Delia’s Crossing (35 page)

“Thank you,” I said, taking it.

“Why would a young girl like you, pretty, too, want to risk her life to go back to Mexico? You can tell me now. It will pass the time.”

I told him why I had been brought to America and what had happened to me and how Ignacio and his friends had sought to punish Bradley and what had happened. He listened and nodded.

“Ignacio was right to run off, but for you, I don’t think it would have been that serious.”

“I wanted to go home,” I said.

He thought and, for the first time, showed some emotion.

“I have not been home for many years. I do not even know if my brothers and sisters live.”

“Why don’t you go visit?”

“It’s better to remember them than to learn bad things about them now,” he said. “No more talking,” he snapped, as if I had peeled off a scab. “Let’s go to sleep.”

He sprawled out, using his knapsack as a pillow. I wondered what sort of a man made his living guiding desperate people across the desert to work as illegal aliens, knowing that some of them would die trying. Was he doing a good thing or a bad thing? As he had said, he made a very good living doing it, but was he driven by any higher reasons? Did he see himself as someone leading people to a better life, to a better dream, to hope, or did he not care? Was he afraid to know his
pollos,
afraid to feel sorry if one fell too far behind or got injured? How many had died walking behind him? How many would in the future? When would this migration of illegal birds end?

My body was too tired to ache anymore. Even the pain was exhausted. This time, I slept so deeply and so hard it took him a while to wake me, shaking me so hard he nearly broke my shoulder.

“It’s time to go,” he said. “This is the shortest portion, but it’s the hardest, because we cannot stop, and we have no more water. You understand, Delia? Draw upon all the strength in your well.”

I nodded, scrubbed my cheeks with my dry palms, and stood up. For a moment, I wobbled. He looked at me, concerned.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Walk.”

“Good.”

He started, and I followed. Where I found the strength, I do not know. It was as if my legs had developed minds of their own and my upper body was long gone and was simply being carried. Two hours into our walk, we again heard voices. This time, they were very close.

“Wait here,” he said, holding up his hand. I stood, but my legs felt as if they were still moving. He disappeared through a bush toward the voices. I waited and waited, nearly falling asleep on my feet. I was too tired even to worry about being deserted.

And then he returned, carrying a jug of water.

“The fools sold it to me,” he said. “I offered them too much for them to refuse. They’ll be sorry when they run out. Here, drink,” he told me.

For a light moment, my conscience complained. I was drinking what might be needed to keep someone else alive, maybe even a child, but the rest of me screamed so loudly against any remorse that I grabbed the jug and began to gulp.

“Slowly, Delia,” he warned.

It felt like life itself rolling down my throat and into my body. I took a deep breath and nodded, thanking him and handing back the jug. He drank.

“We’re definitely going to make it now,” he said. “Let’s go.”

We walked on. I had long since lost track of time, of when an hour or so had passed, but suddenly, he cried out and pointed, and I looked and saw the lights.

“Sasabe, Mexico,” he said. “We’re almost there. You’re almost home.”

I was so happy I couldn’t speak. It wasn’t until we drew very close that I even thought about Ignacio again. I felt guilty having forgotten about him. Neither I nor Pancho had mentioned him during the night. To Pancho, he was just another
pollo,
I thought, easily forgotten. I wasn’t about to forgive him, but it did occur to me that if he didn’t forget the ones he lost, he would be haunted and unable to do what he did.

He took us through an opening in the barbed-wire fence at the border crossing and into the village. I stood looking at the lights, the people, the cars, and listened to the noise, the laughter, horns beeping, music from the cafés, and thought I had landed on another planet. How could all of this be going on while we were out there struggling to survive, while hundreds were doing so right that moment?

“There is the bus station.” Pancho pointed. “You can find out the schedule.”

“Is there no one we can tell about Ignacio?” I asked him.

“You can go, but it will be a waste of time, and you might miss a bus. No one will listen or do anything. No one will want to go out there to search for him, Delia. He is one of so many who are out there, and you don’t have enough money to pay anyone. You cannot do any more, Delia. You must do for yourself now.
Buena suerte,
” he said. “So much is luck after all.”

