Guatemala, he simply told them to go home and left without a backward glance.
“It is better for me to travel alone. But what can I do?” Manuel said, nodding his head toward the two.
I could not look at his dark, piercing eyes without trembling inside, so I had taken the masa and the small clay pot from my pack and knelt at the fire. Dissolving the masa and spices in water, I busied myself with the task of preparing the atole. While Rosa and he talked softly, I watched as it boiled and thickened; then, removing the pot from the fire, I set it aside to cool.
“The trains are very dangerous, no?” Rosa was asking, as I watched the steam rise. The boys were huddled beside me, eagerly waiting for the sweet drink to cool. I stretched out my weary legs and leaned back against the wall. I desperately wanted to remove my clunky shoes, but not in Manuel’s presence.
“Not if you know what you’re doing. And I do,” Manuel was saying with pride. “When to jump on, how to climb to the top, how to hold steady, where the tunnels are, and of course when to jump off so you don’t get caught at a checkpoint. I could help you. But you have to do as I say, or yes, you could be killed—or worse, watch the train take your leg and leave the rest behind.”
My eyes widened in horror as I gasped at this image, and he turned to me laughing. I felt my face flush as he reached out and grabbed my leg and yanked. “Whooosh! Like that it’s gone!” I screamed, and the boys giggled.
“I’m not riding on top of any train!” I kept my eyes on Rosa, but I could still feel my leg tingling where his hand had been.
Rosa reached for the atole and tested it before scooping a bit with her fingers then passing it next to the boys. “Don’t worry, Alma, we aren’t riding on top of any trains,” she said. She turned to Manuel. “I just wondered if there was a safer way to ride them, like sitting inside a car.”
Manuel laughed and spoke to the boys in their language and soon all three were laughing at us. That’s when I came to my senses. If anyone jumped on trains, it would be me, not Rosalba. She feared crossing the tree trunk bridge that I used daily, instead walking clear around the arroyo to a safer path. With my head straight now, I turned to Manuel and said, “I thought you preferred to travel alone. Why would you want us along as well?”
He shrugged and shifted his eyes downward, allowing me to watch his face as he answered. His nose was long and straight, his lashes thick like his eyebrows. “I don’t know. Guess I figured two girls alone might need some help.” He swept his fingers through his thick hair, which fell back over his forehead immediately. “And I already have these two, so what’s two more?” He paused, then looked up at me and added, “Whatever. Do what you want. I don’t care. No me importa.” Then he looked away.
Suddenly, overcome with an agitation that I couldn’t explain, I heard myself say, “And you got caught every time you tried, didn’t you? Why should we stick with you?”
“Alma!” Rosa snapped.
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? How can he show us the way—even to Oaxaca—when he’s been sent back each time?” All I could think of was that we had wasted time, given up some of our food, and why . . . so some boy from Guatemala could tell us stories and grab my leg? ¡Basta!
I struggled to my feet, wincing at the pain of my blistered heel. “Just because you have a gun, you think you can boss people around?” Trembling I turned to Rosa. “We need to go,” I said stubbornly.
“Go where?” Rosa asked, half laughing, which only piqued my anger. “It’s dark. It’s late. We need to sleep and get a fresh start at dawn. You’re being foolish. Sit down!”
I looked at the boys scooping atole into their mouths with dirty fingers, at Manuel who glared up from under his thick brows, and at Rosa who was patting the ground beside her. I thought of Mamá and how she turned her back as I scurried down the mountain. I thought of Papá and how safe I felt when he held me in his arms. I wanted to scream and run out into the darkness, but instead I stamped my foot and said, “I don’t want to sleep here. I don’t trust them. What if we wake and our things are gone?”
Before Rosa could answer, Manuel jumped to his feet and, reaching behind his back, pulled out the gun. In one swift movement, it lay at my feet.
“Here, es tuyo!” he hissed. “Sleep in peace.” And he walked out into the night.
I have often wondered what course our lives would have taken if I had not been so difficult. But Rosa later said that the words I spoke were true, as impulsive statements often are, and that this time the Virgin had placed them on my tongue to send Manuel into the night. Virgin or not, I tend to think the words came from a darker place. But still, if we had all been sitting quietly together in that shelter, if we had fallen asleep, who knows what might have happened. Instead, no sooner had Manuel stepped out through the doorway, then we heard shouts of surprise, followed by thuds and moans that sent the boys scampering out the back and into the field like frightened rabbits. Terrified, Rosa and I had reached for our packs and were stumbling for the opening as well, when Manuel was thrust through the doorway, bleeding from his nose, with an arm around his neck and a knife at his throat.