Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (15 page)

*

The others had piled into the sedan, parked in the alley, by the time I arrived, but they held open the door for me. The driver, spotting me in the rearview mirror, abruptly shifted back into park and spun around to stare. For a moment I was ignorant enough to think he was looking at my eye.

“
Who invited this gabacho?”
he demanded of Carlos, maybe assuming I didn’t speak Spanish, maybe not caring if I did.

Carlos began to explain, but the man didn’t listen. He just interrupted, vehemently.
“¡Chinga!”
he swore.
“You know what kind of idiocy it is to hang out with gabachos? Which one of you dragged me into this? You know what he could do to us?”
Patiently, Carlos continued to try and get a word in; the others fidgeted, looking worried and embarrassed. For my part, hearing this man object because of the color of my skin only aroused the rancor I had been unable to vent at the Neanderthal. They seemed to operate on the same racist principle. I wasn’t going to budge, no matter what he said—not after what I’d been through. If it came to blows, this time I was ready.

Fortunately, Victor joined the fray, and even Timoteo put in a word on my behalf. Still agitated, the man at least quieted down. He eyed me suspiciously again in the rearview mirror, and then finally shifted into
DRIVE
without a word. We creeped from the alley onto the street, and within moments were back on an L.A. freeway, speeding away to yet another part of the unknown city.

It was a fairly long drive, and on the way the guys told him the whole story—of the aborted trip with the
coyote,
of the Toronado fiasco, and then, finally, of their journey through the skies. Carlos, now referring to the guys as
“los aeromozos”
—the jet kids, loosely translated—was almost boasting of their experience: desperate necessity, in a very short time, had turned into exploit. As the chapters unfolded, the driver glanced back at me again and again, and his glare seemed to soften and then even warm.
“Really?”
he kept asking the others.
“
—
him?”
When the facts were finally out I, the
gringo
guide, came out looking pretty good.

“
But why did the cuate
(slang for “cousin, Mexican guy”)
punch you in the eye?”
he finally asked, his first words to me.

“It wasn’t a Mexican that did it,” I explained. “It was another white guy.”

“What!”

“He saw me speaking Spanish with Mexicans, and I guess he thought I was some kind of traitor.” It was the only explanation that made any sense.

It took a moment for this to sink in. Here was a racial warfare twist the driver had never considered: the enemy punching out one of their own! He had to confirm it with the others, and then broke into wild laughter. This was hilarious! Like the Russians blowing up one of their own tanks because of a squabble between commanders. He turned around, and to my surprise offered his hand and a greeting:
“¡Bienvenido a Los Angeles!”
Welcome to L.A.! Welcome to the Hispanic team!

Acceptance is a wonderful thing, but I was pretty sure the man still had misunderstood. He liked me for the same reason the Neanderthal hated me—because, he thought, I had spurned my own kind and effectively switched sides. Nothing could be further from the truth; in my view, it was the team mentality, the whole idea of sides, that was flawed. But that, apparently, was going to be a hard message to get across in Los Angeles.

We left the highway and were soon in a dark neighborhood of small frame houses, most of them peeling and deteriorating, the kind of neighborhood where the front lawn is a parking lot for pickup trucks and low-riders, where trees are for chaining up dogs, where dust blows and babies play. It was evidently Hispanic, though it was hard to be sure in the gloom. We pulled up next to a house like any other, squeezed in between two parked cars, and climbed out. I couldn’t wait for the couch or even the floor I imagined waiting for me inside; it had been a very long day.

We walked into the shadow of the house, and there for the first time I, and perhaps Carlos and the others, realized that this ride hadn’t just been given as a favor. The man was a friend of a distant relative, not the relative. He expected to be paid—extortionately, as it turned out.
“How much does he want?”
I whispered to Carlos as he and the others conferred.

“Fifty dollars apiece”

“What!”

“Don't worry—we’ll cover yours. That was the deal we made.”

“But fifty dollars—that’s ridiculous!”

