Kissing Arizona (13 page)

She thought she had never seen so many stars. She was thirsty but drank sparingly, having no idea how long her water must last. Douglas lay just over the western hills but they had agreed they would not go into town. Many crossers caught taxis there, or phoned family or friends for help – but there was always the danger of being picked up. Vicky had worn the American clothes she had saved for the trip – jeans and a shirt. But the men had Mexican haircuts and mustaches, and wore Mexican sandals on their feet; they would be easy to spot.

They agreed they would walk till they passed the border patrol station. It was miles ahead, somewhere up there along the highway. When they were safely past it, Vicky would use Paulo's cell phone to call Tía Luisa's number, and beg whoever answered to send a ride for them.

Maybe Pablo would come. She had a daydream, never shared with anyone, about a happy reunion with her father. What jokes they would tell! If Pablo had a car by now or could borrow one . . . her new friends would be glad they had brought her along. In fact if her father came with a car, the balance of power would shift at once. She would be the one in charge, and the men would be asking favors from her. That daydream supported her as she walked, very footsore now, north west through the scrubby desert.

It was not an easy, level trail, either – there were hills, and mysterious buildings that could be anybody's, so they had to walk around them. When big vehicles came crashing through the unmarked desert, the four of them sank beside the biggest cactus they could find and tried to stay out of the lights. Dogs barked at them often now, and once there was a snuffling rush through the cactus, some animal that they couldn't see.

Thank you God for making him afraid too.
Vicky had never been religious but she had been talking to God, asking for small favors, ever since they ran across the graveled road that paralleled the fence on the US side. They were headed north, she hoped, keeping the car lights on the highway a vague mile or so to their left. She knew she had never been so tired in her life and she was beginning to be very afraid of what would happen to her if she became too exhausted to walk any further. She knew Carlos and Paulo would leave her behind without a thought, and she wished she was certain Jaime would not. She had been sure of him when they left Ajijic, but he admired these new friends now, especially Carlos. Perhaps he would murmur some easy assurance about sending help, and go on without her. She remembered her mother saying, ‘Men always just please themselves.' Vicky had forgotten that it was she who had manipulated Jaime into making this journey.

Just when she thought they were seeing the lights of the border patrol station ahead, her worst worries came true. Unknowingly, they had walked across a smooth patch of ground that a border patrol vehicle had made by dragging old tires back and forth. When another vehicle came by a few minutes later and shone its lights on the clearing, their footprints showed up clearly in the denuded earth. Trained eyes followed their track.

When the lights hit the four hikers, they ran, as they had agreed, in four directions. Vicky could barely walk by then, so her gimpy run was pitiful and she was quickly captured. She had to wait, wearing plastic cuffs, with one of the patrolmen while they caught the other three. He insisted she sit by his feet. She had never been so glad to comply with an order. The hard part was when the van came bouncing back over the cactus and she had to get up and climb in. The patrolmen took them to the temporary border patrol station by the highway, seated them on a bench under an awning and fastened their legs to the bench with plastic cuffs.

It was a busy night in the desert. Three more vans brought loads of prisoners to the shelter. Two groups of men, seven or eight in each, were crowded in around Vicky and her friends, filling all the space on the cement slab. A larger group that came pouring out of two vans had to squat in the dirt outside the awning, their handcuffs connected by a chain.

Vicky slept through most of the night, sitting up handcuffed, leaning sometimes against Jaime, sometimes against the half-wall next to the bench. She had made a firm decision in the van, when she saw one of the guards looking at her, that she must remain alert and look out for herself, but the night was long on the bench, and she was simply too tired to stay awake.

When she woke she saw at once how lucky she had been to be able to sleep. Daybreak made the human misery in the station clearer. The baby that had been fussing at midnight was screaming now, and its very young mother, who was out of formula, looked as if any minute she might scream too. Two of the women in the large group outside seemed to be debating the tactics that had landed them here. Repeatedly, monotonously, they threatened to kill each other.

