Luz, page 16
The tall man’s face softened into a smile as he spoke to me in English. My doctor said in Spanish, “This gentleman is an official from the police, and he wants to ask you a few questions.” As I looked into the dark eyes behind the silver frames, I knew that this was one time he hoped I’d remain silent.
They each pulled up a chair and sat beside my bed. With my doctor translating in soft hushed tones, I was asked once again, “What is your name? Where are you from?” And then, “Can you tell us what happened?” He held up a white board and held forth a pen.
I kept my breathing slow and even. I looked past both men into the gray sky beyond the window and tried not to hear their voices. I could see the top of a palm tree in the distance.
“Take your time. Any information at all is fine.”
I conjured the sound of the train’s rhythmic roar over the tracks. I even began to sway to the rhythm. Raataataat. Raataataat. Raataataat. Their voices became muffled. Raataataat. Raataataat. Fainter and fainter.
But the next question seemed to anger my doctor, for his voice rose above the rattling of my train, so I paused and listened.
“No,” he was saying, refusing to translate.
The thin man turned directly to me and said two words in English. Words that I knew well, for my father had said them to me before after making lists of numbers to add. In Spanish and then in English, he would say, “¿Cuántos? How many?”
“How many?” this man asked again softly. “How many . . . men?” He held up his hand, one finger, two fingers, then three. My doctor pushed back his chair and rose in anger.
“¡Basta! Enough!” he shouted.
But it was too late. Those simple words . . . how many . . . men . . . pierced through my walls and tore open my thoughts. I saw Rosa’s swollen face. I smelled the rancid breath of a man laughing above me.
“Rosa!” I screamed through clenched jaw. I writhed in agony feeling strong hands upon my body, holding me down, until the nurses came with the needle that made it all go away.
I responded to no one except the woman with the eyes of a saint. Her name was Ana. Ana Lopez. I answered her because she asked so little. “Juice or milk? Is this light too bright? Curtain open or closed?” Only once, she asked gently, “Quién es Rosa?” and when she saw my eyes and heard my groan, she let it be.
Of her, I asked three questions on the white board. “Where am I?” “How did I get here?” and “Was I alone?” She said that I was found lying by the entrance of the emergency room here in Nogales, Arizona—alone.
No one else in a similar state was brought in at that time. No young woman, no young man. Only me. Alone.
When she asked me where I was from—the United States, Mexico, Central America—I realized they knew nothing about me. In fact, I was referred to as Jane Doe. I didn’t answer, and she didn’t ask again.
It was the doctor, the perfect one, Dr. Ramírez, who would not let it rest, for he wanted to contact someone, anyone, who could bring me comfort, he said.
But I deserved no such thing.
I stopped moaning for the medicine so that I could feel the pain. In fact, I worked at making it worse—tightening my jaw repeatedly or jerking my shoulder back and forth—when no one was there, of course. And I made myself remember everything . . . vividly . . . so I would endure it again and again. This I deserved. For it was all my fault.
Ana watched me quietly. She was not a nurse, I discovered, but an aide, and so could not bring me medicine. But she tried to ease my pain in other ways, even when I said no. A soft pillow under my shoulder, a gentle massage at the base of my neck. Once I saw her add some herbs to a drink that she then coaxed between my lips. Yet I noticed that when doctors or nurses entered the room, she seemed to disappear into the surroundings. If spoken to, she would cast her eyes downward and draw into herself, then nod and hurry off to get whatever was demanded.
One evening she entered my room with an uncharacteristic air of nervousness. Pulling up a chair, she actually sat down and whispered that she’d overheard the nurses talking. They said that it was believed I had been attacked while crossing the border. Apparently, my sunburned face, cactus scratches on my arms and legs, blisters on my feet, as well as a degree of dehydration, gave it away. They also said that a similar attack had happened weeks before.
“They are planning to move you.” Ana spoke so quickly I had to focus on her Spanish, as her dialect was slightly different. “They are sending you to an immigrant detention center soon, where it’s hoped you will recover from your injuries and co-operate with authorities. If you don’t, you could be kept indefinitely at the center, and, mi niña, it is like a prison there.”
