Red Glass (10 page)

Mom couldn’t call any of her relatives in England to check up on her alleged great-aunt’s story. She had run away from England when she was eighteen with an American guy she met there, a vagrant backpacker who her mother despised. Mom traveled with him to Nepal and Morocco and India, and while they were passing through Tucson on the way to Mexico, she found out she was pregnant with me. They decided to stay in Tucson, at least through the pregnancy. But then my father got busted for dealing acid and took off. Mom decided to raise me alone.

When Dika arrived in the late summer, once the visa papers were in order, all she brought were three bags: one of clothes, one of toiletries, and one of glass, each in its own canvas duffel bag. Bags of newly collected glass filled her closet. Piles of glass were heaped on her dresser, which she’d moved to the center of the room, where it got the most sun. Sometimes I caught glimpses of her in there, sitting in the worn armchair, watching the glass, occasionally holding a piece up to the light, close to her eye. In the prison camp, gazing into her red glass helped her make it through each day. And still, her favorite piece, it seemed, the one closest to her heart, was that original red shard.

What it came down to was this: if she hadn’t forced her way into my life, I wouldn’t be here now, sitting in the fresh morning air by a street of strange artwork, with Pablo sleeping beside me, and Ángel secretly playing with wisps of my hair and sneaking glances at the top of my nightgown in the shadow between my breasts.

At midday the sun was blazing and people lined the streets, crowds of people, some carrying umbrellas for shade. There were old women wearing checked aprons and shawls folded on their heads; old men in woven palm hats and stained white button-down shirts and goatskin sandals; little kids in Disney T-shirts holding each other’s hands; guys my age with baggy jeans and baseball caps; girls with tight skirts and halter tops. We had no umbrellas, so we pressed ourselves against the wall and waited for the parade and breathed in smells of roasting corn and sizzling meat. In front of us, a sawdust picture of a big white flower spanned the street, and farther on, a swirling medley of animals—foxes, deer, rabbits—filled an intersection.

Earlier, over scrambled eggs and refried beans in the courtyard, Dika had insisted on coming with us to see the parade, even though every few minutes more fireworks exploded. Mr. Lorenzo held her hand the entire time, and with every boom, I saw him squeeze it while her eyes tensed up and beads of sweat broke out above her lip. After each explosion, she wiped her forehead with a handkerchief and said, “Ha! That was not so bad!” and I breathed out in relief.

I held Pablo’s hand, and when no one was looking, Ángel would slip his hand into mine for a moment, or I would let my arm graze his, or he would touch me with the excuse of pointing out something and let his hand linger a few beats. The crowd was pushing us into each other and we let it happen. I loved the shade created just for a moment between his arm and mine, his face and my neck, my hair and his hand. And in this space, I could almost forget that he was leaving for good.

The parade came into view, first a big truck with the
moreno
Jesus on it—the dark-skinned Jesus on the cross—
El Señor de los Corazones
, the patron saint of Huajuapan. He had black flowing hair and a red velvet skirt trimmed with golden tassels and covered with
milagros
, silver prayer charms, pinned to the fabric. His skin was deep brown, darker than Pablo’s or Ángel’s. Women walked behind him, carrying umbrellas for shade, singing a hypnotic song about the Virgin and the Father and the Son, a mournful tune that I knew would be stuck in my head for days.

Then I realized something that gave me chills: The parade was destroying the artwork. But of course it would get destroyed. What had I been thinking? That the people would just push their way through crowds along the sidewalk instead? That the pictures would magically stay there forever?

I turned to Ángel. “They worked so hard on that! It’s so beautiful!”

He nodded.

The truck carrying Jesus inched toward us, followed by the women’s wobbly, high-pitched song. I tried to soak in the flower and fox and rabbit and deer before the wheels plowed through. After the women passed, children in uniforms marched by, playing earsplitting trumpets and drums. Then people from the sidewalks joined the parade, and children wove around their parents, screaming and laughing and kicking up the sawdust.