The guards, who were young and impatient and felt badly outnumbered because they were, began to yell, ‘
Silencio
!' at irregular intervals. Their shouting didn't silence anybody but it did make everybody more anxious, and the baby's screams grew frantic.

When an almost-full bus taking deportees to the border stopped at the station, one of the overstressed guards looked at four empty seats in the back and muttered to his buddy, ‘Whaddya say we clear a few of these bodies out of here?'

‘Hell yes,' the other guard said, ‘Those first four we got in tonight, they're just crossers, right? Didn't turn up on any list. Go ahead, put 'em on the bus.'

So in a blurry minute, with hardly a word spoken – the guards didn't want to start any of the other arrestees yelling to go first – Vicky and her three companions found themselves headed back to Agua Prieta. With no idea what would happen next, Vicky took another nice nap, this time on a fairly comfortable seat.

They were dumped off an hour later and herded into an imposing cinder-block building with a sign that read United States Border Patrol. An enormous American flag snapped in the breeze at the top of a tall flagpole. The parking lot where they unloaded had rows and rows of big, shiny four-wheel-drive vehicles, most of them with cages in the back. Inside, they were led into a vast open space filled with prisoners like themselves, who were milling around a glass-enclosed central core. Men in uniform looked out at them through the glass, and stared into computer screens. They had bored, indifferent faces and expressionless eyes. Uniformed men and women walked among the prisoners, telling them to move here, sit there. Vicky and her friends were separated. On the women's side she was fingerprinted, waited a long time, got some water and two tasteless cookies, and waited another long time.

In early afternoon they were put together again and loaded onto another bus, with a new selection of prisoners. They rode through the town of Douglas, crossed at the border, and were dropped off on a crowded street. Across the road, a steady flow of vehicles crept toward the US, passports at the ready. Documents were destiny here. Paperless, Vicky and her little band stood in wobbly disarray on the sidewalk, blinking.

‘
Buenos Días
,' a voice said, quite nearby
. ‘Tienes sed? Quieres café? Venga
aquí!
' A sweet-faced young woman and a friendly looking man, both gringos, stood a few feet away. Repeatedly they asked, ‘Are you thirsty, do you want coffee?'

Suspecting a trap, the undocumented desert rats panicked. Carlos and Paulo stepped into the street, looking for the best escape route. Vicky, who by this time had developed a low regard for the moxie of Jaime's friends, forgot her Spanish entirely, grabbed Jaime's hand and yelled, ‘Come on!'

Jaime, perilously close to collapse by now, hung back, croaking, ‘
Que pasa?
'

The smiling coffee-offering young man, hearing Vicky speak English, met her eyes and said, ‘Don't be afraid, it's not a trap. We're from Frontera de Cristo – right there, see?' He pointed to a sign. Behind it, on a shaded patio, sat several tired-looking Mexicans, drinking coffee. A couple of them ventured small waves.

Carefully, looking all around and still ready to bolt, Vicky and Jaime went inside. In a small room lined with shelves full of cotton socks and T-shirts, they drank sweet cold water out of a cooler, got a cup of great-smelling coffee and a cookie, and found seats among the other deportees on the patio.

It was a gathering of storytellers. The narratives were similar, with small variations. A trusted friend told me . . . I got a ride with a truck-driver delivering . . . family gave me all the money they had saved for . . . There is a job waiting for me in Ohio if I could only . . . The quiet voices went on and on. Finally Jaime asked the man next to him, ‘What are you all waiting for now?'

‘We're going to rest here a day,' one said, ‘and then try a different way.'

‘You won't go home?'

‘I can't go home. There are no jobs there and they gave me all the money they had. I have to get to Arizona so I can get a job and pay them back.'

One after another, they all said the same thing: there is nothing to go back to. And I think I see now where I made my mistake . . . Next time I'll succeed.