I watched him walk off, looked back into the desert from where we had come and where Ignacio might lie injured or dead, and then I walked to the bus station, where I bought a second-class ticket to Mexico City. I had nearly four hours to wait for a bus. I bought myself some tortillas and beef and a cold soda that was to me at that moment what the most expensive wine must be to my aunt, I thought.

After I ate and drank, I sat in the station and fell asleep for an hour despite the hard wooden seat. I was anxious to get onto the bus so I could continue sleeping. I would have plenty of time, since the trip would take more than thirty hours. There was a bathroom on the bus, but there would be stops along the way at terminals where passengers could get off and buy food. No one wanted to guarantee any time, not even the bus driver, when other passengers asked about destinations. At this point, I almost didn’t care. I was in Mexico, and soon I would be walking down the street to my family home and my grandmother.

I’m sure I looked pretty bad. My hair was filthy, and so was my dress. I had no money for any new clothes, but I did the best I could cleaning myself in the terminal bathroom. I found a brush someone had left on the bus and cleaned it when we stopped at another station. I was still so tired, however, that I really didn’t care how I appeared. Sleep was all I craved. All of the muscles in my body were still very angry. The aches and pains actually grew worse while I was traveling on the bus. I was sure those who saw me wondered how someone so young could sleep so much, but the blessing was that it made the trip seem that much shorter.

When we arrived at the terminal in Mexico City, I searched for the best way to get to my village. The ticket agent told me I would have to change buses three times, but the last bus would take me home. I was anxious and excited, even though I had hours and hours to go.

It was just after midday before I reached my village. As the bus drew closer, my heart started to thump. I wasn’t sure how Abuela Anabela would greet me. Would she be so angry that even the sight of me would not calm her? Had my aunt sent word of my running away, with all that had happened? If she had, I was sure she had made me look terrible. Knowing my aunt, she would send it through Señor Orozco, the postmaster, so that everyone in the village would hear the story.

The bus stopped in the square. As soon as I stepped off, I stood gaping at everything. I felt like someone who had been blind for a while and had suddenly regained her sight. Everything looked beautiful; nothing looked too old or in too much need of repair. The church steeple loomed higher than ever, and the elderly people I saw sitting and talking no longer looked pitiful or lost to me. I wanted to run up to each and every one of them and hug him or her.

No one seemed to take much note of me. For a moment, it made me question whether I had actually been away. Had it all been some horrible nightmare? Did I just wake up in the square? The blisters and the aches were quick to tell me otherwise. I started for home, walking the streets I had walked all my life but never noticing as much as I did now.

When I turned the corner for our street, I paused. The great heat had not come there, I thought. It was comfortable. The sun didn’t burn, and the breeze was soft and refreshing. In the distance, I saw the smoke spiraling from someone’s garbage fire. I smiled at the dogs that lifted their lazy heads while they sprawled in the shade. Their curiosity was not enough to get them to rise to sniff around me. They had begun their siesta, and that was too holy to be violated.

I laughed to myself, eager once again to embrace this simple, unsophisticated, honest life. I gladly would sleep in a room smaller than Sophia’s closet. I would lie on a bed she would consider a joke. I would sweep and scrub floors that would never look rich and clean. I would work beside my grandmother, making our traditional foods and never thinking about gourmet cooking, and I would not regret a single moment. I even looked forward to seeing Señora Porres and hearing her warnings about the ever-present evil eye.

“I have looked into that eye, Señora Porres,” I would tell her. “I have looked into it as you never have, and I have left it blinded behind me.”

My elation filled me with new courage. I walked faster toward our home. No matter what Abuela Anabela had been told or thought, I would soon make her happy again. Tonight, we would say our prayers together, and we would fall asleep listening to each other’s breathing and be comforted.

The sight of our dry old fountain and the angels was never as wonderful, nor were the stubbles of grass, the shrubs, and the lean-to of a kitchen. I couldn’t take it all in fast enough and again heard Pancho’s warning to drink slowly, for this was to me like water in a desert. I was home.

I rushed up to the front door, paused to catch my breath, and then entered my house.

“Abuela Anabela!” I called. It was so quiet. Why wasn’t she preparing her midday meal? “Abuela!”

