Жанин Камминс - American Dirt

Mami opens her mouth but manages to close it again without speaking. She fidgets with the loops of gold at her neck.

Carlos taps his pointer finger on the table between them. They all look at that finger. ‘Meredith, there’s no other option for them. I understand your concern, but this is the only way to get them safely out of Guerrero. If we don’t help them, they could die.’

‘ Could is an understatement,’ Mami says.

But Meredith crosses her arms and shakes her head some more. Her hair is some color between brown and gold, and it’s pushed back from her face with a black headband. Her nose is red, cheeks red, eyes hard blue. Mami lifts her teacup and tries a sip, but when she sets it back down, Luca can tell she didn’t swallow any.

‘I’m sorry, it’s too risky,’ Meredith says. ‘It’s not fair to do that to the kids, to their parents in Indiana. This is exactly the kind of thing those families fear, sending their kids down here to Mexico. Do you have any idea what it takes to placate those fears? We give them our word their kids will be safe. I personally guarantee their safety. I tell them this kind of thing will never happen.’

Mami clears her throat and her face looks like a bomba about to go off, but she breathes through it. ‘This kind of thing ?’

Meredith presses her eyes closed. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean. I don’t even know what to say.’

‘Sebastián is dead, Meredith,’ Carlos says. ‘My friend, your friend. He’s gone. And fifteen more besides. This is not the kind of thing that happens, ever. Not even here. Do you know anyone else who’s lost sixteen family members in one day?’ Meredith glares at him, but he plows ahead. ‘We have to help them. If the suffering of our friends means nothing, if those kids can’t be allowed to see us, to see Mexico as it really is, then what are they even doing here? Are they just drive-by Samaritans?’

‘Carlos, don’t,’ Meredith says, and Luca has the feeling this is a very old conversation between them.

‘They just want to make pancakes and take selfies with skinny brown children?’ Carlos asks.

Meredith slaps her hand against the table, and the tea ripples in the cups. But Mami intercepts the rising anger between them. She speaks like a void, like she’s left the conversation entirely, and only her voice remains behind. She chants without any expression. ‘Sebastián, Yemi, Alex, Yénifer, Adrián, Paula, Arturo, Estéfani, Nico, Joaquín, Diana, Vicente, Rafael, Lucía, and Rafaelito. Mamá. They are gone. All gone.’

A lump rises in Luca’s throat and grows one size with each name that leaves Mami’s mouth. He looks at Meredith to see how she’ll respond, but her face is an unreadable smear of pink and blue. Instead it’s Carlos who replies, placing his hands flat on the table. ‘We will help you,’ he whispers. ‘Of course we will.’

Meredith stands to pace behind her chair, her arms crossed in front of her. ‘Lydia, I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through. It’s unimaginable. And yes, of course we’ll do everything in our power to help. But please try to understand, I also have to weigh my moral responsibility here. Sometimes there are no easy answers.’

Mami tents her hands over her forehead. ‘I don’t want to cause trouble for anyone. I just want to get Luca out of here. I have to.’ For the first time since all this started, Luca thinks she might unravel. He watches intensely, and her voice cracks. ‘Please. We’re desperate.’

Carlos looks up at his wife. ‘Honey, listen. I understand your resistance, I do. But sometimes there are easy answers. This is an easy answer: If we don’t help them, if they get on a bus alone, if they get stopped at a roadblock and killed because we didn’t have the courage to save them, can you live with that? Can we?’

Meredith sighs and leans over the back of her chair. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’

‘Just pray on it,’ he says. ‘Give it up to God.’

She turns and clicks on the electric kettle, even though no one has yet managed to choke down the first cup of tea. With her back to the table she says, ‘Are you sure they’re even looking for you now?’ She faces the table again and leans against the counter. ‘Wasn’t Sebastián the example they wanted? They got him, so maybe it’s over now.’

Luca looks from Meredith back to Mami, and she meets his gaze, and pauses, as if weighing how much to say in front of him. Perhaps she remembers that fear is good for him now. He should be afraid.

‘No,’ Mami says quietly. ‘He won’t stop until he finds us.’

In bed, on the night she discovered that Javier and La Lechuza were the same person, Lydia turned off the lamp but did not close her eyes. She and Sebastián had always agreed that married people were entitled to a certain measure of privacy, that they needn’t tell each other everything. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with him; he didn’t press her on personal matters, he was seldom jealous, and he had no interest in annexing or directing her friendships with other men.

‘You’re a person, an adult,’ he said to her before they were engaged. ‘And I am your lover. If we get married, you choose me. I hope you’ll continue to choose me every day.’ Lydia had laughed at his unfashionable use of the word lover, but the sentiment thrilled her. Before Sebastián, she’d always presumed that marriage would entail a sacrifice of her liberty. That it had not, delighted her. They were both trustworthy, and they fancied themselves quite modern. They kept nothing of import from each other, but Lydia liked having a sacred cupboard within herself, to which only she was allowed access.

So there’d been nothing untoward in her failure to mention the name Javier to her husband before, but, of course, that night, everything changed. When Sebastián got up in the morning and kissed her forehead on his way to the bathroom, she was still awake. She sat up in bed, her stomach lurching with the movement.

‘Sebastián,’ she said. She thought about not telling him, about asking questions instead. She knew that once the words were out of her mouth, her friendship with Javier would come to an end, and beneath everything else, there was a foundation of grief to that impending loss. She wanted her discovery to be untrue, a misunderstanding.

Her husband turned toward her in the gray light of the bedroom. ‘What’s wrong?’ He knew instantly, from the pitch of her voice. He crossed the space between them and sat beside her on the bed.

‘He’s my friend,’ she confessed.

Sebastián didn’t go to work that morning. He called his editor and left a message that he was following a lead and wouldn’t be in until later. He and Lydia sat together on the unmade bed and talked for hours, while outside the light shifted from gray to pink to broad, sunny yellow. When it was time to wake Luca and take him to school, they managed the routine in a distracted haze.

‘I’ll take him today,’ Sebastián insisted. ‘You wait here.’

Lydia cried in the shower.

When Sebastián returned they continued their discussion at the kitchen table. Lydia’s wet hair was knotted on top of her head and her face felt blotchy.

‘Is there any chance you’re mistaken?’ she asked, her arms folded in front of her. She already knew the answer, but it made no sense. She was floundering.

Sebastian locked his eyes on her and answered in the most deliberate possible tone. ‘No.’

She nodded. ‘The piece you’re working on about Los Jardineros – does it specifically mention him?’

‘Yes, it’s all about him, his big debut. The whole Hello, World, I’m a Major Kingpin exposé.’