Norte Read online

  Martín wrote in his notebook: M a r t I n. He had learned to spell his name when he was little in the classes his father taught for the hacienda workers where he and his mother labored. Something inside told him it was better that he didn’t say what country he was from. Mr. Walker was just making nice, acting like he was a friend, but what he really wanted to do was to extract information. Maybe even arrest Atanacio. These folks are double-crossers.

  Mr. Walker asked him for his last name. Martín didn’t know it, he’d never had a birth certificate, and he signed his marriage license with an X. He scribbled an X on the sheet of paper. Mr. Walker looked at him as if he didn’t understand. Another X. Mr. Walker signaled him to stop. Martín made another X. And another. And another. Just to prove that he was able to make things appear whenever he felt like it.

  Martín closed his eyes. Mr. Walker disappeared. Let him know his power.

  Mr. Walker picked up Martín’s wallet from a tray. The police had confiscated it, but there wasn’t anything there to steal. He pulled out the photo of María Santa Ana and his girls. Martín’s manner softened. Just look at that woman, so good and so beautiful.

  Teófila. Agustina, the middle one. And Juana. No Candelario.

  Mr. Walker asked the name of his hometown. Martín stared at his shoes.

  Mr. Walker got up and left. Martín stayed in his cell. The rest of the day he drew toads and stone showers in his notebook.

  A few days later they moved him to a building with shiny walls painted white and landscaped gardens. He could tell it was a hospital.

  He closed his eyes to see if the hospital would disappear. It did.

  He opened them. Better not take any risks.

  Maybe it’s his head what should disappear, not the hospital.

  Damn coco.

  He spent the whole day being shuffled from one room to another. Men and women in white robes and plastic gloves and canvas shoes told him to open his mouth. Close your mouth. Undress. Lie down. Get dressed.

  They hammered his knees. They poked his chest. They checked his back. They pointed their machines at his ribcage.

  He was ashamed. One of these x-rays might show why it was so hard for him to speak.

  They sent him back to his cell.

  Two days later, Mr. Walker came to clarify things for him. Martín understood they were moving him to another building. They would take better care of him there. It would only be for a little while, until they were able to resolve his case. They never asked for his opinion, they just did what they saw fit.

  Must be a hospital for prisoners of war, Martín concluded.

  He’ll have to put up a fight then. Make the place disappear. Like that time when he was a boy and went to the circus with his father. The clowns scared him so badly that he shut his eyes for a long time. But he got to feeling sorry for the people in the stands, so he opened them again. But only the clown, a trapeze artist, and a scrawny tiger came back again. He cried and cried because everyone else was gone, the elephant, the sword swallower, all gone, and he didn’t know where they had gone. That’s how he learned the lesson to be more careful with what the good Lord had given him. He’d learn better, perfect the technique, figure out how to bring everything back, or nothing at all. Things shouldn’t be separated like that, some here and others there.

  Mr. Walker extended his hand, Martín smiled and shook it firmly.

  4

  Villa Ahumada, 1984

  Justino and Medardo were hiding out at an uncle’s house in a neighboring town. At first Jesús had drifted around the streets of Villa Ahumada sleeping in the plaza, at the foot of a statue of Fray Servando. Then he snuck into Father Joe’s church to hide and spent a few nights there sleeping in the pews. The nave was broad, out of proportion for the size of the town. The plaster-cast saints, decked in gold leaf, looked down at him from alcoves along the walls. Santa Engracia’s cracked face trembled in the heat of the forest of candles placed before her, always ready to help the lovesick. San Alonso looked skyward, his chest covered in wounds, feet chained, pleading for divine intervention against mortal illness.

