The Jaguar's Children (11 page)

“And what is forty pesos?” he said. “A liter of motor oil?” He kicked the broken pieces then and my abuelita flinched like he was kicking her. “And how many of these will you sell today with no tourists—two? Three? None? What difference does it make?”

It is not common for Zapotecos to shout in public, but Papá was doing it now and I wondered if he'd been drinking. “We're trapped in the past!” he said. “All of us!” With his hand he swept past my abuelita's pots and over to the French iron bandstand where they played music from a hundred years ago. “Who built that? Emperor Maximilian!” He pointed to the shoeshine man napping in his chair in his snakeskin boots. “Where is he going? Nowhere!”

Like this, his hand a compass needle, my father circled the Zócalo, pointing out the bird man by the fountain with the singing cages on his back, the blind organ grinder on the corner with his hat in his hand, the Maya candy seller with her long wool skirt and shiny blouse, the clowns with their white gloves and red noses, the woman selling sweets off a platter on her head, the young couple on the bench with their children eating ice cream, the Trique women protesting again with their bare feet and their banners. And watching all this—and him and us—like visitors to a human zoo, the handful of pale tourists in the empty cafés with their big black cameras, shooting everything in sight.

“Can't you see it?” my father said to me. “The world has moved on without us, and for a young man there is no worse fate. You are missing the future because the future isn't here.” He looked at me hard with his angry eyes. “The future is there!”

Papá's compass needle swung again and he stabbed his finger to the north like he would poke a hole in it, like he would poke a hole in the bandstand with its bat-wing roof, in the central post office that hadn't been modern since before he was born, in the cathedral that was built when the Spanish came, in the hills and corn and oxen that hadn't changed in a thousand years, in the megacity of D.F. where he didn't stand a chance, in all the states conquered by the drug cartels, in the new steel border fence growing longer and higher with every passing year, in the pile of bones spreading across the American desert, in all the family, friends and neighbors who had lost their faith in Mexico and were never coming back.

“But we are still here,” he said, dropping his hand to his side, too heavy to hold up any longer.

 

Fri Apr 6—00:17

 

There are different ways to count success in Mexico and for campesinos it is mostly counted in trucks and cement. You know someone is doing good when they buy a Ford Lobo Lariat with the super cabina in racing red. And you know it when they build a house of cement. In my old pueblo the brother of the mayordomo has such a house with the garage and two doors that are electric. Maybe it's normal in California, but this house is in a little pueblo two hours from el centro on a road made of broken rock with chickens running and burro shit down the middle and all the neighbors in adobe. And who lives in that big house? Nobody. It is a palace for insects and mice. Everyone who can work in that family is in el Norte sending money home to pay for the house, and now it's so hard to come back maybe they're never going to live in there. Maybe their neighbor just sends them a video.

My abuelo could never understand why people want to give up adobe when it is so cool to live in and you can make it yourself. Cement is hot to live in and you must buy it from someone else. Cucarachas and spiders and scorpions still come in, and the cement patio holds water so mosquitoes can grow and these ones are carrying dengue now. But everyone wants it anyway because it looks so clean and modern and because it is what rich Americanos do. Más importante, it is what rich Mexicanos in America do. So of course we must do it too. Because adobe is for poor people—for Oaxacas. What does my father want more than anything? A new truck and his own house of cement—not to rent from someone else as we must do since leaving the Sierra. “Look at that shitbox you were born in,” he says. “We're still living like the troglodytes. And your mother needs a gas range. You are young and strong. Go.”

It is a tradition in the pueblo to bury your baby's placenta in the dirt floor of the house. It means you will always come back. For most of us it is a root into that place, but for my father I think it is a chain. That memory of Tío Martín with his goldfish and green card and shiny new truck—it chews on him, eating him alive. And you know, my young sister Vera is the same. After she turned thirteen, she would never touch Abuelita Clara's clay again. I asked her why and she said it's dirty. Now she is at the hairdresser school and her favorite T-shirt is a pink one saying with fake diamonds, “Is Not a Hobie—Is a Pasion.” When someone takes her picture with the phone, she will flash some gang sign she learned, but only to show her fingernails because if you've got long fingernails it means you're not working in the milpa anymore, and if you're eighteen and trying to make it in el centro the first step is to look like you never saw a milpa in your life. Many times when I went to visit Abuelo, Vera would laugh and say, “Hey country boy, don't forget your hua
raches!
” Well, they are our traditional shoes with excellent ventilation, and the cactus spines will not go through the bottom. Even mi padre wears them. Once, Tío brought him some Nike Michael Jordans from L.A., but they are so big and white he saves them only for church. On him they look like shoes for a clown, but I never say this. Vera wears only el Converse, black with rainbow socks. Them, or las fuckmes.

 

Nothing is changing in five hundred years—more, even. Always there is a handful of chingones controlling everything and the rest of us chasing the crumbs. So many other young people have gone already—anyone who can make the trip north. I saw this with my own eyes, how the pueblo is a nut with a worm in it—the shell is there, but inside, out of sight, the meat is being eaten away. Many young people say that in Mexico to get ahead now the only way is to cheat and break some rule. But to do this you must have some connections or be very smart, or very hard. For the rest of us there is only el Norte y los dólares gringos.

In my pueblo, half are gone to the States. Almost four hundred people. You walk through there now and you think maybe there has been a war or some disease—just kids and old people and animals left. Abuelo told me it was like this also after la Revolución—a million Mexicanos died from that and many survivors went to el Norte, maybe a million more. And you had half our country already—Tejas, California, Arizona, Nuevo Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and some others I can't remember, plus all those rivers. It was all once Mexico—you can see it by the names. Mexicanos don't forget this and there are many songs. Tijuana No! are rapping about it also, a history lesson for gringos and a kind of promise too—la Reconquista . . . Because we are coming back.

