Into the Beautiful North (10 page)

The cop eyed them skeptically. He smiled. She was cute, the little dark one. Too dark for his taste, but she had some ass on her.

“Very good,” he said. “Very smart.” He tapped his head with one finger.

She flushed.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Nayeli,” she replied.

He nodded.

“Should I search you, Nayeli?” he said. “Are you carrying some of the good Sinaloan marijuana?”

“No.”

He laughed.

“And you?”

He jerked Tacho off balance.

“What is your name, bridegroom?”

“Tacho.”

“Tacho?”

“Just—Tacho.”

“Tacho no es muy macho,” the Jefe called out, and his pals chuckled.

“I’ve heard that joke before,” Tacho said.

“Are you upset?” the Jefe asked him. “You’re crying, Tachito. That doesn’t seem very macho to me.”

He looked at Nayeli.

“I just want a word with the groom,” he said.

He dragged Tacho toward the back of the room.

“Tacho!” Nayeli cried.

One of the kinder aduana agents said, “It is better if you stay quiet.”

The Jefe murmured in Tacho’s ear—“Do you have drugs stuck up your ass, Tachito?”

He slammed Tacho through a door, and they were suddenly in the men’s toilet. The Jefe shut the door and locked it. Tacho wiped his eyes and stood firm. The cop smiled at him.

“Faggot.”

“No.”

The cop bumped into him.

“Oh?” he said. “What was that?”

“What?”

“You bumped into me.”

“I did not.”

“Oh,” the Jefe said, “so I am a liar?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, sir.”

“I am not a liar, then.”

“No.”

“So you bumped into me.”

Tacho stared at the wall. There were ancient hieroglyphs of pudenda and violence drawn on every surface.

“Sí. If you say so.”

“You dirty little faggot,” the cop said. “Do you think you can work your little tricks on me? Rubbing on me like that?”

“No, sir.”

“Apologize.”

“I’m sorry.”

The cop grabbed Tacho’s crotch and squeezed it. Tacho yelped.

“Is this your game?”

Tacho said, “Please.”

“Nice big packet. Were you hoping to use it on me, Tacho?”

The cop hit him once, knocking him against the wall. He turned to the sink and washed his hands.

“You make me sick,” he said. “Get out of here.”

Tacho picked himself up and struggled for a moment with the latch. He hurried out of the bathroom. Everybody stopped what they were doing and stared at him.

“A slight misunderstanding,” he said, and rushed to the bus and folded up in the dark and feigned being asleep.

El Jefe stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

“All clear,” he said. “Let them go.”

The passengers headed for the door.

“Nayeli,” the Jefe called, “come back to see me soon.”

His men laughed.

Twenty miles outside of Mexicali, the hydraulic system broke on the bus, and they rolled backward to the edge of a precipice but did not go over. After trying to get the doors open for an hour, Chuy kicked out one of the windows and dropped to the ground. He began walking toward civilization in the dark. Cold wind came in the open window. Nayeli cradled Tacho’s head in her lap. She could feel his silent tears on her thigh. She could hear coyotes howling outside. All around her, the travelers snored and coughed and cried out in their worried dreams.

Chapter Ten

C
huy did not return. But nine hours later, a second bus pulled up beside theirs. It was full, but the driver got out and told them, “If you’re willing to stand, I can take a few of you to Tijuana.”

The Tres Camarones group got on the bus and hung on to the overhead racks. Three women followed them and bumped up against Nayeli. Their body odor nauseated her. Then she realized she was also smelling herself. This was a serious faux pas in Camarones. Indeed, she had never been outside her house without sweet scents in her hair and the clean smell of American soap rising from her body. Nayeli tried to hold on to the racks and keep her elbows down so her underarms weren’t exposed. She was ashamed and felt filthy. When the bus started, the woman standing in front of her fell back against her and stayed there. Nayeli could feel the woman’s hard buttocks against her belly. She couldn’t move away.

Tacho seemed to be asleep on his feet. His eyes were swollen and red. Nayeli noticed Yolo watching her over Tacho’s shoulder. Her eyes were dark as the highway itself, and she simply stared at Nayeli. Neither of them could believe the world they had entered.

