Avenue of Mysteries (2 page)

Pepe wouldn’t be in the basurero long enough to spot the dead dogs, or to see what became of them—they were burned, but not always before the vultures found them.

Pepe found more dogs down the hill, in Guerrero. These dogs had been adopted by the families who worked in the basurero and lived in the colony. Pepe thought the dogs in Guerrero looked better fed, and they behaved more territorially than the dogs in the dump. They were more like the dogs in any neighborhood; they were edgier and more aggressive than the dump dogs, who tended to slink in an abject or furtive manner, though the dump dogs had a sly way of holding their ground.

You wouldn’t want to be bitten by a dog in the basurero, or by one in Guerrero—Pepe was pretty sure about that. After all, most of the dogs in Guerrero originally came from the dump.

Brother Pepe took the sick kids from Lost Children to see Dr. Vargas at the Red Cross hospital on Armenta y López; Vargas made it his priority to treat the orphanage kids and the dump kids first. Dr. Vargas had told Pepe that those kids who were the scavengers in the basurero were in the greatest danger from the dogs and from the needles—there were lots of discarded syringes with used needles in the dump. Un niño de la basura could easily get pricked by an old needle.

“Hepatitis B or C, tetanus—not to mention any imaginable form of bacterial infection,” Dr. Vargas had told Pepe.

“And a dog at the basurero, or any dog in Guerrero, could have rabies, I suppose,” Brother Pepe had said.

“The dump kids simply must get the rabies shots, if one of those dogs
bites them,” Vargas said. “But the dump kids are more than usually afraid of needles. They’re afraid of those old needles, which they
should
be afraid of, but this makes them afraid of getting shots! If dogs bite them, the dump kids are more afraid of the shots than they are of rabies, which is not good.” Vargas was a good man, in Pepe’s opinion, though Vargas was a man of science, not a believer. (Pepe knew that Vargas could be a strain, spiritually speaking.)

Pepe was thinking about the rabies danger when he got out of his VW Beetle and approached el jefe’s shack in Guerrero; Pepe’s arms were wrapped tightly around the good books he’d brought for the dump reader, and he was wary of all the barking and unfriendly-looking dogs. “¡Hola!” the plump Jesuit cried at the screen door to the shack. “I have books for Juan Diego, the reader
—good
books!” He stepped back from the screen door when he heard the fierce growling from inside el jefe’s shack.

That woman worker at the basurero had said something about the dump boss—el jefe himself. She’d called him by name. “You won’t have trouble recognizing Rivera,” the woman had told Pepe. “He’s the one with the scariest-looking dog.”

But Brother Pepe couldn’t see the dog who was growling so fiercely behind the shack’s screen door. He took a second step away from the door, which opened suddenly, revealing not Rivera or anyone resembling a dump boss; the small but scowling person in the doorway of el jefe’s shack wasn’t Juan Diego, either, but a dark-eyed, feral-looking girl—the dump reader’s younger sister, Lupe, who was thirteen. Lupe’s language was incomprehensible—what came out of her mouth didn’t even sound like Spanish. Only Juan Diego could understand her; he was his sister’s translator, her interpreter. And Lupe’s strange speech was not the most mysterious thing about her; the girl was a mind reader. Lupe knew what you were thinking—occasionally, she knew more about you than that.

“It’s a guy with a bunch of books!” Lupe shouted into the shack, inspiring a cacophony of barking from the disagreeable-sounding but unseen dog. “He’s a Jesuit, and a teacher—one of the do-gooders from Lost Children.” Lupe paused, reading Brother Pepe’s mind, which was in a state of mild confusion; Pepe hadn’t understood a word she’d said. “He thinks I’m retarded. He’s worried that the orphanage won’t accept me—the Jesuits would presume I’m
uneducable
!” Lupe called to Juan Diego.

“She’s
not
retarded!” the boy cried out from somewhere inside the shack. “She understands everything!”

“I guess I’m looking for your brother?” the Jesuit asked the girl. Pepe
smiled at her, and she nodded; Lupe could see he was sweating in his herculean effort to hold all the books.

“The Jesuit is nice—he’s just a little overweight,” the girl called to Juan Diego. She stepped back inside the shack, holding the screen door open for Brother Pepe, who entered cautiously; he was looking everywhere for the growling but invisible dog.

