The Guardians (19 page)

“And can you explain to me why you still have that?” I said, pointing to that monstrosity of a truck that he'd been driving around. It belongs to el Abuelo Milton. Miguel told me at the school. “I can't believe my grandfather wouldn't even let me
look
at his troca and he let Gabo drive it home from El Paso. It's a classic, you know.”

It may be a classic but it's still a monstrosity. “Make sure you take it back to him soon,” I told Gabo.

“Don't worry, Tía,” was all Gabo said, like always, as he pulled the sábana over his shoulders. I helped him stand up and we walked back to the house. Tuerta, too. She sleeps in Gabo's room now. Then they went to bed.

My sobrino hasn't been up since. It's already dusk.

It's
something,
all right.

While I cannot say why or how the thought has even occurred to me, I have the feeling that Gabo's spells have to do with his love for Christ. He calls it passion. I say obsession. But who can I ask? Padre Juan Bosco left us without so much as saying good-bye. He didn't bother to give one last farewell Mass or even put it in the Sunday bulletin. He just got up and left. We don't have a priest now at our church. Every Sunday a different one comes down from Las Cruces to take confessions and give Mass. Then he jumps in his vehicle and leaves.

I asked Herlinda Mora about Juan Bosco when I ran into her at el Shur Sav. I went one evening pretending I needed some baking powder for the tortillas in the morning. The real reason was that I had started checking up on Gabo, and I went to see if he was at work. I know he said the Arellano brothers are in jail, but they do belong to a gang. That means there are more of those hoodlums. The job of a mother (even a substitute one like me) never ends. Lately I keep reminding myself it's only until Rafa comes back for his son.

Herlinda's eyes were all red from so much llanto. They looked like she had busted the veins inside them from crying so much. Now she was
starting to feel the shame she should have had from the start, I thought. Her parents barely in their graves, and she was already shacking up with the cura who had given their funeral misa. “He's gone,” she cried out, hoping for consolation. When she didn't get it, she wiped her eyes. “He went to Rome,” she said proudly, like he was some kind of emissary from the New World. Herlinda Mora never was a smart woman.

I guess Father Juan Bosco had to report to the big guys before they kicked him out—the equivalent of upper management. The new pope in training, I'm sure, don't have time to deal with one more malportado.

Management know-how is essential to running any kind of business. I am still considering signing up for night classes. The math teacher told me I have a knack for working numbers out quickly in my head. “Open up a pie shop, Miss Regina,” she advised. Gabo gave me a better idea. “Start your own tiendita online, Tía. You know how to make quince-añera dresses, bake delicious pastries. You could cater … design everything, basically plan the whole event, if you wanted.” That sounded like a lot of work for one person alone. That's why I need to learn about management.

The doctor has another opinion about Gabo's sleepwalking. Of course, el médico didn't examine him. I can't afford to take my nephew in for something like that. Over the phone, the doctor in Juárez said Gabo was walking in his sleep because of all the stress he's under, possibly losing a second parent and all. If you ask me, that's not just stress, that's trauma. Even I know the difference.

MIGUEL

Before we recovered from the flooding, another serious problem came up. To my mind this one was motivated by unmitigated vigilantism at its racist best.

That's right.
RA-CIST.

I don't have any problem calling things how I see them.

So when the Minutemen announced they were coming from Arizona to Sunland Park to set up a new chapter in our town, my neighbors and I had to have another urgent meeting. The Minutemen believe that the Border Patrol isn't doing its job. The organization claims to be just “concerned citizens.” They wouldn't try to apprehend anybody they spotted crossing over illegally, just report them. But when you start taking the law into your hands, you best believe you are going to get lunatics in the bunch who'll do whatever they get into their heads.

“They're no better than the KKK!” Matilde shouted at the meeting. Matilde Benavides was the woman who said she would lead the protest. Matilde worked in maintenance over at the casino.

“No, what they are are borderland terrorists,” another neighbor said.