  Jesús only went out to eat. When he did, he saw the photos of Suzy in the newspaper, her face smashed in by his own fists (“Murderers Brutally Assault Working Girl”; “They Drank Her Blood!”; “Police Haven’t Ruled Out Satanic Ritual”); he ripped out the article and photos and shoved them in his pocket. He got a kick out of reliving the scene. No more voices, though, just an overwhelming silence: Justino and Medardo’s mouths moved, but he couldn’t hear them; the woman screamed, but he couldn’t hear her. All that existed within the silence was a blinding sense of power, and the woman’s body sprawled on the stairs. The knife became an extension of his arm, and he used it sadistically, as if this is exactly what was expected of him. Every blow, every thrust of his knife puncturing her flesh with astonishing ease, turned him into the instrument of an avenging angel prepared to wield justice on earth.

  One day Jesús saw Father Joe enter the confessional and he decided it was high time he said something.

  Two women dressed in black were on their knees reciting prayers in the front pew. Jesús walked by, nodded in greeting, and continued to the confessional. He knelt down. Someone cleared his throat from inside the narrow confessor’s cubicle. He tried to discern the face through the jalousie. It was Father Joe all right. Originally from California, Father Joe measured well over six feet. His nose and cheeks carried the characteristic red tinge and patterning of a rampant case of rosacea. He had worked in an oil refinery in Texas when he was young and did stints in Monterrey every fifteen days. Partial as he was to alcohol and cheap whores, he just loved it when the time came to cross the border. But he screwed up and got sweet on one of the girls, and asked to be transferred out to Villa Ahumada to keep her close. When her boyfriend found out, he shot her dead. Overcome with sorrow and guilt, Joe looked for redemption by offering his life up to the Lord’s work.

  “Father,” Jesús said. “I have . . . something to confess.”

  “Same as usual?” the priest asked in his intimidating boom of a voice. He spoke decent Spanish after spending decades there, though his gringo accent was still thick.

  “Partly, yeah.”

  “Spit it out then, you know I have to hear you say it.”

  “I felt desire for my sister.”

  “I know. But have you done it again?”

  “Done what?”

  “What we already know. How many times has it happened since the last time you were here?”

  “Four. Maybe five.”

  “No way, so it’s getting worse?”

  “Have you seen my sister lately, Father?”

  “Don’t say it like that. You want me to congratulate you or something? Tell you it’s OK?”

  “But that’s not what I’m here to confess, Father. I want to talk about something else.”

  “The monsters again?”

  Jesús remained quiet. The nightmares had begun a few years ago. Monsters with green heads and nine fingers haunted his dreams. Jesús would fight them relentlessly, wearing a mask and carrying a sword. The monsters’ bloody, pock-marked cheeks didn’t intimidate him, instead they made him feel heroic, confident. Every time he was on the verge of death, some sudden noise would startle him awake, and he’d slowly come back to consciousness scrutinizing the objects littered around the bedroom he shared with Mamá and María Luisa—scribbled notebooks, dresses with broken elastic, photos and posters of masked wrestlers along the walls, cobwebs stuck to the cracked ceilings, the closet where he hid his collection of porn magazines.

  “Go on, son. Speak your mind.”

  He answered by taking the newspaper clipping from his pocket and sliding it to the priest, who read it and understood instantaneously.

  “You have twenty-four hours to get out of town. If not, if you . . . Son of a bitch!”

  The priest left the confessionary and disappeared through the doorway.

  He waited for Marí
a Luisa to get out of school. He sat guard near a cedar tree, riveted by the bustle and chaos of so many white uniforms when the bell rang; parents picked their children up by car, on bikes, daughters bought candies and snow cones at the entrance, they waved goodbye to each other, kissed one another on the cheek.

  María Luisa left together with a couple of friends; Jesús stalked them, keeping out of sight behind trees and in the shadows of the houses as they passed by, careful not to be seen in case one of them might turn around unexpectedly. Jesús considered how hard it would be to live in any city without his sister.

  When María Luisa said goodbye to her friends, Jesús put on his Mil Máscaras disguise and continued to follow her.

  As she reached the front door, María Luisa spun around and walked straight toward him. Jesús froze in midstep.

  Keeping a safe margin of a few feet, she said, “Will you take that mask off, please?”

  Jesús panted like a cornered wolf.

