The Same Sky (24 page)

“Aunt Alice, you shouldn’t smoke,” said Rick. I turned and saw him in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt and plaid pajama pants.

“Busted,” I said.

“Really,” said Rick. “It’s so bad for you.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“So you know what happened to the baby?” said Rick.

I blinked, unsure of how to respond. “What do you mean?” I said.

“There was something wrong with the baby,” said Rick. “Sometimes that just happens.”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.

“Nobody knows why,” said Rick.

I held his gaze, nodding. In his face, I saw a dim terror, the dawning understanding of how much he had to lose.

41
 

Carla

T
HE PRIEST, AN
old man in robes, took my crumpled phone card and let me use the church telephone. I dialed my mother’s number carefully. Her phone rang once, and then again. On the third ring, she answered, “
¿Bueno?
Hello?”

“Mami?” I said.

“Gracias a Dios!”
she shouted, so loud that the priest looked up and smiled. “Carla, you are alive!”

“Yes!” I shouted, bursting into tears.

“Where are you?” she asked. “I’ve called everyone! They told me you had gone!”

“Nuevo Laredo,” I said.

“Oh, baby,” she said, “oh, my baby, you’ve almost made it.” The happiness in her voice made me cry louder. “How on earth—”

“I need to get across the river,” I said. “I need help. Two thousand dollars.”

She paused. I knew how much money this was to my mother, and I bit my tongue. Did she know what it was like in Nuevo Laredo? “I’m scared,” I said, hoping she would understand about the campsite and the robbers and the children selling their bodies in the street. I did not say,
I am scared I will die
. But my mother had been here herself.

“You have found a
coyote
?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “I am told he is trustworthy. But he won’t help me without money.”

“Of course,” she said. There was the smallest pause. “I will send it today,” said my mother.

“Today?” I said, stunned. I quickly gave her the information necessary to send the money.

“You will be here tomorrow,” said my mother, her voice disbelieving. “You will be here with me tomorrow!” she repeated.

“Thank you,” I said. “Mami, my phone card is running out,” I said, panic rising in my chest.

“Precious one, be safe,” said my mother. In a smaller voice, she asked, “And Junior?”

Tears rushed into my throat. I gagged on the words, but I spoke. “No, Mami.”

There was no sound. My expensive seconds on the phone card ticked away as she tried to put unanswerable questions into words. I could hear my heart thudding in my ears. “Junior …?” she said again.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Her silence expanded to form a terrible darkness over
me. But finally my mother’s voice broke through. “Goodbye until tomorrow,” she said.

“Goodbye until tomorrow,” I whispered. I handed the phone to the priest.

The church was small and in bad repair. Above the pot of stew, Jesus Christ looked down on us from a large cross. The stew tasted so wonderful I had to hold it in my mouth before swallowing. I was very hungry. Around me were dozens of others, all starving, hollow-eyed. We were the lucky ones.

The priest had errands downtown, so he took me to the Western Union himself. He warned me that sometimes relatives promise to send money but do not. This was why he had to limit the meals he could give. “Some people end up staying in Nuevo Laredo for a long time,” he said. He smiled mournfully. “We do what we can do,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Perhaps you will get there,” he said. “Perhaps your American dream will come true, and it will be all you wished for.” He looked at me, hope in his eyes. “It’s possible, isn’t it?” he said. He seemed to be asking himself this question.

At the Western Union, two thousand American dollars was waiting in my name. I stowed the money in my underwear, went with the priest back to the church for dinner, then brought the money to the encampment. When I found the Snake, he was not well. I understood his state:
he looked like Junior after the Resistol. I asked him if my friends had made it over the border, and he said yes. For all I knew he had killed them all—who would ever discover his crimes? Still, I pulled the Western Union envelope from my pants and handed it to the Snake. “Can you get me to Austin, Texas?” I asked. I told him my mother’s address, which I had committed to memory.

He put the money in his back pocket and nodded lazily. “We will leave soon,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable, girl, and I will make arrangements.”

I was overcome. I did not believe him, yet I had no choice but to believe him. Though I knew vultures were watching, I lay on the soiled blanket, feeling sick but trying not to vomit. Finally it became dark. I heard the Snake departing, saying goodbye to those around the fire. I prayed, my eyes shut tight. I could not close my ears, however. I heard splashing and cries as the Rio Bravo ate those who tried to swim. I listened to the bullhorns as Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger shouted, “Go back! Go back!”

But I could not go back.

In the dead of night, the Snake shook me awake. Soundlessly we headed along a dirt path to a secluded place by the water. Night-blind, I could not see any American SUVs across the river. “Climb on, quickly,” said the Snake, indicating a black inner tube he held still with his hand. Uncertainly, I mounted the tube. The Snake put a plastic bag with dry clothes in my lap. Then he launched us into the fierce river, trying to paddle forward, keeping
the tube level so I would not tumble into the water. If I drowned, I realized, no one would tell my mother. I would just never arrive, and after a while she would understand.

I did as the Snake ordered, frozen with fear. We reached the island in the middle of the river and slid to safety. Mercifully, I did not see any agents on the American side. “Don’t make a sound,” said the Snake. “Nothing.” I bit my tongue as he pushed us from the island back into the river. I was so close to America. Finally we reached the bank. The Snake hurried me along the land to a tributary. We followed it, the Snake watching our surroundings carefully. In the distance, a spotlight illuminated the island in the middle of the river. It was empty.