Maybe this is our destiny—not for Mexico to lose her people or for America to lose her soul, but for all of us to come together—the United States of Améxica. It will be a new superpower, but with better food.

 

Ever since I was young, my father talked of going back, but he never did, and when I asked him why, he only made excuses until one day last fall when we were arguing again about me going to university, I got angry. “Why are you always telling me to go up there,” I said, “when it is you who wants it so much?”

It was the first time I spoke to him like a man and not like a son or a boy. Instead of shouting or raising his hand, Papá looked away out the window, took a sip of his beer and said nothing. We were in the Chevy Apache on the road to Tlacolula, the nearest town to our pueblo. I was driving and we had just come through Santa María del Tule, past the giant cedar there, which rises like a green fountain from the valley floor—three thousand years old and wider than the church. Outside of town, vultures circled over the road waiting for something to die. Papá did not speak as we passed the quarry where they cut a hill in half and the fallen blocks lie scattered, almost yellow in the pale green brush. Or when three state police cars raced up behind us with sirens and disappeared over a hill. My heart was starting to settle and my hands relax again when my father finally spoke.

“You may not remember this,” he said, still looking out the window, “but when we got deported, they held us in Brownsville for two days. They put me with the men. You were the only child in our group and you went with the women. You didn't cry when they took you away and I was proud. Of course I protested—I said you were my only son and that we must stay together, but the agents said I had broken the law and had no right to make demands. They put us in barracks like in the army, it was hot as hell, the mosquitoes were terrible, and I hoped it was better where you were. On the second day, two agents from la Migra took me to another building. There, in a small room, they took my picture, my fingerprints, all my details, but it was not this that frightened me. It was their words. ‘We will be watching for you,' they said. ‘If you ever come back we will put you in prison, and where will your boy be then?'” My father finished his beer and threw the bottle out the window. “That is why.”

“You believed them?” I said.

“If you had been in that room,” he said, “you would have believed them too. Those chingados can take anything from you—your job, your freedom, your child. Without these, what is a man?”

Fri Apr 6—00:49

 

If you are my witness, AnniMac, I am your invisible man. O su suplicante. Pues, I am saying all this because I cannot see or do anything else. Because remembering the past helps me forget the present. Because maybe right now someone is fixing the tower and these messages will finally go. I tell myself that even if the mechanic never comes, la Migra will find us. It is what your border army is for, no? We hear all the time in Mexico about your modern technologies for catching migrantes—the cactus microphones and the cameras in space and the great engines under the desert that rumble in the night, powering the whole machine. And we see the pictures of all your green men with their trucks and planes and helicopters, and their dogs and indios to follow the tracks. I know this truck is big and easy to see—it is an elephant out here. It even has a sign on it en español which is yelling now—
DEPORT ME
. Or maybe it is
DRINK ME
.

Even with César so close I'm freezing. I'm holding him as tight as I can. It is the only way I can stop my teeth from rattling. I'm not the only one doing this, but I'm glad no one can see it.

 

Fri Apr 6—08:36

 

The helicopter went over us so low we were sure they saw us, but that was half an hour ago. The truck is getting warmer, but I am so stiff from the cold and the metal. The viejo in front who was insulted by the coyote, I think he is hallucinating—talking to his wife, asking her for agua de jamaica. There are some in here who think I am hallucinating too, talking to people who aren't there. Sometimes the baby-face man and his friend told me to be quiet, but not for a while. I know people are in trouble now, I can hear it by how they breathe—like dogs and sick people. It is a big question—if all of us will live to be saved. My water is gone and I think it is the same for everyone.

Maybe César is the lucky one. Maybe his accident was Juquila's mercy protecting him from something worse. Because what are the chances of such an injury? César said Juquila saved me also—from the federales. He said she might have a plan for me, but a plan is not the same as protection. César didn't give me his phone because he is a nice guy or because he didn't want it anymore—he gave it to me because he wanted someone to keep it alive. In there are some files and documents about the corn and a company called SantaMaize. I know this because of what I saw and what he told me on our last night in Altar. But this is not the only thing I have from César.

I did not say before how I came to have his phone because of what came with it, what I took. Two nights ago when the tank was cooling—for a short time before the cold it was better for us. This is when César started moving again—his hand. It was a surprise for me because it is the first time since he fell, and I said, “Cheche! Are you OK?”

But he only whispered, “Tito,” his voice so quiet I must put my ear by his mouth to hear it, and I said, “Yes, I am here,” and took his hand.

Luego, he pulled my hand over to his pants and they were wet. He pushed my hand down on the zipper. “Take it,” he whispered. “Take it.”

I didn't know what he was talking about and even in the dark it was embarrassing. I thought he must be delirious, so I'm pulling my hand away and saying, “What? What is it?” But he keeps pushing my hand down there so I can feel everything and he's saying, “Take it,” and then I feel something hard that is not him. It is completely dark, but I'm looking around anyway because you don't want anyone to see you doing like this—it feels so wrong. And then I do it, AnniMac, reach my hand into his pants. I try to stay outside his chones, but that's not where it is. I have to go inside them all the way because this is where he hides his phone. It is a safe place there and it is the reason he still has it, but I think I am going to be sick, trying not to touch anything but the phone, and when I get it I wipe it on my pants, and that's when I feel it—his battery, the new Mugen that lasts for many days.

César took a big breath, and another, and then he lets go my hand. I am afraid he's dying, right in that moment, but when I listen he is still breathing the same way like before. When I touch his head I can feel that the bleeding is finished which I hope is good. I try to give him some water, but he chokes on it and I don't know what else to do. No one can help me, and I can't help César.

But his water—when I found that in the pocket of his jacket, I put it in my backpack. All this time I saved it.