Enrique's Journey (23 page)

Others urged him to give them a taco, but for God's sake not to allow illegals into the church. What if among the Central Americans there were dangerous criminals fleeing prosecution in their own countries? Why not let a church with more resources take on this task? Why, others asked, should all their tithes go to helping strangers, to the extent of building a room to feed them supper? Meanwhile, their church, one of the poorest of the city, was falling apart. The pews were decrepit, the bills were once so in arrears the electricity was nearly turned off, and the padre hadn't installed air-conditioning, despite summer temperatures that reach 120 degrees. A church survey showed that many didn't attend church because of the migrants. Only a tenth of the neighborhood's residents come to the Parroquia de San José. In other neighborhoods, a quarter attend Mass.

Neighbors confronted the priest. Migrants would loiter, drink, and smoke around the church. “They feel like peeing, and they just let loose!” and urinate on her front gate, says a woman who lives next to the church. Another neighbor says a migrant hugged and tried to kiss one of her twin daughters. The migrants sleep around the church, get into fights, and defecate on her doorstep. She has to scrub the sidewalk with bleach to get rid of the stench.

Many priests and the bishop admire and support Padre Leo. Others oppose him. Priests, they say, should stick to doing Mass, weddings, and baptisms. The social role of helping the poor and migrants belongs to politicians. Some snicker that he's a clown, laugh about his appearance, dismiss his humility as an act.

Once, the local director of
la migra
threatened to lock up the priest for several years on smuggling charges if he didn't bar migrants from entering his church. Leo promised to behave—and then ignored the warning.

Now three quarters of the people in his parish agree with his work. “We should say thanks that we don't have to go through this—but maybe with a bit of bread, a smile, you can lessen their load,” says Peña. Without the church's help, she says, the migrants would be even more desperate, and the impact on the city would be worse. Like many others at the church, she volunteers to help cook dinner for the migrants each day. “There is no one like this man. He is too humble. Too humble,” she says of her priest. “Padre Leo has taught me to give to others without expecting anything in return.”

In late afternoon, Enrique reaches his old boss on the church telephone with his request. Two hours later, the padre bellows Enrique's name. As always, word spreads through the courtyard like wildfire: someone named Enrique has a phone call.

“Are you all right?” asks Uncle Carlos.

“Yes, I'm okay. I want to call my mom. I've lost the phone number.”

Somehow, his boss has neglected to tell them this. Do they have it with them? Aunt Rosa Amalia fumbles in her purse. She finds the number. Uncle Carlos reads it, digit by digit, into the phone.

Ten digits. Carefully, Enrique writes them down, one after another, on a shred of paper. Just as Uncle Carlos finishes, the phone dies. Uncle Carlos calls again. But Enrique is already gone. He cannot wait.

When he talks to his mom, he wants to be alone; he might cry. He runs to an out-of-the-way pay phone to call her. Collect.

He is nervous. Maybe she is sharing a place with unrelated immigrants, and they have blocked the telephone to collect calls. Or she might refuse to pay. It has been eleven years. She does not even know him. She told him, harshly, not to come north, but he disobeyed her. Each of the few times they talked, she urged him to study. This, after all, was why she left—to send money for school. But he has dropped out of school.

Heart in his throat, he stands on the edge of a small park two blocks from the camp. Next to the grass is a Telmex phone box on a pole.

It is 7
P.M
. and dangerous. Police patrol the park. Enrique, a slight youngster with two left shoes, pulls the shred of paper from his jeans. They are worn and torn; he is too tattered to be in this neighborhood. He reaches for the receiver. His T-shirt is blazing white, sure to attract attention.

Slowly, carefully, he unfolds his prized possession: her phone number. He listens in wonderment as his mother answers. She accepts the charges.

“¿Mami?”

At the other end, Lourdes's hands begin to tremble. Then her arms and knees. “
Hola, mi hijo.
Hello, my son. Where
are
you?”

“I'm in Nuevo Laredo.
¿Adónde está?
Where are you?”

“I was so worried.” Her voice breaks, but she forces herself not to cry, lest she cause him to break down, too. “North Carolina.” She explains where that is. Enrique's foreboding eases. “How are you coming? Get a coyote.” She sounds worried. She knows of a good smuggler in Piedras Negras.