“Put on the dry clothes,” said the Snake, and I changed out of the pants and shirt I had worn for so long. The new pants were too tight, but the sweatshirt was large enough to cover where the zipper would not reach. There were shoes, too, and I tied them tightly. Shoes were of great value.

“Now,” whispered the Snake, “we run.”

He began to sprint, and I fell in beside him. We ran for a long time, up from the river onto dirt trails behind a housing development. We crossed a paved road and saw a car ahead. The headlights blinked on and off. “There,” said the Snake. We reached the car, and the Snake opened the trunk. “Get in,” he said.

My mind reeled back in time, to the day I watched my baby brother being set in a trunk. Now, at last, it was me. But the space was small, and when the Snake slammed it shut, I did not have enough air. What if Marcos was wrong?
What if I died here, in America, in a car trunk? The car started to move, stopping briefly at what I imagined were border checkpoints. I fell in and out of slumber.

By the time the trunk was opened, it was very hot. I gasped the fresh air and saw the sun. A stranger’s face came into focus. He was a white man, an American, with gray hair and the stubble of a gray beard.

The strange man said, “Get out.”

My legs were weak. I had vomited on myself, and the man wrinkled his nose. We were parked in front of a motel called the Ace. Faded cars shone under a brilliant sky. “Room Sixteen?” said the man, reading to himself off a piece of paper. The Snake was gone.

I nodded.

The man dragged me to a red door that had the number sixteen spray-painted on its metal surface. Outside the door was a folding chair, an ashtray, and three empty cans of American beer. The man knocked sharply. The door was yanked open, and I saw her.

“Mami!”
I said, falling toward her.

“Carla!” cried my mother, catching me.

42
 

Alice

E
ARLY IN THE
morning, Jane shook me awake. “Come on,” she said. “I want to do Bridge of Heaven.”

“It’s dark out,” I said. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“Please,” said Jane. “I’m feeling strong. I … I need to do this.” The hike was at least a seven-hour round-trip, so I gritted my teeth and climbed from her cozy bed. “I have coffee,” said Jane. “Meet me in the Land Cruiser.” I nodded, half asleep. I changed into hiking clothes, shoved my hair under a hat, and brushed my teeth. None of the children were awake. Dennis lay on the couch, snoring loudly. I tiptoed out the back door, where the ’76 Land Cruiser, which had been my parents’ and which Jane and Dennis paid a fortune to keep running, was warming up. I climbed into the passenger seat and Jane handed me a thermos.

“Jesus, it’s cold,” I said. “Fucking Christ.”

“Please don’t take the Lord’s name, et cetera,” said Jane.

“Since when are you religious?” I asked.

“Since I don’t know,” said Jane. “It helps me personally, and it helps me figure out what to tell the kids when a pet dies.”

I nodded, smiling. “Raven, Hammy the hamster, the betta fish …”

“All living happily in heaven,” said Jane.

“With Mom, I gather,” I said.

“With Mom,” said Jane. “Who watches over us.”

“I wish I could believe that,” I said morosely.

“It’s not so hard,” said Jane. “Just believe it.”

“Then why did you lose the baby?” I said, anger rising in my gut. “And why did I, if there’s some benevolent God and a heaven?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane.

We drove out of town in silence, taking County Road 14 past Lake Lenore into the national forest. We passed the remains of Ash, a town founded by the owners of the Bachelor Mine, and crossed Dexter Creek. Jane pulled the truck over. “I’ll do it,” I said.

“Thanks,” said Jane.

I climbed out of the truck. In the chilly morning, I knelt to turn the knobs on the front wheels that would lock the hubs and engage the four-wheel drive. I got back inside, and Jane put the truck in gear and drove up the steep dirt road to the Wedge Mine. “I always feel like we’re
going to fall off,” I said, grabbing the dashboard as Jane expertly handled a sharp switchback.

Jane sighed.

“What?” I said.

“That about sums it up,” said Jane.

“What does that mean?” I said.

Jane bit her lip and did not answer. In the dawn light, with her hair tucked under a Ouray High cap, she looked sixteen again, and I remembered how ethereal she had been, always pale, dreamy-eyed, sort of floating on the outskirts of our family. Before Dennis and the kids had worn her down, she’d been a blond angel.

“I used to think you looked like an angel,” I said.

“Not anymore?” she said slyly.

“No, but …,” I said.

“I don’t mind being a fat mom,” she said matter-of-factly. “Nobody saw me when I was perfect. I was invisible. Now I’m in the middle of everything. I’m the anchor.”

“The heart,” I said, moved.

“Yup,” said Jane. She put her shoulders back, and I saw in this gesture how proud she was of what she’d accomplished.

“I’m proud of you,” I said.

“Thanks. I’m proud of you, too,” said Jane.

“For what?”

“For accepting your life,” she said. I was silent, chewing that one over. I hadn’t accepted my life at all, which was the problem, I saw now. But wasn’t striving for your dreams supposed to be a good thing?

“I haven’t accepted it,” I said.

Jane drove to the trailhead and pulled the brake. She gathered our backpacks, which she’d filled with sandwiches, trail mix, and lemonade. “Let’s go,” she said.

“Hold on,” I said. “I
said
I haven’t accepted it. I want a baby and I fucking deserve one, just as much as you do.”