The Same Sky (17 page)

And then, filled with a quiet sense of accomplishment and joy, I brought my husband his supper.

27
 

Carla

T
HE BEAST HAD
stopped in a fair-sized town. Junior and I were sitting in the shade of a tin roof eating mangoes Ernesto had given us. He seemed to have acquaintances in every place; when the train slowed, he would step off, disappear for a while, and return with water and food. I had thought he was running from his gang, but he no longer seemed scared. We never talked about what had happened to me.

In the town where I was caught by
la migra
, Ernesto was smoking cigarettes with a group of boys who had the number on their faces. We were waiting for the train to begin moving again, so we could jump aboard.

“I’ll be right back,” said my brother, standing up and stepping into the sunlight.

“Where are you going?” I asked. I had a guess; he found
a way to refill his baby-food jar at most rest stops. I didn’t know if people gave him the glue or if he stole it. I hoped that our mother could help my brother get well in Austin, Texas.

Junior ambled off, toward Ernesto and his gang of thugs. I took a juicy bite of mango flesh into my mouth, the taste giving me pleasure. All of a sudden, a truck approached with sirens blaring and someone shouted,
“¡La migra! ¡La policia!”

“Junior!” I hollered, jumping to my feet. I began to sprint toward my brother, but Junior was also running, following Ernesto away from the town square, toward the ramshackle houses that lay beyond it.

He did not turn. My brother, whom I spent every night curled around, my nose nestled in his earthy-smelling hair. He never glanced toward me, just pumped his legs forward, his arms moving rhythmically as he fled. I tried to catch up.

An immigration officer caught me by the wrist. I howled, tried to wrench free, but it felt like an alligator had clamped its teeth on my arm. “Ernesto!” I screamed.

Ernesto slowed. He looked back: his lovely face with its terrible black tattoo, his mouth open, gasping for air.

“Take care of my brother!” I cried.

Did I imagine it? Perhaps. But it seemed that Ernesto nodded—a promise—then turned again and ran.

“Come with me, miss,” said the officer. Three other officials were grabbing people; they handcuffed us and shoved us into air-conditioned trucks. If anyone protested, they were beaten. I did not protest. A part of me was broken,
tired, ready to just go home. I did not understand what God wanted from me, and where He was taking me, and why.

We were piled on top of each other, taken to a squat cement building, a jail, where one by one we were interviewed. I knew what I was supposed to do in this instance: pretend I was Mexican, so as not to be sent back home. My brother was in Mexico now, in the company of a boy I did not understand or trust. It was my duty to find Junior.

So when the woman asked me the name of the president of Honduras, I told her I had no idea. When she asked who the Mexican president was, I said proudly, “Vicente Fox.”

The woman shook her head. “Vicente Fox was the president of Mexico many years ago,” she said. “Look. I can put you on that bus, and you will be in Tegucigalpa tomorrow morning.”

Just hearing the name of my city melted my insides. I thought of Humberto, his lips, his curling black hair. I thought of my house, the pallet where I could sleep unmolested. But then I thought of Junior, so small, adrift in Chiapas.

“I am Mexican,” I said. “I just forgot! Of course, the new president is …” She waited, but no name came to me. More specifically, only
one
name came to me: Vicente Fox. “The new president is …,” I said, helplessly.

The woman watched me with patience. Her eyes were so soft I wished for a moment that she would adopt me herself. I had to force myself to stay in my plastic chair instead of leaping into her lap and begging her to save me.

“The president of Mexico is …,” I repeated. I held my breath and bit my lip, praying for the answer to appear in my mind. I put one tired foot on top of the other. I wrapped my arms around myself, digging my fingernails into my skin. I stared at the official, wondered if she had children, if she sang lullabies at night.

“Yes?” said the woman. She held her pen aloft, ready to seal my fate. Outside the jail, a row of buses idled, waiting to return us to the places we belonged.

28
 

Alice

A
FTER DINNER, WE
got into bed. Lazily, Jake kissed my neck, then my collarbones, my breasts. I turned to him. We made love tenderly at first, and then frantically, as if trying to reach a place we’d lost the directions to. Was he thinking about Lainey? I was thinking of myself, in a way—how I might look from above, my hair tangled, nightgown abandoned, moving above my husband, his eyes closed, large hands grasping at the meat of my waist. We both climaxed, technically, but I felt far away from Jake, and for that matter, far away from myself. This was a strange time in our marriage: we were being fashioned into personalities by reporters like Lainey, but we were losing sight of who we’d hoped to be, who we were, and what the hell we wanted.

Jake was leaving town in the morning, so he rose around 10:00 p.m. to head into Conroe’s and prepare the ribs for the next day. I was still wide awake and decided to join him. Through rainy streets, we drove to the restaurant, detouring to grab pastries from La Mexicana Bakery. The fecund scent of Austin—the smell of things growing; too many things, growing too fast, but thrillingly so—calmed me, brought me back to myself. Why had making love with Jake left me unmoored? I decided not to think about it.

