American Dirt : A Novel (2020) (37 page)

‘Mijo.’

‘Are you okay?’ Marisol asks.

It’s not a question mark. It’s a sickle. And beneath the sickle, in fresh black paint, the slanted letters warn:
Vienen Los Jardineros
. Perched on the curved blade is an owl. La Lechuza
.
And then something new, something Lydia has not seen before: a perfect, faceless rendering of Javier’s distinctive glasses. The exact shape as to provoke in her memory the man himself. Where the lenses would be, someone has scrawled,
A
ú
n
te
est
á
buscando
.
He is still looking for you.

For me. He is looking for me, Madre de Dios.
Lydia turns on her heel. ‘Luca, come.’

‘But, Mami—’

‘Come!’ she snaps, her voice like a whip.

Marisol jogs to catch up with her. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks again.

After seventeen days, sixteen hundred miles. Here, on the doorstep to
el norte,
los pinche
Jardineros. How flawlessly the artist has rendered Javier’s glasses! As if he’s familiar with them. As if he’s seen them in person, here, in Nogales. Lydia will fall down on the street. Her knees will give way. The wind passes through her body as if she’s mostly holes, a ghost already. Marisol reaches out to steady her.

‘We cannot go that way,’ Lydia says, and she’s walking quickly now, but not too quickly, not quickly enough to draw the attention of those three boys leaning against the wall of the bodega. Her arms feel clattery in their sockets, her knees liquid with panic.

‘Okay, it’s okay.’ Marisol puts an arm around Lydia’s shoulder, and they fall in step together, Lydia’s stride matching the older woman’s accidentally. And here’s Luca, tucking beneath her other arm. And they’re already half a block away, the other direction, and now they turn a corner onto a shadier street, and Lydia doesn’t know if the direction they’re going is any safer than the one they’d been traveling before, and does Marisol know where they’re going? Is she leading them somewhere? Lydia shakes herself out from beneath the woman’s arm.

‘Thank you, I’m fine now,’ she says. ‘I’m fine, we’re fine.’ She grabs Luca by the hand. ‘I just remembered something we have to do,’ she says. ‘We’ll see you back at the apartment later.’

Marisol stops, confused. ‘Oh.’

‘We’ll be back soon,’ she says, and she drags Luca across another street, and they leave Marisol standing alone in the middle of the road.

They have to get off the street, out of sight. Away from anyone who might recognize them. Los Jardineros are here, in Nogales. Perhaps as an alliance. Perhaps as a test market, a turf war. Perhaps only to hunt her, to find her, to take her back to Javier so he can finish the job of eradicating Sebasti
á
n’s entire family in return for Marta’s death. Lydia can see it as if she’s there, in that dorm room in Barcelona: a creaking sound from above. Marta’s feet swinging slightly in their navy-blue tights, one chunky black shoe still clinging to her left foot, the right one fallen to the floor beneath. Lydia squeezes her mind closed against the image, and against the certainty that Javier would follow her here, will follow her indefinitely, across anyone’s territory, until he finds her. Only in
el norte
will his power be diminished. In
el norte,
where there’s no impunity for violent men.
At least not for violent men like him,
she thinks.

There are no sidewalks here; the garden gates and shopfronts sit directly at the edges of the streets. Cars have to swerve around the pedestrians. There’s no place to hide. They turn at the next corner and head back the way they came. Lydia’s not wearing her hat. Why didn’t she wear her hat? She hates that floppy, pink thing. She’d liked the idea of liberating herself from it long enough to buy groceries and pretend normalcy for an hour. Until the graffiti it had felt like a jaunt. Things had gone well yesterday at the bank. The apartment was comfortable. They were so close! She had let her guard down.
Est
ú
pida.

An old woman leans against her door jamb and calls out to them as they pass, ‘
¿Fruta, pan, leche, huevos?
’

It’s not the supermarket Lydia’d been in search of, but maybe it’s better: a woman selling the basics out of a makeshift shop in the dark front room of her house. They duck inside and Lydia keeps an eye on the street through the open door. They buy eggs, tortillas, onions, an avocado, and some fruit.