Somehow, La Vampi managed to swoon into the lap of a sixty-year-old cowboy with a straw hat and a mesh bag full of onions. He cautiously put his arm around her and sat erect, never looking at her once all the hours of their long drive to Tijuana. She knocked his hat askew, and he stoically let it ride sideways on his head.

In a vast flat of sagebrush and far dirty hills, their driver turned on his microphone and announced, “To your right, the fabled American border.”

They craned and stared.

They looked for fences and helicopters and trucks and dogs. Nothing. There was nothing there at all.

Tacho noted, “It just looks like more Mexico,” before he closed his eyes again and sank into his misery.

Nayeli tried to do one of Sensei Grey’s meditations, seeking Buddha in the illusion of the moment. She tried to make the lake in her mind still as a black mirror. Someone stepped on her foot. She meditated on the pain instead.

They came down out of the mountains. They saw the Rodríguez Dam standing above the city. They could see sedimentary rings on the cliffs where the shore had receded.

“Empty,” the driver said. “I saw it in 1965, full to the top. But there’s no water left.”

Down, into the hard dirt of Tijuana. Shacks and huts and scattered little cow farms gave way to small colonias and clutches of houses around gas stations and stores, and the roads got bigger and fuller, and there were newer cars, and more of them. Trucks everywhere. They saw canals, and now the fences appeared as all trees vanished. They saw their first bridges. A prison. They plunged into the maw of the city—shantytowns surrounded the dusty center. Cars everywhere. Everyone stirred and craned, and Tacho nudged Nayeli and pointed, and she looked up at a dead hill across a tall fence where white trucks sat watching and a helicopter circled.

The USA didn’t look as nice over there as it did on television.

They lurched and turned a hundred corners and pulled into the battered new bus station on the far side of Tijuana.

They fell off the bus, dizzy and exhausted and thirsty. But they laughed. They danced. They were in Tijuana! The first leg of the journey was over!

They watched the driver unloading bags and suitcases.

“Let’s get a motel,” Tacho said.

“We have to save our money,” said Nayeli.

“I want a bath,” Vampi said.

“You need a bath, girl,” said Yolo.

“I wouldn’t talk, cabrona.”

“Where’s the bags?” Tacho said.

“I’ll call Chavarín,” Nayeli promised. “I’m sure we can take showers at his house!”

“Together?” said Tacho.

“¡Ay, tú!” Yolo cried.

“I want to see you all naked,” Tacho announced. “I want to see what all the fuss is about.”

“If you see me naked, boy,” Nayeli promised, “you’re going to change your ways!”

“Or throw up,” Tacho retorted.

La Vampi sighed, “I want my bag.”

But there were no bags.

The bin was empty. The driver slammed the doors down.

Nayeli stepped up to him and said, “¿Señor? Disculpe, pero ¿donde están nuestras maletas?”

He stared at her.

“¿Qué?” he said.

“Our bags.”

“What bags?”

“Our bags from the last bus.”

“You don’t have any bags.”

“He loaded our bags.”

The driver shook his head.

“No bags,” he repeated.

He lit a cigarette and walked away.

The girls cried out. Tacho cursed. Nayeli yelled, “Wait!” but the driver never looked back. They stood there between the big buses and watched him leave.

“Now what do we do?” cried Vampi.

Nayeli looked at Tacho, and they both turned and stared out at the alien city surrounding them. Even Yolo was starting to cry.

“I’ll think of something,” Nayeli said.

Nayeli could not find a phone booth. She hunted all around the bus station. There were no pay phones anywhere.

She stopped a man in an old checkered sport coat and said, “Señor—could you direct me to a pay phone?”

When he ascertained to his satisfaction that she wasn’t begging for alms, he said, “Use your cell phone,” and rushed away.

They pulled together and stood in a tight group, looking around. The norteño accents were a bit off-putting, but at least it was still Spanish. They told themselves it wasn’t like they had suddenly landed in Shanghai or Beirut. This was still Mexico.

“Let’s go downtown,” Tacho said. “Let’s get some food and a Coke and find civilization.”

“Good idea,” Nayeli said.

“There must be a phone booth downtown,” Yolo said.

“Must be,” said Vampi.

