Broken Ground (25 page)

“
Los niños,
Hector
. Bueno?
” Silvia asks.

Our driver nods. Blood is leaking through the rag I wrapped around his head, clotting in his thick gray eyebrows. I tear another strip of fabric from my dress and dab the blood away. Hector maneuvers the truck around a corner and down a narrow side street. It's less crowded ahead, though many people follow in our wake. Hector says something urgently, but his Spanish is beyond my understanding.

Silvia sees my confusion. “
Look
for them, he says!” She leans toward the window, her gaze raking each shop and alley we pass. “They must be somewhere.”

I shift in my seat, searching, searching. People throng around us; some manage to squeeze between the truck and the buildings on either side and run on before us. But there is no sign of Luis or Thomas. No sign of Marco or the other men who came with us today.

Hector has begun singing soft and low, a melancholy folksong I don't recognize. I don't think he's aware he's doing it. He sings as the blood oozes from beneath my clumsy bandages, sings as the blood mats in his eyebrows, sings as it drips into his eyes, sings as he wipes it away.

Todos me dicen el negro, Llorona

Negro pero cariñoso.

It's a long song with many verses, which Hector sings as we turn down one narrow street and then another until Silvia begs him to stop singing and stop driving and stop now,
por favor!

We are on the outskirts of town, and the crowd has dissipated. Hector parks the truck along the side of the road in the shade of some trees, and—with no threat in sight—the three of us get out. The children are gone; they must have jumped out along the way. Silvia says something in Spanish to Hector: a command, it sounds like. He climbs up in the truck bed and lies down there. With a boost from me, she heaves herself up beside him. Her bag is where she left it, tucked into a corner with her black book. She opens it and takes out a flask, then a needle and thread. As Hector tips the flask to his lips, she looks at me. “Luis said we would be safe.” Her voice breaks bitterly. “But when are we ever safe now, really?” She shakes her head, staring down at the wound on Hector's forehead. “Get me something for him to bite down on, Ruth.”

I find a stick, take my handkerchief from my pocket, wrap it around the stick. Hector takes it—his expression stoic—and as Silvia strikes a match and holds the needle in the flame, he sets the stick between his teeth. I have to look away then.

“I'm going to find them,” I say, turning back toward Puebla. When Silvia doesn't respond, occupied as she is, I set off, running. My head pounds harder with my every footfall. But I run the whole way.

AFTER SOME TIME
searching—an hour? at least—I find Thomas and Luis in the plaza, where they returned after combing the streets for us. I tell Luis that Silvia is safe. Repeatedly, I reassure him, until he finally seems to believe me. Only then am I able to ask what happened to them.

With Thomas's help, Luis escaped the police officers. But many weren't so lucky. From what they've heard, the officers, federal marshals, and some of the local farm bosses took away about thirty people. Some are in jail; others are preparing for deportation.

“Two children jumped in the back of Hector's truck. Young children!” I blurt this out. “Do you think—” I draw in a deep breath. “Do you think they found their families?”

Of course Thomas and Luis can't provide me with an answer.

We search for Marco and the other men until dusk, but they are nowhere to be found. So we trudge back to the truck. Hector and Silvia are resting there in the bed. When Silvia opens her eyes to see Luis climbing in beside her, she pushes herself up, sobbing in relief, and throws her arms around his neck. They stay like that for some time, until Thomas persuades them that we must go back to camp. “We've looked everywhere for the others,” he says. “Hector needs care, and you do, too, Silvia.” Half in Spanish, half in English, she has told us about her concerns for the baby. “We must be very careful now. Or this baby will come too early.
Bebé prematuro.
” Silvia's low voice is hoarse with fear. “
El bebé podría morir.
”

The baby could die.

Luis drives us back to the camp. Silvia sits next to him, her head on his shoulder, and Hector beside her. Exhausted, Thomas lies down in the truck bed. We jounce roughly along for a few minutes, until, rattled, I lie down, too. I pillow my head in my arms, trying to cushion it as I am able. Side by side like this, Thomas and I look up at the black sky. It's cloudless, the stars thick as spilled salt. Even after today, I can't deny that it's beautiful here. Still a Golden Land.