  “Please,” she insisted once more.

  She took the mask off his face with a single fluid movement of her right arm. She registered his bloodshot eyes, the tremble in his lips, and could hardly recognize the face and features of her onetime playmate, her brother. Jesús played back a scene from his memory of when they were in a pasture near the river frolicking one late afternoon a few years earlier, just before dusk. María Luisa had tripped and fallen, and he acted as though he meant to help her up but instead jumped on top of her, and took advantage to feel up her scrawny tits. He fumbled at her pants, trying to pull them down, and she screeched at him between sobs, “You’re not allowed to do that, please Jesús, don’t, you’re not allowed, not like that, not that.” Jesús came back to the present in a flash.

  “When are you coming back home?” she asked. “Mom’s worried about you.”

  Jesús wanted to say something, but his tongue couldn’t formulate the words. He stood frozen in the middle of the street, staring at her. María Luisa went up to him and hugged him. He laid his head on her chest that heaved under the effort to restrain her breathing, betraying how desperately she was trying to appear calm.

  “It’s me, María Luisa, I’m still the same person I’ve always been,” she said.

  Better she didn’t try to lie to him.

  He grabbed the mask back from her and took off running. He didn’t have the nerve to look her in the eye.

  Jesús left town that same afternoon, in a truck heading for Juárez.

  5

  Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 1985

  Jesús woke up with a start, drenched in sweat: his sister had appeared in his nightmare holding a meat cleaver in her hands.

  “You going to stab me with that thing?” he shrieked, and she nodded in assent and continued walking toward him one slow step at a time. Finally María Luisa stood over him, arms raised, ready to bring the cleaver down. He jolted awake, eyes open wide as dinner plates.

  He leaped out of bed and shuffled around in the dark room, trying to locate his underwear. He found the window shade and pulled it open. A pickup truck was parked crooked on Calle Guerrero, one of its wheels was up on the sidewalk. Posters with the slogan “We’ll Never Forget October 2” were glued all over town, announcing a Grupera band’s upcoming show.

  He didn’t feel like going to work today, waste his time patching tires and getting his hands filthy with engine grease.

  Braulio, one of his bosses at La Curva’s machine shop, had offered him the chance to run stolen cars over the border. “Piece a cake,” Braulio had said, “everything’s all set up.” He’d cross over to Texas and make his way to El Paso or Landslide, where the cars were waiting for him. All he has to do is drive back across the border, ningún problema.

  “But how do I get over there?”

  “A mule. It’s all arranged. If you end up in Landslide, you can jump a freight train to El Paso.”

  “And the border check?”

  “No worries, hermano. We have our arrangements.”

  “With the gringos?”

  “Everyone’s got a price, güey. You just drive the stolo across like nothing was up. The puercos never check anything traveling to this side.”

  It seemed easy. He’d already considered crossing, but not to come back.

  He didn’t trust Braulio, something about him was shifty and fly-by-night. Jesús’s gut told him to keep his distance. He’d be better off going to the town square where people hook up with coyotes to cross over, he thought; see how much it’d cost. Problem was the lack of cash. Though he couldn’t complain: not a year in Juárez and he’d already landed a job.

  He grabbed the plastic Mil Máscaras action figure from its spot on top of the television set. Mil Máscaras, there’s a smooth operator, Jesús thought. He’d sneak up on his adversaries without them ever noticing, then pin them down in a cross-body block and deal the final blow for victory. Why weren’t he more like Mil Máscaras, able to cross the border on his own? Have the right moves to bring those haters down who stand guard and don’t let anyone else access the country—think they’re such badasses.

  His neighbor was listening to the radio full blast, some program with news of the people who had dared to cross by themselves. He thought about it but always chickened out in the end. Would Papá have come this way to cross? How’d he do it? By himself or with polleros and coyotes? Was he still alive? If so, where?