As I listened, I pushed aside my rising fears and decided this was the punishment I deserved. Imprisonment would be an apt penance.
But Ana had another plan. She said she could sneak me out of the hospital and take me somewhere where I could get strong. When I shook my head, she wisely whispered, “Once you’re strong, you will be better able to find out about . . . Rosa.”
I turned anguished eyes to hers and mumbled slowly through my lips, “I know about Rosa. Ya sé de ella.”
My stomach churned as I imagined her abandoned body decaying just like those we had come upon together. And all because of me. I had insisted we cross again. I had convinced her—pushed her—to try just one more time. And I had led her to an end far worse than the one she had feared in the desert. In the desert, we might have kept the hope of imminent rescue alive. In the desert, we might have had time for a coming to peace. But the end she met was one of despair and terror. I might as well have stripped off her clothes for them.
I turned away from Ana and curled up into a tight ball. My shoulder throbbed; I yanked it over harder still.
But she persisted. “You don’t know. You don’t know anything for certain. Ahora escúchame. Perhaps someone found her, and they’re caring for her.” Ana leaned in closer, “Someone who would not go to authorities.”
I knew she was onto me. I knew she was trying to save me from myself, but she had a point. What if Rosa was alive? What if she needed me? If I had survived, perhaps Rosa had, too, and Manuel. Oh, my sweet Manuel. What fate had he met at their cruel hands? I remembered the chilling silence when I shouted for him near the end. He’d have been better off riding the trains with the boys from Guatemala. But he’d chosen to stay with me.
I turned to Ana and for the first time looked into her eyes without turning quickly away. The pain reflected there was overwhelming. I grasped her hand.
Tears flowed as she spoke haltingly, “My father and brother died in the hands of heartless men in Guatemala during the war,” she paused and drew in her breath, “so I do understand . . . a little.” She stroked my face the way my father used to do when I would carry on the night before his departure. “So, you must get strong . . . for Rosa.”
I closed my eyes and saw Rosa’s face, the swan-like curve of her neck, and Manuel’s tender eyes beneath his tangled mass of hair; this time, I let my tears fall. First in gentle trickles and then in torrents. I hiccupped and sobbed, gasped and choked. Ana sat with me until, exhausted, I fell into a deep sleep.
The next day around noon, Ana walked into my room and pulled the stained white curtain around my bed. Tugging at her own clothes, she removed her blue nurse’s smock and pants, revealing a second set underneath.
“Let’s get these on quickly,” she whispered, helping me out of my patient gown and into her uniform. Then she placed the patient gown back over the smock. In a flash, she disappeared into the hall, returning with a wheelchair. After helping me into the chair, she slipped blue shoe covers over my bare feet, then covered me from the waist down with a blanket. I could hear the woman in the bed beside me snoring deeply, while the TV blared with religious music and a man’s voice ranted rhythmically. Whisking back the curtain, Ana wheeled me casually down the hall. We turned right twice, ending up in a short, deserted hallway. Ana helped me to my feet, removed the blanket and gown, and folded up the wheelchair.
Placing it to one side, she turned to me and said, “Let’s see if you can make it down one short flight of stairs and out the side door. My car isn’t far. If we pass anyone, just act like we’re on our way out for lunch. Be casual and relaxed. Keep your head down. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Todo saldrá bien.”
We walked around a corner and headed toward a door marked “Stairs.” My legs felt weak, but my heart pounded with such fervor, I felt I could fly. One step at a time, I descended down the metal staircase. No one passed us. No one saw us step out the door. Once in the parking lot, we walked toward a small white car—two nurse’s aides on their lunch break. Once settled in the front seat, I glanced up and saw a tall, slender tree, graceful as my Rosa, swaying gently beneath a vivid blue sky. I closed my eyes, and for a very brief moment, I let myself hope.
13
Not Knowing
My “escape” resulted in momentary chaos, a review of security policy, several reprimands, and a wide range of gossip. None of it touched Ana, for as she had expected, no one even noticed her presence that Sunday afternoon. And since it had not been her usual shift, she was not even questioned that evening when she appeared for work.