For some it is. But not for others. I can't deny that, either.

I turn to Thomas. “Hector sang a song this afternoon. Over and over he sang it. I wonder if you know what it means.”

“Do you remember the words?”

I try to recall the lyrics.

Todos me dicen el negro . . .

. . .
pero cariñoso.

“Something like that,” I say.

Thomas nods. “It's an old song, very old, and very sad.
‘La Llorona
.' In English, that means ‘The Weeping Woman.' It tells of a woman who drowned her children to be with the man she loved. But he wouldn't have her. She drowned herself then—a suicide—only to learn that she wouldn't be admitted to heaven until she found her children. And so she searches the earth for all eternity, weeping without ceasing. That's the story. I've heard that parents tell it to their sons and daughters to keep them from going out alone at night. You don't want to encounter
La Llorona
.” He is quiet for a moment. Then, his voice harsh, he adds, “Or
El Regreso
.”

“
El Regreso?
”

“The Return—as in repatriation.”

The truck turns a sharp corner. My head bumps against the metal bed—I can't help but cry out—and I'm thrown against Thomas. His arms come around me; my head rests against his chest. For a moment we stay like that, breathing in time, even as time seems to have stopped. Then he opens his arms, and I move away.
Separados, no juntos
. Lying beside each other at a safe distance, we silently watch the stars.

IN THE DAYS
that follow, Silvia, from her bed, guides me through the pages of her black book, translating the herbs needed to make the special teas and soups that compose her meals now. She translates recipes, too—
pollo caldo,
for example, but the broth of the chicken soup only. Luis and I eat the bits of meat and vegetables she isn't able to consume. I learn to make tortillas: Gently knead and divide flour, lard, and salt, then flatten the balls of dough and cook on their cast-iron pan. I learn to make rice the way Luis likes it, with bits of onion and tomato. Silvia eats plain rice only now. She can also have strawberries and oranges, which I buy from a nearby fruit stand. We often share an orange in the late afternoon, when the cabin is hot and bright and the fruit in my hand resembles a pebbled sun. The torn skin emits a citrusy-sweet mist, and Silvia and I nibble slowly at the segments, savoring the juice and the pulpy white threads that she assures me are good for us both. Almost, at moments like this, I forget that just a short time ago—after Charlie, and then again after expulsion—I thought my life was over. Now I hold happiness again, if only for a moment. I share it with my new friend who relies on my care. I take my duties seriously—more seriously, even, than I did with Charlie in East Texas. My time with Charlie—our brief newlywed season—seems like playing house in comparison to this. My time with Charlie seems like a beautiful dream from which I was abruptly awakened. From it, I learned how swiftly life can be extinguished. Here, there are two lives at stake. So whether we're sharing an orange or I'm busy with simple tasks, I keep watch over Silvia. She must stay quiet, resting until her delivery. She has no choice. The next weeks, if she wants to carry this baby to term, she'll keep to her bed. I'll do whatever it takes to keep her there. And with my days and nights nearly as confined as Silvia's, I must do what I've been avoiding for too long. I must write to Mother and Miss Berger. I must tell them what has happened to me in these last weeks.

I decide Mother will learn that I had a run-in with a teacher—a disagreement. In its wake, the university administration asked me to take a leave of absence.
I'm fine,
I write to Mother.
It's turned into a kind of adventure. I'm gaining real experience. Next year or, more likely, the year after, I'll return to college. Where, I don't know yet, but I'll find the right place, a good place. I still have the money from the insurance company. And where I am now, I don't have to pay rent! They've only asked me to help buy food, which I'm more than glad to do. So, don't worry. I'm really, truly fine! All love to you and Daddy.

