Red Lightning (17 page)

“Coordinates.”

“Yes.” She smiles at me but looks concerned. “In this way, they helped us cross the scariest part. The one hundred yards of barren land between the Mexican side and the U.S. side. We were on our stomachs. We did exactly as they said. ‘Five meters forward. Stop. Okay, go. Stop. Down, stay down. Man looking your way. Down, down. It's gonna be a few hours, man. The guys are chatting. Rest. Fast, go five more.'”

“Oh, Alejandra—”

“Never did we raise our heads. Even when we had to—”

“Yes, I know.”

“We only raised our heads to drink from the water bladders we each had on our backs. Enough to swallow. In this way, on our stomachs, we crossed one hundred meters of dry desert. Try to imagine, try to imagine moving so slow.” She closes her eyes, and I do too, listening from the place of darkness beneath my eyelids, letting the red seep in. “Once we'd made it to the U.S. side, at the first vegetation, we could get to our hands and knees. Even though we had padded our knees and put on gloves, it was painful. Finally, we saw it, the small ditch, the blue Toyota—how happy we were to see the blue Toyota! It was another of Lobo's men. We climbed in, went to a house, and it was dark and horrible for days. It made us wish again for the sky and earth. We could hear a race track. The horses, the loudspeaker, the crowd. Such a gamble. Such a gamble, all of our lives are. Out there was food, water, life. But we stayed inside, and it is there that the money was delivered, four thousand dollars each, paid partly by your friend—”

“Slade?”

“Yes, Slade. We knew we were a surprise for you. We also had to carry
mota
and
coca
. I didn't want to, Tess. Then we were driven to a small road west of Alamosa. Lobo's man said, ‘Wait here, wait exactly here.' So we did. We waited and waited. But there was no water in the creek where usually there is water. And so we moved.
Directly to the west, only one rise of a mountain, one day of hiking, because there was a stream of water, and then we walked back. We took turns leaving one person at the pickup spot.”

“Oh, Alejandra—I must tell Slade. I must somehow tell him. He'll be so happy you're alive—”

“The cell phone had no reception. Only if we walked to the road. And so I did, and I called Lobo, but no one answered. We knew then we were alone. Then Mama fainted. And then I lit the signal fire, I did it.” Here, tears rush out of her eyes. “We had no water to put it out, only a rock, but we did a good job. Then the wind started rising. I worried, but I thought it was out.” Alejandra's tears turn to weeping, now, loudly. I touch her shoulder and then pull her into my lap. I glance at Lupe, whose leg is in a splint of sorts, the work of Libby, I can tell, the very way she wraps Kay's bandages. When my eyes travel up from Lupe's legs to her eyes, I see how dead they are, how this ordeal has been too much for her, too much open space, too much dark, too much fire. She has shut down, and I recognize it.

“
Hay más
. . . just so much more.” Alejandra sucks in her breath and glances at me, her mother, back at me. “One of the men was bitten by
un cascabel
, while on his stomach, drinking. From the poison, he got so weak . . .”

“
Es demasiado
, it's too much, too much.” Lupe's voice is a broken mumble, an empty not-right mumble. Despair that is beyond despair, dead that is beyond dead. “
Demasiado
, too much.” She says it over and over, blurring the words together in English and Spanish. One of the men goes to her side and rocks her.

“So we waited, Tess. I daydreamed it would be you. I daydreamed that I was a little girl, and it was you again, pulling up in the truck, saving us from the desert. It had been so hard, and I prayed that it would get better. I prayed to the sky, and to the sand, to the earth . . .” She trails off and then leans against me, takes my hand. “And you
didn't come. We heard a car honking, and we heard someone yelling, but it was far away, and we couldn't tell in what direction. The mountains are so large, Tess. People forget that. They are big. There's not always water . . .” She trails off, glances at the sky. “We had three tortillas for the all of us. One gallon of water for all of us. We found
piñones
, and raspberries, and
escaramujos
. But it was not enough, and we were already sick. And one morning, I woke up, and I knew we were
completamente solitos
. I just knew that the person was no longer out there, looking for us. No one was coming. Ever.”

She stops until I nudge her, an old joke from when she was younger and was supposed to be telling me stories to keep me awake while driving.

She smiles a sad smile. “We were going to die. I could feel the sickness getting into all of us. I decided to build a signal fire and call 911. Even if we were deported, we'd be alive. Perhaps I wasn't thinking correctly. People forget that the brain doesn't work well when it's tired and hungry—”

I let out a laugh. “I do know.”

Lupe looks at me, now calmed. “
Danos la paz
. Grant us peace.”

Alejandra tilts her head at her. “Mama wasn't going to last much longer. I hiked until I had reception, and I called 911. And then I called Salvador.” She breathes in, starts again. “I told him where we were. He didn't want to come. He said, ‘I'm not doing that anymore,' but I explained, I begged.
Es un milagro
his number worked. The same number, after all these years.”

“But the fire?”

“I walked back to the group. I smelled smoke. It had gotten windy. Clouds were coming. Then—aye! The fire jumped out of the little pit we had dug, but it was very small, and we put it out. We stamped and we threw rocks and dirt . . . and then, well, Ed was there, calling for us, and so we ran to his orange van, and I did not know his name was Ed,
and it was just an orange blur, sitting there. That one moment was . . . what is the word? Heaven. But at the same time, the fire was starting.”

