Into the Beautiful North(28)

Tacho called, “Somebody milk that cow! It’s starting to moo!”

“Oh, my God!” Yolo said.

They buried their faces in their pillows, laughing.

Just when they thought they were falling asleep, one of them would say, “Moo!” and it would start again.



The men came for them at about three in the morning.

Nayeli heard the whispers first and came awake immediately. The faulty latch on their door began to rattle. She held her breath, thinking it might just be ambient sound or perhaps the remnants of some dream. She squinted at the door, and she saw the knob turning back and forth. Then, a bolt of fear when the latch popped and the door cracked open. She stiffened in the bed. The door swung open slowly, reaching the end of the chain. Hisses. A low man’s voice.

She shook Tacho. He snorted. She punched his arm. He buried his head under his pillow.

She looked around for a weapon. There was a small chair by the bed—she could club them with it when they broke in. She rose silently and stared. An arm was trying to reach into the room, the hand scrabbling like a spider, reaching around for the thin chain to get it off the hook. Nayeli squinted: a yellow sleeve. That bastard! The man from the taco stand.

“Almost,” the yellow man was saying to his associates. She could see their shadows through the window shade, backlit by the neon and streetlights.

She stood in the center of the room, in her panties and her T-shirt, watching the hand clutch at the chain.

Her girls were deep asleep in their bed. Tachito was snoring. Nayeli stretched. She shook out her arms and raised each leg once. She rotated her neck and felt it pop. She grabbed Tacho’s pepper spray can from the bedside table and positioned herself in front of the door.

The yellow man’s hand grabbed the chain and began to work it free.

“Got it,” he said.

Nayeli kicked the door closed on his arm. He screamed. She held the door against his wrist and threw her weight against it three times. He yelled curses. She grabbed his little finger and bent it back until it snapped. He made a terrible sound of shock and agony. But he let go of the chain. She pulled the door toward her and leaned into the gap and fired the pepper spray directly into his eyes. She slammed the door on his bloody arm again.

He jumped and howled and thumped against the wood as if he were being killed. His partners ran away and thundered down the stairs like bison. Tacho was beside her now, yelling, “Kill the bastards! Kill them!” Yolo and Vampi were yowling like air raid sirens. Nayeli fired another round into the yellow man’s face and released the door. He fell on his back and writhed. She stepped out and stomped him once.

“Oh, my,” Tacho noted. “Right in the balls.”

“You,” Nayeli growled, “stay away from me and my friends or I will kill you.”

The man was trying to crawl to the steps.

Tacho kicked him in the ass.

“Dog!” he said.

They slammed their door and fastened the chain again and locked the worthless latch and braced the chair beneath the knob. The girls stared at Nayeli with awe. Tacho was so jazzed that he couldn’t stop dancing and talking. Nayeli sat on the bed and shook.

She trembled until morning came and they went back to the street.





Chapter Twelve



I want to go home,” Vampi said.

“All I ever wanted was a boyfriend,” Yolo complained. “A nice little house, a quiet life.”

“Me, too,” said Tacho.

“I wanted Missionary Matt,” said Yolo.

“Me, too,” Tacho said.

“But Nayeli got him.”

“?Cabrona!” Tacho cried.

Nayeli kept walking. It was morning. Tijuana was silent. The sun was buttery, and doves cooed all around them. Dry palm trees made soft oceanic sounds in the breeze. Where was the Sodom of last night? They trudged between small yellow houses with falling fences. Little dogs wagged their tails. Alley cats swirled between their legs. Nayeli led them north, toward the Tijuana River.

An old woman in a small yard poured water from a coffee can onto clumps of geraniums.

“Buenos días,” she said.

“Good morning,” said Nayeli.

“Good morning, se?ora,” said Tacho.

“Nice flowers,” Yolo said.

“?Adios!” Vampi called.

They came to a big street, and across it stood a rusting wall of metal. It rose high on a bluff and seemed to run forever. It was covered in bright paint—an American flag, coffins full of skeletons, words, poems, a white dove. They stared at it, reading the graffiti.

“Somebody doesn’t like George Bush,” Tacho noted.

“They don’t like Calderón, either,” Nayeli said.

“The new revolution,” Yolo announced, “will be the war of the media!”

They cast jaundiced eyes upon her.

“Don’t start with your Zapatista crap because, right now, I am not in any mood!” Tacho scolded.

“Who’s Calderón?” Vampi asked.

They stared at her, aghast.

“Calderón, Verónica?” said Nayeli. “Your president?”

Vampi said, “Oh. I didn’t see the news.”

Looks were traded.

Vampi stared at a melancholy skull that seemed to be weeping naked bodies out of its eye sockets.