Into the Beautiful North(24)

The Tres Camarones group got on the bus and hung on to the overhead racks. Three women followed them and bumped up against Nayeli. Their body odor nauseated her. Then she realized she was also smelling herself. This was a serious faux pas in Camarones. Indeed, she had never been outside her house without sweet scents in her hair and the clean smell of American soap rising from her body. Nayeli tried to hold on to the racks and keep her elbows down so her underarms weren’t exposed. She was ashamed and felt filthy. When the bus started, the woman standing in front of her fell back against her and stayed there. Nayeli could feel the woman’s hard buttocks against her belly. She couldn’t move away.

Tacho seemed to be asleep on his feet. His eyes were swollen and red. Nayeli noticed Yolo watching her over Tacho’s shoulder. Her eyes were dark as the highway itself, and she simply stared at Nayeli. Neither of them could believe the world they had entered.

Somehow, La Vampi managed to swoon into the lap of a sixty-year-old cowboy with a straw hat and a mesh bag full of onions. He cautiously put his arm around her and sat erect, never looking at her once all the hours of their long drive to Tijuana. She knocked his hat askew, and he stoically let it ride sideways on his head.

In a vast flat of sagebrush and far dirty hills, their driver turned on his microphone and announced, “To your right, the fabled American border.”

They craned and stared.

They looked for fences and helicopters and trucks and dogs. Nothing. There was nothing there at all.

Tacho noted, “It just looks like more Mexico,” before he closed his eyes again and sank into his misery.

Nayeli tried to do one of Sensei Grey’s meditations, seeking Buddha in the illusion of the moment. She tried to make the lake in her mind still as a black mirror. Someone stepped on her foot. She meditated on the pain instead.



They came down out of the mountains. They saw the Rodríguez Dam standing above the city. They could see sedimentary rings on the cliffs where the shore had receded.

“Empty,” the driver said. “I saw it in 1965, full to the top. But there’s no water left.”

Down, into the hard dirt of Tijuana. Shacks and huts and scattered little cow farms gave way to small colonias and clutches of houses around gas stations and stores, and the roads got bigger and fuller, and there were newer cars, and more of them. Trucks everywhere. They saw canals, and now the fences appeared as all trees vanished. They saw their first bridges. A prison. They plunged into the maw of the city—shantytowns surrounded the dusty center. Cars everywhere. Everyone stirred and craned, and Tacho nudged Nayeli and pointed, and she looked up at a dead hill across a tall fence where white trucks sat watching and a helicopter circled.

The USA didn’t look as nice over there as it did on television.

They lurched and turned a hundred corners and pulled into the battered new bus station on the far side of Tijuana.

They fell off the bus, dizzy and exhausted and thirsty. But they laughed. They danced. They were in Tijuana! The first leg of the journey was over!

They watched the driver unloading bags and suitcases.

“Let’s get a motel,” Tacho said.

“We have to save our money,” said Nayeli.

“I want a bath,” Vampi said.

“You need a bath, girl,” said Yolo.

“I wouldn’t talk, cabrona.”

“Where’s the bags?” Tacho said.

“I’ll call Chavarín,” Nayeli promised. “I’m sure we can take showers at his house!”

“Together?” said Tacho.

“?Ay, tú!” Yolo cried.

“I want to see you all naked,” Tacho announced. “I want to see what all the fuss is about.”

“If you see me naked, boy,” Nayeli promised, “you’re going to change your ways!”

“Or throw up,” Tacho retorted.

La Vampi sighed, “I want my bag.”

But there were no bags.

The bin was empty. The driver slammed the doors down.

Nayeli stepped up to him and said, “?Se?or? Disculpe, pero ?donde están nuestras maletas?”

He stared at her.

“?Qué?” he said.

“Our bags.”

“What bags?”

“Our bags from the last bus.”

“You don’t have any bags.”

“He loaded our bags.”

The driver shook his head.

“No bags,” he repeated.

He lit a cigarette and walked away.

The girls cried out. Tacho cursed. Nayeli yelled, “Wait!” but the driver never looked back. They stood there between the big buses and watched him leave.

“Now what do we do?” cried Vampi.

Nayeli looked at Tacho, and they both turned and stared out at the alien city surrounding them. Even Yolo was starting to cry.

“I’ll think of something,” Nayeli said.



Nayeli could not find a phone booth. She hunted all around the bus station. There were no pay phones anywhere.

She stopped a man in an old checkered sport coat and said, “Se?or—could you direct me to a pay phone?”

When he ascertained to his satisfaction that she wasn’t begging for alms, he said, “Use your cell phone,” and rushed away.

They pulled together and stood in a tight group, looking around. The norte?o accents were a bit off-putting, but at least it was still Spanish. They told themselves it wasn’t like they had suddenly landed in Shanghai or Beirut. This was still Mexico.