The Guardians (21 page)

“Maybe he found himself a wife,” one laborer said once. I imagined him with a big old grin. In the day people are all blurry. Sometimes I can see the color of the shirt, more or less, or sometimes the hair or los ojos stand out to me, but mostly they're casi mirages.

“Yeah, by getting married he could get his papers fixed and stay here,” another chimed right in.

I don't know why that set me off. Maybe because getting to know la Regina and her sobrino, who's all but grown wings on him, I figured the missing man had to be un hombre noble. He wouldn't have abandoned his family like that. I said, “This was a man with a family. He ain't like you so-and-sos.”

“WHO ARE YOU CALLING A
SONSO?
” the first man yelled. He thought I'd called him a dummy. He also thought I was yelling at him, so he yelled right back.

Oso can sense things right away, things that are there and that are not there, so he started baring his teeth and the men backed off.

I wasn't afraid of them, though. Even if I couldn't see them.

REGINA

Except for Uriel, I never had any friends. Mamá always said we didn't have time for them. Good times were for los lazyflojos who ended up on welfare and collecting government food stamps. No one we ever knew did that. Mejicanos needed to work, Mamá always said. At home, we had to keep the house clean. She didn't even believe in sitting down just to watch TV. We crocheted or mended while we kept up with a telenovela.

Despite all the work and running all over the place, my mother got fat. Well, not really fat, but fat enough that we believed it was the cause of her diabetes. All she could fit in for a while were huge housedresses, like campanas. They used to call them tent dresses. The diabetes got worse even after Mamá went on a diet. She lost all the weight. Mi mamá started dressing in culottes and matching tops, toda color-coordinated— chanclas, plastic earrings, and vinyl tote bags, even sunglasses if she could find them. Everything bright pink, orange, or lime green and with rhinestones, even better. She was real happy for a while.

Then the doctor told us they were going to have to amputate one of her legs. I've been thinking about that lately. About losing a part of yourself. But even after they cut off your leg you can still talk to people. You can tell them how you feel about them. You can live without half a leg. You can go on to live a pretty decent life, too. At least as decent as it ever was.

My feet and ankles swell up something fierce nowadays. Maybe I'll end up in a wheelchair like my mother. “Probably from so much work and never any dancing,” Uriel said when I told her how Gabo had soaked and rubbed my feet. That gesture made me cry. I cried so much after he
left for work, if you had sat me on the roof, my tears would have made another hole in it.

With Gabo's help, Miguel fixed the one causing seepage over my bedroom. My nephew was right. I kept myself too isolated. It was kind of awkward the first time Miguel showed up just to keep me company. One evening he was at my door with no reason or excuse. As usual, the mosquitoes were sucking on the very air. Right away I insisted he come in the house. “You want some tea?” I asked. “I just made up a jarra and put it in the fridge.” He shook his head. “How 'bout some pie?” He shook his head and even shuffled his feet a bit.

“You wanna just talk?” I asked.

“Okay,” he said. So that's what we did. We sat on my plaid patched couch and talked our heads off. Not just him but me, too, for a change. I didn't even care that he caught me with the cloth I dry the dishes with over my shoulder. He already knows I'm not elegant. Not being elegant don't mean you don't have class.

We were talking and even laughing. Then Miguel noticed the guitar I had leaning against the wall. I got it as a trade some years back from my vecinos. I gave the neighbor's two kids free haircuts. (I learned the haircut business from Mamá.) One day the father gave me the guitar. I can play a couple of chords. That's about it.

Miguel gestured as if to ask if it was okay for him to try it out. It turned out he plays like he could teach it. He played some old revolutionary songs like “La Adelita,” “La Valentina,” and even “Allá en el Rancho Grande.” Then he started a tune I sort of remembered from my parents’ time. It was pretty. When I hummed along, Miguel asked, “Do you know what this song is called?” No, I said. “ ‘Quizás, Quizás, Quizás,’” he said, looking at the guitar as he strummed, instead of at me. Maybe, Maybe, Maybe.

Then there was the most recent occasion. He brought up that pingo of a grandfather to talk about how the old man had taken my nephew sin papeles across the border. They went to look for his dad at the city morgue.

Gabo, with his new mustache, looks more like Rafa each day. He's stubborn like him, too. When we saw the news about the bodies found in the desert, there was no doubt in my mind that if Gabo could find a way, he'd go to Juárez to see if one of those muertos was his father. Then the phone rang.
“I THINK WE SHOULD GO SEE FOR OURSELVES,
”el Abuelo Milton said. A couple of days later it was all set.

El Viejo has lived by the Santa Fe Puente all his life, so naturally he knows a few customs officers, sons and grandkids of people who drank in his cantina. When you're driving across, officers don't ask every single person for an I.D. It's the luck of the draw. You never know if you'll be the one who gets pulled over. People owe el Abuelo Milton. He did favors and made loans back when he had a business and money to lend. So el Abuelo Milton must've got someone to let Gabo cross back into the U.S. with no I.D. That's how I figure it, anyway. No one asked my permission and no one asked my opinion.

That evening I fixed us sopes while el abuelo and my nephew told me and Miguel about their adventure to the city morgue. Gabo and el abuelo both looked wrung dry from heat exhaustion and emotion. Somehow it had been determined by the authorities that the group of muertos had started out in Zacatecas. It didn't seem likely that Rafa would have been among them. Gabo and the grandfather had to see for themselves. They were sent all over the place. When they finally did find the morgue, they said only two of the cuerpos were identifiable. If you could call that what they described.