‘Do you have a hat?’ Lydia asks her.

‘A hat?’ The woman shakes her head.

‘Or a scarf? Anything for my hair?’

‘No.
Lo siento
.’

‘It’s okay. Thanks anyway.’

‘Wait.’ The woman snaps her fingers and totters into the kitchen. She returns with a thin blue dish towel adorned by a pattern of flowers and hummingbirds. She presents it to Lydia like a bottle of fine wine, and gestures that she could use it to cover her hair.

‘How much?’ Lydia asks.

‘Cien pesos.
’

Lydia nods, and ties the cloth over her hair like a handkerchief.

‘What about for him?’ The old woman points at Luca with her chin, and Lydia turns to look at him, confused. ‘Are you crossing?’ she asks, this time using her chin to point north, toward
la frontera.

Lydia hesitates for only a moment and then confesses. ‘Yes, we’re crossing.’

‘He needs a coat,’ the lady says. ‘It gets very cold.’

‘He has a sweatshirt and a warm jacket.’

‘Wait.’ The woman disappears into the kitchen again, and Lydia and Luca can hear her banging through cupboards or closets, shifting things around, dragging a box across the floor. Luca giggles in the leftover quiet, but Lydia’s too nervous to join him. She eyes both doorways, interior and exterior. When the lady returns, she’s carrying two lumps of knitted blue yarn, which she spreads out across the counter so Lydia can assess their shapes: a hat and scarf. Perhaps a little too big for Luca, but the yarn is thick and warm. Lydia touches the soft wool with her fingertips, and nods.

‘How much?’

The old woman waves at Luca. ‘
Un regalito,
’ she says.
‘Para la suerte
.
’

They move through the streets as quickly and carefully as they can. Each window and door they pass feels like a possible booby trap. She counts their steps to try and keep herself calm. Luca carries the eggs and tortillas. She carries the bag with the produce. She considers Marisol as they go, her apparent kindness and sorrow. Behind Lydia’s fear, she might
find room to feel bad about the abrupt way she left Marisol standing in the street. The fact that she hadn’t followed them, hadn’t insisted or attempted to redirect them, that feels to Lydia like probable evidence that she’s no nefarious actor. She probably is who she claims to be: a deported mother, desperate to return to her daughters in California. When Lydia sees the house where their apartment is, she holds her breath. She looks behind her. Only one car on the street. It approaches slowly, and Lydia doesn’t exhale until it rolls past them, the elderly couple inside giving Luca a friendly wave as they go.

‘Thank you, God,’ she says out loud when they step through the door and close it behind them. She leans against it for a moment and allows herself to breathe before, together, she and Luca descend the steps back into the apartment. There are voices and laughter below, and it’s warmer inside than on the street – humid with people. Lydia walks in, and when she gets to the bottom step, she drops her grocery bag to the floor.

‘Surprise!’

Lorenzo is seated on the black leather couch.

Lydia cannot immediately respond. An avocado rolls out from the toppled bag. Her terror causes a speech delay. She pushes through it. ‘What are you doing here?’ She picks up the wobbling avocado.

‘Same as you, going to
el norte
.’

The avocado resting in her hand is like a still life. ‘But how did you find us?’

‘
Puta,
don’t flatter yourself,’ he says. ‘I didn’t find you. I found El Chacal. It just happened to be a nice surprise when I walked in and saw the hottie twins were here.’

Marisol is in the kitchen with a glass of water, and the two men with the low hats are seated at the counter with a deck of cards. Lydia stands behind the couch across from Lorenzo, who’s sprawled back on the facing sofa.

‘Anyway, this guy is the best coyote in Nogales,’ Lorenzo says. ‘What’d you think, nobody else would know that?’

‘You’re not
.
.
.’ She doesn’t know how to finish the question, so she doesn’t. It hangs, half-formed.