The boy, the dump reader himself, was barely more visible. The bookshelves surrounding him were better built than most, as was the shack itself—el jefe’s work, Pepe guessed. The young reader didn’t appear to be a likely carpenter. Juan Diego was a dreamy-looking boy, as many youthful but serious readers are; the boy looked a lot like his sister, too, and both of them reminded Pepe of someone. At the moment, the sweating Jesuit couldn’t think who the
someone
was.

“We both look like our mother,” Lupe told him, because she knew the visitor’s thoughts. Juan Diego, who was lying on a deteriorated couch with an open book on his chest, did not translate for Lupe this time; the young reader chose to leave the Jesuit teacher in the dark about what his clairvoyant sister had said.

“What are you reading?” Brother Pepe asked the boy.

“Local history
—Church
history, you might call it,” Juan Diego said.

“It’s boring,” Lupe said.

“Lupe says it’s boring—I guess it’s a
little
boring,” the boy agreed.

“Lupe reads, too?” Brother Pepe asked. There was a piece of plywood perfectly supported by two orange crates—a makeshift table, but a pretty good one—next to the couch. Pepe put his heavy armload of books there.

“I read aloud to her—everything,” Juan Diego told the teacher. The boy held up the book he was reading. “It’s a book about how you came third—you Jesuits,” Juan Diego explained. “Both the Augustinians and the Dominicans came to Oaxaca before the Jesuits—you got to town third. Maybe that’s why the Jesuits aren’t such a big deal in Oaxaca,” the boy continued. (This sounded startlingly familiar to Brother Pepe.)

“And the Virgin Mary overshadows Our Lady of Guadalupe—Guadalupe gets shortchanged by Mary
and
by Our Lady of Solitude,” Lupe started babbling, incomprehensibly. “La Virgen de la Soledad is such a local hero in Oaxaca—the Solitude Virgin and her stupid burro story! Nuestra Señora de la Soledad shortchanges Guadalupe, too. I’m a Guadalupe girl!” Lupe said, pointing to herself; she appeared to be angry about it.

Brother Pepe looked at Juan Diego, who seemed fed up with the virgin wars, but the boy translated all this.

“I know that book!” Pepe cried.

“Well, I’m not surprised—it’s one of
yours,
” Juan Diego told him; he handed Pepe the book he’d been reading. The old book smelled strongly like the basurero, and some of the pages looked singed. It was one of those academic tomes—Catholic scholarship of the kind almost no one reads. The book had come from the Jesuits’ own library at the former convent, now the Hogar de los Niños Perdidos. Many of the old and unreadable books had been sent to the dump when the convent was remodeled to accommodate the orphans, and to make more shelf space for the Jesuit school.

No doubt, Father Alfonso or Father Octavio had decided which books were bound for the basurero, and which were worth saving. The story of the Jesuits arriving third in Oaxaca might not have pleased the two old priests, Pepe thought; besides, the book had probably been written by an Augustinian or a Dominican—not by a Jesuit—and that alone might have condemned the book to the hellfires of the basurero. (The Jesuits did indeed put a priority on education, but no one ever said they weren’t competitive.)

“I brought you some books that are more
readable,
” Pepe said to Juan Diego. “Some novels, good storytelling—you know,
fiction,
” the teacher said encouragingly.

“I don’t know what I think of
fiction,
” the thirteen-year-old Lupe said suspiciously. “Not all storytelling is what it’s cracked up to be.”

“Don’t get started on that,” Juan Diego said to her. “The dog story was just too grown-up for you.”

“
What
dog story?” Brother Pepe asked.

“Don’t ask,” the boy told him, but it was too late; Lupe was groping around, pawing through the books on the shelves—there were books everywhere, saved from burning.

“That Russian guy,” the intense-looking girl was saying.

“Did she say ‘Russian’—you don’t read
Russian,
do you?” Pepe asked Juan Diego.

“No, no—she means the writer. The writer is a Russian guy,” the boy explained.

“How do you understand her?” Pepe asked him. “Sometimes I’m not sure if it’s Spanish she’s speaking—”

“Of course it’s Spanish!” the girl cried; she’d found the book that had
given her doubts about storytelling, about
fiction.
She handed the book to Brother Pepe.

“Lupe’s language is just a little different,” Juan Diego was saying. “I can understand it.”

“Oh,
that
Russian,” Pepe said. The book was a collection of Chekhov’s stories,
The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories.