Ed sits next to me. Nudges me with a water bottle. “I didn't realize you knew these people. Until I picked them up, and on the drive here, in my bus, they started asking careful questions. They knew someone from out this way. They knew a dark-haired beautiful girl. Who had given them my phone number.” His voice is soothing, but it sounds far away, as far away as a hundred yards of desert. He is facing Alejandra and Lupe and the group of men. “Tess, you're sick. Stay here. I'll come back with the truck. I don't want to make you walk back. I don't want to drive the VW right now—I just used it for . . . this. Just rest here. Later, when you see Amber, don't tell her. About any of this. In all other ways, we try to be honest. But not this. Secrets are burdens.”

I nod. Yes. I know secrets are burdens.

A sudden burst of noise startles us all. A mariachi band. It takes me a moment to realize that it's the ringtone on Ed's cell. And as he fumbles for it, and answers it, I claw out of my fog. My fog of this story—their story and my story. I'm too tired, and it seems too much: Alejandra and Lupe and their cousins, all rescued, all not burning. All here. With a future.

From Ed's phone, I can hear the tone and pitch of Amber's voice:
Please come now. It's Kay
.

Ed holds the phone to his stomach, looks at me, reaches his hand to pull me up, decides otherwise. “You can't make it. I need to run.” His voice is firm. “You stay here. Do you understand? I'll come back.” With that, he starts back to the farmhouse, speaking into the phone as he goes.

I watch him jog away from us, heat waves on the earth spiraling up to make him warp, make the landscape warp, and I feel my heart finally warp too. Finally, finally. Finally it has lost its beat, its rhythm.
Finally it is giving up. I wince, pull into my mind the picture of Amber sleeping, Alejandra's smile, Slade with arms outreached, of my sister taking a step toward me.

*

Time flows like water, like wind, like air. Perhaps hours, perhaps minutes
. I wake and drink water and shift around to the other side of the tree, where Lupe and Alejandra already have moved themselves for the shade.

                
Only some people know how important shade is,

                
comforting, consoling, lifesaver.

                
Tess takes Alejandra's hand in one, Lupe's in another.

                
Three women, sitting under a tree, holding hands in

                
silence. Something inside them shifting around.

                
Tess wonders if she can hold the different parts of herself

                
and bring herself back together.

                
There is real talking to be done.

                
Too bad humans can't whistle the huge truths.

I watch a leaf laugh its way down, passing tenderly through time and space, and I remember the last time I saw Libby and Amber before I left:

        
—Infant Amber was sleeping in her car seat outside in the shade,

        
—and she was rocking her head, back and forth, just coming out of a sleep,

        
—and her eyes drifted open and stared up at me,

        
—and she made a movement, then, kicking her arms and legs, like she was running with joy.

        
—Behind her, Libby was painting our old house, and she had bought fifteen gallons of light purple paint, and I knew then, with that color choice, that she was making the decision to make a good and real life for herself.

        
—And I was sorry. Sorry because I knew, when I left, that we would talk of smaller and smaller things. We would go backward, from love to not-knowing.

        
—She looked down from the ladder and said, Tess, it's rude to stare, but on the other hand, in order to see, you have to keep looking. Go ahead and stare. Keep looking at them, at people.

*

We doze. Then I awake to murmur, “Which one? Which one of those
boys is your
novio
?”

But she turns to me. “His name was Oscar. He—”

I can feel the knowledge in her, that every fiber of her being has been worn out, nearly to extinction, and I understand, too, that her boyfriend had burned up. He had died of poison, of snakebite, then burned. I take her hand and pull her to me and rock her like a child. Two of us under a tree, in the sparse shade, rocking.

*

Time shifts, blends with earth and sky. Later, she starts up again. Her
words land in my mind, circle around, a bird in flight. “I didn't know you had a sister, a daughter, this, how do you say it?
Cuñado
, brother-in-law,” she says. “You never said . . . that part. You only told me, when I was a girl, to call this number if ever I was in trouble. Remember how you made me memorize it? But you never told me who it was.
Salvador
. That's what you called him, that's what we called him.”

I nod. Lick my lips. Stare at the sky.

She sighs. “Remember when I was a child. I was . . . how do you say it? Annoyed at you. For making me memorize that number.”

“I remember,” I say, leaning my head back against the tree. “He stopped doing this work, you know. Because he had married Libby—”

“Yes, and adopted your Amber. But I had memorized his phone number. Long ago, when I was a girl.” She looks at me, touches my chin so that I have to look at her. “You saved my life. You came to me, on the mountain, with that phone number. And hours later, a man arrived in an orange van. I did not know that he was related to you. We only hoped to be saved. But on the way here, across the fields of Colorado,
aprendimos
. He knew the color of your eyes. You saved us.”

“I've never saved anyone.” But it is a whisper, and she doesn't hear it.

“It was a small fire. There were storm clouds building, and then it started to rain. And I was so relieved. I thought it was God, sending us a gift. And so we got in the VW, and we came here. I never knew . . . about wind, about the . . . wind and air and the earth. I just hope you are not too angry.”

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you, happy you're alive.” I whisper this to her and lean over, put my head onto her stomach. “I never told you I'd given birth to a baby. But I had, and then I left. I left my baby with my sister. And I became a
levantona
. I knew Ed back then, a little. I knew he was a kind man, doing the same work, but for different reasons.” Suddenly I laugh, an odd sound issuing from my throat.

Lupe is reciting the Lord's Prayer. “
Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo
. . .”

We murmur it along with her, an old habit. When we are done, Alejandra touches my shoulder. “What about that man? Slade? Your
novio
?”

“Well, he's never quite been my
novio
.”