Carlos Fuentes - The Crystal Frontier

Her parents gave Marina that name because of their desire to see the ocean. When she was baptized, they said, maybe this one will get a chance to see the ocean. In the clump of shacks in the northern desert, the young would get together with their elders, and the elders would tell how, when they were young, they wondered what the ocean was like. None of us had ever seen the ocean.

Now, as the frozen January sun rises, Marina sees only the thin waters of the Rio Grande, and the sun feels that everything’s so cold it would like to slip back down between the dun sheets of the desert from which it is beginning to emerge.

It’s five o’clock and she has to be at the factory by seven. She’s late. What made her late was making love with Rolando last night, going with him to El Paso, Texas, on the other side of the river, and returning late, alone, shivering as she crossed the international bridge to her one-room house with lavatory in Colonia Bellavista, Ciudad Juárez.

Rolando had stayed flat on his back in bed, one arm folded behind his head, the other flattening a cellular phone to his ear. He looked at Marina with weary satisfaction, and she didn’t ask him to take her home. She could see how comfortable he was, so boyish, all cuddled up, and also so open, so moist and warm. Above all, she saw him ready to start working, making calls on his cellular phone since very early — the early bird catches the worm, especially if the bird’s a Mexican making deals on both sides of the border.

She glanced at herself in the mirror before leaving. She was a sleepy beauty, with the thick eyelashes of a young girl. Sighing, she put on her blue down jacket, which looked bad with her miniskirt because it hung to her knees while the skirt just reached her thighs. She stuffed her work sneakers into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Unlike the gringas, who walked to work in Keds and put on their high heels in the office, Marina always wore pointy high heels to work even if they sank into the mud from time to time. Marina wouldn’t sacrifice her elegant shoes for anything: no one would ever see her in worn-out shoes looking like some Apache.

She caught the first bus on Cadmio Street, and, as she did every other morning, she tried to look beyond the dirt-colored neighborhood, the shacks that looked as though they’d popped up out of the ground. Every day, without fail, she tried to look at the vast horizon. The sky and the sun seemed her protectors; they were the beauty of the world, they belonged to everyone and cost nothing. How could ordinary people make something as beautiful as that? Everything else was ugly by comparison. The sun, the sky… and — so they said — the sea!

She always ended up looking toward the gullies that tumbled down toward the river, as if her eyes were pulled by the law of gravity, as if even within her soul all things were always falling down. Even at this early hour the Juárez gullies looked like anthills. Activity in the poorest neighborhoods began early, as swarms of people poured out of the shacks down by the edge of the narrow river, trying to cross. She turned away, uncertain if what she saw annoyed her, embarrassed her, aroused her sympathy, or made her feel like imitating those crossing to the other side.

Better she fix her eyes on a solitary cypress tree until she couldn’t see it anymore.

Instead of the cypress, Marina saw only concrete, wall upon wall of concrete, a long avenue boxed in by concrete. The bus stopped at a field where some boys in shorts were playing soccer to keep warm, and then, shivering, it crossed the vacant lot to the next stop.

She sat down next to her friend Dinorah, who was wearing a red sweater, blue jeans, and loafers. Marina held on tight to her bag but crossed her legs so Dinorah and the other passengers could see her classy high heels with a chain instead of a leather strap across the ankle.

They made their usual small talk: How’s the little one, who’d you leave him with? At first, Marina’s questions irritated Dinorah and she would pretend to be distracted— looking for a piece of chewing gum in her bag or fixing her mop of short orange-colored curls. Then she realized she’d be running into Marina on the bus every day of her life and she would quickly answer, My neighbor’s going to take him to a day-care center.

“There’s so few of them,” Marina would say.

“Of what?”

“Day-care centers.”

“Around here, sister, there’s not enough of anything for anything.”

She wasn’t about to tell Dinorah to get married, because the one time she did, Dinorah had responded angrily, Why don’t you go ahead and do it first? Set an example, Miss Know-It-All. Marina wasn’t about to point out that, though neither of them was married, she didn’t have a child — that was the difference. Didn’t the kid need a father?

“What for? Around here, men don’t work. You want me to support two instead of just one?”

Marina told her that with a man at home she’d be able to defend herself better against the pests at the factory, who were always after her because they saw that she was defenseless, that no one stood up for her. Marina’s comment infuriated Dinorah, and she told Marina she was sick and tired of her, God may have thrown them together on the same bus, but if Marina went on giving advice no one asked for, she’d quit talking to her. Marina should stop being such a hypocrite.

“I’ve got Rolando,” said Marina, and Dinorah almost died laughing: All the girls have Rolando, and Rolando has all the girls. Who do you think you are, you idiot? Marina began to sob, though the tears didn’t roll down her cheeks but instead welled up in her eyelashes, and Dinorah felt bad. She pulled a tissue from her pocket, hugged Marina, and wiped her eyes.

“You don’t need to worry about me, honey,” said Dinorah. “I know how to protect myself from the boys in the factory. And if someone tells me I’ve got to fuck him to get a promotion, I’ll just change factories. Anyway, nobody moves up around here. We just go sideways, like crabs.”

Marina asked Dinorah if she changed jobs a lot. Marina’s job was her first, but she’d heard that when the girls got fed up with one place they moved on to another. Dinorah told her that after you’ve done the same work for nine months your sides start to hurt and your back won’t let you sleep.

They had to get off to change buses.

“You’re late too.”

“I guess it’s for the same reason you are,” Dinorah said with a smile. They walked off laughing, arms around each other’s waist.

The plaza, crowded with little shops and all kinds of stalls, was already bustling. Everyone was exhaling winter mist, and vendors were showing off their merchandise or hanging up their signs: Hurry, hurry, get your beans from Jean. The two women stopped to buy corn, delicious ears of it dripping melted butter and still steaming. They giggled at an advertisement: Use Macho Man for Sexual Deficiency. Dinorah asked Marina if she’d ever met a man with sexual deficiency. Marina said no, but that didn’t matter as much as choosing the right man. The right man? Well, the one you really like. Dinorah said that the men with sexual deficiencies were almost always the braggarts, the ones who bothered them and tried to take advantage of them in the factories.

“Rolando’s not like that. He’s very macho.”

“So you told me. And what else does he have?”

“A cellular phone.”

“Wow.” Dinorah rolled her eyes mockingly but said nothing more because the bus arrived and they got on to make the last leg of the trip to the assembly plant. A very thin but good-looking young woman, with an aquiline beauty unusual in those parts, came running up to catch the bus. She was in a Carmelite habit and sandals. As she took the seat in front of them, Dinorah asked if her little feet weren’t cold like that in winter, without stockings or anything. She blew her nose and said it was a vow that only made sense in the frost, not in the summer — she used the English word.