Into the Beautiful North(16)

“Maybe, you know, we could get one gay boy,” Nayeli said. “For poor Tacho.”

Yolo nodded wisely. “Tacho needs love, too.”

“We should take Tacho with us!” Vampi cried.

They turned to her with a bit of awe. It was the first really good idea La Vampi had ever had.

The girlfriends had all seen Los Hermanos Blues at the Pedro Infante a few months earlier.

“We’re on a mission from God,” Nayeli intoned.

La Vampi turned to her and said, “I’m going.”

Nayeli cried, “We can repopulate our town. We can save Mexico. It begins with us! It’s the new revolution!” She stood up. “Isn’t it time we got our men back in our own country?” She was slipping into Aunt Irma campaign mode. She sat back down.

“Oh, my God,” said Yolo. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.”

They slapped hands.

“To the north,” Nayeli said.

“Al norte,” they replied.

“We have to tell the old woman,” Nayeli said.

“?La Osa?” cried Yolo. “Are you crazy? She’ll never allow us to do it.”

“I think she will.”

“No, she won’t. She’ll bite our heads off.”

“No,” Nayeli said. She stood up and brushed off her rear end. “I think she will give us her blessing.”

She started to walk away, but stopped and turned back.

“We are going,” she said, “to bring home the Magnificent Seven!”



Late that same night, Irma was startled by a knock at her door. When she opened it, she was amazed to discover Garcí a-García standing there with a suitcase. His left eye was black, and he had blood trickling from his nose.

“What the hell happened to you?” she demanded.

“They came to my house.”

“Who?”

“Bandidos.”

“Bastards!”

“They threw me out.”

“No!”

“They took my house from me!”

She stood there in her tattered nightgown and curlers.

“Can I sleep here?” he asked.

Irma had only been in charge of the town for scant days, and already the troubles were starting.

“Sleep in the back room,” she said.

He trudged in, forlorn and humiliated.

“Hope you don’t snore,” La Osa added, and slammed her door.





Chapter Eight



Most of them were crammed into Irma’s kitchen. The over-flow stood in the street, with their faces jammed in Irma’s television window. The priest and several concerned grandmothers stood in the living room; the eldest of them took up regal space on the flowered couch. Poor Garcí a-García sulked in the backyard, trying to keep Irma’s turkey away from him with one foot.

Of course, Tacho had always wanted to go north, but he wasn’t going to admit it. What was there for a man like him in Tres Camarones? Less than nothing. Maybe the girls. And there was no way he was going to let the girlfriends face the dangers, or the excitement, of going to el norte without him.

In his mind, they would cross the border under a stack of hay in an old truck, like the heroes in Nazi movies always escaped from occupied France. Some Border Patrol agent might poke the hay with a pitchfork, only to be called away by barking German shepherds just as the tines came perilously close. Maybe Yolo or Vampi would get poked, in a thigh, and would heroically bite back her yelps of pain. Not Nayeli—she was the leader of the commando unit. Tacho saw her in some kind of hot shorts with a red blouse tied under her breasts. There would be a close-up of the blood drops falling on the cobbles, but the impatient Border Patrol agents would wave them through, unseeing—in fact, their own boots would obliterate the telltale blood drops. And then he’d be there: La Jolla and its emerald beaches. Hollywood. Los Beberly Hills. Stars and nightclubs and haute couture. Tacho was ready.

Aunt Irma had to promise to manage the daily operations of the Fallen Hand before Tacho would agree to go with the notorious girlfriends. Then came the tense negotiations between Irma and the mothers, grandmothers, and aunts. No one was willing to let her girl go into the maw of the appalling border. A long journey far from home, predatory men and Mexican police, bandits, injuries, car wrecks, kidnapping, slavers, pimps, drug pushers, illness, jails, Tijuana! The word alone speaking volumes about every border-fear they held within them. Coyotes and smugglers. Border Patrol and Minutemen. Rapists, addicts, dogs, robots, demons, ghosts, serial killers, racists, army men, trucks, spotlights. ?Por Dios! they cried, these were just girls!

Tacho helpfully informed them: “I am not a girl, thank you very much!”

“If God is with us,” Nayeli pontificated, “what harm can befall us?”

Tacho sipped his Nescafé instant and thought: How about crucifixion? Lions? Burning alive? He glanced at Irma. She wasn’t moved by the religious propaganda, either. But Father Fran?ois stood at the back of the room and raised his hand over the girls in a benediction and said, “Benditas sean.” He looked at Tacho, who was irked that the girls got all the blessings. “And you, too,” Fran?ois amended.

Tacho raised his cup.

“Amen.”