Chapter 20
“You’re a real,” Joana began, cellphone pressed to an ear as she swallowed down a forkful of tortilla slices fried in salsa, “fucking idiot.” She was sitting cross-legged in a chair, the restaurant of a hotel, one of the only ones still open.
Half the restaurants, or related food places, were temporarily closed due to the gas shortage, and most food carts had relocated to outside of major supermarkets, whereas the smaller and informal markets suffered severely.
Tadeo was sighing. “You told me that everything’s been fine. No one has noticed I’m gone.”
“Did you forget about the massacre at the river, dumbass?”
“But you said that there hasn’t been anything that’s gone wrong since.
You told me that everyone thinks I’m still there.
And there’s— Oh for God’s sake, Joana, I can’t leave him there!
I left him in Hell! That’s the part you’re missing.
I didn’t leave him on the side of the road or something.
I left him in a nightmare, and it’s my fault. I have to make it right.”
“If it’s such a nightmare,” Joana replied, “then he’s probably already dead.” She turned away from the televisions, heading toward the entrance. “Come back soon or other people you care about are next.”
“I don’t care about him.”
Joana hung up, shut her eyes in frustration, then heard a low chuckle from the other end of the table, followed by the deep voice of a man.
He said, “In Hell, eh?” She refused to face him, the kingpin.
“Well, we’re going to need him back soon, mija.
” Scraps against the plate indicated that he was still picking at his food, a simple meal of beans and eggs with tomato, onion, and serrano pepper.
“Have you seen the news? They’re saying the bad men,” meaning them, of course, “ordered those migrants to die.” He hummed.
“I didn’t know that.” Joana bit her tongue, then finally fluttered open her eyes again, but hazily, tiredly.
“It’s a good story, though. The people like a good story.
The state is very mad at us, and the north isn’t happy either.
There was a deal, did you know? There was a deal.
” A grin formed between a scratching laugh.
“They say that us bad men infiltrated the soldiers, corrupted them, mija, but no, no, they infiltrated us. For too long, me and my men, we had to listen to the governor, the businesses. There was no freedom.”
Something deep, deeper than the heart, unsettled in Joana’s chest, and her blood felt heavier in her veins as she whispered, “Who are we really fighting?”
Another laugh, then a disbelieving shake of his head. “This is about freedom. All of this with that boy and who you’ve aimed him at for us — it was about freedom for us. You can understand that, can’t you? We never wanted to be part of anything bigger.”
They didn’t talk about much else before Joana thanked him for the breakfast, wiped her mouth, nodded at the poor waiter who’d likely walked hours to work — the state buses were too cramped — then headed out into the warm winter day.
Up ahead, there were few civilian cars but what seemed a hundred cargo trucks and a handful of soldier vehicles passing through.
Not far from the door, there was an old man with a bad hunch leaning against a cart of various trinkets, including a pole where various cloth masks hung from. Wrestler masks, luchador masks.
Briefly, Joana recalled a time, years ago, when the kingpin, before his men, before Joana’s father, questioned if Tadeo was truly so obedient to her, if he didn’t suspect her intentions.
‘We’ll have to hurt you,’ the kingpin had said, ‘if we find out that you’re not being honest with us.
’ She can’t remember what she’d said, but, now, she wished she’d replied: ‘He believes too much in God. It makes him naive. He thinks we’re all good people at heart.
He believes in me. It’s going to kill him, and he’s going to die believing in me. ’
Joana stepped toward the man and his cart of a million trinkets.
And, instantly, he smiled, eyes crinkling, lips pulling back to reveal a silver tooth or two.
Despite the hunchback, he moved swiftly, almost elegantly.
“Oh, young lady! Good morning. Look, I have some jewelry here and toys here for a baby or a nephew or niece.”
“Good morning. How much are the luchador masks?” Joana reached into her baggy jeans, tugging out a tiny cloth purse — with sarape stripes — unzipping it, pulling out just a few coins as the man named the price.
