The Guardians (17 page)

MIGUEL

Finally the rains came. It was a relief, too. The days had gotten so bad I had to change my shirt two, even three times a day. I was teaching summer school and we don't have any air-conditioning in the classrooms. Then the rains came down like nobody's business, like it would soon be time to build an ark (as my ex put it). Then the sewage system on my street backed up for miles. There were no fishing boots tall enough to spare anyone. Not to mention it reeked to high heaven. Fire departments came out to help, volunteers, whoever could lend a hand to start the cleanup afterward. Some of the people in Anapra had to vacate and were taken to stay at the high school in Santa Teresa, where the Red Cross brought cots, dry clothes, and food.

Wastewater had backed up into all the houses. Sewage surfaced everywhere on the front walks, lawns … streets. Drinking water had to be brought in from El Paso. All the water was contaminated. Nobody could bathe, wash clothes, or anything else. (I went all the way to my abuelo Milton's just to shower.) The mayor brought in Porta Potties. For days and nights we had to go outside to the bathroom. Electricity was out. La Migra stopped and flashed infrared lights on people all the time. I swear, it looked like we were living under martial law. I sent my ex and kids to Califas to stay with her brother Fernie in Oxnard. Schools were closed, anyway. I stayed behind to deal with the sludge.

In our small desert city, flanked by the Texas border and the Mexican one, we're always having water problems. Water is a precious resource around here. It's a blessing from Father Sky. That's how you gotta look at it. And that's why I wear my jacket with the fringes all the time during
our periodic droughts. The fringes are symbolic of the rain. I keep my Lakota pouch on me, too. I'm no medicine man. I just believe in paying homage to the old gods. I believe in respecting the land, respecting all the gifts of Ometeotl—Mother Earth and Father Sky, which were meant to be used by everybody. It don't really matter what your religion or spirituality—without water there'd be no life on the planet. The president, as a born-again, more than anybody, should be aware of water's basic association with salvation. Baptism takes place in the immersion of pure waters. Who'd want to take Christ into their lives by being dunked in an oil-slick river contaminated by chemicals?

First it was so dry, fires were sparking everywhere. Then the rains hit and got us all real bad. Up there in Cabuche, where esta Regina lives with her nephew, they were flooded. The road up to their place was washed out. Regina works during summer school, too, and she couldn't get down the mesa for three days. Our school stayed open because the rains hadn't affected it. The lousy thing about the school board is that it won't approve paying teachers’ aides for days off. I keep telling Regina she should go to night school and start working toward a degree. Who knows? Maybe she's not cut out for it.

Then again, she's got a lot more going on than she gives herself credit for. One day she found me trying to start up my Mustang in the school parking lot. “Pop the hood,” she said, like she worked at Pep Boys. She figured out so fast what was wrong I was barely out of the car, getting ready to tell her not to mess with it, when she said, “Start it up.” And sure enough, it started right up. Impressive. More so, because she's like this “lady,” you know?

Before my ex and the kids left for Califas, we decided to have dinner together at the “Big House.” That's what I call the home, where I no longer live but still get to pay the bills. I ain't exactly a guest there, either. The only times I'm invited over is to cook, babysit, or do handyman work. During last football season, I suggested I'd go and watch the games on my wide-screen TV in the den with a few of the guys, like I always did, but needless to say, that didn't go over with Crucita. The TV was too big for my trailer, so that was that.

The electricity was back on, I had thrown out all the ruined carpeting, and except for the Porta Potti situation, the family was more or less comfortable. Now we'd have to deal with the mold. We were heating bottled water on the brick barbecue I had built with my father-in-law next door way back when. My ex-in-laws were still hanging in there. (“Don't worry,
don't worry,” they always say when I check up on them. Just like old electronics that outlast new models, the elders seem to have more durability than the young.)

Our street was lucky. Not just our street, but my own side of the street, especially. The trailer went unscathed by the storm. Some neighborhoods were inundated. One grocery store lost its foundation. That neighborhood got slammed with currents of mud, and produce and canned goods were floating down the street. The governor was asking Washington for emergency relief money. But when wasn't he?

While “family dinners” had been Crucita's idea since the separation, as usual it was left to me to put something together. My ex was in J-Town, either working on her new storefront church with the preacher or volunteering at the women's shelter there. We all knew she'd be late. “Make whatever you want, Mike,” she told me when she called from her cell. “The kids aren't picky.” Not the kids I knew.

I stopped by the Little Diner on the way home and picked up some chile colorado gorditas for everybody. Right away my son said the food was too spicy for him. He wouldn't even taste it. Xochitl announced she was on a diet. “Xochi, you're already a toothpick,” I said to my teen.

“No, I'm not. I'm fat. Fat. Leave me alone.” Híjole. We ended up making grilled-cheese sandwiches.

We were just about to sit down to our fabulous supper when the kids’ mother walked in. “We need more sandbags around the house, in case it starts raining again,” was the first thing Crucita said as she threw her keys on the counter and flung off her shoes, which hit the wall on the other side of the kitchen. We settled down around the island, where we usually ate, and my ex joined me in having the gorditas.

“Did you guys know that the border has had something like twenty times more water pumped out of it every year than can be replaced naturally?” I asked my children. Xochi's cell rang. She answered it but didn't answer me. Little Michael picked at the sandwich his mother had just cut off all the crust from. “Some of those people out there in J-Town don't have any access to clean water at all,” I told them.

