The Heart Is Not a Size (8 page)

Hope you do, I wanted to say.

I didn’t.

It took another hour to get to our quarters—past clanked-up cars; past roadside vendors; past women walking, old men walking, children, crowds of children—hundreds of them. They moved along beside the
road with steady determination, or they were carried by their mothers, or they were chasing one another, laughing; and where, I wondered, were they going, what was waiting for them, at the end? I pressed against the window and took photographs—through the dust, through the traffic, child after child.

We arrived at last at a tiny, gated-in church located on a hard-dirt road in a part of Juárez where we were not
ever
—we were three times cautioned—to go walking. Some of us were to sleep in the miniature chapel, some in the kitchen, some in the two tight rooms that had probably been designed for storage, and the rest of us up a flight of stairs that seemed to have been nailed there only seconds before our arrival.

“Up there?” Riley asked. We’d sat together in the van, with Sophie one seat up—beside Sam and Corey, who had stopped playing their card game and had stopped talking, too, taking their cues, it seemed to me, from the big guy. It was Jazzy who had provided running commentary as we drove, until even she couldn’t think of words for what we saw. Mr. Thom had driven, with Mrs. K. beside him. He was blond and young looking; he was Corey’s dad. Mrs. K. had long, brown
wavy hair held back by a broad white band. She looked glamorous with her sunglasses on, and she was an older version of her daughter, Catherine, who had traveled in the other van. Now Mrs. K. stood in the courtyard with her suitcase in one hand, looking around at her lodging options, looking, as I’d been looking, at the scarily rickety stairs.

“I’m making a claim,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. I gathered my things, headed for the stairs, tested the first step with my foot. Riley was right behind me, Sophie second. Mrs. K. wasn’t too far behind.

“Catherine wants the kitchen,” she said as a way of explaining her decision to room with us. She waited until Riley, Sophie, and I had reached the thin plywood landing outside the second-floor room before she started to make her way up. She hoisted her bag high with both her hands, then realized she needed a way of steadying herself. “Well, this is sweet,” she said; “the whole thing’s swaying.” And just like that, Riley was down the steps helping Mrs. K. with her bag. It was half her height and twice her width, that suitcase. I could see only Riley’s head and feet.

“If your mother could see you now,” I said.

“Except that she can’t,” Riley said, and yipped.

Again Sophie started laughing. “Don’t get her started,” I warned. “Believe me.”

The upstairs room had just one puny window. It had five bunk beds that were built of wood, and that was it—no sheets, no pillows, no blankets, no mattresses. There was a red-tile floor and a loose pane of reflective glass on the far wall. “For primping,” Riley said. Mrs. K. lifted her heat-dampened hair off the back of her neck and removed her huge sunglasses.

“You know what the worst part is?” Mrs K. asked, wiping a bead of sweat off her face.

“What’s that?” I asked when it was clear that she wasn’t about to answer her own question.

“The worst part is that this was my idea. ‘College résumé,’ I kept saying. I had to force Catherine to go.” I remembered Catherine sitting all sullen faced at the airport and on the plane. I remembered her shoving her way into the van she knew her mother wouldn’t be taking.

“I think there’s just so much to love,” Riley said, and now she opened the plank door that had slammed
shut behind us and swung her arms open to Juárez. We stepped out with her onto the wobbly second-floor landing and stood together watching the others below us, watching Sam, Corey, and Jazzy, mostly, who were already deep in a game of Hacky Sack. Corey was going knee-to-ankle with the thing. Then he tossed it off to Sam, who chested it to Jazzy, who meant to hit it with her head, I guess, but it flew past her, hit the ground, threw up a cone of dust.

“My bad,” she said.

“Nice,” Jon said. He was standing there watching, leaning against the chapel wall beside Mariselle and Neil. They looked odd together, the three of them—Mariselle so tall and Jon so broad shouldered and Neil real skinny—and they had their arms tied across their chests, as if they couldn’t decide if Hacky Sack was cool or not, something they should move in on or something to despise.

Finally it was Neil who broke free from the wall. “Yo,” he said; and Jazzy tossed him the sack and he spun on one foot, then tossed the thing off his head like Jazzy was supposed to have done in the first place. Sam made a dive for it and saved it, brushed himself
off. Corey got it next. He put on a show, then tossed it high; Neil was the one who took over.