They went about discussing how they could appease the man. Obviously, they didn’t have that much apiece right now. He said he could wait for the rest, that he trusted them, that he knew their cousin Martín. As a favor, he said, he’d let them sleep in the van over there, until they could sort out other arrangements tomorrow. He pointed to a broken-down vehicle on blocks in what was once a backyard, but which now, scattered with metal objects and other junk, was resigned to some vague utilitarian purpose.
“Muchas gracias,”
said Carlos to the man, with no irony in his voice at all. I could hardly believe his stoicism. Welcome to Los Angeles, indeed.

The
coyote
entered his warm house and, as we walked into the yard, a cat shot out from underneath the van. Ismael and Victor, pulling together, opened the rusty door. We leaned in, lit a cigarette lighter, and turned up its flame to have a look. Two dirty blankets lay crumpled on the metal floor, around them a tire jack and cigarette butts—a real
pollo
way station, all right. What a way to end a glorious trip! Flight bags in hand, the five of us climbed in. A resounding clunk from the vicinity of Timoteo’s head alerted us to the fact that two iron bars ran the length of the ceiling, making it even harder to maneuver inside. We guessed it must have carried garments, like a dry cleaner’s delivery truck. Discomfort, however, was a state with which my companions were well acquainted. We lay down sardinelike on one of the blankets, spread the other blanket on top, and, for pillows, wedged the flight bags under our heads. My eye throbbed as the blood ran to it; just the same, I could have fallen asleep within seconds. Unfortunately, I happened to be in the middle, and everyone else was excited—they had made it!—and wanted to talk.

“The door in the airport,” said Ismael, “did you see it? The one that slid open when we walked up to it? It was like a genie!”

“
How about that music, through the little ear-speakers!”
said Carlos.
“And the waitress ... ahhhh!”
There was laughing, ribbing, a mention of Darla Derringer, the stripper.

“I didn’t care for the moving staircase,” said Timoteo.

“
We’re just glad you didn’t throw up on it,”
said Carlos, to laughter.
“Sssssshh,”
he then added, trying to control his own giggles.
“Shut up!”

There was a long pause, as the mirth subsided.
“Hey, Victor,”
said Ismael.

“Yeah?”

“
Ever get that pressure out of your ears?”
The tittering broke out again, all the more inevitable for being supposedly ill advised. Finally they could make fun of his ignorance, which all but Carlos, probably, had shared, but which only Victor had admitted. I thought it was a low blow.

“
Sssssssh,”
said Carlos again, noticing my silence.
“Ted is trying to sleep.”

“
If only I could” I said.

“
What’s wrong?”

“
My pockets are too full of these goddamn pesos!”

*

It was nighttime again before we arrived at the home of Cousin Martín. Most of the day we spent in and around the van, waiting for the
coyote
to get home from his job in a plant nursery so he could take us to Martín’s and finish the job. His wife, while we were waiting, invited us in for a meal and also let us use the phone; Carlos surprised me by ringing up two uncles of his who also lived in Los Angeles—Cándido and Esteban, both middle aged. They agreed to float him a loan to pay off the
coyote.

“
You know more people in this state than I do,”
I commented, and Carlos grinned. We picked up the uncles on the way to Martín’s, and they paid the
coyote.
That behind us, we looked forward to a big reunion.

Our next stop was a strange sort of industrial-residential area which could only have resulted from a lack of zoning laws. Except for the large warehouses, everything was one or two stories, with lots of brick and concrete and very few living things; all the soil, it seemed, had been paved over. Those windows which were unbroken seemed clouded, dirtied by the air. The neighborhood, I was told, was San Pedro. We pulled up at a curbside along a busy avenue, just before a driveway closed off by a six-foot chain- link fence. The fence extended around a small lot containing an old school bus and other metal artifacts, ending at a squat, one-story building also set against the street. Behind the fence, a small dog snarled at us.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“
¡Oso!”
cried Uncle Cándido.
“¡Oso! Don’t you recognize your uncle?” Oso
means “bear,” a funny misnomer for such a small dog. It calmed down as Cándido put his shoulder against a section of the fence on wheels, a six-foot sliding gate which opened slightly for us to enter. Oso wagged his tail as we came in. It was dusk, and we were at the front door of Martín’s place, which was to be our home for the next several weeks.

