Now he conferred with my father about the July 4 brisket; the men planned to stay up all night July 3. Years before, Jake had built a smoker in Jane and Dennis’s backyard, winning over all our nephews by letting them try out his welding equipment. In the airport, my father clapped his hand on Jake’s back, leaning in and saying something about the dry rub. “Hi, Dad,” I said, under my breath.
“You know how he is,” said Jane.
When Jake and I had booked our July trip to Colorado, we thought we’d be bringing Mitchell to meet the family. When those plans changed, Jake convinced me we needed a break from the Texas heat anyway and should keep our reservations. We’d already given everyone at Conroe’s the week off, he insisted. I loved Colorado but found it full of uncomfortable memories and relationships that stressed me out. It was hard not to compare myself with Jane. I was jealous of her kids, and being around her made me question my decisions. At the same time, I worried about my baby sister. No matter how much I pushed, she refused to have the genetic screening that could save her life. I’d have a talk with Dennis this visit, I decided.
Jake and I were staying in the apartment above Hill’s Market. It was where our family had lived when Jane and I were babies, before our parents bought the Oak Street house. Now it was rented out or used for visitors. (Dennis had a large family in nearby Gunnison.) As Jake and I lay in bed for the first night of our three-night stay, I stared at the familiar striped wallpaper. “It does smell good here,” I whispered. “Cleaner, or something. It smells like snow, even in July.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” warned Jake.
“Don’t worry, my love,” I said. Still, as we spent our first morning making pancakes at Jane’s house, getting used to the constant activity as the boys whirled through the kitchen like tumbleweeds, I felt a yearning. It wasn’t that I wanted to live in Colorado, of course, though I adored the way the sun shone on the mountains, loved the way the water was always ice-cold coming from the faucet, felt safe and happy lying on the lawn with no thoughts of chiggers. Maybe it was Colorado. Who knew?
That evening, July 3, Jane and I left our husbands and father in the yard with growlers of beer and the slow-cooking brisket. Jane said I could sleep over, as Dennis would be up all night, but I declined. I walked from Oak Street to Main Street, past the old Randolph house, where my first boyfriend had lived, and the Western Hotel, where I’d had my first legal beer. I felt both nine years old and seventy. I was a visitor here now, and I always would be. I would never be a Colorado mother. I missed my own mother. I stood on the bridge above the rushing Uncompahgre River for a while, feeling melancholy.
The apartment above the store had a deck that overlooked Twin Peaks. I took a cup of hot tea outside and curled up in a chair. I remembered sitting on my mother’s lap in this same place. Was she somewhere? Could she see me? “Mom?” I said aloud. I blinked back tears, feeling stupid. Somehow I’d thought she’d send me a sign—a shooting star, an owl calling out—but of course there was nothing. She was gone.
9
Carla
I SUPPOSE I ALWAYS knew I would ride The Beast to America. My mother told me not to come, but she didn’t understand what life had become in Tegucigalpa. I found it hard to sleep for fear of robbers. A boy I’d known since childhood, Oscar, told me I had to pay him protection money or risk being raped and beaten. But it wasn’t until what happened with Junior that I knew it was time to go.
Everyone was aware I had a mother who sent money. Junior and I were targets, because most people had nothing. Some robbers were getting organized, selling drugs, but when business was slow they became roving gangs, sending boys like Oscar to take from those who had any small thing.
Junior, as I’ve said, spent much of his time alone. On occasion he came with me to the dump, but he barely gathered enough to help at all. He took to sitting outside the house instead of inside. At six years old, he was skinny, with long legs and a sunken chest. He started to have opinions (throwing a bowl of paste on the floor, saying it was “shit”) and desires (“I want to be the Terminator and kick everyone’s ass!”). He set his jaw in such a way that he looked like an angry adult. Sometimes he would surprise me on my walk home, just appearing by the side of the road in the dangerous purple twilight.
“I needed to get out,” he would mutter when I admonished him. It was painful to look at Junior—he was so hard and hungry—and to remember myself at six, beloved by my grandmother, clad in new American clothes.
One night Humberto and I walked home as always, weary and dirty but holding hands. I was still waiting for my first kiss. As we walked farther from the dump, the awful smell faded and it seemed possible to remember that we were young. I had turned twelve by this point, and I felt very tired. This is hard for an American to understand, but it felt like my life was over. In my village, some married at my age, and soon became mothers.
Humberto brought me joy. This was all the happiness I had: the way he looked at me and how this made me feel. If you pressed down one of the curls on his head, it sprang back up. This was what Humberto was like in general. You could not keep him flat. Oh, the feel of his fingers around mine. I knew—I thought I knew—we would marry in the Maria Auxiliadora Church, in a ceremony that was long enough to make Junior fidget in his pew, but also glorious. We would move into the same house—into the same room!—and I would greet my Humberto each evening with a kiss and a hot meal. In this way—sitting next to each other, the sunset burning from marmalade orange to violet to black, sipping milky coffee, holding hands—we would grow old.
But I wasn’t ready to be old yet.
So much was mixing in my mind that night; it was confusing. There was the girl I had been, the child my brother Junior was not allowed to be. There was sadness for having to pick through garbage. There was hope for the thrilling kisses Humberto and I would share, and also the ways of our bodies coming together. I knew the basics, of course, but had been told by Stefani that my own body would do things I could not yet understand. (Stefani had been seduced by an older boy, a man, eighteen. He took her from her family and into the city. I had not heard from her in months.)
Humberto’s brother, Milton, had tried to get to America the year before. He had told us that he would go to Arizona, where the crossing was easiest because there were fewer immigration officials. Obviously, none of us knew how to get to El Norte, not really. We had heard things. We had seen things. Some of us had relatives in America (like me). Some had money for coyotes. Some paid coyotes and were caught by la migra anyway. Some people did not want to leave, the old or secure, but many of us dreamed of escape, of money and food and a complete family.