“Anyone have a basketball?” Jon asked from the sideline. Nobody answered.

“God, it’s hot,” Mariselle said. She drew in a deep breath and exhaled, then slumped against the chapel wall as if she were bored already with everything Juárez. Now something caught her eye, and I followed her gaze—straight up to the rooftop next door. There were six men up there, in folding plastic chairs. Maybe I’d have stared, but Mrs. K. was drawing our attention across the courtyard and past the gate toward a little pink stucco house and a slender goose that stood like a guard dog at a post. Beside the goose sat an elderly woman who’d tethered the goose to the stoop with a rope.

“Georgia.” Riley nudged me. “Look at that.” Outside the gate stood a little girl—dark haired and well dressed and no more than five years old. She was sticking her nose through to our side of things, toward the big guy, Drake the Third, who, I realized, had been nowhere during Hacky Sack. He was kneeling down, making himself her height. He was talking quietly to her.

“Wonder who she is,” Riley said.

“Wonder who he is,” I said. “I mean, who he
really
is.” I took off my glasses, rubbed the lenses clean on my shirt.

Two women in white cooked for us that night—beans that softened to a purple, chicken in a tomato stew, tortillas. There were sodas without ice and sterilized water from a five-gallon jug and some kind of pineapple-watermelon drink that Mack said was safe but that Riley and Sophie and Jazzy and I decided to forgo—all of us sitting together at the two picnic tables that had been dragged out from somewhere onto the rubble. We’d cleaned up a little since the plane and the van, but we still didn’t look like much. Sophie’s weather-saturated hair fell limply to her shoulders. Riley’s streak of orange looked strangely harsh by the light of the setting sun.

Sam and Corey had already made some pact with Neil. Catherine was where her mother wasn’t. Jazzy had asked us, “Do you mind?” and Mariselle had come along sighing and stayed—sitting at the table’s end, near Mrs. K. The men on the neighboring rooftops had
doubled in numbers but were perfectly quiet, peaceful, neighborly even, just catching a breeze on the roof. The goose across the street was still. There was a yellow German shepherd-sized dog whose name was Lobo and who walked around us, nice enough, except for the fleas in his fur and the look in his eyes; and this is what we talked about, the six of us at our crooked table, while the sky turned from blue to black. When Mrs. K. said Lobo might have started life as a wolf, Mariselle rolled her eyes.

“This is a dog that wouldn’t hurt one of the fleas on its own back,” she declared. She squinted until her eyes got as small as two black dots.

“Do you think it ever rains?” Mrs. K. asked. “In Mexico?”

Now Mack—who hadn’t, I’d noticed, been eating at either of the tables—came out of the kitchen and stood by that door. He raised one hand and we all got quiet. “Welcome to Juárez,” he said. “We are grateful to Manuel and his family for sharing this home with us, and to Leonor and Concha, who will be keeping you well fed. By now you’ve all met Lobo.” The ears on the old shepherd went up in the direction of his name. He
trotted over to where Mack was standing and accepted Mack’s hand on his head.

“Today was a long day,” Mack continued. “Tomorrow will be longer. Sleep will be the most important thing that you will do tonight. Ten o’clock, lights out. You’ve got another hour. Remember that we’re here as emissaries, as good neighbors. No loud games or noises. No leaving the premises. No flushing anything but the obvious down the toilets. You’ll need to be dressed by six tomorrow morning. There’ll be cereal in the kitchen.”

He bent now to a cardboard box that was by his feet and pulled out a water bottle. “There is one of these for each of you,” he said. He reached into his shirt pocket. “And here’s a marker. Take a bottle, write your name on it. Take it with you everywhere. Refill it with the filtered cooler water that I provide.” Mr. Thom cupped his chin in his hand. Lobo stirred and walked away. Mack said, “I believe Leonor has your dessert prepared,” and he stepped aside to let the cook appear with a heaped-high plate of melons. She walked her plate to Mr. Thom’s table. Concha followed with a plate for us.

“They must be sisters,” Sophie said. “Same size, same eyes, same nose.”

“Probably Manuel’s sisters,” Riley said.

