Until I Find Julian (2 page)

He grinned and hugged me. “I've read so much about America—the mountains, the sea, the tall buildings. The prairie grass that waves in the wind.” I could see the excitement in those dark eyes. “I want to be part of it, to paint all of it. I can't forget the money either. I'll work at anything and someday I'll find a place where I can draw, sketch—” He broke off. “In the meantime, I'll send money home. You know there are no jobs here.”

He rested his hands on my shoulders. “This is the way I'll go. I'll walk miles to the train and climb on top…”

“You can't do that!”

He raised his hand. “After the train, I'll find someone to take me across the north of Mexico and the river.”

“You mean a coyote.” I grabbed his collar. “Mami says they're desperate men. They rob the travelers, and sometimes they even kill.”

“I'll be all right. Once I cross the border into Texas, I'll stop at our cousin Consuelo's house. And then, at last, Arkansas.”

“But why Arkansas?” I ask.

“Tomàs says there's work up there. And I read about it. It sounds like a beautiful place.”

Nothing I could say would stop him.

The next day he and Tomàs were on their way.

At the table now, Tomàs is still talking. “I have a long way to go. Home first. Then miles of walking to find a job. Any job at all.”

Abuelita scrapes back her chair. I know she's going to pack what little food we have for his journey.

After Tomàs has gone, I still can't make myself go inside. I rest my hand on the cat, feeling the burning in my throat.

Mami bends her head over the squares as colorful as macaws, her tears dripping onto the fabric. Abuelita picks up her needle and begins to run stitches through two red pieces. Her eyes are almost closed. She won't let herself cry.

Julian has to be all right!

What will we do without the money he sends to the bank for us each month? Even worse, how will we know where he is, or how much trouble he's in? Letters hardly ever reach our town.

But we have to know.

I
have to know.

I have to find him, save him, the way he saved me once.

And I know the way.

Tonight there's no chicken stewing
in the pot, no shredded meat in our bowls. “It's been a long day.” Abuelita tries to smile. “We'll have a little rice, a little bread instead.”

I tell them about losing my job, but they hardly listen. Mami swipes a cloth over the counter in great arcs, her eyes swollen. She isn't speaking, she isn't singing. It's strange with no music in the kitchen. There's only the sound of the frogs croaking as they float on the water, their throats puffed into iridescent bubbles.

Mami doesn't want to tell me about Julian, not yet. I know she can't talk about it.

My little brother Lucas reaches out to me as if he knows something is wrong. I grab his hands and swing him around, just missing the table; he laughs, a smear of something across his cheek. The kitchen spins with us: the table with the bowls of rice, the wide window without glass, the green trees outdoors.

I put him down and sit at the table. I can't eat the rice in front of me. I'll do what Julian did: walk that long way to the train, then somehow cross the north of Mexico to the Rio Bravo. Texas is just on the other side of that river. Once there, I'll find Consuelo. I'm sure she'll tell me the rest of the way.

I take a forkful of rice. It has no taste; I'm not hungry even though I haven't had anything since breakfast.

My eyes go to Abuelita, the lines in her forehead deeper, then to Mami, staring out the window. She looks the way she did that terrible day Papi died. Our neighbors carried him home from the fields where he was planting in heat that soared over one hundred degrees. “His heart gave out,” his friend Paulo told Mami. “The heat was too much for him.”

Now, long after dinner, I go to bed and listen to the ripple of the creek and the faraway sound of a dog barking. I wait until the house is still.

The money I've saved to surprise Mami on her birthday goes into my pocket. I shrug into my old sweater and wrap a piece of cloth around my waist for a blanket.

Abuelita has left a new notebook for me in the kitchen closet. I copy Consuelo's and Julian's addresses from her pad, even though I'm sure I'll remember them.

I rest my hand on the notebook. Ah, Abuelita!

Once I told her, “I might write a book someday.”

She nodded. “I know you will, Mateo. Everyone has something, and you have a way with words,
mi amor.
” In the kitchen, she cut paper into squares. With rough fingers, she stacked the pieces with a blue paper cover and stitched them together with string. She handed me the book, my first notebook. “Write down your memories: good ones and bad ones. Someday they'll turn into stories.”