I went through the house in seconds but did not find her. The kitchen looked untouched, not a dish out of place, nothing in the sink, the table clear. In our bedroom, both beds were made. Her nightgown was folded as usual and lying on her bed, something that made me smile. Perhaps she had gone off to deliver some of her
mole,
I thought. I drank some water and pondered what to do. Search for her or just wait?

Then I heard the sound of footsteps and the front door opening.

“Abuela Anabela!” I cried, hurrying to greet her.

I stopped.

Señora Paz was standing there alone. “My sister said she thought she saw you walk up the street,” she told me.

Because she wasn’t smiling and showing her happiness at seeing me, I assumed I had been right to fear my aunt sending the news back here. The whole village thought badly of me. I would have to work at turning them around.

“Do you know where my grandmother has gone?”

She crossed herself and looked up. “She has gone to God,” she said.

Somewhere back in the desert, a coyote was howling over a fallen man, a buzzard was circling, scorpions crawled quickly toward the body, and snakes rattled and hissed nearby.

It wasn’t only in the desert where mercy was a stranger. It was everywhere there were hearts made to be broken.

The weight of my struggles, the weight of my dead hope and happiness, was too great to be ignored or resisted.

I folded to the floor like a flag bearer in a great battle, once full of determination, brave and strong, defeated in the end by the enemy he could not see.

His flag floated down over him, burying him under what were once his dreams of glory.

“F
ive days ago, she just didn’t wake up, Delia. She passed on in her sleep, dreaming of you, I’m sure,” Señora Paz told me.

She had called for her sister, and they had put me on the sofa and placed a cold washcloth on my forehead. The two of them looked down at me with similar expressions of pity and sorrow. They were two years apart, but they were like twins in the way they reacted to things. If one had a headache, so did the other. One didn’t laugh without the other joining in, and any complaint one made, the other seconded.

“They’re twins, all right,” Abuela Anabela would tell me after they left us whenever they had visited. “One was just born later.”

It was a funny thing for her to say, but Abuela Anabela used to say neither of the sisters needed to look into a mirror. Each could look at the other and see herself.

“The whole village attended her funeral, Delia,” Señora Paz’s sister, Margarita, said. “Señor Lopez attended and gave the church a good donation. While you were away, your grandmother often sent him things to eat, her wonderful lemon cakes, her chicken
mole,
or whatever she happened to make that day.”

“She was very proud of you and what you were doing in the United States. She read us your letters as soon as she received them,” Señora Paz said.

“She read them to anyone who would listen,” her sister added, smiling.

“Why did you not know of her passing, Delia? Señor Diaz sent news to your aunt. He sent it through one of those fancy machines,” Señora Paz said, those beady eyes of hers filling with suspicion.

“It’s called a fax,” her sister told her.

“Whatever, it is supposed to be very fast.”

“I left before my aunt received it,” I told them. It was, after all, the truth.

“Why did you leave?” Señora Paz asked pointedly.

“Since you obviously did not know about her passing, you have come just for a visit?” her sister followed, jumping on my words like a detective.

Grandmother Anabela would tell me they were getting all the information they could so they could spread it firsthand in the square tonight. They were our town criers, the town’s radio and newspaper all wrapped into one. It was clear that no news about me having run off had preceded my arrival. No one back in Palm Springs had made much of an effort to find me.

“I have not come back just for a visit. I have come home to stay,” I told them.

They both looked shocked, their eyes similarly wide, their mouths opened equally. I nearly laughed at how perfectly they resembled each other. Then Señora Paz nodded at her sister.

“Margarita said it was odd that a big car didn’t bring you here, that you had come back on a bus,” Señora Paz said.

“What about
su tía
Isabela? Did she want you to leave?” Margarita asked. “Was she sorry she had taken you in to live with her and her children?”

One thing was absolutely sure about the sisters, I thought. They had to know everything as quickly as possible. It would be terrible for someone else to have even the slightest information ahead of them. I turned away and closed my eyes.

“I need to rest a little and then go to the cemetery,” I said.