“Renegades,” someone in the back called out.

“Does that mean
renegados?”
Don Carlitos, the man who owns the land where my trailer sits, leaned over and asked me.

Vigilantes, I say. Unmitigated vigilantism.

But then again, that would be just this veteran radical's opinion. Something I do believe I have every right as an American citizen to express.

The Migra not doing its job? Bull crap. Those that live around here
more than anyone else in the country, I think, are aware of the
24
/
7
vigilance we live under. Hey, it is our tax dollars, too, that go to maintaining “borderland security” And then, we are also the ones who get stopped just for being out and about.

The other morning my abuelo Milton was walking home from the panadería when some Migra asked him for his papers. What was an old man going to take from this country, even if he was illegal? Not Social Security. Not Medicare. Prescriptions are a lot cheaper in México. Gringos cross over all the time to get their medication at pharmacies there.

La frontera is a Berlin Wall great divide. The Border Patrol not only has million-dollar barriers with stadium lighting; they have motion sensors, helicopter sweeps and night-vision goggles. They are better equipped for combat than the boys at war.

Hell yes, I've given it a lot of thought.

One time, years back, my ex and I took the kids up to Vancouver. Crossing back from Canada was like being at a national park. Mi'ja needed to use the restroom and, lo and behold! There were not only nice, clean public restrooms right there; you could get out of your car—while in line waiting to cross over—and stroll over to use them. People were getting out to take pictures on the lawn by public sculptures.

What passes for public art at the Santa Fe bridge here is the pink installation—eight feet tall, with ninety nails hammered in halfway. They represent all the women who'd been killed by the time the memorial went up. Most were unsolved murders. Get out of your car crossing from J-Town and you not only get accosted by a slew of merchants selling everything from cartons of cigarettes to Chiclets to getting your windshield wiped with dirty rags, but the customs officers will bring out the dogs and detain your ass.

I went out with my neighbors to march the day the Minutemen held their first meeting in our fair hamlet. Some thought we should have given ourselves a slick propaganda name like the Minutemen had, just to make a point of how we felt our hermanos and hermanas on the other side had every right to be here. Someone came up with the Pilgrims of Aztlán. I suggested the People of Corn because it was our people who cultivated maize on these lands. I should have seen the jokes coming. Immediately I got shot down by everybody, saying we'd just be considered “corny.”

Sometimes I think we
are
corny—still thinking we could get some redress for all the bullshit we've been subjected to on our ancestors’ lands.

Fast-forward five hundred years and we now believe we can get unions back.

The TV news people came out. But there were only about three dozen of us protesters. The same people I've been working with for fifteen years. Where were all those who complained all the time when it counted? I've gotten tired of asking.

The Minutemen held their own press conference. They talked about how they were just “helping out the Department of Homeland Security—to be its eyes and ears in spotting and reporting crossings.” They were also of the conviction that south-of-the-border immigrants are taking away jobs from “true Americans.”

“Do
they
wanna be chicken pluckers or peel chiles all day long and work for below minimum wage and with no benefits? Go for it,” I called to my fellow protesters over a bullhorn with a chorus of, “Minutemen, go home,” behind me.

The truth is, a lot of employers don't want immigration laws to change. Like one grower put it, “Illegals kick butt out on the fields.” But I have another way of looking at it. If the country made it easier for professional immigrants to come in, the competition would possibly drive professional salaries
down.
Thereby equalizing the distribution of wealth. Anyway, it's not about people sneaking in but jobs being snuck out. NAFTA, CAFTA, the new treaty with the Pacific rim, all the maquilas along the U.S.-Mexican border and Southeast Asia—companies went there and keep going there to take advantage of the cheap labor to be found abroad. Hell, just take the all-American great auto production, as a case in point; it was one of the first hard-hit.