My heartbeat quickened; my skin grew prickly, my head dizzy.

At that moment, Pablo slipped his hand out of mine and disappeared into the crowd. “Pablo!” My voice didn’t carry far with all the noise and music. And then I saw him, in the street with the other children, stomping on the colored sawdust, destroying every last trace of the pictures.

“I can’t believe they’re doing this!”

Ángel spoke calmly. “But I think that’s the point, Sophie.”

“What?” I felt faint. I took a gulp from my water bottle and tried to keep my eyes glued on Pablo. “To make something incredibly beautiful, and then, before you even get to enjoy it, mess it up?”

He gave me a puzzled look. “What about the memory? You’ll have that.”

I glared at my reflection in his glasses. “Memory isn’t something real. Something you can touch.”

“But the memory changes you, right? It makes you a different person.”

I looked at him, hard, then grabbed his sunglasses and looked at him even harder. His eyes looked very fragile underneath, very uncertain. My hands shook and my head felt as if it were swarming with insects, and all the people and noises faded and Ángel and I were the only ones there.

“Forget it, Ángel.” My words shot out like little bullets. “Go to Guatemala and stay there and forget everything.” I threw his glasses on the ground and pushed my way through the crowd, past the ruined sawdust pictures.

At least Pablo won’t stay here, I thought; at least he’ll come back with us. I scanned the crowd in the street and saw him, jumping up and down on a sawdust flower. In the book, when the Little Prince was about to go back to his star, he told his pilot friend to look at the stars and know that he would be on one of them, laughing. So for the pilot, it would be as though all the stars were laughing. I wondered if one day I’d see a guy in sunglasses with skin nearly the color of the
moreno
Jesus, and instead of crying I’d smile at the memory. Or if one day Dika could think of her house and garden before it was kaput and smile, or if Mr. Lorenzo could think of his wife before whatever happened happened and smile. If we could ever wade through all that sorrow to find a little shard of happiness.

I ran alongside Pablo and cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “Let’s go, Pablo!” He waved at me, but he didn’t come. His sweaty hand had slipped out of mine so easily.

And then, suddenly, Ángel’s hand was on my hip and he was turning me around and pressing me to him and whispering, out of breath, “Lime-girl.” I felt my breasts against his chest, and I breathed in his soap, the detergent of his T-shirt, the sunshine on his neck. In the middle of all those people, next to the destroyed Virgin on the sliver of moon, with only a few tiny stars left on her cape, I could see why someone would want a moment of complete happiness, even if it wouldn’t last. I pressed my lips against his neck and hung on.

The rest of the day passed quickly—a whirlwind of dancers spinning in swirling skirts, mayonnaise-coated corn on the cob, bags of cut-up fruit sprinkled with chile, live band music blasting through giant speakers. We went to bed early, and the next morning, on the way out of town, Mr. Lorenzo and Ángel bought their bus tickets to Tapachula, the border crossing point. Juan and Mom didn’t want them driving the van to Guatemala, so the deal was they had to take the bus. They planned to go there next Monday, after a week in Pablo’s village, while we stayed on with Pablo’s family.

From the bus station, we headed into the mountains, winding up steep, narrow roads. Mr. Lorenzo drove and Dika squealed. “Ohhh!” she cried at every curve. When the rain started, she squeezed her eyes shut, clutching his arm.

For a while, we all laughed at Pablo’s purple turtle jiggling on the dashboard. Then that got old, and we looked out the windows. Pablo watched the trees and rock formations, which must have been familiar. He traced raindrops with his fingertip and his head fell against my shoulder.

Ángel pushed open the window, stuck his hand out a moment, and brought it in, dripping wet. He rubbed it on his forehead like a baptismal rite. “Want to know how we got out of the desert?”

Pablo and Dika yelled, “Yes!”

I shrugged. Part of me thought, Why does it matter?

