Illegal (12 page)

"Your mother's beautiful," Sharon said. "What's her name?"

"Marisol." Tino's voice wobbled.

He tried to be tough, Sharon thought, but he was still a little boy.

"What's really bad," he said, his eyes watery, "it's all my fault."

"What is?"

"That we had to cross over. That
Mami
's missing." Tears tracked down his cheeks. "I'm the one who ruined everything."

Even after blurting out his guilt, Tino still didn't know whether he should tell them what really happened back home.

If he told the lawyer and the lady cop, they might turn him over to
La Migra
. He would be sent home and put in jail. Or worse. Rafael Obeso would kill him.

As he ate, Tino sized up the two Americans. He liked the woman. She could cut it in the street, a real
pachuca
. Strong, like his own mother. He was not yet sure about the lawyer. Unfriendly at first. But he had kept his word. Picked him up when the police were chasing. Handed over the promised money, too.

That is what his mother taught him. But could he trust them with
his
truth?

"What do you mean you ruined everything?" the lady cop asked, tenderness in her voice.

"I did something that made a man want to kill me.

He said he would cut out my heart and deliver it to
Mami
. Then hurt her, too."

The cop and the lawyer looked toward each other, as if asking whether they should believe him. Funny thing about grown-ups, Tino thought. They will swallow your lies, but the truth is so much harder for them to take.

After thinking it over, Tino told the lawyer and the pretty cop exactly how it happened. What he had seen and what he had done. And why his mother was forced to grab him and run like hell, all the way to
El Norte
.

Three days earlier, Tino had watched his mother scramble up the scaffolding of the big house under construction on a hill above their village. A petite woman, only a few centimeters taller than him. But strong and with womanly curves. Her long thick hair, dark as the desert night, swished across her shoulders as she climbed the scaffold. Workmen stopped. Whistled. Hooted. Mumbled filthy words.

"It is a curse to be a pretty woman," she had told Tino many times.

Warning him not to be like those men. Smelly and foul-mouthed. Beer-swilling and lazy. Working as slowly and as little as possible. Gambling away their money. Brutalizing their women and ignoring their children.

"Men are a plague."

"Was my father that way?"

Her smile was both sweet and sad. She never criticized the man who fled as soon as her belly swelled. She was not angry with him. With his
mestizaje
blood of Spanish ancestors, Gustavo had bequeathed his bright green eyes to Tino. At the time Tino was conceived, Gustavo was barely more than a boy himself.

"Your father sang
'Bésame Mucho'
in a voice that made my knees go soft. But he could not hold a job or make a plan past the next weekend." She let out a long sigh. "At least your father bathed. He did not stink."

To Tino, it seemed like his mother deserved more than that.

As she climbed the scaffold the day the trouble started, Xavier, a carpenter with a tattooed neck, squeezed her ass through her jeans. Marisol swatted away the
pendejo
's hand. Another two rungs, another worker, Jesús, tried to grab her breasts. She dangled there, one hand looped on the rung above. With her other hand, she pulled the air-powered nail gun from her tool belt.

"Jesús," she said to the tit grabber, "do you want me to nail your hands and feet to the framing? Should I crucify you like your namesake?"

"Put one through his
pinga,
" another worker called out, laughing.

"Won't need the gun," Marisol replied. "A half-inch staple will do the job."

The other men coughed and belched and hawked up tobacco. Jesús unleashed a torrent of
puta
sand
coño
s and
cachapera
s as Marisol climbed to the roof.

Tino watched all this with a mixture of fear and pride. His mother could take care of herself, but wasn't he the man of the household? When he delivered lunch to the men, shouldn't he order them to stay away from his mother? Or should he just punch Jesús in his stupid mouth? Before he could decide, Rafael Obeso, in his knee-high leather boots, strode through the mud to the foot of the scaffold.

"Leave her alone," Obeso ordered the men. "She's a better carpenter than any of you turds."

The men got back to work, picking up their pace.

Worms, Tino thought. Spineless men. Half-day workers, half-day drinkers. Lacking pride and motivation.

Tino had learned a phrase from his mother.
"Amor propio."
Self-esteem.

He admired American men. The ones he had seen on television. Well dressed and handsome, with good teeth and fast cars. He did not read the Spanish subtitles on the screen in order to learn English. The same with his beloved Los Angeles Dodgers. Although he could listen to Jaime Jarrin broadcast the game in Spanish, he preferred Vin Scully.

A relaxed, musical voice, smooth as velvet. Sentences that sounded like songs. Someday, he would like to see the Dodgers play in the place Vin Scully called "Chavez Ravine."

Tino got back to his job, delivering tacos and tortillas and cold drinks to the workers. They were building a new house, three stories tall. A grand home for Rafael Obeso, the richest man in the village.

Marisol had told Tino that the roof would have a satellite dish six meters across, even though much smaller ones were just as good, maybe even better.

"Señor Obeso wears boots too big for his feet," she said. "He is very conscious of show. Such men are stupid, no matter how much money they have."

His mother was right about so much, Tino thought, watching stonemasons build the fountain in the courtyard, complete with pissing cherubs.

Obeso was a short, stout man made taller by his boots. He wore a black-fringed shirt, and a bolo tie with a slide shaped like a bull and made of solid gold. His brushy mustache was streaked with gray. He told people he owned a doll-making factory in Mexico City, but no one believed him. Obeso was a drug smuggler with two bodyguards in camo gear, AK-47s slung over their shoulders.

Tino's job was to run errands and feed the chickens in a pen behind the house. Obeso paid in American money. A dollar here, a dollar there, carelessly crumpled and tossed at the boy. When Obeso traveled with his bodyguards, there was no pay. On Fridays, Tino sneaked into the village cantina and drank two beers.

