American Dirt

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Nogales makes them feel almost as if they’ve arrived in the United States already. The train slows way down and chugs right through the middle of the city. The streets are wider than Luca has seen elsewhere. The cars are bigger. There’s a giant Coca-Cola can perched atop a building and countless radio towers stretching up into the sky. And then. They all see it at the same time. A huge green highway sign with white writing and an arrow. There are only three letters on the sign: usa.

Soledad begins to cry. She doesn’t even try to keep from crying – she lets the tears stream down and the snot fill her nose and overflow, and this she wipes with the back of her wrist, but Rebeca puts an arm around her, which makes Soledad cry even harder.

‘We made it,’ she whispers to her little sister.

Beto stands up on top of the train (an action that makes Lydia feel almost instantly hysterical) and says without deliberate cruelty, ‘Not yet, you didn’t.’

Luca pinches him on the back of the leg.

‘Ow,’ Beto says. ‘I mean, you will. You will, you’re going to make it.’

‘You have no idea how far we’ve come,’ Soledad says. ‘Even just to see it.’

The train is slowing, and there’s the lurching they’ve all become accustomed to, so that Beto has to stagger a bit, one or two steps forward, half a step back, and then Lydia can’t take it any longer and she yells at him, ‘For God’s sake, would you sit down before you get yourself killed – you’re not made of rubber!’ And she feels self-conscious about the unintentional sharpness of her outburst, but Beto sits down without argument and grins at her. She clutches at her chest. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

They wait until the train stops before they all climb down to the pavement. There’s no station here, but it’s stopped for a red signal, and they’re close enough to the border that they won’t have to walk for miles, and yet far enough to avoid a run-in with la migra.

As soon as she sets foot on the asphalt, Lydia feels a tremor of excitement travel through her whole body. She feels the exhaustion of this journey drop away from her shoulders, all the trauma and grief and guilt and horror submerge beneath a skin of new possibility. She turns back to the ladder and lifts Luca down by the armpits.

‘Mami, stop, I can do it,’ he says, and Lydia realizes that the presence of Beto has returned yet another of her son’s temporarily suspended features: parental embarrassment. She’s happy to see it.

‘Sorry,’ she says.

‘You guys hungry?’ Beto asks. ‘I’m starving, I’m going to go find some lonche. You wanna come?’

‘¿Lonche?’ Luca asks.

‘Almuerzo,’ Mami translates. Lunch.

‘Yeah, I want some lonche,’ Luca says.

‘I could go for some lonche,’ Soledad agrees.

Lydia thinks about the cash they have left: just over a hundred dollars. They need to eat, but that money won’t last.

Beto sees her hesitation. ‘I’m buying,’ he says.

They walk north along the main avenue, and when Beto spots a birriería, they stop and order five portions of the spicy stew. When he opens his pocket wide enough to take some money out, Lydia sees the big wad of cash he has in there, and all at once, her fear returns. They’d been foolish to trust this kid so easily, regardless of the hole in his shoe, regardless of the empty inhaler. No ten-year-old should be walking around with that kind of money in Nogales. There’s only one source of potential income for a kid like this, Lydia knows. She stiffens, but the vendor is passing her a Styrofoam bowl with fragrant steam curling up the handle of the spoon. She can’t help but fall onto it with vigor. The last time they ate well was in Culiacán. Her suspicions can wait until after lonche.

‘Ay, Dios mío, thank you,’ Soledad says with her mouth full of food.

Beto nods.

‘Let’s go see it, I want to go see it,’ Soledad says.

‘Then just look,’ Beto says, gesturing with his spoon.

Soledad follows the direction of the spoon, and she sees, not half a block from where they’re standing with their toes pointing north, flapping against the stark sunshine, the red and white stripes, the blue starfield of the American flag.

‘It’s right there?’ she says, forgetting her food for a moment. ‘That’s not it, is it?’

‘That’s it.’ Beto nods, shoveling in a mouthful.

