Mark Gimenez - The Governor's wife

Dying is a way of life on the border.

And if her true identity ever became known, she'd be dead before the sun again rose over the Rio Grande. But here in the colonias on the outskirts of Laredo, she was just the Anglo nurse who made house calls. Not that the residences qualified as houses. They were just shanties constructed of scrap material-plywood, sheet metal, cardboard, even discarded garage doors-but they provided shelter from the hot sun if not the dry wind that blew in from the Chihuahuan Desert. It was early September, but it was still summer on the border. It was always summer on the border.

She ducked her face against the dirt that never ceased to blow and walked down the road to her next house call.

Barefooted children played in the gray dirt that was the road or in the foul water that was the river. Potbellied pigs lay in what shade they could find. Chickens pecked at the bare ground, and goats wandered aimlessly. Vultures circled overhead, waiting. Always waiting for death. Young women who looked old cooked beans and tortillas over open fires and wielded straw brooms in a losing battle against the dirt. They smiled and waved to the pretty nurse wearing a white lab coat over a bright yellow peasant dress and pink Crocs; a stethoscope hung around her neck. A scarf concealed her famously red hair from the world and a wide-brimmed hat her light complexion from the sun's harsh rays that had burned the land to a crisp brown. Everywhere in Texas, she was considered a glamorous forty-four-year-old woman.

Everywhere except the colonias.

Over her shoulder she carried a black satchel filled with medicine and supplies and hard candy. Small children ran to her and gathered around as if she were the Pied Piper, a dozen little voices pleading in Spanish and twice as many hands reaching up to her. She searched inside the satchel and dug out a handful of candy; she placed one piece in each open hand. Their brown faces beamed as if she had doled out diamonds, then they ran back to their madres. The sight of an Anglo in the colonias would normally send the women and children scurrying into the shanties and shadows. But she was welcome now.

Because while they lived with the fear of death, she was in the business of life.

She stopped at the next residence where a child's wailing could be heard from inside. A once colorful wool blanket now made gray by the dirt that attacked it like a cancer covered the doorway. A clay flowerpot sat outside with a single yellow sunflower. She spit dirt then called out to the woman of the house.

"Maria!"

A hand yanked the blanket aside, and the distressed face of a young woman appeared in the doorway. Maria Teresa Castillo was only twenty-three years old, but she looked twice her age. Life in the colonias aged a woman. Maria was a Mexican national and a single mother of four children and pregnant with her fifth. The youngest had diarrhea. From the river water.

" Senora, thank God you have come," Maria said in Spanish. "Benita, she is very sick."

She stepped inside and recoiled at the foul smell of the child's stool, suffocating in the small space. She blew out a breath against the odor then waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Electricity had not yet come to this colonia. She now saw the small child lying on a burlap pad on the dirt floor and crying against the pain of intestinal cramps.

"Maria, you cannot bathe her in the river," she said in Spanish. "The parasitos and toxins in the water make her sick."

The Rio Grande was contaminated with industrial waste from the maquiladoras on the other side and human waste from both sides. She cleaned her hands with a gel sanitizer then dropped the satchel and knelt beside her two-year-old patient. She placed her palm on the child's forehead; her skin felt hot and clammy. She retrieved the tympanic thermometer from her coat pocket, placed a disposable cover over the probe, then inserted the probe into the child's ear canal and took her temperature.

" Ciento dos."

She put on latex gloves and removed the child's dirty diaper. It was wet and pungent with urine, which was good; she was not suffering from dehydration. She cleaned the child's bottom with a sanitary wipe then applied petroleum jelly to ease her discomfort. She put a new diaper on the child then removed the gloves and searched her satchel for medicine to relieve the child's pain until the bacterial infection had run its course. In Spanish, she explained the proper dosage to Maria. Her instructions were interrupted by the sound of distant gunfire, which elicited no more reaction in the colonias than the sound of the wind. With Nuevo Laredo just across the river, gunfire was the car horns of the colonias. She continued her instructions until she heard a familiar voice outside.

"?Senora!?Senora! "

"In here!"

The blanket parted, and Inez Quintanilla stood in the doorway.

" Senora, you must run away! You must hide!"

The doctor's young receptionist was breathing hard, her pretty brown face distorted with panic. That was not like Inez.

"Why?"

"They come for you!"

"Who?"

"El Diablo! And his hombres."

Her respiration increased.

"He's here? In the colonia? "

" Si, Senora."

" Why? Why does he come for me?"

She heard the fear in her own voice.

"El Diablo, he knows who you are."

"How?"

Inez's brown eyes dropped.

"I am sorry, Senora."

Her eyes came back up.

"But you must run! He will take you away!"

"Where?"

Inez pointed south to the river and Mexico beyond.

"You must hide! They are coming!"

Inez stepped to the blanket that was the back door then turned to her.

" Senora, I pray to God for you."

Inez disappeared through the blanket. Pray she might, but there was no god on the border. There was only the devil. El Diablo. And there was no place for an Anglo to hide in the colonias. There was no place for anyone to hide. The river blocked escape to the south, the eighteen-foot-tall border wall to the north. The colonias occupied a no man's land, on the American side of the river but the Mexican side of the wall. The U.S. government had built the wall to keep the Mexicans out, but they had fenced the colonias in. Everyone in the colonias now lived at the mercy of the Mexican drug cartels.

Including her.

They would take her across the river into Nuevo Laredo, just as they had taken so many other Americans, who had never been seen again. But she was not just any American. She turned to Maria and gestured to the back door.

"?Andale, andale! "

Maria lifted the child and carried her out back.

She was alone. She didn't need the stethoscope to know that her heart was racing; she could feel it pounding against her chest wall. She stepped across the dirt floor and peeked out the blanket door. She stared east. In the distance she saw women and children scattering from the dirt road and a cloud of dust kicked up by black trucks speeding toward her.

She did not have much time.

Everyone in the colonias knew of the Anglo nurse. But only the doctor knew who she really was. She had never revealed her true identity to anyone else, and no one here had recognized her. They had not seen her face on the news because there was no television in the colonias. They had not read about her or seen her photo in the newspapers because only the Mexican papers were sold here-the language of the colonias was Spanish. The colonias, like so much of the borderlands north of the river, were just suburbs of Mexico.

But Inez had learned the truth. And then she had betrayed her. How? And why? She did not understand, but it did not matter. All that mattered was that they were coming for her. And they would take her into Mexico. She fought not to panic-because what she did in the next few moments would determine whether she lived or died.