"When you are old enough," Obeso told him, "I will teach you to slaughter chickens by wringing their necks."

"I am old enough."

Obeso turned to nearby workmen. "The boy's not a
marica
like his father." Calling the father Tino never knew a sissy.

Then, imitating Gustavo, Obeso strummed an air guitar and shook his hips like a girl, his workers laughing so hard that spittle flew.

That night, Tino was already in bed when his mother came home to their two-room adobe house. Even in the dim light, he could see the black, curdled blood on her lip and the swelling under one eye. She went to the spigot and washed her face, telling Tino that she was hit by a two-by-four that had dropped from a frame.

He did not believe her. He asked if Jesús had hit her.

No.

The toothless man? Or that truck driver with the huge belly?

No, no.

It came to him then. Only one man would have the nerve. Rafael Obeso.

"Was it
el jefe
?"

She didn't answer. Then Tino saw that his mother's blouse was torn, and when she turned around to undress, he saw brambles lodged in her long, dark hair. He heard himself sniffle.

"Tino, no," his mother said without turning around.

There is neither time nor space to cry.

The next morning, Obeso sent Tino's mother to the quarry to pick out limestone for the stairs.
Jefe
called it "women's work," the choosing of colors and grains in the stone. But Tino's mother, bruised and sleepless, was expected to lift dozens of heavy slabs into the bed of a truck.

There would be no need for her hammers and nail guns, so she left them home. Before Tino headed for the job site, he opened her toolbox and removed a wood chisel, which he taped to a leg under his torn jeans.

He delivered breakfast to the men, as always, then waited until he saw Obeso. Pretending not to notice the man, Tino walked casually behind the house to the chicken pen. He knew the fat man would follow just to criticize him for one thing or another. The bodyguards would stay at the front of the property, watching the road for approaching cars.

Tino dropped a handful of feed toward his feet, where a dozen chickens clucked. Just as he thought, Obeso thundered through the gate.

"Throw the feed and put some muscle into it," he ordered, "or the chickens in back will go hungry."

Purposely, Tino again dropped the seeds in front of the closest of the squawkers.

"
¡Jesucristo!
You throw like a
maricón.
"

Obeso stomped over, his boots sinking into a river of chickenshit. "Give me the bucket."

"One more try," Tino pleaded. He wound up like Esteban Loaiza of the Dodgers and threw a handful of seeds straight into the man's fleshy face. Grains flew into Obeso's eyes and his open mouth. He choked and spat and coughed.

"Sorry,
jefe.
"

"
¡Agilipollao!
You stupid fool." Clawing at his eyes.

Tino reached under his pants and peeled the wood chisel from the tape. With one smooth motion, he slashed at Obeso's forehead, cutting a horizontal line from right to left, just above the man's bushy eyebrows. Blood poured into Obeso's eyes, mixing with the chicken feed, stinging and blinding him. He stumbled forward, screaming for his bodyguards, when Tino kicked as hard as he could. Straight in the
cojones
.

A high-pitched squeak came from Obeso, who dropped to his knees, then pitched headfirst, straight into a pile of steaming chickenshit. Tino turned to run and looked back when he heard Obeso call out his name. In a hoarse whisper, the man croaked, "Ay,
chilito
. I will cut your heart out and give it to your whore mother."

Tino sprinted to the quarry and told his mother what had happened. She put a hand to her mouth and bit her lower lip.

"Oh, Tino. Why? Why?"

"The
cabrón
stole your honor."

"No, Tino. No man can take a woman's honor unless she gives it to him."

"Are you angry at me,
Mami
?"

"No. But Rafael Obeso is very dangerous."

"I'm not scared."

But Tino
was
confused. There were things he knew, but other things of which he was unsure.

A good man must not run from trouble. A
valiente
will protect his mother from a cabrón like Obeso. But what happens when doing the right thing is more dangerous than doing nothing?

In moments like this, Tino wished he had a father. A man to talk to, someone who could answer questions that a woman might not understand.

His mother motioned for Tino to follow her. "There is no time to waste."

They left the slabs at the quarry. Someone else would have to build Obeso's staircase.

It only took minutes to pack their belongings, for they could only take what they could carry. They left their small home, hitched a ride into Caborca, and caught the last bus north. As they left the city, Tino patted his mother's hand and said, "I will never let anyone hurt you again."

The bus climbed the hills out of their valley, passing through the dry scrublands and stands of mesquite, hawks soaring in the updrafts. They hurtled past roadside cantinas and country markets, auto junkyards and
vulcanizadoras,
tire repair shacks, the national business of Mexico. Heading north on Federal Highway 2, Tino fell asleep somewhere between Chijubabi and Rancho San Emeterio.

When he awoke, they were just outside San Luis Rio Colorado, so close to the American border that Tino glimpsed signs for Yuma, Arizona. He looked at his mother through hooded eyes and saw a tear rolling down her face. Not wanting to embarrass her, he did not move. She whispered to herself, and he strained to hear, picking up words that seemed to be part prayer and part promise.

I am a citizen of the world and a church without borders.

Tino checked their faces. Looking for disapproval, anger, horror.

But the lady cop looked like she was going to cry. And the lawyer smiled warmly at him. "You're a terrific kid."

"You bet. Defending a woman is a high calling. If the woman's your mom, bonus points."

Tino told them the rest. El Tigre the coyote. The plan to reach a stash house in Calexico. The foul-up at the border, his mother making the crossing at gunpoint. Rey and the other two
cabrónes
forcing him to carry cocaine.

The cop and the lawyer were quiet when he finished.

"Holy shit," the lawyer said, finally.

"My God, what you've been through," the lady cop said.