I wriggled out of my coat and handed it to her even though it was about three sizes too big for her. The sleeves covered her hands and the body of it reached almost to her knees. It reminded me of that day I first met her in the Dollar Tree. She’d been wearing that yellow sweater. She’d been swimming in it. Lost in it. Now she was lost in me. I shook my head and smiled. She made me think the craziest stuff, but I didn’t even care.
Maribel and I ducked under the lowered parking gates and walked across the empty lot, our sneakers making prints in the snow, our breath heavy in the air.
The sand, when we came to it, was covered by a dusting of snow. The barreling ocean waves were a silvery blue. We stood side by side and looked out at the vastness, the possibility of everything out there. Within the universe, I felt like a speck, but within myself I felt gigantic, the salt air filling my lungs, the roaring of the waves rushing in my ears.
“It’s so beautiful,” Maribel murmured.
I kept my hands balled in the pockets of my jeans while the cold air knifed at my lungs.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“This.” She held her arm up, the end of the coat sleeve flopping.
“Yeah,” I said, like it was no problem, which in a way it wasn’t. Forget about the trouble we were in, or who might be looking for us, or how, after this, it would probably be even harder to see her again. Forget all of that. I would have done anything for her.
I shifted my weight from side to side and clapped the edges of my sneakers together, knocking the wet sand off. I was freezing without my coat, but there was no way I was going to admit it. Goose bumps pricked up on my skin under my shirt, and a shiver spread across my back.
Maribel crouched down and ran her hand along the sand, barely skimming the surface. “So beautiful,” she said again.
I put my hand on her head, on her damp hair, and when I squatted beside her, she looked at me with her golden brown eyes and her long black eyelashes. I reached under her hair and put my hands behind her neck and kissed her. Her face was moist from the falling snow. Maybe I should have stopped, I don’t know. I should’ve given her a chance to come up for air or to protest or whatever. But when she put her hands on my shoulders, pressing her mouth to mine, I knew she wanted to be there as much as I did. I kissed her again and again and again, greedily, like I was making up for the time I’d lost, like I was making up for all the times I might not get to kiss her again once our parents found out what we’d done, like I was making up for my whole life when I hadn’t known her, which seemed unbelievable and like a crime. And by the time I finally pulled away, I wanted to devour her. I wanted to tackle her to the ground. I wanted to put my hands along every inch of her. I felt crazy—spinning lights, blurry vision, pounding ears—with want. Her face was flushed, and I was breathing fast. We were kneeling in front of each other. I slid my arms up under her shirt and felt her ribs and her hot skin under my hands. My fingertips brushed along her bra and I reached around to fumble with the hook until I gave up and lifted the whole band up over her breasts. I laid my hands on them, the softest things I’d ever felt, and she took a sharp breath. “Are you okay?” I asked, and she nodded. Under my pants, I could feel myself getting hard. I didn’t want it to happen again, though, the way it had that day in the car. I didn’t want Maribel to think I had a problem or something. So I dropped my hands to her waist and tried to take a breath, to calm down and just look at her. Maribel blinked. “You have snow in your hair,” she said. I smiled. “So do you.” I reached out and lifted a few strands of her hair, drawing them across my tongue, through my teeth, tasting her shampoo and the icy flavor of snow. I was shaking and my skin tingled. Maribel unzipped my coat and spread it open like wings, folding it around me as far as it would reach. I inched closer to her on my knees through the sand, and the two of us crouched together, huddled in my coat, listening to the crashing waves, our breath pulsing into the salty air, watching as the snow landed on the water and melted away. And then Maribel fell backwards, right onto her ass. She started laughing. “I knew it wouldn’t last,” she said. I knew it, too. But I wished like hell it would.
Micho Alvarez
I came from México, but there’s a lot of people here who, when they hear that, they think I crawled out of hell. They hear “México,” and they think: bad, devil, I don’t know. They got some crazy ideas. Any of them ever been to México? And if they say, yeah, I went to Acapulco back in the day or I been to Cancún, papi, then that shit don’t count. You went to a resort? Congratulations. But you didn’t go to México. And that’s the problem, you know? These people are listening to the media, and the media, let me tell you, has some fucked-up ideas about us. About all the brown-skinned people, but especially about the Mexicans. You listen to the media, you’ll learn that we’re all gangbangers, we’re all drug dealers, we’re tossing bodies in vats of acid, we want to destroy America, we still think Texas belongs to us, we all have swine flu, we carry machine guns under our coats, we don’t pay any taxes, we’re lazy, we’re stupid, we’re all wetbacks who crossed the border illegally. I swear to God, I’m so tired of being called a spic, a nethead, a cholo, all this stuff. Happens to me all the time. I walk into a store and the employees either ignore me or they’re hovering over every move I make because they think I’m going to steal something. I understand I might not look like much. I work as a photographer, so I’m not in a business suit or nothing, but I have enough money to be in any store and even if I didn’t, I have the right to be in any store. I feel like telling them sometimes, You don’t know me, man. I’m a citizen here! But I shouldn’t have to tell anyone that. I want to be given the benefit of the doubt. When I walk down the street, I don’t want people to look at me and see a criminal or someone that they can spit on or beat up. I want them to see a guy who has just as much right to be here as they do, or a guy who works hard, or a guy who loves his family, or a guy who’s just trying to do the right things. I wish just one of those people, just one, would actually talk to me, talk to my friends, man. And yes, you can talk to us in English. I know English better than you, I bet. But none of them even want to try. We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we’re not that bad, maybe even that we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate then?