“No, no,” he says. “I have someone here.” Enrique trusts El Tiríndaro, but he costs $1,200.

She will get the money together. “Be careful,” she says.

The conversation is awkward. His mother is a stranger. This is probably expensive; he knows that collect calls to the United States from back home in Honduras cost several dollars a minute.

But he can feel her love. He places the receiver in its cradle and sighs.

At the other end, his mother finally cries.

SIX

A Dark River, Perhaps a New Life

A
t 1
A.M
. on May 21, 2000, Enrique waits on the edge of the water.

“If you get caught, I don't know you,” says El Tiríndaro. He is stern.

Enrique nods. So do two other migrants, a Mexican brother and sister, waiting with him. They strip to their underwear.

Enrique has seen smugglers ask migrants to grab hold of a long rope to cross the river. Others lock arms and form a human chain. El Tiríndaro's strategy is more risky. He uses a black inner tube, which is bulky and easy for Border Patrol agents to spot.

Across the Rio Grande stands a fifty-foot pole equipped with U.S. Border Patrol cameras. In daylight, Enrique has counted four sport-utility vehicles near the pole, each with agents. Now, in the darkness, he cannot see any.

He leaves it up to El Tiríndaro, who has spent hours at this spot studying everything that moves on the other side.

Enrique tears up a small piece of paper and scatters it on the riverbank. It is his mother's phone number. He has memorized it. Now the agents cannot use it to locate and deport her. In all, Enrique has spent four months trying to find her.

El Tiríndaro holds an inner tube. The Mexicans climb on. He paddles them to an island in midstream. He returns for Enrique with the tube.

He steadies it in the water.

Carefully, Enrique climbs aboard. Up to three migrants have drowned in a single day along this stretch of river. The Río Bravo, as it is called here, is swollen with rain, a torrent of water coursing toward the Gulf of Mexico. Two nights ago, it killed a youngster he knew, a tall, skinny migrant with a cleft upper lip. A whirlpool pulled him under. The year is not yet half over. Already, fifty-four people have been pulled, lifeless, from the river at or near Nuevo Laredo. Enrique cannot swim, and he is afraid.

El Tiríndaro places a plastic garbage bag on Enrique's lap. It contains dry clothing for the four of them. Then El Tiríndaro paddles and starts to push. A swift current grabs the tube and sweeps it into the river. Wind whips off Enrique's cap. Drizzle coats his face. He dips in a hand. The water is cold. He scans the murky water for the green snakes that sometimes skim across the waves.

All at once, he sees a flash of white—one of the SUVs, probably with a dog in back, inching along a trail above the river.

Silence. No bullhorn barks, “Turn back.”

The inner tube lurches, sloshes, and bounces along. Enrique grips the valve stem. The sky is overcast, and the river is dark. In the distance, bits of light dance on the surface.

At last, he sees the island, overgrown with willows and reeds. He seizes the limb of a willow. It tears off. With both hands, he lays hold of a larger branch, and the inner tube swings onto the silt and grass. They have crossed the southern channel. On the other side of the island flows the northern channel, even more frightening because it is closer to the United States.

El Tiríndaro circles the island on foot and looks across the water. The white SUV reappears, less than a hundred yards away. It is moving slowly along the dirt trail, high on the riverbank.

Its roof lights flash red and blue on the water, creating a psychedelic sheen. Agents turn to aim a spotlight straight at the island.

Enrique and the Mexicans dive to the ground face-first. If the agents spot them and lie in wait, it could spell doom for Enrique. He is closer to his mother than ever. Authorities can deport the Mexicans back across the river, but they can send him all the way to Honduras.

Worse, he could sit in a Texas jail cell for months before the United States processed the paperwork to deport him, most likely the juvenile prison in Liberty, Texas, forty-six miles northeast of Houston, where many minors who are captured in Texas trying to enter the United States alone and illegally are sent to await deportation.

Immigrant children arrive at the jail shackled. They are strip-searched and asked to “squat and cough”—an exercise to determine if they are harboring any contraband items in certain cavities of their bodies. They file through eight locked metal doors to arrive at the E pod, where immigrant children as young as twelve are held. They are housed, at times, in the same pod with accused rapists and other felons.