“I am hardly noticed when I’m there anyway,” she had told me quietly, a fact that clearly brought her pain, but worked to our advantage this time.
Ultimately, they concluded that whoever dropped me off at the emergency entrance had picked me up. Ana said Dr. Ramírez was quite upset and feared my life was in danger. Some official told him they’d let him know if I turned up on a coroner’s table.
Ana lived with her mother in a small, sparse apartment not far from railroad tracks, so as I lay on the sofa, I could feel the walls tremble and hear that familiar sound each time a train passed by. Strangely, it brought a comforting ache to my heart, just like the little shrine her mother had set up on the floor in one corner of their living room. In Guatemala, just as in Oaxaca, their shrine was arranged on the floor. Each evening, her mother, a tiny frail woman, would kneel on a small cushion before it, light the candles, and lift the rosary that lay in the painted dish in the center. She prayed for the souls of her husband and son who had been killed during the civil war in her country years before, and now she prayed for me as well.
Since they shared the only bedroom, I spent my days and nights on their dark green sofa wrapped up in a colorful afghan that one of them had crocheted. They left me to myself, let me sleep through the day, never questioned when I sat in the dark, and never lectured if I didn’t finish the food they offered. Neither did they object when I began to watch television from early morning, sometimes through the night. They seemed to know the necessities of this passage.
And bless their souls, they never panicked when my spine-chilling screams pierced the silent night. Dark dreams of snakes slithering around my limbs, tightening their grasp and pulling me down beneath sinking desert sands, or of large powerful hands bursting through the ground as I walked, grabbing my ankles, then my calves, and yanking me down, down, down through the earth. It became my ritual to wrap myself tightly in the afghan, my arms and feet safely cocooned inside and unexposed to the whim of any beast that might happen by in the night. Ana and her mother remained calm and patient during these outbursts. They would wake me from my terror gently, and then, while her mother would prepare warm atole, Ana would rub my back, switch on the television, and search until she found some light diversion.
One such night I saw an ad on TV for free legal aid for immigrants. Silently, I memorized the number and recited it to myself like a prayer. 1 520 629-8327. 1 520 6AYUDAR. Numbers always brought me comfort. As I chanted it softly to myself over and over, another number suddenly materialized in my mind: 1 818 555-7475. It was Berta and Diego’s phone number in Los Angeles. I thought of the tiny white paper that Rosa had carried in her bag and how she feared she’d lose it. I thought of my little box of stars and of my calla lily journal that Manuel had given me. Were they weathering beside Rosa and Manuel’s blessed bones? Or had they been trampled and scattered to pieces like my soul?
I imagined a pencil in my mind and tried to erase the numbers imprinted there, but they wouldn’t fade. I turned back to the telenovela I had been watching and turned up the volume.
Ana had spoken with her priest, who worked with the refugees and immigrants in the community, and he offered to make inquiries with border officials, as well as with church members, regarding any young women or men who might have been found injured or worse in the past month. She also insisted that I contact family or friends back home to let them know I was alive and to see if they had any word of Rosa. But I refused. I didn’t want anyone, especially Mamá and the Garcias, to know about our fate. Like Papá, let our whereabouts remain a mystery.
Exasperated, Ana said, “But think of the pain they are going through. The unknown can be the cruelest form of suffering. You should know that better than anyone else, no?”
I coldly replied through my wire-clenched teeth, “Knowing the truth—imagining each detail over and over again—that would be cruel. No saber, not knowing, is a gift.”
Ana sat with her hands in her lap and her head bowed as if in prayer, but I sensed her mind was not with God. And I was right, for she lifted moist eyes to mine and said, “Perhaps you are right. There are some things I wish I had never been told.” I knew she was thinking of the torture that preceded her father and brother’s deaths in Guatemala. She had told me their tragic story late one night after I’d angrily implied that she couldn’t understand my suffering. Now shaking her head, she said, “But you forget. You are alive. They need to know that.”