  Every once in a while, he’d hang around the vicinity of Juárez Bridge and watch the bustling lines of people on their way over to El Paso; he wished he was one of them but didn’t have the papers. Graffiti sprayed on the wall said, “No human is illegal” and “Death to the Empire,” and he agreed with the slogans. A line of buildings cut a silhouette against the sky in the distance. Signs of the promises offered on the other side hung there in full view: “Wells Fargo” and “Chase.”

  Something might happen to that radio, Jesús thought. It could fall over the balcony. Or the neighbor lady too, nobody’d even notice.

  Some people crossed at the narrow segment of the river, near El Paso, then got sucked into the city streets and disappeared. They’d hide and wait till the Migra’s jeeps finished making their rounds. There were sections of the barbed-wire fence on the other side that were either broken or down altogether. Braulio suggested that he take that route: it’s risky, but if you make it through, everything else was in his favor.

  He combed his hair back in front of the mirror, which was cracked into two parts. He put on his pants, a shirt, and a University of San Diego baseball cap, then walked down the hallway on the second floor of the boarding house and out onto the street. A sudden blast of hot, merciless wind nearly took his breath away.

  He liked to pass by the train station on his way to work. Curiosity got the better of him, and he decided to duck into the building with its stucco walls and rusty iron braces that clutched the oblong ceiling. A deaf-mute held out his hand asking for money, but he ignored him.

  The arrivals and departures sign announced trains coming from and going to cities on the other side of the river. A policeman eyeballed him uneasily. The ticket seller, a plump woman with robust braids, attended a long line of passengers. A family stood together by the tracks next to a pile of suitcases; the children played atop one of them, made of black polyethylene.

  He wondered how much a ticket would cost.

  Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have papers.

  Exiting the station, he caught sight of a freight train in the distance, a red-and-yellow-striped locomotive with rusty, ochre-colored boxcars. He drew closer and read Burlington Northern on the side.

  The train seemed to go on forever. It moved him to watch how sluggishly it rolled along the tracks.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent quietly doing oil changes, repairing radiators, and fixing worn-out brakes. He kept his mouth shut when his coworkers teased him, even when they called him a retard. If they only knew, he thought to himself, who they were messing with.

  But it was better f
or him—for them—that he keep a low profile and just ignore them.

  When his shift ended, he headed over to the cantina where Rocío worked. He sat down and asked for a chela. The place was empty. Flies scurried across tabletops and windows. The waiter stood at the end of the bar, lazily working a crossword puzzle. The cook watched him, leaning against the kitchen door with his arms folded. A singer’s grainy voice crooned a narcocorrido over the speakers, pledging allegiance to the “court of el Señor de los Cielos,” the drug lord who had taken over the Juárez cartel and used his fleet of jets to traffic across the border.

  As soon as the song was over, Jesús sauntered to the jukebox and selected a few tracks by Juan Gabriel and ABBA.

  Rocío finally showed up, wearing a blue skirt and shell-pink top. Jesús loved her big balloon tits and meaty thighs. She had an ex-lover’s name tattooed on her right forearm, and promised to have it removed as soon as she had enough guts, it hurt so bad when she got it done in the first place. Jesús gave her a peck on the cheek.

  “What’s up? Didn’t expect you here so soon.”

  “Slow day. Boss let us off early.”

  “Nobody around here ever lets me go early. You good?”

  “Good as can be.”

  “I can’t talk now, you know.”

  “Ain’t no one here but me.”

  “And my boss is a cabrón. Pick me up in two hours?”

  “Let me finish my beer first.”

  Rocío grinned at him flirtingly before vanishing into the kitchen.

  Jesús was waiting for her by the exit. He grabbed her hand and they went to a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, where she rented a room with its own bathroom in an elderly couple’s home.

  They greeted the owners politely as they walked by on their way to Rocío’s room. The man had been a cop and remembered the days when the only people who needed arresting were the trafficking crooks who precharged people to cross the border, then left them stranded. His wife was addicted to soap operas. At times she’d look at the man snoring on the couch next to her as if he were some trespasser who came only to aggravate her by hiding the remote whenever she needed it.