Vicky noticed that Jaime, increasingly silent and withdrawn ever since they were picked up in the desert, looked more and more discouraged as he listened. He would not meet her eyes any more. After half an hour of stories, she nudged his elbow and nodded her head, outside. He followed her to the sidewalk and stood looking at his shoes.

Vicky said, ‘Tell me what you are thinking.'

‘That I wish I was home.'

‘Are you serious? You would really go back?'

‘I would give anything to be back in Ajijic right now. If I could get there I would never leave again.' He glared at her, expecting a fight.

But the desert had humbled her. She understood, now, that the road north was an all-or-nothing struggle for survival. Just to stay alive would take all her strength. She no longer wanted to be responsible for what Jaime decided. ‘You got bus fare home?'

‘Just about. Close enough.' His eyes were getting brighter. ‘You coming?'

‘No.'

For a moment, he became her lover again. ‘I cannot leave you here alone.'

She almost laughed. She thought she stopped in time, but she saw how his face changed when he saw the contempt in her eyes. As she watched, it set him free.

‘I will be fine,' she said. ‘Let's go inside and find somebody who knows where you need to go to catch the
camión.
'

While Jaime talked to the men on the patio, Vicky went to the bathroom. She got another glass of water and stood in the small front office drinking it, feeling scared and elated at the same time. Jaime had afforded protection on the trip so far, she would not take that away from him. But she thought she would be freer to explore all the options if she did the rest of this trip alone.

The sweet-faced girl who had stood on the sidewalk offering water was sitting at a desk now, entering information into a computer. They began to talk, idly. She said her name was Dee.

‘What is this place?' Vicky asked her. ‘Why is it here?'

‘Frontera de Cristo is a mission supported by the Presbyterian Church,' Dee said. ‘It is just here to help. Having risked everything to cross, the people who get brought back and dumped here are worse off than when they started.'

Vicky shrugged ironically. ‘
Por segura.
' And then quickly, ‘For sure.' She was beginning to understand what the school psychologist in Tucson had meant by ‘sudden mood swings'. Listening to the Mexican deportees on the patio, she had felt like an American girl dropped by mistake in the wrong place. But talking to this fresh-faced gringo girl, she found she had cycled back into a Mexican.

‘So we give them water and coffee,' Dee said, ‘a little food when we have it. Some have worn out their shoes and socks, so we try to keep some of those on hand. Mostly we give them a safe place to rest and decide what to do next.'

‘You work here full time?'

‘I'm a volunteer, I don't get paid. In another month I'll go back to school at the University of New Mexico.'

‘Ah. Lucky.' Vicky had always rebelled against the discipline of school and never spent a minute dreaming of college. But now, looking at Dee's clear-eyed self-assurance, she felt the nibble of a little worm of envy. I could do that in Tucson, she thought, why not?

She poured another glass of water from the cooler – her body was still demanding water, after that grueling desert walk and the long dry wait in the shelter that followed it. She carried the glass out to the sidewalk in front of Frontera de Cristo, thinking that as soon as she had said goodbye to Jaime she would find a chair on the patio and listen a while. When she decided which ones sounded most experienced she would start to ask them,
What's next for you? You
got a plan, anybody to call?
She would listen until she heard the idea that sounded like something she could do. Then she would rent a room and sleep for many hours. Tomorrow, she would start over.

She saw Dee moving quietly inside, passing a cup of coffee, handing out a clean pair of socks and some sneakers to a man with rags on his feet. I'll need to get a map, she thought. A crazy line of dialogue came back to her from her months of movie-watching in her father's chair.
We don't need no stinkin' maps.
Something like that. The cruel little
bandido
in
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
. She looked up, smiling a little in spite of her dry lips, and saw a slender, handsome black man standing a few feet away on the sidewalk, smiling back at her.

‘Hey,' he said. ‘How you doin', lady?'

Vicky got her face straight in a hurry, and said, ‘
No hablo Ingles
.'

‘You must understand some. I saw you talking to the girl in the mission in there.'