We ate in my little living room that's still bigger than my kitchen. My sobrino, standing up, pecked on a sope. Afterward, he let himself flop down on the couch. “There was a muchacho crying over his mother's body. He was about my age,” Gabo said, staring down at his dirty feet. He was wearing huaraches, the kind made from old tires. Terrific. He crosses over knowing that he might not be able to get back in and he goes shopping … ? (He bought me three crepe-paper flowers on thick wire stems.) Then Gabo gave away his good shoes to someone on the street there. I'm not buying him no more shoes. That's all I gotta say.

“EL MUCHACHO SAID HE AND HIS MAMá LOST THEIR GUIDE.
” El abuelo picked up the story.
“THEN THEY GOT SEPARATED FROM EACH OTHER DAYS LATER, HE WENT BACK WITH HIS RELATIVES TRYIN TO FIND HER BUT COULDN'T.
”

“He had his arm all wrapped up,” Gabo said. “He got it messed up while he was out there, lost, alone.”

“CAT'S CLAW BUSH,
”the old man explained.
“HE GOT A BAD GASH THAT ENDED UP GETTIN INFECTED.
”

“He could lose his arm,” Gabo said.

“YEAH, THAT'S WHAT THEY SAID,
”el abuelo said.
“ ANYWAY, WHEN THE BODIES WERE FOUND, THERE WAS NOTHIN LEFT OF HIS MOTHER … JUST PUROS HUESOS.
”

I tried to imagine what it was like for a boy to find the skeleton of his mother and the fact was that I couldn't. There were tears rolling down Gabo's cheeks, big globules. I was thinking about that word,
globules,
big, round bubbles, when Miguel asked, “Then how did he identify his mother? How did the boy know it was her?” He pulled out a wrinkled hankie from his back pocket. He patted his forehead. Then he dabbed his eyes.

“Sí …” I said, rubbing the top of my ear. I do that when I get anxious. I was having an outage.

“Was it by her teeth work or … ?” Miguel said.

“No,” Gabo said, jaw clenched, holding everything back. “She had three fingers with flesh left. Each finger had one of her rings. One of them with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe engraved on it.”

“AY, JUST THINKIN’ ABOUT IT ALL
”—the old man gave a loud sigh, pretending not to notice all the carrying on around him—
“IT SURE IS ENOUGH TO MAKE ANY MAN WEEP.
”

EL ABUELO MILTON

Last week el governor de Nuevo México declared a state of emergency. We didn't know nothing about it 'til me and el Mikey got stopped by a roadblock.

It was the entire police department of Cabuche—all twelve of them.

The state of emergency was supposedly related to the crossing of mojados and drug dealings being both out of control. But I think the governor figured it would be a good way to get some real federal funding. He asked for something like a million dollars to increase border security. El sheriff y los deputies were stopping every vehicle going down Main Street quesque checking for sobriety. It was a Friday night and no doubt about it, Regina's town on weekends had a line at the package liquors drive-through como you wouldn't believe. N'hombre. Just the sight of all them cars lined up for beer made me miss my cantina. Like I always say, people like to drink and it ain't my fault if they do.

They also like to gamble. That's why when Miguel told me that Cabuche may end up with a casino in the not-too-far-off future, I figured the town was ripe for it. It may sound weird, but gambling and people with no money go together, just like drinking and having all kinds of problems do.

Me and my grandson had just come down the mesa from Regina's ranchería. That was the day when I had somehow pulled off slipping Gabo back into the U.S. I don't mind admitting it was proving to be one of the longest days of my life. And it was not over yet.

Well, at least in more recent memory it was the longest. Back when I fought in el army I had some pretty long days, too. None as long as the
time when my jefita left me. She was gone for a month. She took the children and went to her sister's over in Amarillo. “I had enough,” was all she said every time I called over there on the telephone. She was referring to the “viejas.” Rumors, no más, I'd tell her. But she left me anyway. I bought her a new Buick and told her I would teach her how to drive it if she promised to come back. She kept her promise and I kept mine. I didn't count on her “surprise visits” at my establishment once she could get around on her own.

After a while a man gets tired of going from flower to flower like some greedy bee. Lola was my true love. Once my children were big enough to come to the bar to drop off my supper or give me a message from home, I started behaving myself. No use giving your children the wrong idea about what you know is not correct. It'll only come back to bite you in the trasero.

That day, when I decided to take my adopted grandson, like I call him now, to the other side to check out the bodies at the city morgue, we had a heck of a time. It started out with my compadre's daughter, my goddaughter, who is an officer at the Puente. At the last minute she called to say she was sick and wasn't going to work. We had arranged for her to be on the lookout for us at the crossing to help get Gabo back in with no problems.

Then, mi ahijada called me again. She said for a hundred dollars one of her compañeros would look out for me. Bueno, a hundred dollars is a good chunk out of a man's monthly pension, but I had already promised Gabo. He was even taking off from school, which to that boy was almost a sin.

Everything that has to do with the realities of life is a sin to that boy. “Having too much of a conscience is gonna make your head explode someday,” I've told him.

Me and el muchacho made it to Juárez that morning. Then, hijo. How many times did we get lost trying to find that bendito city morgue? People sent us all over the darn place. Pa’ 'qui y pa’ ya. We just went in circles and kept ending up at the mercado.

I couldn't see nothing anyway—mi carnalito was leading me around.