“Neither do we,” Crucita said.

I'm not sure why, but half of what my ex-wife complains about makes me feel like it's my fault.

“I know,” I said, ignoring the sarcasm. “Right here in the First World, if you can call New Mexico that, our own tap water is full of moyote,” I said. Our pipeline flows underneath the dump. The storage tanks are situated
inside the landfill and the water system is not exactly hermetically sealed. Inspectors “assure” us that horsehair worms aren't harmful if digested. “We're living in dire conditions, guys,” I said. “Dire conditions require extreme measures.”

“Here we go,” Crucita said, jumping the gun as usual with me. “How many times do I have to tell you I am not leaving Sunland Park? I am not going to leave my parents. And I am not leaving my home.” A big drop of water fell from the ceiling and splashed on her plate, followed by a slow drip. Everyone's roofs had sprung leaks. I stared at her.

“What?” she said.

“You what,” I said.

Little Michael and Xochitl got up and left the room. Crucita folded her arms. Her tight body language implied that once again I'd managed to screw up by alienating our children. “What?” I said. “Our kids had to be tested at school for TB because it's on the rise again. The truck driver who just had lunch in a restaurant here is having breakfast in Utah mañana. Our crisis today in no-man's-land is tomorrow's national epidemic.”

“Mike, do you ever stop lecturing?” Crucita said. Then without further ado she pushed back her chair and got up. “I promised this women's shelter in Juárez that I would try to raise some money for them. Their government funding was just cut off. I'm going to make some calls.”

She left, and after a minute or so I got up and went to the living room. All our family pictures were still on the mantel. Crucita was sitting on the couch with the cordless phone on her lap and her phone book out. We stared at each other. She was wearing her hair differently, blond streaks going through her natural black hair. It came off incongruously becoming, like a lot about her. Crucita had always looked to me like a cross between a Tarahumara and Sally Fields. Lately she looked more like a sunburned Norma Rae than the perky Flying Nun.

We were all wiped out.

I sat down next to her. “Your daughter thinks she's fat,” I said. “She weighs ninety-eight pounds soaking wet.”

“She weighs one hundred and ten, like me,” Crucita said.

“That's not fat.”

Crucita shrugged her shoulders. Women and their weight—you could never win that argument, I thought, observing my own growing gut. She changed the subject. “Lots of horrible stuff goes on across the border and not just related to water shortage,” she said.

“That preacher treating you all right?” I asked.

“I'd kick his hiney if he didn't. You know that,” she said, almost smiling. “What about your friend up there at the school?”

I had told her about Regina's brother gone missing. I had tactfully left out my interest in the redhead, but women always sense these things. Before I could answer she asked, “Did you hear anything about her brother?”

I shook my head.

“Well, maybe I can ask around over there,” she said, gesturing her head south, toward J-Town.

“You'd do that?” I asked, frankly surprised by the offer. We were not husband and wife anymore or even friends to go out of our way for each other.

Nodding, she let out a heavy sigh. That was my ex's way of reminding me how weary my presence made her. It was how she felt. She didn't have to justify it, she would have said, if asked. And had, plenty of times.

REGINA

LA B
U
SQUEDA DE UN SUE
N
O AMERICANO PUEDE SER TU PEOR PESADILLA
.

Every time I go to the Grupo Beta office in Juárez and wait for la Señorita Edwina to talk to me, I stare at that sign on the wall, like it is a snake getting ready to bite. “The search for the American Dream could be your worst nightmare.”

The purpose of Grupo Beta, a Mexican government agency, is to discourage illegal immigration. They drive all around and hand leaflets that warn of the dangers to immigrants trying to cross. La Señorita Edwina is on the phone. She is combination office manager and agent. Short-handed, she always says, “Maybe you want to volunteer?” This is my third visit. After school, I waited in the long line to cross into México. On the way back I'll wait in another long bumper-to-bumper line.

How I found out about Grupo Beta was from un trabajador near my place. He was out picking cotton. I stopped while I was driving by. First I honked. Honked, honked. Then I called to the men and women hunched and sweating. Only one looked up at me. He finally walked over to my truck. “Sí, señora?” he asked. Maybe he thought I was a pa-trona myself and looking for gente to work for me. He took the opportunity of my interruption to remove the large straw hat he was wearing. He wiped his brow, which was wrapped with a dirty kerchief. I wasn't sure what I wanted to ask. It had something to do with finding out about Rafa's whereabouts. The man seemed a little surprised that a woman who looked like me, practically a gringa, would have un hermano in such a situation. Then el trabajador recommended I go to Juárez and ask about Rafa at the Grupo Beta office. “Maybe they found him,” he said.

I reached into my truck and pulled out a bottle of water to give to him. He shook his head. “It's not my break time.” Break time consisted of two ten-minute “breathers” out of a ten-hour day. As el trabajador went back to the field, I spotted a parked truck in the distance. Probably the supervisor, watching. I stared at the man as he returned to the endless rows of cotton. That had been me as a girl, I thought. Not a girl, but a robot, expected to have no feelings, no brain. That's why me and mi mamá got out of it. Getting legal status was easier said than done, naturally. We had to get our papers in order. That's all every immigrant in the world wants, to get her papers in order. To officially become a person. One day a machine will be invented to replace all the farm workers. Then what?