“Of course. But you should know Señor Diaz has arranged for the sale of this house. Your grandmother gave him the right to do so in the event of her passing,” Señora Paz said. “The house was sold to Señor Avalos just yesterday. The money was set aside for you, I’m sure. You will have to see Señor Diaz so he doesn’t send it on to your aunt for you.”

“The house is sold?”

“
Sí,
Delia,” Margarita said. “No one expected you would come back here to live, least of all your grandmother, who was receiving the wonderful letters from you.”

I had no more parents, no grandmother, and now no home.

“Maybe you should take your money from the house and go back. Will your aunt take you back?” Señora Paz asked. They would get the nitty-gritty details one way or another, I thought.

“I cannot think about it now,” I said, bringing disappointment to both their faces.

“I’m sure Señor Avalos will let you stay here a day or so, but I heard he has plans to do some repairs and changes,” Señora Paz said. “We’ll let him know you are here. You can come and have something to eat with us when you are ready, Delia,” she added. “And until you decide what to do, you are welcome to stay with us as well.”

I said nothing. I kept my head turned away.

“No one was loved here more than Anabela. Come to us when you are ready and if you need anything,” Margarita said.

“Thank you. I mean
gracias,
” I said quickly. Speaking in English seemed like a betrayal to me now.

I didn’t turn around until I heard them leave.

My sorrow and despair turned to anger. Why couldn’t God wait for me to get home before taking Abuela Anabela? Why was she permitted to die before learning the truth about my new life? I was just as angry as I was the day my parents were taken. When I sat up and looked around, my anger subsided, and my sorrow returned. How empty the house now seemed. Without Abuela Anabela here, I did not care if it was sold.

I went to the sink and washed away my tears. Then I went to the bedroom Abuela Anabela and I had shared and looked for my clothes. Everything was still here, and in fact, Abuela Anabela had washed and folded my things as if she knew I would return. I quickly changed into clean things and then left to go to the cemetery.

I walked through the village like someone walking in her sleep. I saw nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing. Despite moving in a daze, I made the correct turns and headed up the small hill toward the cemetery, where my grandmother now lay near my parents. As soon as I reached it, I stopped on the pathway. A cat was lying on my grandmother’s freshly dug gravesite. It saw me and sauntered off as if it had been guarding the plot and waiting for my arrival. Although it wasn’t a margay, it looked a little like one, and for a moment I smiled, remembering Ignacio’s grandmother and her belief in sharing your destiny with an animal. Perhaps my margay had sent this cat to stand in until I arrived.

It really wasn’t until I saw her name engraved on the stone that I truly realized Abuela Anabela was gone. I fell to my knees, embraced myself, cried and rocked and cried until I could cry no more. After that, I remained there, picturing her face, her smile, hearing her voice as she sang me a lullaby or said her prayers.

“You will never die the third death, Abuela Anabela, never, as long as I live,” I swore. Then I prayed at my parents’ graves and pressed my hands to the ground, hoping to draw strength up from their sleeping souls. I stayed at the cemetery until it was almost twilight.

On my way home, I stopped at the square and sat for a while. Señor Hernandez came hobbling along with his painted hand-carved walking stick. For as long as I could remember, he was a regular citizen of the square. It was a rare night without him sitting and smoking his pipe or talking softly with anyone who would stop to pass the time. He was a great storyteller, having once been an actor who played in theaters all over Mexico. Although he didn’t look terribly old, I knew he was just as old as Abuela Anabela. She had told me he was getting more and more confused, mixing events from the past with the present, but somehow he still managed to care for himself. He never had a wife, and he never had any children to look after him, so I assumed he was used to being alone. How do you get used to that? I wondered, now that I was alone.

“Ah, Delia,” he said, approaching. “Are you on your way home from school?”

“No, Señor Hernandez. School won’t be over for at least another hour or so.”

“Ah,
sí,
” he said, standing and gazing about. “I don’t even look at my watch anymore. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m tired, I sleep. What difference does time make for an old man, anyway?” He smiled.

Even now, I thought, looking at his aged face, it was possible to see how good-looking a man he was once.

His question told me he either didn’t know or had forgotten that I had left. A realization came to him, however.