‘But it looks so…’ Soledad doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

This street dead-ends in a fishbowl of concrete: a line of shops to the right, some formidable, blockish government buildings to the left, and a wall directly in front, which is topped with a second wall, which is topped with a third wall, which is topped with razor wire and mounted cameras. It’s behind this wall, stretching high up into the sky, that the American flag moves stiffly in the mild wind. Only a few feet away from it, on this side of the fence, a Mexican flag also flies.

‘See,’ Beto says, pointing to the Mexican flag. ‘This is the whole problem, right? Look at that American flag over there – you see it? All bright and shiny; it looks brand-new. And then look at ours. It’s all busted up and raggedy. The red doesn’t even look red anymore. It’s pink.’

Luca and the sisters walk toward the Mexican flag and then past it. They approach the wall at a section of open screen where they can see through to the other side. Lydia hangs back with Beto, who’s seen it all before. It’s good to have a minute alone with him anyway. She wants to interrogate him about the money.

‘It’s like we don’t have any pride, like we don’t even care,’ Beto is saying. ‘I mean, why does their flag have to be so much higher? How hard would it be to get a taller flagpole?’

Lydia looks up and sees that he’s right. The Mexican flag here does look tattered and sun bleached, and the red, white, and blue one appears pristine behind it, like it was replaced just this morning.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Imagine replacing that flag every week, how expensive that would be. What’s the point?’

Beto tosses his spoon into a planter and tips the Styrofoam into his mouth. He slurps it.

‘Seems like a lot of jingoism if you ask me,’ Lydia says.

‘A lot of what?’

‘Wasted money.’

‘I guess.’ Beto shrugs. ‘I mean, those estadounidenses are obsessed with their flag.’ He tosses the remainder of the stew into his mouth and then pitches the Styrofoam into the planter after the spoon.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Lydia asks. ‘Speaking of money?’

‘Sure.’ But the mention of money makes him shift his weight.

She clears her throat. ‘I couldn’t help but notice you’re carrying quite a lot of it there.’

Beto slings his hand instinctively into his pocket. Lydia keeps one eye on Luca and the sisters while she bends to retrieve Beto’s discarded spoon and bowl. She sets her own bowl of half-eaten stew on the edge of the planter and takes Beto’s garbage to a nearby trash can. When she returns, he’s seated on the edge of the planter beside her birria. She lifts it and sits beside him, taking another bite.

‘It’s my money,’ he says. ‘I didn’t steal it.’

‘No,’ Lydia says. ‘I’m not accusing you.’

‘I didn’t do anything bad for it either.’

Lydia continues to eat. ‘It’s none of my business, I know,’ she says between bites. ‘But of course it makes me curious. Sometimes money is cause for concern. Especially here. Especially when it’s a young person who has a lot of money without having a job or a rich family.’

Beto stares at a wad of gum beside his feet. ‘I could have a rich uncle.’

Lydia frowns. ‘Listen, you seem like a nice kid, but we’ve had enough trouble already,’ she says. ‘We really can’t afford any more.’

Beto sits up out of his slouch and answers defensively. ‘I got it by selling some stuff.’

Lydia sets her spoon into her empty Styrofoam bowl and waits a beat to see if he’ll continue. When he doesn’t, she prompts him. ‘What kind of stuff?’

Beto leans down to rest his elbows on his knees, which isn’t easy for him, since his feet don’t quite reach the ground. ‘I found a gun,’ he says, and then he looks at her to gauge her response before continuing. She doesn’t seem alarmed, so he goes on. ‘And I found some drugs.’

She nods. ‘Okay.’

‘And I didn’t even really sell the stuff, I just returned it to the guy in el dompe who I knew it probably belonged to.’

‘So the money was more like a reward?’

‘Yeah, I guess. He asked me if I wanted to work for him, and I said what I really wanted was to get out of el dompe and go north, so he gave me the money.’

‘But that much?’

Beto shrugs. ‘I think he felt bad for me because of Ignacio and stuff. Everybody in el dompe was always feeling bad for me after that, and after my mami disappeared.’

Lydia bites her lip.

‘He didn’t even count it. He just went to his lockbox and grabbed me a fat stack of cash. Told me to go to Nogales if I really wanted to cross.’

‘He didn’t even count it?’

‘Nah.’

