Chapter Fifteen #2
“Oh, yeah,” Sebastián said. “That was crazy. You know we run that annual poetry contest? His daughter, Javier’s daughter, sent it in. She submitted it on his behalf. I guess she wanted to surprise him.”
“Wow,” Lydia said. “Marta.”
The inclusion of the poem was mortifying.
It served to coalesce all the facts into a vivid portrayal and to corroborate, somehow, the accuracy of Sebastián’s description.
As she closed the browser and leaned back in her chair, Lydia discovered that there were many different ways to feel horrified at once.
“Well?” Sebastián shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and leaned back against the kitchen counter. He was barefoot and his socks were twisted into a small heap on the counter behind him. Lydia stared at those socks. “What do you think?”
She folded her hands beneath her chin and shook her head. “I think it’s fine.”
“Fine? Not good?”
“No, I mean it’s good. It’s good, Sebastián, I’m not talking about that. I mean I think it’ll be fine with Javier.”
He nodded at her. “Okay.”
They were quiet while she contemplated further. “In fact, I think it will be better than fine with Javier. I think he’ll like it. It’s fair. More than fair, almost flattering.”
He nodded some more. “You feel confident?”
Again, she waited a moment to make sure her answer was true before she said it. “Yes.”
Sebastián went to the fridge, retrieved two beers, twisted off both caps, and set one down in front of his wife.
“I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little nervous.
” He tipped the bottle into his mouth and drained half at once.
“I’m relieved you feel good about it, though.
You’re sure it’s okay.” He watched Lydia twist her brown bottle in circles on the table.
“You don’t think we need to disappear for a few days, just to be on the safe side? ”
She knew how important it was to be sure. She didn’t fling the answer out recklessly; she measured it first. And then, “No, I think we’re fine,” she said.
“A hundred percent?”
“Yes. A hundred percent.” She closed the laptop and pushed it away.
Sebastián was leaning against the counter. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and there was a shadow of stubble across his chin. “Are you surprised? You think it’s too sympathetic?” he asked.
“No. I mean, it’s still horrifying.” She sipped from the bottle. “But accurate. You show that he’s human. So as far as the truth goes, I think he’ll be pleased.”
That was a Monday evening, less than two weeks ago.
Lydia remembers it was Monday because she’d just brought Luca home from fútbol practice and he’d been hungry, so she’d given him a slice of toast and a banana, even though he was late getting to bed.
He’d tracked dirt into the hallway because he forgot to take his cleats off at the door, and Lydia had been annoyed because she’d just swept.
Less than two weeks ago, dirt on the floor in her hallway was a thing that could annoy her.
It’s unimaginable. The reality of what happened is so much worse than the very worst of her imaginary fears had ever been.
But it could be worse still.
Because there is still Luca.
On top of the train, Lydia takes two of the canvas belts from her pack and secures one through the back belt loop of Luca’s jeans before threading it through a metal loop atop the grating where they sit.
Then she belts herself to the top of the train in the same way.
She doesn’t know if that small strap of canvas would actually do much to save Luca, should he fall.
All she can do is try. She imagines that most accidents happen when migrants are trying to get on and off the trains anyway.
Her feet smart in a way they haven’t since she was a young girl leaping from the swings at a full arc, when she’d land with a thud, and feel that echo of tenderness reverberate up her legs.
They’re sore, but it’s not a bad pain. It’s only a reminder that she’s alive, that her legs can be used like pistons and springs, that her feet can still make a racket beneath her.
She flexes one leg and then the other, bangs her feet against the metal grating to loosen the ache.
Rebeca and Soledad are a few cars ahead of them because they jumped earlier, but soon the girls make their way back to them, stepping along the tops of the freight cars, leaping across the gaps, ducking flat when the train passes beneath a roadway.
Lydia performs a series of elaborate flinches while she watches them.
Soon they’re all seated together, along with the four young men who were already here, including the one who caught Luca when he jumped.
Lydia watches the men react to the girls’ arrival.
She studies their faces as, one by one, they absorb the circumstance of the girls’ extreme beauty and one by one, they shift their bodies ever so slightly away from the teenage sisters.