Flashes of light illuminated the old bus, parts of the fence, and cars in the driveway as we walked in. Martín’s was, in fact, a welding shop outdoors, and a small windowless living area indoors. Resident in the States for several years, Martín, in his late twenties, was already a small businessman. His main product was custom decorative ironwork; most of his clients were interested in security gratings for their doors and windows. We walked past his pickup truck, outfitted with racks for transporting his creations, and past storage shelves for long iron bars and pipes. There was a small painting area outfitted with a spray compressor. And then, rounding a corner, we came upon the building’s patio, its walls bright with the light of Martín’s acetylene torch.

Sparks flew into the night as Martín, wearing a steel welder’s mask and bent over his task, finished attaching a row of scrolls to a bar. One young Mexican was holding two bars steady for him, his eyes shut and head turned in the other direction; two more watched from a distance. We joined the two, and waited. Eventually, Martín straightened his stiff back and then lifted the mask to wipe his face and take a breather. It was at this moment that he saw us. Turning off the torch, he marched over, shaking hands with the uncles and looking the others up and down.
“Well, well! Where did you get those ridiculous clothes?”
Carlos and Victor turned a little red, and I laughed out loud. In the tension and excitement of our journey between two little Mexicos, we had forgotten how peculiar the clothing looked out of context. Carlos’s cardigan, Ismael’s high-top “Cons,” and, best of all, Timoteo’s seersucker suit, the jacket once again closed with all three buttons—I had stopped trying to change his habits—looked like a parody of Anglo clothing tastes.

“We got them at the swap meet,” said Carlos, with a grin, “for the airplane.”

“What airplane?” asked Martín.

“The airplane we came on.”

“
You came on an airplane?”
Martín glanced over at the uncles, gestured at the guys as though they were crazy, and swore amiably. He was an old U.S. hand, but still he was impressed.
Los aeromozos
were pretty cool.
“Come on in, let’s eat.”

The three other young Mexicans followed us inside. Already at the sink, doing the dishes, was a middle-aged, one-armed man.
“Supper?”
he asked Martín.
“Lunch,”
Martín responded—lunch, for Mexicans, is the big meal of the day and, though no one had complained of hunger, Martín had been around. He knew that when you traveled in the States, Mexican style, you went without. In fact, it had been twenty-four hours since we last ate. Martín brought out some beers, and the sound of the caps being twisted off mixed with the hiss and sputter of eggs on the stove.

The cook, I would learn later, was named Luis. He was in Los Angeles to try and take his younger brother, a man who had encountered only hard times and a drinking problem in America, back to Mexico, where their family were neighbors to Martín’s. Luis had lost his arm in a tractor accident elsewhere in California when he was much younger. He wasn’t much help around the welding table, but in the kitchen he made a great contribution. Quickly he cooked up a huge quantity of scrambled eggs, mixed with green and red peppers, corn tortillas, and beans, and set the table with a hot salsa he prepared with a stone mortar and pestle, common in Mexico, and strong white cheese cut into little cubes. As usual, there was no silverware; we just scooped everything up with rolled pieces of tortilla. The food was gone within minutes, and Luis, who had been watching over us, restocking the stack of hot tortillas, cooked up another batch. The effect was pure euphoria.

As Carlos and the others spoke to the uncles and Martín about Phoenix, the journey, and me, I looked around. A living room and a bedroom branched off from the kitchen; down the hall was a small bathroom with shower. But it was questionable whether the space had ever been intended for habitation. The only see-through window was set over the kitchen sink and looked onto the patio/welding area. The other rooms had small opaque windows at ceiling level, lined with paper and sealed with bars; even with the lights on, the rooms were dark. The security bars and the nonhuman design of the rooms said a lot about the neighborhood outside: that it was rough, that it was industrial. They made you feel glad to be inside, as though the shop were a sort of sanctuary.