“Thank you, sir.” She handed the money to his shaking, open palm, and he clasped her hand in his own in an affirming, kind shake before he retreated.
After this, he asked her who the mask was for — a boyfriend, brother — or if it was for herself, in which case he had a pink one with white flames at the top but he might need help to reach it.
“The black one, please,” she said simply; it had white accents as well. “It’s for my friend.”
The man and Joana argued for a few minutes; her begging him to keep the change and him refusing before she slapped the extra money on his cart then took off running across the parking lot, leaving him there to call after her then surrender with a loud: “God bless you! Take care of yourself, miss! Thank you!”
With nothing else to do, given Tadeo’s absence, she went home, talked with her oldest brother, mumbled to her mother, helped with her youngest brother, then took off again in the later afternoon with the mask in her back pocket.
Heading to the border bridge on foot, she followed a line of teen students walking together, looking down at the increased number of tents creating colorful hills along the river.
There were quite a few foreigners here now, migrants from southern states or island states or the other side of the Earth, distinct in appearance enough to be noticed but quick to disappear into the backgrounds of wherever they were working.
Joana caught a foreigner helping change the tires of a truck, and she wondered if any of them would stay if all the wars in the world ever ended, wondered if the town was irrevocably changed in ways beyond the abandoned homes.
Once she reached the bridge, ignoring the mass of soldiers stationed in its vicinity, she reached for her passport and visa.
Tadeo had always thought they were counterfeit, but it’d been easy for her to arrange getting them with the right money.
And so crossing the border was simple, requiring just a few coins into the turnstile before pushing through.
Again, she followed the students headed to study in Babylon — a rather diverse group of those with private education money and those with public education citizenship.
Joana had never finished her secondary education on this side of the river, but sometimes she fantasized about college, about leaving town and saving nothing but herself.
“Hello,” she greeted in a foreign language to the green-clad officers at the center of the bridge, showing identification before they allowed her to walk on ahead, right into the line of students, maids, gardeners, visiting family, and the like.
‘If I’m too late,’ she thought of her destination, ‘then maybe I'll leave it, leave her.’ Joana reached for her headphones, plugged her ears, then put on some regional music, then her guilty pleasure — the blonde superstar, the Harlot.
Forty minutes later, she finally arrived at the interior immigration office, had her papers checked again.
The state official nodded at her, and he asked if she’d heard about the executive orders and the increase in troops that’ll happen by the end of the month, and she lied, said she never heard much about anything.
After this, Joana allowed herself the sweet luxury of a taxi.
She slipped into the first car she could find, made some awkward small talk with the driver.
Many of those on the side of Babylon spoke the same language as those trapped outside of it.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that they’ll send me back even though I am a good man.
I’ve come here only to work and for a better life for my kids.
” Joana apologized to him as if she were responsible.
“We are good people. You too, miss. We are good people, right? Hardworking people. Not all of us are bad. Those that are bad — yes, send them back. But not me, not you.”
Joana whispered, “I wish this country would sink underwater.”
Finally, the pilgrimage ended, and it was dark now.
With her head of curly dark hair pressed against the window, Joana hadn’t noticed, staring at her own reflection in the window, in the silence following her exchange with the undocumented man driving.
‘Does God ask for papers to get into Heaven?’ What was the border between Heaven and Hell like?
Was it like this? She had family on this side of the border too; they lived only twenty minutes from her home hypothetically, but the border more than doubled the time it took to get to them.
If it weren’t there, then maybe she would have been closer to them, maybe everything would have been different.
Softly, the man asked Joana if she was well, and she said that she was, and then she reached to pay him too.
There wasn’t much she was carrying — her father had taken much of her money.
Her mother had insisted Joana be no trouble, to just hand it over because that was her father asking for it, and she was his daughter.
She was. She knew that. And she did love him.
‘I love you,’ she’d told her mom too before heading out.