Children in the E pod spend most of their time inside windowless cells that measure seven and a half by ten feet. Migrant children say the jail, operated by Corrections Corporation of America, doesn't feed them enough. Without cash to buy from the jail's commissary, they go hungry and lose weight. They see sunlight one hour a day, when they are allowed into an outdoor area surrounded by a fence topped with concertina wire.

They have little information about when they might be brought before an immigration judge or deported. The guards know little, and most do not speak Spanish.

Locked up day after day, month after month, the children grow desperate. They run circles around their tiny cells. They read the instructions on the shampoo label over and over. Some become fearful they will go crazy in the jail. They begin to talk to themselves. One boy gets so depressed he stops eating for days and bangs his knuckles against the concrete wall until they are raw. A few of the children become suicidal and try to hang themselves.

If he was lucky, Enrique would spend no more than two or three months locked up before being sent back to Honduras. It would mean starting out for the ninth time.

For half an hour on the river's island, everyone lies stone still. Crickets sing, and water rushes around the rocks. Finally, the agents seem to give up. El Tiríndaro waits and watches. He makes certain, then returns.

Enrique whispers: Take the others first. El Tiríndaro loads the Mexicans onto the tube. Their weight sinks it almost out of sight. Slowly, they lumber across the water.

Minutes later, El Tiríndaro returns. “Get over here,” he says to Enrique. “Climb up.” He has other instructions: Don't rustle the garbage bag holding the clothes. Don't step on twigs. Don't paddle; it makes noise.

El Tiríndaro slips into the water behind the tube and kicks his legs beneath the surface. It takes only a minute or two. He and Enrique reach a spot where the river slows, and Enrique grabs another branch. They pull ashore and touch soft, slippery mud. In his underwear, Enrique stands for the first time on U.S. soil.

NEARLY FROZEN

As El Tiríndaro hides the inner tube, he spots the Border Patrol. He and the three migrants hurry along the edge of the Rio Grande to a tributary called Zacate Creek. “Get in,” El Tiríndaro says.

Enrique walks into the creek. It is cold. He bends his knees and lowers himself to his chin. His broken teeth chatter so hard they hurt; he cups a hand over his mouth, trying to stop them. For an hour and a half, they stand in Zacate Creek in silence. Effluent spills into the water from a three-foot-wide pipe close by. It is connected to a sewage treatment plant on the edge of Laredo, Texas. Enrique can smell it.

El Tiríndaro walks ahead, scouting as he goes. At his command, Enrique and the others climb out of the water. Enrique is numb. He falls to the ground, nearly frozen. “Dress quickly,” El Tiríndaro says.

Enrique steps out of his wet undershorts and tosses them away. They are his last possession from home. He puts on dry jeans, a dry shirt, and his two left shoes.

El Tiríndaro offers everyone a piece of bread and a soda. The others, hidden in a thicket of bushes, eat and drink. Enrique is too nervous. Being on the outskirts of Laredo means they are near homes. If dogs bark, the Border Patrol will suspect intruders.

“This is the hard part,” El Tiríndaro says. He runs. Enrique races behind him. The Mexicans follow, up a steep embankment, along a well-worn dirt path, past mesquite bushes and behind some tamarind trees, until they are next to a large, round, flat tank. It is part of the sewage plant.

Beyond is an open space. El Tiríndaro glances nervously to the right and left. Nothing. “Follow me,” he says.

Now he runs faster. Numbness washes out of Enrique's legs. It disappears in a wave of fear. They sprint next to a fence, then along a narrow path on a cliff above the creek. They dash down another embankment, into the dry upstream channel of Zacate Creek, under a pipe, then a pedestrian bridge, across the channel, up the opposite embankment, and out onto a two-lane residential street.

Two cars pass. Winded, the four scuttle into bushes. Half a block ahead, a car flashes its headlights.

PUFFS OF CLOUDS

It is a red Chevrolet Blazer with tinted windows. “Let's go,” El Tiríndaro says.