Mariselle yawned to prove she couldn’t care less.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Mrs. K. announced. “If you girls don’t mind.” We all understood what she was saying, which was “Please. I’d like to be alone.” Even Mariselle nodded; and Mrs. K. rose, made her way up the rattling stairs. Then she came back down with a bundle in her arms and went off toward the bathroom, pulling the plastic curtain door as closed as plastic curtains close.

Afterward—after Mrs. K. was through with her shower and the rest of us had gone two by two into the bathrooms, had brushed our teeth with the water from the cooler, had splashed our faces with the same stuff, had not forgotten (no one did) about the toilet trash—we were upstairs in the dark. I made Riley take the top bunk of our claimed set, afraid that if I did I’d smash straight through. I was the largest girl on this trip to Juárez, and I didn’t trust the thin plank beneath me, which made bizarre, creaking sounds when I turned.

“Hey, Riley,” I whispered when she was settled in. She dropped her hand over the side. I reached for it. “Sweet dreams,” I said. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Her voice was quiet. She seemed far away, all the way up there, and I felt all alone in this place to which we’d come—each of us for our own, still-secret reasons. Even the beads on the bracelet Riley had given me didn’t glimmer; there was no light shining through the puny window.

Sleep didn’t come, not that night. I tried every trick, but I was restless—dreaming when I wasn’t even asleep, drifting all around in my mind to thoughts of Kev and my mom, thoughts of the men on the roof, thoughts of the goose across the street, thoughts of Riley above, who was so quiet, too quiet, even in sleep. Who was too thin. I thought of how last night my mom had come to see if I’d remembered what I’d need, then drew me close for a kiss. “You’re my daughter,” she said, “and don’t you forget that.”

I said, “Mom, you know I won’t.”

“Apply your intelligence to every living thing—to where you go, to how you behave, to the way that you look after Riley, because, Georgia, you will have to
look after Riley. She’s not as good as you are at looking after herself.”

“I know that, too.”

“Don’t drink any water that isn’t bottled.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Don’t go anywhere alone.”

“It’s a cardinal rule.”

“Don’t think that you have to do everything that the boys do, only better. I know how you are, Georgia. But you leave those saws to them.”

I nodded, but it isn’t like a nod is a real promise.

Later that night I woke up sweating from a dream, those black wings inside my rib cage beating, my mother’s words—
Apply your intelligence to every living thing
—snaking through my blood. Because again my heart knew what my mind had avoided: Juárez was probably a hare-brained scheme; what were the chances—really—that I’d fly all the way there and come home stronger? I fought with the dark to free myself from my bed, struggled to wrest the weight from my chest. It was after two, and the house was quiet, and I headed for the stairs, my right fist against my heart to quiet the fury, to survive it. I needed the
night beyond, which finally I reached, stumbling out onto the porch and into the streets and heading for the fairgrounds, which were empty now, the horses long since talked back into their trailers and driven off, Riley’s stories floating somewhere in the caverns of their heads. I hadn’t had a panic attack in two months. Each one was bigger than the last.

We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows.

The words are from a poem Jack Gilbert wrote and Mr. Buzzby read toward the end of my sophomore year, when I finally stopped minding the class so much and settled in to learn. I walked the streets that night with that line in my head—walked until I could breathe again and stand up straight without collapsing. I was going to Juárez because I needed some perspective, some place where I could let the big bird free. My head knew things that my heart didn’t yet. I was privileged. I was smart. I had a future. It was time to believe in myself.

Now Dad’s laugh seemed a million miles away, and Kev didn’t seem, in memory, quite so annoying, and I wondered whether Geoff was out or barricaded behind his door. I thought about how cool the air in my own bedroom was. I thought about waking Riley, or even waking Mrs. K., who was breathing hard against her dream, or saying something loud enough for Sophie to hear—Sophie, who was rustling in her own sheets, who was either awake or unwittingly restless; but what would I say if I called to Sophie? Where does a story like mine begin?

I pulled the thin sheet off my legs and crawled out of the hard-plank bed, through the darkest dark. I felt around for the doorknob and opened the door, and then I was outside, sitting on the loose plank landing of the stairs, my knees up under my chin. There was no light to read by, no place to pace, nowhere else to be, no need to put on my glasses. Through the dark I could see the rooftop men who had fallen to sleep in their spectator chairs. Beyond them was the rise of mountains. I heard no morning birds, no honking goose, no Lobo. The day would come. It had to.