Now I slide two bottles of water and a few bits of food into my backpack. I tear a page out of the notebook and write quickly:
I've gone to find Julian.
I put it under Mami's breakfast plate. They won't find it until morning. Then I tuck the little book and a pen into my pocket.

I'm ready. I climb out the window and glance back at the sleeping house. Rain patters on the tin roof, and a mist rises up from the creek.

The cat is curled up under a tree. She'll have to hunt for every bit of her food from now on. I reach over and run my hands along her rough sides. Then I begin to walk.

Behind me, there's a voice.

I turn. Abuelita!

“You're going north across the border,” she says.

I swallow. What can I say? “You found my note.” I wonder if she'll tell me to go back inside.

She surprises me, though. “No, I haven't seen a note. But I knew you would go. I saw you outside listening when Tomàs was here.” She touches my cheek. “It's a very dangerous trip. But I'd do the same thing if I were younger. We are alike, Mateo, you and I. We have great love for our family; it makes us strong.”

We sit on the ledge next to the creek. “You must watch everyone and everything constantly.” Her voice is stern. “Think before you act. Move slowly, carefully. Be deliberate.”

Her eyes fill. I've never seen her cry, not even when Papi died. “You are everything to me.” She slips a medal on a chain around my neck and money into my pocket. The medal matches the one she wears: Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“The lady, the Blessed Mother, appeared to a boy,” Abuelita says. “She left her image and a spray of roses on his cloak. You can still see that cloak in Mexico City.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “She will protect you.”

I watch her go back to the house, her head up. My tough Abuelita!

“I'll come back when I find him,” I call after her.

And then I'm on my way.

I reach up to touch
Abuelita's medal around my neck. It's been so long since she put it there. More than a week? It seems forever.

My eyes are closing as I listen to the sound of the motor and try to breathe inside the truck's close, dark air. I'm almost asleep.

Dreaming, Mateo.
That's what it is.

I'm lost in dreams. I see our house that tilts against the creek, covered with Julian's paintings. It's miles behind me now. I hear Abuelita's husky voice as she reads to me.

Behind her, Lucas dances around the kitchen waiting for the beans to simmer in the enamel pot on the stove; his eyes are the color of walnuts and his hair grows every which way, just like mine. He sings a song he's just made up.

I feel Mami's floury hands on my cheeks.

And Julian: long ago, as I sleep in bed, creek water plinks on my cheeks; more slides down my neck. Green water, with the smell of weeds and fish! I reach up and grab Julian so he drops the cup, still half filled. We wrestle over the bed, onto the floor, laughing. He's eight years older than me, my best friend.

I'm in the back of a coyote's truck now; I concentrate on his red baseball hat, which stands out in this rusted heap as we try for the border.

In the beginning, I promised him money. “I'll pay you back someday.”

He was chewing on something, ready to walk away, when he saw the watch on my wrist. Julian's watch. Too big for me, a little battered, but all I had left of him.

A moment later, the watch was off my arm, onto his. And I was crowded inside that truck with six others, holding my bare wrist.

Now the motor gives a dry cough. The truck heaves forward, then rattles to a stop. “We'll have to walk,” the coyote says.

We stumble out and follow that red baseball hat.

I'm last. I can almost hear Damian saying, “Always last, Mateo. The cow's tail.”

I wander into a thorny bush and fall over a hidden rock. “Ai!” Too far back for the coyote to hear. I've done something to one of my ribs. The pain is fierce. I lie there, holding my side.

My mouth is filled with grit; I've never been so thirsty. My face is sunburned, blistered, stinging more now that it's almost dark.

I want to cry like Lucas, to wail, to pound my fists.

Stop!
Think about Mami and how frightened she is for Julian.

Think of Abuelita, who believes I can do this. I reach back to touch the little notebook in my jeans pocket. It's half filled now. I wrote in some of it after I left the train and waited to find a coyote, and a few pages more as I crouched in the back of that smoky truck.

I've told about my journey: the days of walking and sleeping near the road, then racing along next to the train heading north, hauling myself up, the train speeding around curves, the wind and bits of debris so strong I couldn't open my eyes. My feet sliding, my legs…

I held on to the railing as my sweater flew off my shoulders, the scrap of blanket was ripped off my waist, and the backpack hurtled away.

But I wrote about happier things too: Lucas loving music, waking us with his songs. And our house, which Abuelita and my long-ago Abuelo built with their own hands.