“It’s not about the dog at all,” Lupe complained. “It’s about people who aren’t married to each other having sex.”

Juan Diego, of course, translated this. “All she cares about is dogs,” the boy told Pepe. “I told her the story was too grown-up for her.”

Pepe was having trouble remembering “The Lady with the Dog”; naturally, he couldn’t recall the dog at all. It was a story about an illicit relationship—that was all he could remember. “I’m not sure this is age-appropriate for either of you,” the Jesuit teacher said, laughing uncomfortably.

That was when Pepe realized it was an English translation of Chekhov’s stories, an American edition; it had been published in the 1940s. “But this is in
English
!” Brother Pepe cried. “You understand English?” he asked the wild-looking girl. “You can read English, too?” the Jesuit asked the dump reader. Both the boy and his younger sister shrugged. Where have I seen that shrug before? Pepe thought to himself.

“From our mother,” Lupe answered him, but Pepe couldn’t understand her.

“What about our mother?” Juan Diego asked his sister.

“He was wondering about the way we
shrug,
” Lupe answered him.

“You have taught yourself to read English, too,” Pepe said slowly to the boy; the girl suddenly gave him the shivers, for no known reason.

“English is just a little different—I can understand it,” the boy told him, as if he were still talking about understanding his sister’s strange language.

Pepe’s mind was racing. They were extraordinary children—the boy could read anything; maybe there was nothing he couldn’t understand. And the girl—well, she was different. Getting her to speak normally would be a challenge. Yet weren’t they, these dump kids, precisely the kind of
gifted
students the Jesuit school was seeking? And didn’t the woman worker at the basurero say that Rivera, el jefe, was “not exactly” the young reader’s father? Who
was
their father, and where was he? And there was no sign of a mother—not in this unkempt shack, Pepe was thinking. The carpentry was okay, but everything else was a wreck.

“Tell him we are not Lost Children—he found us, didn’t he?” Lupe said suddenly to her talented brother. “Tell him we’re not orphanage material. I don’t need to speak normally—you understand me just fine,” the girl told Juan Diego. “Tell him we have a mother—he probably knows her!” Lupe cried. “Tell him Rivera is
like
a father, only better. Tell him el jefe is
better
than any father!”

“Slow down, Lupe!” Juan Diego said. “I can’t tell him anything if you don’t slow down.” It was quite a lot to tell Brother Pepe, beginning with the fact that Pepe probably knew the dump kids’ mother—she worked nights on Zaragoza Street, but she also worked for the Jesuits; she was their principal cleaning woman.

That the dump kids’ mother worked nights on Zaragoza Street made her a likely prostitute, and Brother Pepe
did
know her. Esperanza was the Jesuits’ best cleaning woman—no question where the children’s dark eyes and their insouciant shrugs
came from,
though the origin of the boy’s genius for reading was unclear.

Tellingly, the boy didn’t use the “not exactly” phrase when he spoke of Rivera, el jefe, as a potential father. The way Juan Diego put it was that the dump boss was “probably not” his father, yet Rivera
could be
the boy’s father—there was a “maybe” involved; that was how Juan Diego expressed it. As for Lupe, el jefe was “definitely not” her father. It was Lupe’s impression that she had
many
fathers, “too many fathers to name,” but the boy passed over this biological impossibility fairly quickly. He said simply that Rivera and their mother had “no longer been together in that way” when Esperanza became pregnant with Lupe.

It was quite a lengthy but calm manner of storytelling—the way the dump reader presented his and Lupe’s impressions of the dump boss as “
like
a father, only better,” and how the dump kids saw themselves as having a home. Juan Diego echoed Lupe that they were “not orphanage material.” Embellishing, a little, the way Juan Diego put it was: “We’re not present
or
future Lost Children. We have a home here, in Guerrero. We have a
job
in the basurero!”

But, for Brother Pepe, this raised the question of why these children weren’t working in the basurero alongside los pepenadores. Why weren’t Lupe and Juan Diego out there
scavenging
with the other dump kids? Were they treated better or worse than the children of the other families who worked in the basurero and lived in Guerrero?

“Better
and
worse,” Juan Diego told the Jesuit teacher, without hesitation. Brother Pepe recalled the
other
dump kids’ contempt for reading,
and only God knew what those little scavengers made of the wild-looking, unintelligible girl who gave Pepe the shivers.