Lydia doesn’t think he’d bother lying. He seems completely guileless, and he doesn’t owe her an explanation anyway. But it’s so far-fetched. Why would anyone give a kid that much money? It seems almost impossible to offend Beto, so she pushes it.

‘Are you sure you didn’t take it when he was sleeping or something?’

He laughs. ‘Güey, I’d have to have some huevazos to do a thing like that!’ He shakes his head. ‘Or a death wish.’

‘Okay,’ she says.

‘I don’t have a death wish,’ he clarifies. ‘I like being alive.’

‘Good,’ she says.

‘Despite everything.’

Lydia crushes the Styrofoam bowl in her fist without meaning to, and a dribble of sauce runs into her palm. She wipes it on her jeans and then looks at Beto’s round face. He’s a philosopher, she thinks. He’s rough, but he means what he says, and his openness is a provocation. Despite everything, he likes being alive. Lydia doesn’t know whether that’s true for herself. For mothers, the question is immaterial anyway. Her survival is a matter of instinct rather than desire.

‘If you want to know the truth, I think it’s more than he meant to give me,’ Beto confesses suddenly. ‘He was pretty stoned.’

‘Ah.’ Now it makes sense.

‘I told him I’d pay him back when I got a job en el otro lado, but he said, “After you get across, just keep walking. Don’t ever look back here.” ’

Lydia nods. ‘So that was it?’

‘That was it, here I am!’

‘Here you are.’

Luca looks over at them, a little boomerang of reassurance – just verifying they’re still there. Then he returns his gaze northward.

‘And nobody’s coming after you, right?’

‘I hope not,’ he says. ‘I’ve paid my taxes, stayed out of prison, always kept up with my child support.’ He clears his throat and spits into the sidewalk. He squints north toward the wall. ‘I’m a free man.’

Lydia laughs. ‘You’re a character.’

‘That’s the word they always use,’ he says. ‘Character.’

She tosses her bowl into the trash can as well. ‘Well, it sounds like you were overdue for some good luck anyway.’

‘That’s right, it’s my turn,’ he says. ‘Darle la vuelta a la tortilla.’

‘So how are you going to cross?’ she asks. ‘You have plans?’

Beto sits up taller and studies la línea from where they sit. It looks as impenetrable as it does in TJ. ‘Sometimes kids just walk right up to the booth and hand themselves in,’ he says. ‘Some of the Central American ones can get asylum. You know about that?’

‘Sure, I heard about the caravans.’

Lydia had been aware of the migrant caravans coming from Guatemala and Honduras in the way comfortable people living stable lives are peripherally aware of destitution. She heard their stories on the news radio while she cooked dinner in her kitchen. Mothers pushing strollers thousands of miles, small children walking holes into the bottoms of their pink Crocs, hundreds of families banding together for safety, gathering numbers as they walked north for weeks, hitching rides in the backs of trucks whenever they could, riding La Bestia whenever they could, sleeping in fútbol stadiums and churches, coming all that way to el norte to plead for asylum. Lydia chopped onions and cilantro in her kitchen while she listened to their histories. They fled violence and poverty, gangs more powerful than their governments. She listened to their fear and determination, how resolved they were to reach Estados Unidos or die on the road in that effort, because staying at home meant their odds of survival were even worse. On the radio, Lydia heard those walking mothers singing to their children, and she felt a pang of emotion for them. She tossed chopped vegetables into hot oil, and the pan sizzled in response. That pang Lydia felt had many parts: it was anger at the injustice, it was worry, compassion, helplessness. But in truth, it was a small feeling, and when she realized she was out of garlic, the pang was subsumed by domestic irritation. Dinner would be bland. Sebastián wouldn’t complain, but she’d register the mild disapproval on his features, and she’d feel provoked. She’d try not to start an argument.

Beto is talking beside her. ‘I heard if your life is in danger wherever you come from, they’re not allowed to send you back there.’

To Lydia it sounds like mythology, but she can’t help asking anyway, ‘You have to be Central American? To apply for asylum?’

Beto shrugs. ‘Why? Your life in danger?’

Lydia sighs. ‘Isn’t everyone’s?’