As they reach it, locks click open. Enrique and the others scramble inside. In front sit a Latino driver and a woman, part of El Tiríndaro's smuggling network. Enrique has met them before, on the other side of the river.

It is 4
A.M
. Enrique is exhausted. He climbs onto pillows in back. They are like puffs of clouds, and he feels immense relief. He smiles and says to himself, “Now that I'm in this car, no one can get me out.” The engine starts, and the driver passes back a pack of beer. He asks Enrique to put it into a cooler. The driver pops a top.

For a moment, Enrique worries: What if the driver has too many? The Blazer heads toward Dallas.

Border Patrol agents pay attention to Blazers, other SUVs, and vans. Some smugglers favor windowless vans. They strip out the backseats and stack the migrants like cordwood, one on top of the other. Headlights tilted up mean there are people in the back, weighing down the vehicle, says Alexander D. Hernandez, a supervisor in Cotulla, Texas. Weaving means the load is heavy and causing sway. When the agents notice, they pull alongside and shine a flashlight into the eyes of the passengers. If the riders do not look over but seem frozen in their seats, they are likely to be illegal immigrants.

Enrique sleeps until El Tiríndaro shakes him. They are out of Laredo and half a mile south of a Border Patrol checkpoint. “Get up!” El Tiríndaro says. Enrique can tell he has been drinking. Five beers are gone. The Blazer stops. Enrique and the two Mexicans, with El Tiríndaro leading, climb a wire fence and walk east, away from the freeway. Then they turn north, parallel to it. Enrique can see the checkpoint at a distance.

Every car must stop. “U.S. citizens?” agents ask. Often, they check for documents.

Enrique and his group walk ten minutes more, then turn west, back toward the freeway. They crouch next to a billboard. Overhead, the stars are receding, and he can see the first light of dawn.

The Blazer pulls up. Enrique sinks back into the pillows. He thinks: I have crossed the last big hurdle. Suddenly he is overwhelmed. Never has he felt so happy. He stares at the ceiling and drifts into a deep, blissful sleep.

Four hundred miles later, the Blazer pulls into a gas station on the outskirts of Dallas. Enrique awakens. El Tiríndaro is gone. He has left without saying good-bye. From conversations in Mexico, Enrique knows that El Tiríndaro gets $100 a client. Enrique's mother, Lourdes, has promised $1,200. The driver is the boss; he gets most of the money. The
patero
is on his way back to Mexico.

Along with fuel, the driver buys more beer, and the Blazer rolls into Dallas about noon. America looks beautiful. The buildings are huge. The freeways have traffic exchanges with double and triple decks. They are nothing like the dirt streets at home. Everything is clean.

The driver drops off the Mexicans and takes Enrique to a large house. Inside are bags of clothing, in various sizes and American styles, to outfit clients so they no longer stand out. They telephone his mother.

LOURDES

Lourdes, now thirty-five years old, has come to love North Carolina. People are polite. There are plenty of jobs for immigrants, and it seems to be safe. She can leave her car unlocked, as well as her house. Her daughter Diana quickly masters English, something she hadn't done surrounded by Spanish speakers in California.

Lourdes is always thinking about the two children she left in Honduras. When she walks by stores that sell things they might like, she thinks of Enrique and Belky. When she meets a child Enrique's age, she tells herself, “
Así debe estar mi muchachito.
My little boy must look this big now.”

A small gray album holds treasures and painful memories: pictures of Belky, her daughter back home. At seven, Belky wears a white First Communion dress and long white gloves; at nine, a yellow cheerleader's skirt; at fifteen, for her
quinceañera,
a pink taffeta dress with lace sleeves and white satin shoes. Belky leans over a two-layer cake topped with white frosting and a pink angel. Lourdes spent $700 to make the party special. She promised Belky she would try to make it back to Honduras for the big event somehow. “I wanted to go. I wanted to go…,” Lourdes says. At eighteen, Belky wears a blue gown and mortarboard for her high school graduation.

There are pictures of Enrique, too: at eight in a tank top, with four piglets at his feet; at thirteen in the photograph at Belky's
quinceañera,
the serious-looking little brother. She most treasures a photo of her son in a pink shirt. It is the only one she has where he is smiling.