Into the Beautiful North(43)

Smith returned to the truck and said, “It’s not an easy job, you know. Why don’t you folks stay home and make my life easier?”

Tacho laughed.

Smith liked Tacho.

“I wish I had stayed home,” Tacho said. “I can’t keep my hair combed up here.”

They watched the vehicle with the bloodied boy drive off.

“That right there,” Smith announced, “was your typical bad boy.”

“We are not bad, se?or,” Nayeli said.

“Oh, I know!” he said. “You are Nayeli, right? The one the Olympic pole-vaulter was hollering about.” He turned and winked at Tacho. “Nayeli,” he said. “You rifa!”



He off-loaded them at a big school bus lit by spotlights. Tacho jumped down by himself. He helped Yolo and Vampi, who seemed to be collapsing in fear. Nayeli jumped down, pushing Tacho’s helping hand away. The Border Patrol agents helped Candelaria down.

Anderson was there.

“Mother,” he said to the pregnant woman.

“Se?or,” she replied.

He supervised the handover, and armed men herded them onto the bus, where they took seats among tired men who smelled of smoke and dirt and sweat. Candelaria ended up several seats behind them, and they lost sight of her and did not find her again. There was a sick man slumped in the front seat, wheezing and groaning. A migra agent gave him water and shone a light in his face. There was a commotion near the front door, and suddenly agents pulled their sidearms and backed a Libertad bad boy down to his knees. He was hauled away. Coughing in the bus. Nayeli was amazed to hear snoring. Some of the men were dead asleep! Young guys joked and called insults to one another, cursed the migra. They made kissing sounds at Yolo and Vampi. Nayeli got up and walked to their seat and stood there, facing the boys, looking like an Aztec warrior priestess. Before the bus could roll, though, the migra matron who was driving with an armed cohort told her she had to sit down. But someone had taken her seat, so she sat on Tacho’s lap.

“Everybody,” the guard with the big shotgun announced, “we are going in to register you. A quick interview. And you will all be going home. Stay calm.”

Tacho said nothing.

Nayeli couldn’t tell if he was angry or depressed.

Vampi was so scared she could not stop crying.

Yolo was so mad, she wanted to slap Nayeli’s face and go back home.

Tacho was thinking: The United States is a little disappointing so far.



ICE agents, customs agents, soldiers in camouflage, Border Patrol agents, agents with DEA on their windbreakers, EMS ambulance techs, dogs, white men in slacks and black ties, a San Diego city cop, men in red T-shirts, frightening men in black outfits. It looked to Nayeli like one of those boring old James Bond movies where 007 dropped inside a big plastic volcano to blow up the communists’ spaceship. But this place was more scary because they were in it. The guns were real. The lights were too bright.

The gates of the holding pens slammed loudly. All the young Mexican guys were yelling. Suddenly, Nayeli was separated from her friends as the tide of bodies split and sent them into two different groups. Vampi looked as if she was drowning, turning once in the tide and going under. Yolo caught Nayeli’s eye and stared at her, sending venomous lightning through the air. Nayeli had known her long enough to read the look: You did this to us! she was saying. Someone put his hand on Nayeli’s rear and squeezed; she spun around, but he was gone; she looked back, and Yolo had vanished. A hand brushed her breast.

Signs in Spanish asked them to follow requests, to report any violations to the agent in charge, to report any criminal activity in the pen, to make a free phone call if they had representation or needed to report human rights violations to the Mexican consulate. Many of those in the cage just stared at the floor. Most of the people herded into the pens were like them. Just… people. Small, brown, tired people. Nayeli was stunned to see mothers with children—the kids weeping and snot faced. She heard indigenous tongues in the pen—shamanic-sounding utterances that felt a million years old to her, sounds of jungle and temple and human sacrifice.

Nayeli looked at the migra agents through the iron mesh. Big men. Happy, bright-faced men. Shiny and crisp. Green uniforms. Short hair. Mustaches.

What made them different from her?

She could not tell.

They moved around with real efficiency, she noted. Sensei Grey would have appreciated their economy of motion, their obvious ease with their strength. And—a woman! A woman migra agent! Nayeli was fascinated by her. She had a big fat gun on her hip, and she was as short as Nayeli herself, but she was also stout and moved like a little tractor. A black man! Nayeli had never seen a black man outside of Irma’s porch television or the Pedro Infante on movie night. She was amazed by his hair, gray and white, tight to his skull. His skin shone and, she was astounded to realize, he had the same skin tone as hers, just a shade darker. She knew she was a sweet tanned color, but she had always imagined herself as white.

He saw her looking at him.

He stopped by the gate and peered in at her.

“You eyeballing me?” he said.

“?Perdón?”

“?Usted me está mirando?” he said, in Spanish.

“Sí.”

“?Porqué?”

She looked at her feet.

“It is… your skin,” she said. “It is… beautiful.”