It’s fucked up. The whole thing is very, very complicated. I mean, does anyone ever talk about why people are crossing? I can promise you it’s not with some grand ambition to come here and ruin everything for the gringo chingaos. People are desperate, man. We’re talking about people who can’t even get a toilet that works, and the government is so corrupt that when they have money, instead of sharing it, instead of using it in ways that would help their own citizens, they hold on to it and encourage people to go north instead. What choice do people have in the face of that? Like they really want to be tied to the underside of a car or stuffed into a trunk like a rug or walking in nothing but some sorry-ass sandals through the burning sand for days, a bottle of hot water in their hands? Half of them ending up dead, or burned up so bad that when someone finds them, their skin is black and their lips are cracked open? Another half of them drowning in rivers. And half after that picked up by la migra and sent back to where they came from, or beaten, or arrested. The women raped in the ass. And for what? To come here and make beds in a hotel along the highway? To be separated from their families?
And then there are a lot of people who come here because they actually want to try to do something good in this country. In my case, I was working at a newspaper in Sinaloa for years, trying to report on the drug war, trying to make people there aware of what was happening in their own backyard, but my bosses only had an appetite for the macabre. They kept sending me out to take photos of crime scenes that they’d plaster on the front pages. I did it at first because I thought, you know, that’s what people needed to see. Maybe people would be shocked into action. But after a while I realized that it was all just spectacle. Photos of decapitated bodies weren’t helping anyone. So I wanted to come to the other side, across the border. No one here wants to admit it, but the United States is part of México’s problem. The United States is feeding the beast, man. I thought maybe if I came here, I could make a difference.
Now I work with a group in Wilmington that’s advocating for legislation reform for immigrants. I do all the photographs for their newsletter and their website. Pictures of people’s living conditions or of some bodily harm that they suffered because they got jumped just for being brown in this country. I don’t know. We don’t make much progress most of the time. But what else am I gonna do? I gotta fight for what I believe in.
Alma
That Friday I waited by the front window for Maribel’s bus to bring her home from school. Tiny flowers of frost were etched across the windowpane, and I puffed my breath against the glass, watching it fog up and dragging my finger through the condensation.
I checked the clock on the oven. It was an old oven, scabbed with rust, and I remembered my dismay at seeing it when we first arrived. Nothing at all like the tile and clay oven I had in Pátzcuaro with its wide wood mantel. I watched the hands on the clock tick around calmly. It’s still early, I told myself. I bit my thumbnail and waited. And yet, after ten more minutes, there was no sign of her.
I put on my coat and boots and walked downstairs, standing under the balcony overhang, looking around. The grass was ragged and soggy along the edge of the asphalt. Food wrappers littered the ground. I took a deep breath to calm myself and walked to the road, craning my neck to look for her bus.
When I didn’t see it, I cut back through the parking lot and headed toward the Toros’ apartment.
Celia looked surprised to see me when she answered the door. I hadn’t talked to her since I’d called her to tell her that we didn’t want Maribel spending time with Mayor anymore. She had defended Mayor at first, reminding me that Quisqueya was a gossip and assuring me that Mayor never caused any trouble. But later Rafael had called back and told us that Mayor admitted he’d been in the car with Maribel. Rafael apologized on behalf of himself and Celia and said that they had made sure Mayor understood he had to stay away from Maribel.
Now, though, the friction was unmistakable.
“I was on my way out,” Celia said.
She was wearing gold earrings and a butterscotch-colored sweater. Her hair was hair-sprayed stiff.
“Have you seen Maribel?” I asked.
“Maribel? No.”
“She’s not here?”
“No.”
My stomach turned. “Her bus didn’t come today,” I said.
Celia’s face betrayed a flash of concern. “When was it supposed to come?”
“Fifteen minutes ago. Maybe twenty by now.”
“Did she have something after school? A meeting or a club?”
“No.”
“I don’t know, Alma.”
“Is Mayor here?” I asked.
Celia tensed. She pulled back her shoulders. “No,” she said. “But he’s not with her. He knows the rule.”
“Maybe he’s heard something.”
“Well, he was going to a movie with his friend William after school today. I can ask him when he gets home.” Celia leaned forward and stuck her head out past the door frame. “Is that snow?” she asked.
“What?”
“It’s snowing. When did that start?”
I turned and saw brief glints of something, like dust lit by sunlight. I was so distracted that I hadn’t registered them.
“Dios, qué vaina,” Celia said. “All winter long, nothing. And now this! At the end of March!”
I was quiet, catching sight of the flakes and then losing them again, feeling myself burrow further into fear. Where was she? I didn’t want to think what I was thinking. Had that boy come for her again? Had he taken her somewhere? And what was he doing to her if he had? I felt it, then, the full weight of my terror. I felt it low and round in my belly, thin and quivering through my chest. An anguished sound escaped my lips.
“Alma!” Celia said, startled.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have to relax. I’m sure she’s fine. Maybe the bus is stuck in traffic.”
I nodded, unconvinced.