Miss Berger will learn the whole truth. Given that Union University has the Alba Public Library on file as my primary contact, she may have already received notice of my dismissal. If so, I doubt that she's come to any conclusions or made any judgments. She will wait to hear from me. Discreet as she is, she won't have shared the news with Mother. But she will be concerned for me, deeply so, and she has enough to worry about in Alba. I want to ease her concern. Telling her the truth, or at least my side of things, I will try to make things less terrible.

This letter proves the hardest thing I've ever written. The official story, the one Tobias told and the administration believed, yammers on in my head, threatening to drown out my own version. I try and fail, try and fail, and so days pass.

This afternoon while Silvia sleeps, I sit at the table and set my pen to paper, determined. I do not stop writing until it is all laid out before me. The unofficial story—my story. I try not to cast blame in the wrong direction. I try to state the facts and state them simply. The facts, I pray, will speak for themselves. Miss Berger will be the one interpreting them, after all.

The hardest part of my news finally down on the page, I tell Miss Berger where I am now.
I'm living with migrant farmworkers and their families,
I write. I describe Silvia and Luis. I describe the raid in the plaza.
I'm hoping to start teaching a bit in the evenings.
And then I reassure Miss Berger, as I did Mother, that I will return to college one day. I close with a plea:
Take good care and please don't worry. All in all, a fair amount of good has come from the bad.
I include the address of the Puebla post office, used by residents here at Kirk Camp, in case Miss Berger wants to respond.

I set down my pen with a sigh. I feel lighter, the burden of telling—not confessing but telling—lifted. I clasp my necklace—my wedding band and the silver cross—and wait for the black fog. But it doesn't overwhelm me. It, along with the related feelings, belong to the person I was and would have become more fully, I imagine, if I'd stayed in Alba or continued on at Union, under Tobias's sway. Charlie wouldn't have wanted me to be a person who carried such feelings day to day. I don't want to be that person, either, and it appears, suddenly, that I might not be. Despair, guilt, and shame are just one version of the story. I can create another version.

I fold Miss Berger's letter, slip it into an envelope, and set it on the table beside Mother's. Someone in camp will be making a post office run tomorrow. I will send the letters along then.

T
he third week of June, when the last of the cherries are ripe for picking, I finally slip away to a bonfire. Luis is with Silvia. It was Silvia herself who encouraged me—no,
begged
me—to go out for the evening. If it hadn't been a risk to her health and the baby's, I believe Silvia would have shoved me out of the door. I've been hovering over her, she says. Too much energy, now that I seem to have recovered from my concussion, and too little to do but cook, clean, and tend to her needs. Earlier this evening, I asked to braid her hair. That was the last straw. “My hair is fine,” she snapped. “Now,
go
. Please!”

I follow the scent of wood smoke through Kirk Camp's narrow dirt roads, which are mostly deserted now. When I reach the edge of camp, I see why: A large number of residents already are gathered around the bonfire. The fire flickers, a bright blaze in the center of the open field before me. People move around it, their bodies dense shadows against all that light. Through the shifting crowd, I see the tall flames shooting toward the night sky, licking and snapping at the air. Given that there's no electrical service in Kirk Camp and the sky is cloudy now, the fire seems all the brighter. There's a large pop, and sparks shower over the crowd, but this only seems to add to the general feeling of festivity. People laugh and talk; children of all ages run and play around the perimeter. All in all, it looks like a great, good time, a kind of reward at the end of the long workday.

I approach the fire, and as I do, I hear Thomas calling for the children. By the time I stand with the others, Thomas and a few other adults have begun the night's lesson. The children are split into three groups, which in essence serve to represent the very young, the older elementary school–aged kids, and a few young people who would attend high school if they were able to do so. The largest group—composed of about twenty of the littlest children—are learning the alphabet in English. The older ones are taking turns reading aloud from battered schoolbooks; there are four groups of about five, each group sharing a book. The oldest of all are learning how to write a formal letter. They stand before two chalkboards mounted on easels, writing down various salutations and opening paragraphs. They appear to be working on requests for job interviews. As I watch, they weigh different versions and make suggestions about which is best.