“We ended up wandering in circles, and finally ended up back at the border.” He gave an ironic smile. “We crossed back over to Mexico.”

Dika shook her head. “You boys! Well, you must to tell us how you cross finally.”

Ángel continued. “We decided the Arizona border was too tough. So we took a bus to Chihuahua, near Texas, and we found a coyote. Around ten at night, he takes about fifteen of us on flimsy rafts across the Rio Grande. Man, did that river stink. Then he leads us through scrub brush, and whenever he calls
‘¡Suelo!’
we hit the ground like soldiers. We press our faces in the dirt and close our eyes so the
migra
can’t see them reflecting the spotlight. Someone must have left their eyes open, or made noise or moved, because we hear the
migra
running toward us, shouting. My dad takes my hand and says, ‘Run!’

“Now we’re separated from the group. We walk until morning, just me and my dad, following the north star. Once daylight hits, we worry. Our bodies remember how thirsty and hot we were last time. We take little sips of water from our bottles. By night, the water is almost gone, and we’ve eaten our tamales and fruit. Then we spot train tracks. At that moment, I feel a few fat raindrops. I tilt back my head and open my mouth to them. ‘Let’s jump on a train, son,’ my dad says. We walk along the tracks until we hear a rumble, and then we hide behind some bushes while the first car passes. It’s going pretty slow. There are people hanging on to the train, other migrants like us. My father carries me alongside the tracks and then lifts me up. I grab the ladder at the end of a car and hang on. My father runs and leaps up after me.

“Now it’s raining harder and the temperature’s dropping. I have to hold on with all my might. My hands keep sliding off, and my whole body’s shaking and shivering, and it’s all I can do to hang on.”

Ángel acted it out so convincingly, trembling and convulsing and straining his face, that I could feel the train’s vibration, the sting of rain, the cold wind.

I glanced at Mr. Lorenzo. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his lips pressed together. Dika had arranged the visor mirror so that she could watch Ángel. For once, she was quiet.

Ángel’s hands clutched the seat in front of him so hard the veins stood out. He unclenched them, slowly slid them off. “And when I feel my hands slipping, the woman appears, and she turns into my mother with my mother’s hands, warm and rough with calluses, and pressing mine onto the bars.”

He put his hand over mine and I felt heat, almost fiery heat, so hot it nearly burned me. I read somewhere that Tibetan monks can raise the temperature of their fingertips sixteen degrees just by meditation.

“The whole night was like this,” he said. “The whole night.”

After a long silence, Pablo said, “
Mi mamá también.
My mom was with me, too.”

I pulled him closer to me. “What do you mean,
principito
?”

He spoke in Spanish in one long rush of words. “She went up to the sky and she had on a white dress and she floated over my head until the police helped me and at night she made me warm, too, and it was just like your mom, Ángel.”

Ángel smoothed his hand over Pablo’s hair. For a long time, no one said anything. When Pablo’s eyelids fluttered closed, and his breathing grew deep and rhythmic, Ángel said softly, “Just like my mom, Pablito. Only the difference is that I never saw her body. There’s a chance she’s still alive.”

His words hung in the van like something you could snatch and stuff back into his mouth.

Dika spun around and stared at Ángel, then at Mr. Lorenzo. I could see a thousand thoughts racing through her mind, but she swallowed her words. Her chest heaved as though she were lifting something heavy, and Mr. Lorenzo put his hand over hers and then she looked out the window with glassy eyes.

Mr. Lorenzo took a deep breath and looked at Ángel in the rearview mirror.
“Hijo—”

Ángel cut him off. “I know, I know, you think she’s dead. But if there’s any chance she’s alive, no matter how small…I have to know the truth. I’ve been waiting since I was Pablo’s age, waiting to find the truth.”

One runs the risk of weeping a little if one lets oneself create a bond with another.

—T
HE
L
ITTLE
P
RINCE