‘Nah.’
Lydia doesn’t think he’d bother lying. He seems completely guileless, and he doesn’t owe her an explanation anyway. But it’s so far-fetched. Why would anyone give a kid that much money? It seems almost impossible to offend Beto, so she pushes it.
‘Are you sure you didn’t take it when he was sleeping or something?’
He laughs. ‘Güey, I’d have to have some huevazos to do a thing like that!’ He shakes his head. ‘Or a death wish.’
‘Okay,’ she says.
‘I don’t have a death wish,’ he clarifies. ‘I like being alive.’
‘Good,’ she says.
‘Despite everything.’
Lydia crushes the Styrofoam bowl in her fist without meaning to, and a dribble of sauce runs into her palm. She wipes it on her jeans and then looks at Beto’s round face. He’s a philosopher, she thinks. He’s rough, but he means what he says, and his openness is a provocation. Despite everything, he likes being alive. Lydia doesn’t know whether that’s true for herself. For mothers, the question is immaterial anyway. Her survival is a matter of instinct rather than desire.
‘If you want to know the truth, I think it’s more than he meant to give me,’ Beto confesses suddenly. ‘He was pretty stoned.’
‘Ah.’ Now it makes sense.
‘I told him I’d pay him back when I got a job en el otro lado, but he said, “After you get across, just keep walking. Don’t ever look back here.” ’
Lydia nods. ‘So that was it?’
‘That was it, here I am!’
‘Here you are.’
Luca looks over at them, a little boomerang of reassurance – just verifying they’re still there. Then he returns his gaze northward.
‘And nobody’s coming after you, right?’
‘I hope not,’ he says. ‘I’ve paid my taxes, stayed out of prison, always kept up with my child support.’ He clears his throat and spits into the sidewalk. He squints north toward the wall. ‘I’m a free man.’
Lydia laughs. ‘You’re a character.’
‘That’s the word they always use,’ he says. ‘Character.’
She tosses her bowl into the trash can as well. ‘Well, it sounds like you were overdue for some good luck anyway.’
‘That’s right, it’s my turn,’ he says. ‘Darle la vuelta a la tortilla.’
‘So how are you going to cross?’ she asks. ‘You have plans?’
Beto sits up taller and studies la línea from where they sit. It looks as impenetrable as it does in TJ. ‘Sometimes kids just walk right up to the booth and hand themselves in,’ he says. ‘Some of the Central American ones can get asylum. You know about that?’
‘Sure, I heard about the caravans.’
Lydia had been aware of the migrant caravans coming from Guatemala and Honduras in the way comfortable people living stable lives are peripherally aware of destitution. She heard their stories on the news radio while she cooked dinner in her kitchen. Mothers pushing strollers thousands of miles, small children walking holes into the bottoms of their pink Crocs, hundreds of families banding together for safety, gathering numbers as they walked north for weeks, hitching rides in the backs of trucks whenever they could, riding La Bestia whenever they could, sleeping in fútbol stadiums and churches, coming all that way to el norte to plead for asylum. Lydia chopped onions and cilantro in her kitchen while she listened to their histories. They fled violence and poverty, gangs more powerful than their governments. She listened to their fear and determination, how resolved they were to reach Estados Unidos or die on the road in that effort, because staying at home meant their odds of survival were even worse. On the radio, Lydia heard those walking mothers singing to their children, and she felt a pang of emotion for them. She tossed chopped vegetables into hot oil, and the pan sizzled in response. That pang Lydia felt had many parts: it was anger at the injustice, it was worry, compassion, helplessness. But in truth, it was a small feeling, and when she realized she was out of garlic, the pang was subsumed by domestic irritation. Dinner would be bland. Sebastián wouldn’t complain, but she’d register the mild disapproval on his features, and she’d feel provoked. She’d try not to start an argument.
Beto is talking beside her. ‘I heard if your life is in danger wherever you come from, they’re not allowed to send you back there.’
To Lydia it sounds like mythology, but she can’t help asking anyway, ‘You have to be Central American? To apply for asylum?’
Beto shrugs. ‘Why? Your life in danger?’
Lydia sighs. ‘Isn’t everyone’s?’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The sisters call the coyote from a pay phone. They feel like professional telephone users now, and they make the call without Luca’s assistance. Soledad tells the coyote they’ve arrived in Nogales, and they have three more people now who want to join their crossing.
‘Can they walk?’ he asks. ‘This is the no-frills package. They have to be in good shape.’
‘Yeah,’ Soledad assures him. ‘They’re good.’
‘Where are you now?’
Soledad presses the receiver to her ear and looks around. ‘I don’t know, we’re right by the border,’ she says. ‘By the train tracks.’
‘You can see the American flag there, on that big white building?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yeah, I know where you are.’
The coyote tells her to meet him at a plaza a couple blocks away. He’ll be there within the hour. She’s excited when she hangs up the phone. She tells Lydia and the boys the news.
‘He says it’s good if you come. We have to go meet him now.’
They want to call Papi first, and they try three times, but it’s an international call and they don’t understand all the codes, so they finally have to enlist Luca’s help. It turns out they don’t have enough money anyway, so they settle on a prayer instead.
‘He’ll be okay,’ Rebeca insists. If she says it enough times, she can maybe make it true.
At the Plaza Niños Héroes, there are ornate benches painted a vivid gold, but all the ones set in the shade are already taken, so Luca and Beto sit on the edge of another planter, and Lydia sits on a low step nearby. The sisters walk quiet laps together through the square, their arms folded tightly in front of themselves, and their heads tipped toward each other. Lydia watches people notice them, their remarkable beauty, their visible exhaustion.