“DON'T YOU GOT NOTHIN’ BETTER TO DO THAN BE OUT THERE LIKE A MITOTERO?
”el Abuelo Milton told me on the phone that night after he caught the weak turnout on the ten o'clock news.
“WHY DON'T YOU SPEND YOUR FREE TIME DOIN SOMETHIN USEFUL, LIKE SHOWIN YOUR SON HOW TO PLAY BASEBALL INSTEAD OF WASTIN MONEY ON ESOS VIOLIN LESSONS?
”

“Abuelo,” I replied, finding I had to remind my ever-so-mucho-macho grandpa once again, “Little Michael's asthma won't let him play any kind of sports. I know it's related to the environment here.”

“
AWW,
” Abuelo said,
“YOU'RE PARANOID. YOU THINK EVERYTHIN’ IS POISONED. THE WATER, THE LAND, EVEN THE AIR. WHY DONT YOU GET YOURSELF ONE OF THOSE OXYGEN MASKS, IF YOURE SO DARN WORRIED?
”

”Everything
is
contaminated,” I said. “Now, is that all?”

“NO, MUCHACHO,
I
'M CALLIN ABOUT WHAT ELSE I SAW ON THE NEWS TONIGHT—THOSE TEN MUERTOS THEY FOUND OUT ON EL DESIERTO… . DID YOU SEE THAT STORY?
”

Of course I had seen the news. I was the one who called my abuelo Milton to put on the TV that night.

“BUENO,
”he said.
“I TELEPHONED THE STATION. THEY SAID THEY'RE HOLDIN THE BODIES IN THE CITY MORGUE IN JUáREZ. THE BODIES ARE MORE OR LESS DECOMPOSED FROM BEIN OUT THERE FOR A WHILE. BUT ANYONE INTERESTED CAN GO AND IDENTIFY 'EM.
”

“Abuelo, I hope you are not thinking what I think you're thinking.”

“WHY NOT? AIN'T IT POSSIBLE THAT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE COULD BE LA REGINA'S HERMANO? MAYBE THOSE COYOTES NEVER HAD 'IM TO BEGIN WITH … OR MAYBE HE RAN AWAY FROM 'EM WHEN THEY STARTED ASKIN FOR MORE MONEY? OR"

“Maybe he went back to México and was trying to cross again… .” I started contemplating the possibilities myself. After all,
something
happened to Regina's brother. He didn't just fall off the planet. What really got me from what she said was that this guy had been a guerrillero, un luchador, an ass-kicker, man. You can't bring a guy like that down easy. What the chingados happened to him?

“I THINK IT'S WORTH GOIN TO JUáREZ TO CHECK OUT.
”

“I don't know, Abuelo,” I said, trying not to imagine the condition of the bodies, flesh and eyes picked off by buzzards. “I'd hate to put Regina through that …”

“WELL, SON.
”He paused and then asked,
“WHAT WOULD BE WORSE? KNOWIN OR NOT KNOWIN?
”

EL ABUELO MILTON

El Chuco is where I've spent my life, El Paso del Norte. Like they say, there's no place like home. As for my barrio, el Chihuahuita, it's older than me. It came together with the building of the Santa Fe Railroad back in
1881
. Back in them days things were bustling around here, the railway, mines, copper mill smelters—where my jefito worked until he died with a pair of charcoal lungs.

Bueno. Nowdays what you can see from downtown besides los Franklins and la Puente is Fort Bliss, the country's largest army training base. Yes, sir. It's right here. That's why we were all so worried after
9
/
11
. We figured we could be next. In el centro itself, besides the run-down businesses, are the old railroads. There ain't much else. You might say this town grew out of the Santa Fe Puente, where you cross back and forth to el Other Side. Not like a corn on your toe. N'hombre. It's a big city. It ain't nothing like the town it was when I was growing up. Now you got your convention center, the Camino Real hotel all renovated, even an art museum. There are los mansions in Coronado Estates (I hear los narcos own some). But what you got mostly, near my barrio and the Puente, is a whole lot of gente.