“I’ll pay the taxi,” Tacho said.

“Our benefactor,” Yolo said.

They were scared out of their minds.

Vampi tugged on Nayeli’s shirttail.

“Nayeli?” she whispered. “Do you have any Kotex?”

“What?”

“I started my period.”

“Now?”

“On the bus. My Kotex is in my bag. I used toilet paper.”

Nayeli still had her small purse—it had a tampon in it.

“I’ve got this.”

“What’s that?” Vampi said.

“It’s a tampon,” Nayeli said. “No seas simple.”

Vampi stared at it.

“How’s it work?”

“You don’t use these?”

“My grandmother would never let me use that.”

“It’s all I have.”

“It’s kind of small, isn’t it?” La Vampi asked.

Nayeli whispered, “It goes inside.”

The other two were now staring at her.

“I can’t do that!”

“I’m not going to do it, girl, so you better figure it out,” Tacho said.

Vampi made a face.

“We’ll help,” Yolo said.

“You go right ahead, girls,” Tacho said. “I’ll stay right here.”

Vampi started to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right,” Nayeli said. She put her arm around her. “You’ll get used to it.”

They hustled to the women’s toilet.

Tacho wondered if he was the only one who knew they were in serious trouble.

Apparently, taxicabs in Tijuana carried as many human bodies as possible. The four of them piled into the backseat of a middle-aged Chevy and were astounded when two more people shoved in on top of them while an old woman with a cane and a bag of groceries got in the front.

“Welcome aboard!” the driver quipped, and they were off on a bone-rattling journey through the unbelievably crowded streets. The driver turned on the radio, and they were amazed to hear a Mexican techno song announce, “Tijuana makes me happy” in English.

“Does Tijuana make you happy?” Tacho asked the driver.

The driver looked at him in the mirror.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s the happiest city on earth.”

He dropped them off outside the jai alai frontón.

As they got out, the old woman in front handed Nayeli an orange.

“Eat fruit,” she advised.

They walked with the restless throngs. The tide of American bodies dragged them down Revolución, the central party artery of Tijuana. Techno and Van Halen boomed from shops and bars and eateries. It was only afternoon, but lurid lights were already blinking and sizzling outside the bars. Hawkers stood in the street, calling to passersby: “Hey, amigo! C’mon, c’mon, amigos! Tequila buena! I got good prices on shoes! For you, two-for-one special! C’mon!” Nayeli almost laughed. Tacho began to strut again. Maybe Tijuana was his kind of city. That made him feel better. He almost forced the Jefe and the bathroom out of his mind; he forced himself to forget the missing bags.

A boy with blue eye makeup called him “guapo.”

“Oh, my God!” Tacho said.

“That boy had eye shadow,” Vampi said. “I like that.”

Donkeys in the street stood stoically before madly painted carts decorated with Aztec and rural scenes in vivid colors. The donkeys were spray-painted white and black to look like zebras. Americanos sat on the carts and giggled with huge sombreros on their heads as bored Mexicans snapped their pictures. Mexican cops kept an eye on the crowd. Tacho noticed soldiers in black body armor on several corners, their evil black machine guns slung low.

Children shined shoes, walked up and down the sidewalks with boxes of Chiclets, or carried poles hung with bracelets and woven chokers. Vampi bought a black cross made of shiny thread. It had a red bead in the center that looked like a drop of blood.

“Gothic Catholics unite,” Tacho said.

They paused in front of an upstairs eatery, and before they knew it, they were swept up into it and seated at a table.

“What can I get you?” the waiter said.

“I’m dying for a cold beer,” Tacho announced.

The waiter nodded.

“Four?”

Yolo and Vampi started to giggle. They had not yet drunk beer. Nayeli smiled up at him. He was quite handsome.

“Sí, por favor,” she said.

“Bring limes,” Tacho said.

“Claro.”

They were fascinated by the passing tourists on the street below. Cholos and surfos cruised by, pickups and low-riders, old work vans and bicycles. They watched cops pull over and shove a drunk American sailor into their car and inch back into traffic. Flocks of schoolgirls in their uniforms hustled along, chattering and laughing. Fat Suburbans with black windows carried cocaine cowboys on their rounds.