“No,” I answered, my heart rising to my throat. “I don’t want anyone to know the truth. ¡Nadie! I’ve done enough damage, ruined enough lives. To learn that I’ve survived is no joy in the face of what happened—of what I caused. It’s best they never know the truth. Nunca.”
Taking my hands, she pleaded, “Oh Alma, no, you must not think that way. You didn’t bring that evil upon yourself or Rosa. You are not to blame. Tú eres inocente.”
But I knew she couldn’t understand, so I simply pulled my hands away.
As for word of Rosa making it home, I knew in my heart that wasn’t so. No contact to Chiapas was needed to verify that fact. I prayed that the Garcias would never learn our fate. I couldn’t bear to lay that burden on their generous souls. The way I saw it, I’d spent years not knowing about Papá. Only now could I appreciate this gift he had given us, for he would always be alive for me somewhere. Waiting.
Six weeks from the date of my hospitalization, no unidentified bodies meeting Rosa or Manuel’s description had been found. A man’s wife died of dehydration in his arms. An older woman and two children were found dead beneath a bush with a half bottle of water beside them. Four young men were rescued by la migra just in time, though two were hospitalized. But no one had found a young woman or man. Not dead. Not alive.
I knew there was no hope left. I wanted to die. But that seemed too kind an escape.
Ana woke me late one morning and handed me a skirt and blouse. “Get dressed,” she said. “Today is the day we will set your jaw free.” The church had found a doctor who would treat me with no questions asked, and the time had come for my wires to be cut.
I had spent the past weeks in Ana’s blue uniform curled up on the sofa day and night. I’d lost considerable weight, not only because I was limited to liquids and some soft foods, but I had absolutely no appetite. In fact, the smell of food made me ill. So, when I put on her clothes, they hung on me like a child playing dress-up.
Looking in the mirror, I saw a stranger—a skeleton of the girl I used to be. My hair was matted; my eyes sunken into a thin face accented by dark circles that reminded me of my grandmother in Chiapas. Gone were my fleshy breasts and hips. Instead a bony, childlike body strangely contrasted with an old woman’s weathered face that looked dully back at me.
“We need to get you some new clothes, Alma,” Ana spoke behind me as she secured the waistband of the skirt with a safety pin.
I shrugged.
Her mother sat me in a chair and began gently brushing the tangles from my hair. “Are you nervous?” she asked.
“She probably can’t wait to get those wires off. Imagine how awful not to be able to eat or to really talk,” Ana answered for me.
“But it will probably hurt. She must be worried a bit. ¿Estás preocupada, mi niña?” Señora Lopez asked, stroking my arm.
“Doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. And I didn’t care, about feeling pain, eating food, talking, getting caught and deported. Nothing mattered. Nada.
I slumped in the front seat of Ana’s car and closed my eyes, opening them only when we arrived at the white rectangular building. The endless wait in the small sitting room made me restless for the simple reason that it lacked a TV. I longed for the monotonous voices that filled the silence. Finally, they called me in. The baldheaded doctor with scaly spots on his scalp drew blood from my arm, checked my heart and lungs, and asked for a urine specimen. The procedure itself to remove the wires was unpleasant, and as expected, my jaw was sore and stiff. None of this touched me in the least. I just wanted to curl up on a sofa and watch TV or sleep.
As I sat on the examining table, Ana spoke with the doctor beyond the closed door. When it opened, both entered with worried looks on their faces. My first thought was that the X-ray pictures were not good, and perhaps the wires needed to be replaced. I didn’t mind; in fact, I preferred to be muzzled like a dog.
So, when Ana took my hand and said, “Alma, there’s something you need to know,” I was ready, but what she said took my breath away, “You are pregnant, embarazada.” She waited and let the words linger. Then she continued, “The doctors knew this before we left the hospital, but Dr. Ramírez felt you were not ready to know yourself.” Ana took a deep breath and squeezed my hand. “They were going to tell you . . . they were going to talk to you about an abortion, if you wanted, and then, afterwards, send you to the detention center.” She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “I knew this and didn’t tell you. Lo siento. Forgive me. I felt you needed to get stronger first. I feared what this would have done to you . . . at the time.”