He has black shorts on now, and his skin has been darkened a shade or two by the sun, but everything else about him is the same: the diamond stud earrings, the flat-brimmed baseball cap, slightly sun-faded, but still clean. His socks are remarkably white for a migrant, but his expensive shoes are beginning to look worn. He sits up and swings his feet to the floor in front of him. ‘Look, I know I make you uncomfortable, and I don’t really give a shit. It’s not my problem,’ he says. ‘But I swear I didn’t follow you, I wasn’t looking for you. Just like I told you, I’m done with all that Jardinero shit. I’m out.’

Lydia studies him for a moment. Because there’s nothing she can do about any of it, about the graffiti announcing Javier’s presence, about the sickening proximity of Lorenzo, about feeling acutely distrustful of everyone she meets: Marisol, who emerges from the kitchen to retrieve and unpack the groceries, the men sitting at the counter playing cards, Lorenzo smirking on the couch. Any one of them could mean her harm. Any one of them could murder Luca in his sleep. They haven’t done it yet. So perhaps they won’t. Lydia rubs her thighs through her jeans. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, his being here. The graffiti.

‘Okay,’ she says.

‘
As
í
que tranquila.’

She regards him for another moment. ‘But if it’s true,’ she says. ‘If you’re really out?’ She lets a beat pass so she can focus, measure her words. ‘Then there’s something you should know.’

‘Yeah? What’s that?’

‘Los Jardineros are here.’

A calculated disclosure. Sharing this information may benefit her in a number of ways.

‘In Nogales?’ he asks.

She nods. Perhaps he’ll feel indebted to her. In any case, there is this: the opportunity to observe his reaction. And he does react. He blanches. Gone is the smile, the arrogant posture. He sits up and clears his throat. His shoulders hunch automatically, so Lydia can see it’s authentic. Lorenzo is afraid.

‘How do you know?’ he asks.

‘I saw their graffiti.’ She sits down on the arm of the opposite couch. She’s aware of the two men at the counter, listening. Their cards remain in their hands.

‘Close by?’

‘A few blocks from here.’ She turns to Luca. ‘Why don’t you go check on the girls. See what Beto is up to.’ He scoots down the hall into the bedroom where they all slept last night. To Lorenzo she says, ‘You want an omelet?’

* * *

While the two women are cooking, Soledad escapes the apartment. What felt spacious for the five of them is cramped with nine, especially with the reappearance of that revolting
naco
Lorenzo.

They’re in the far west of the city, only steps from the border, and Soledad paces the street outside, up and down the hill, watching the emptiness on the other side. The border is unnatural here, a sharp and arbitrary line that slashes through the desert, restraining the surging city behind it to the south. There is almost nothing Soledad can see on the northern side of that line – perhaps there really isn’t anything over there, or perhaps whatever’s there is hidden by the buckles and folds of the landscape. On her third trip down the hill, she goes a little farther and finds a remarkable place where the landscape funnels into itself. There’s a bald patch of dirt beside the road, and a little berm built up there that looks like a ramp. Indeed, the berm is higher than the fence because of a significant dip where the border is lower than the road. Soledad stands on this ramp, and her heart soars across like a bird. She could almost run and launch herself across. She might manage to jump it from here. She scrambles the few feet down the gravelly embankment to where the rusty red fence digs into the earth, and she wraps her fingers around two of the thick red posts, and leans her forehead against the bars, and she
can see very clearly then that the fence is only a psychological barrier, and that the real impediment to crossing here is the technology on the other side. There’s a dirt road over there that follows the jagged landscape wherever it leads. The road is worn smooth by the regular accommodation of the heavy tires of the United States Border Patrol. Soledad cannot see them, but she can sense them there, just out of sight. She sees the evidence of their proximity in the whirring electronics mounted on tall poles that dot the hillsides. She doesn’t know what those contraptions are – cameras or sensors or lights or speakers – but whatever they are, she can sense that they’re aware of her presence. She sticks her hand through the fence and wiggles her fingers on the other side. Her fingers are in
el norte
. She spits through the fence. Only to leave a piece of herself there on American dirt.