The men are deferential. They know what hardship lies along the road for these girls, and they’re sympathetic to that danger.
Soon they all move past it. The men smile at Luca.
They tap him and point out interesting sights as they pass: a mother cow with her calf, a huddle of trees like a rugby scrum, a stark white cross atop a low hill.
The men bless themselves when they go by a steeple or a roadside grave. They pray.
Those first few hours on La Bestia are exhilarating.
The train ambles west and west and north, and Luca feels a giddy sense that they are really going now.
It feels so good to be a passenger, to make fast progress with the power of machinery doing the work.
They drink water from their canteens and eat granola bars.
Lydia gives one to the sisters to share.
Soledad and Rebeca sit back to back, their knees propped up like tent poles.
Soledad eats her half in one gulp. Rebeca savors hers, picking crumbs from the corners and allowing them to dissolve in her mouth before swallowing.
The landscape rolls beneath them, shifting colors.
Sometimes the trees draw close to the tracks, squat and scrubby.
Sometimes they stand back and pierce the sky.
Sometimes obstructions press in at the top of the train and threaten to knock the passengers off: overgrown foliage, the narrow structure of a bridge crossing over a ravine, and most alarmingly, the cramped tunnels, where the ceilings seem to skim just inches above their heads, and the echo of deafening noise amplifies the fear of falling.
The migrants are alert to these dangers: they crouch, flatten, lean.
They draw their arms and legs in and hold their breath.
Periodically, the train stops, and after a while, Luca begins to understand how to predict those interruptions.
First, there will be an abrupt change of direction—that means there’s a town nearby, large enough that whoever laid these tracks determined the train should go there.
The train turns and lurches, slowing first for the change of direction, and then further as the town approaches.
The migrants shift into postures of alertness, make themselves flat atop the cars, so Luca and Lydia do the same.
They watch for the dark trucks and white stars of la policía federal, whose job it is to clear migrants from the trains.
“What happens if we see la policía?” Luca asks. He’s lying flat on his stomach, stretched out between Mami and Soledad. Soledad faces him and rests her ear in the crook of her elbow.
“You run for your life, chiquito,” she says.
Sometimes the stops are brief, a few minutes; sometimes they last an hour or more, while the migrants hold their collective breath, their muscles taut, their senses strained.
Their eyes comb the landscape for movement beyond the men loading and unloading freight from the hollow cars beneath them.
Sometimes the working men throw snacks up to the migrants on top of the train before it leaves, or refill their water bottles from a nearby hose.
Other times, it’s as if the men have been warned not to aid the migrants, like they’re invisible on top of the train, and those times are like careful choreography, all pretending not to see or be seen.
And then at last, there’s a whistle, a jerk, and the gradual acceleration of relief as the train resumes its journey to the next place.
When the light descends to that golden, glowing hour, when it touches Soledad’s skin like an uninvited spotlight, the sisters put their heads together and talk quietly for a few moments.
“We don’t stay on the trains at night,” Soledad explains to Lydia, after.
“We’ll get off at the next place,” Rebeca adds. “Whenever it stops again.”
Lydia nods. She doesn’t ask why.
“We’ll get off then, too, right, Mami?” Luca asks.
It feels like the sisters have invited them, indirectly, to go with them.
Rebeca looks to Lydia, the girl’s face nearly as hopeful as Luca’s.
Soledad is harder to read, turning askance so Lydia can see only her profile.
Lydia’s loath to get off, after their difficulty boarding.
Now that they’re finally moving, she’d like to stay on the train all the way to el norte.
But on the other hand, it’s precisely because of these girls and their instructions that she and Luca managed to get on La Bestia at all.
They’ve returned Luca’s voice to him. They know things. “Okay,” Lydia says.
When the train stops at San Miguel de Allende just before sunset, Luca and Lydia follow Soledad and Rebeca down the ladder.
They wave goodbye to the men who remain behind, and wave hello to the men who are opening one of the freight cars to unload the waiting cargo. They set off quickly into the town.