“Your grandmother has passed on.”

“
Sí,
Señor Hernandez.”

“When she was your age, she was the most beautiful young woman here. I would have asked her to marry me first, but her father was not happy to think of an actor as a son-in-law. I can’t say that I blamed him. But, alas, I could not give up the stage. It was in my blood. My father was not happy about it, either. Fathers, unless they are actors themselves, are not happy about their sons and daughters becoming actors.

“But you know why I became an actor, Delia? I became an actor because on the stage, you have control of happiness and sadness, life and death. In this hard world, it’s better to live in your imagination,” he said. “On the stage, you cry only when you play sorrow, and if you don’t want to cry, you don’t play sorrow.”

He sighed and sat beside me, leaning forward a little on his cane.

“I have played an old man on the stage many times, but when I walked off, I was a young man again. I’m stuck in this part now. Until I walk off,” he added, his voice drifting.

He stared ahead, and I could see from the way his eyes moved and his lips softened and then hardened that he was reliving some of his roles, perhaps seeing himself on the stage. I did not speak. I stared ahead with him, reliving my life here in this small Mexican village, the two of us, young and old, caught for a few moments in the same theater.

We were interrupted by Señora Paz and her sister hurrying toward me, shuffling over the cobblestones in synchronization like two parade soldiers, their skirts flapping around their legs.

“There you are,” Señora Paz said. “We were worried about you, Delia. You must come to our home to eat and stay. We discussed it and decided you must not be alone. There is to be no argument about it.”

I started to shake my head.

“You don’t want to be alone in that house now, anyway,” she added.

She was right about that.

“Come, dear,” Margarita said, reaching for me.

Despite their hunger for gossip, they were kindhearted, I thought. Abuela Anabela didn’t dislike them. They were amusing to her. She would want me to accept their generosity, to find comfort in their company. I stood up.

“
Buenas noches,
Señor Hernandez,” I said.

He looked up at me as if he just realized I was there, his eyes dull and quiet and then brightening with his smile.

“Ah, Delia,
sí.
You remind me of a young actress I knew. We were working in a small theater just outside of Mexico City, and…”

“She has no time for your silly stories,” Margarita snapped. “Don’t you know she just lost her grandmother?”

“Ah,” he said. “Yes, I heard. I am sorry.” He smiled at me. “Nevertheless, you remind me of her.”

“Old fool,” Señora Paz said, turning away.

“He means no harm,” I said, following them.

I looked back at him and remembered how much Abuela Anabela enjoyed talking with him. He was staring ahead again, surely seeing the wonderful people he had known and worked with for so many years, reliving his memories. Soon, I thought, he would step off the stage and be a young man again.

“How that man manages is truly a mystery,” Margarita said.

How any of us manages is a mystery, I thought. I knew it was far too bitter and cynical a thought for someone as young as I was, but I had seen too many terrible things.

The sisters made a very good dinner for me, although not as good as Abuela Anabela’s dinners. I ate everything they put on my plate. I could see they were surprised at the size of my appetite, but it had been so long since I had eaten a real meal sitting at a dinner table. Their house was much smaller than ours. It had only one bedroom, but it was clean and nicely furnished.

After dinner, I let them prepare a place for me to sleep in the living room. I was very tired, and once they had blown out the candles and I closed my eyes, I drifted off quickly and slept right through the night. Without waking me up, they worked around me in the morning, preparing breakfast.

As soon as I did wake up, I rose, washed, and joined them at the table, anticipating their questions. That was the payment they expected, I thought, and I was ready to give it to them, but they surprised me by talking about my future instead.

“While you were at the cemetery, we met Señora Rubio. You know she runs her
menudo
shop with her son. It makes them a small living, but they have a nice little
casa.
You know her son, Pascual?”

“I know him only to say hello,” I said. “We have never had much to say to each other. He is at least ten years older than I am.”

“
Sí,
but he doesn’t look it,” Margarita said.

“His mother would like him to settle with a wife, and we thought maybe with the money you will get for the
casa,
you will have a nice dowry.”

“You mean to marry Pascual Rubio?”

“It would be an easier life than a life with a farmer,” Señora Paz said.