At Conroe’s, we worked together soundlessly, classical music on the radio. Pete slept in his crate. Around midnight, I was cutting fat from a brisket when I heard a rapping on the window. I looked up and saw Evian standing in the rain outside Conroe’s.

“Honey?” said Jake.

“It’s my deal,” I said.

“Damn right it is,” said Jake.

I washed my hands and pushed open the door. Evian saw me and rushed forward. “Oh, Alice!” she cried, throwing herself against me, a wet storm of fruity-smelling body spray and booze. There was a dull thud as the side of her face hit my rib cage. I hesitated for a moment, stunned, but then slowly lifted my arms and folded them around her skinny shoulders. “My mom kicked me out,” said Evian, her voice rapid-fire and muffled against my shirt. “She hates Sam. She won’t let me smoke. I can’t handle it!
I can’t handle it!” Evian sobbed wildly for a while. I patted her shiny jacket.

Over her head, I watched the kitchen nervously, afraid that Jake would see our embrace and be angry. I could see the little painted sign I’d hung above the refrigerator:
Home is where the heart is
. I’d found it in the pile of trash the previous owners had left in the living room of our Mildred Street house. I’d also found some beat-up pots and pans and a Crock-Pot that worked fine once you duct-taped the crack in the lid. I found it surprisingly easy to feel hopeful when I read the plaque, rather than focusing on the fact that the previous owners of our house had perhaps given up on the sentiment while packing for Pflugerville.

“Shh, shh. What can I do?” I said.

She took a deep breath and pulled back, presenting me with her tear-stained face, made grotesque by some sort of multicolored mascara. It’s not that I fell for her histrionics, but I remembered clearly being a teenager and wanting a mother. I guess I saw a bit of myself in Evian, though we hadn’t had the sort of face paint Evian favored at the Ouray Variety Store. Her pupils were wide, and I tried to remember if this meant she was drunk or stoned.

“I don’t have anywhere to go!” she cried. “Sam doesn’t have a house! He lives with the football coach. I can’t go there!”

“Sam lives with the football coach?” I asked.

“He’s the
quarterback
!” Evian wailed. This was surprising news, as Sam was certainly tall but not very broad. Maybe he was the JV quarterback. Sometimes it seemed as
if every man I met in Texas was, wanted to be, or had been a quarterback.

“His mother’s on drugs,” cried Evian. “I have nowhere to go!”

“I’ll take you home,” I said. “Let me get my keys.”

“No!” shrieked Evian, folding inward and howling as if someone had kicked her in the spleen. Jake came to the door.

“Alice?” he called, pushing open the screen.

“Here,” I said. “I’m here, with Evian.”

“Oh. I see,” said Jake. He went back inside, not stopping the screen door from slamming (as he knew it would) with an emphatic
bam
. He couldn’t have planned it better:
Oh. I see. Bam!

“Wait here,” I told Evian.

In the kitchen, Jake was making coffee-chipotle sauce. He raised his eyebrows when I came in. “Her mother kicked her out,” I said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jake evenly. He looked old under the fluorescent lights. I saw fine lines around his eyes that I’d never noticed before.

We both leaned against the steel counters we’d salvaged from a restaurant on South Lamar when the owner had been arrested for trafficking heroin. “I think I’m going to tell her she can stay with us tonight, and that’s all,” I ventured.

Jake whisked with fervor. He set the metal bowl down sharply, snapped his head up, and said, “I disagree.”

“Noted,” I said, pushing the door open and stepping outside.

“This is a really important week for me,” said Jake. “Lainey’s here for six more days.”

“Fuck off,” I told him.

I went to Evian and took her hand. “You can sleep on our couch,” I told her, leading her to the truck.

“Thank you,” she said. I noticed she was dragging a large garbage bag, which she explained was her belongings. (“Mostly dirty laundry,” she told me.) I couldn’t tell if I had done the right thing, but I felt strong at least, as if I was taking charge of something.

I made Evian a bed on the couch with a sleeping bag and two pillows. I even found a mini-tube of Crest and an extra toothbrush that had probably not been used before. I brought her a washcloth and a bar of soap and told her to sleep tight. Pete had stayed at Conroe’s with Jake.

“Hey, Alice?” called Evian as I was changing into pajamas.

“Yes?”

“Do you have, like, a Wi-Fi password?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. I jotted it down,
WHERESTHEBEEF
, and brought it to Evian, who seemed to have recovered completely from her previous hysteria. She sat on the couch in my pajamas with her legs crossed, tapping away at her device. I went into my room and tried to fall asleep, but sleep would not come. After a while, I heard the front door open. Jake tiptoed to our room, changed quickly, and climbed into bed.

“I’m awake,” I whispered.

“I have to get some rest,” said Jake. “Lainey and I are leaving in a few hours.” Since Jake had told Lainey about the different styles of Texas barbecue—hickory-smoked and slathered with sauce in East Texas; South Texas
barbacoa
, beef heads smoked in a hole in the ground; direct-heat, mesquite-flavored “cowboy style” in West Texas—she’d gotten the go-ahead from her editor to take Jake on the road. “Are you sure you and Benji can handle the rush?” asked Jake.