Then one afternoon, Iván lay in bed wearing boxer shorts and smoking a cigarette. He blew the smoke toward Soledad where she sat slightly curled over herself on the edge of the bed near his feet. ‘So I heard you got a sister,’ he said, nudging her backside with his toe. Soledad was very grateful not to be facing him when he said this, because she knew her face would’ve told the whole story of panic that these words provoked. ‘How come you never mentioned her?’
Soledad was wrapped in a sheet; it was tucked beneath her arms. She made her face into the approximation of a smile and turned it toward him. ‘We’re not close,’ she said. ‘She’s nothing like me.’
Outside she could hear two of Iván’s homeboys arguing, but there were also children playing somewhere beyond, squealing, chasing one another up the block. The sunlight rocketed through the open window.
‘Nothing like you, huh?’ he said, sitting up and yanking the sheet down to her waist. He tapped the bottom of her breast and watched it react. ‘That’s not what I heard.’ Then he tossed his still-full cigarette into the ashtray beside the bed and sat up on his knees. ‘Damn, girl. Lemme get in there again.’
Soledad endured him with something more immediate and terrifying than her regular revulsion, and when he was finished, and he instructed her to come back in the morning and bring her sister, she went home, packed her backpack, took all the little bit of money Papi had managed to save from the coffee can on top of the refrigerator, and then sat down at the table to wait for Rebeca to get home. She wrote Papi a note:
Querido Papi:
I love you so so much, Papi, and I’m sorry for these words I have to write that I know will break your heart. And I’m sorry for taking all your savings, but I know that you work hard and save this money only for us, and I know that you’d insist we take it and use it to get away from here if you knew the terrible things that were happening to me. And I didn’t tell you sooner because I thought I could protect you and Rebeca if I stayed quiet and just did what they told me to do, but there are monsters in this city, Papi, and now I’m so scared, and I have to get Rebeca out of here before they hurt her, too. So we’re leaving today, Papi. We are already gone. And you must be very careful and look after yourself, please. We are taking you with us in our hearts, and we will call you when we get to el norte, Papi. And we’ll send for you when we have jobs, and you can come to us, and you can bring Mami and Abuela, too, and we will all be together again as it is meant to be.
God bless you, Papi, until we meet again.
All my love, from your devoted daughter, full of sorrow,
Soledad
Much of this Rebeca doesn’t know. But she does know that Soledad texted their cousin César in Maryland that afternoon while she waited for Rebeca to get home. And she knows that César didn’t ask any questions because he already knew all the worst possible answers and all he wanted to do was get them out of there. Rebeca knows that César asked if they could wait a few days so he could try to arrange for a coyote to bring them all the way from Honduras to el norte, but Soledad told him they couldn’t wait. They were leaving today, right now. Rebeca knows that César has since prepaid for their crossing with a trustworthy coyote who will meet them at the border. Rebeca doesn’t know that the sum of money their cousin paid for their crossing was $4,000 each. But even if she had known, that kind of money doesn’t even make sense to her. It’s so far into the realm of the incomprehensible that it might as well have been $4 million.
As Rebeca reveals what scraps of story she does have to Luca, he starts to understand that this is the one thing all migrants have in common, this is the solidarity that exists among them, though they all come from different places and different circumstances, some urban, some rural, some middle-class, some poor, some well educated, some illiterate, Salvadoran, Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican, Indian, each of them carries some story of suffering on top of that train and into el norte beyond. Some, like Rebeca, share their stories carefully, selectively, finding a faithful ear and then chanting their words like prayers. Other migrants are like blown-open grenades, telling their anguish compulsively to everyone they meet, dispensing their pain like shrapnel so they might one day wake to find their burdens have grown lighter. Luca wonders what it would feel like to blow up like that. But for now he remains undetonated, his horrors sealed tightly inside, his pin fixed snugly in place.
Chapter Seventeen
For both Lydia and the sisters, there’s a constant tug-of-war between the gruesome feeling that something’s chasing them, that they must move quickly away, and a physical hesitation, a reluctance to move blindly toward whatever unknown demons may loom in the road ahead. The Casa del Migrante they find in Celaya is a respite from that tug-of-war, and as such, after a sleepless night outdoors for Lydia, a holy blessing without compare.
It’s only midday when they arrive. Luca and Rebeca play basketball in the yard and no one else can join, some complicated game with jumbled rules of their own devising. Lydia and Soledad sit quietly together, watching from a nearby bench. They help in the kitchen, listening to las noticias on television, and then Lydia naps. When she wakens, she watches her son playing dominoes with Rebeca. She notes how quickly those two have bridged the gap between their respective ages, eight and fourteen – Luca seems to have grown up and Rebeca to have simplified quite neatly – so they meet seamlessly in the middle. It feels as though they’ve known each other forever, as though these girls have always been here, waiting to become a part of their lives. That night Luca asks if he can snuggle in beneath Rebeca’s arm in her bunk.
‘It’s not appropriate.’ Lydia draws the line.
Luca knew it was a long shot anyway, but hardly any of the rules from his old life seem to apply anymore, so he figured it was worth asking. He climbs in bed without complaint. Lydia hauls her backpack beneath the sheets by her feet and wraps its strap twice around her ankle. They all sleep soundly. Glory, glory to have a door with a lock.
Soledad has told Lydia nothing of where she and her sister came from or what they endured. Lydia’s said nothing of her family’s circumstances either, but there’s that silent bond of knowing between them regardless, a magic that’s marginally maternal, but entirely female. So it’s not surprising that in the morning, the girl, who seems much older than just the eighteen months that separate her from her sister, and who’s not typically so forthcoming about private matters regarding her body, confides to Lydia that she’s pregnant. Taking her cue from Soledad, Lydia endeavors to deliver her response to this news in a calm, unvarnished manner.
‘Your baby will be a US citizen,’ she whispers across the top of her coffee cup.
Soledad shakes her head and stands up from the table to clear her plate. ‘The baby isn’t mine,’ she says. When she stretches her arms above her and her baggy T-shirt grazes the waist of her jeans, her tummy is still flat.