Жанин Камминс - American Dirt

‘Mami!’ he says.

It’s the first word he’s spoken in three days, and he immediately regrets the sound of it, the plain, disloyal happiness of it. Mami smiles at him, but it’s not her regular smile, and there’s no mistaking the endeavor of it for actual joy. So why isn’t he broken like that? What’s wrong with him, that he can behave so normally? Mami runs her fingers across the top of his head and he pushes his face back toward the glass. He watches the tram swallow the track beneath them.

Inside the terminal, the mechanical hum of air-conditioning is like a sheen behind all the other noises: a little girl holds her mother’s hand and rolls her dog-shaped suitcase behind her by the leash, a man shouts into his cell phone in a throaty, unfamiliar language, a woman clacks hurriedly along on her angry heels. There is the smell of lemon and freon. Luca follows Mami to a little kiosk with a screen on it, and he watches while she clicks around on there for a few minutes. Then he thinks he shouldn’t be watching her, but he should be watching other people, to make sure nobody’s noticing them, so he turns and looks, and no one is watching them except that little girl with the dog-shaped suitcase. She’s standing in line with her mother, or rather sitting on the back of her suitcase. When her mother moves forward, she pushes with her feet to keep up. Luca would like a suitcase like that.

‘We can’t book from here.’ Mami interrupts his thoughts. ‘It won’t let you buy a same-day ticket. We have to get in line.’ Mami picks up her backpack, which she’d set down on top of her feet, and Luca follows her over to get in line. He’s happy to have a closer look at the dog suitcase, which, he can now see, also has a furry tail and ears.

The girl sees him admiring it and she smiles. She’s about the same age as Luca, maybe a year younger. ‘You can pet him if you want to,’ she says. ‘He doesn’t bite.’

Luca takes a step back and hides his face behind Mami. But then a moment later, he reaches out and brushes the tip of the dog’s tail with his fingers. The girl laughs and then her mother says, ‘Let’s go, Naya,’ and the girl waves, pushing with her sneakers, all the way up to the ticket counter.

Luca and Mami are next, and soon they’re standing in front of a lady wearing a blue suit and a red silk scarf. Her round face is repeated in miniature on the plastic name tag hanging from her neck. She smiles at Luca.

‘Hello, little jet-setter!’ she says to him. ‘First time flying?’

He looks up at Mami, and she nods, so he nods, too. Flying! He can’t believe they’re going to fly. He’s not sure he wants to fly, but it’s possible he really wants to fly. It’s hard to tell.

‘We’re taking a little spontaneous vacation,’ Mami says to the ticket agent.

The woman’s hands are poised over her keyboard. ‘Okay. Where to?’

‘I was thinking of Nuevo Laredo?’

The woman clacks around on her keyboard at a comical speed. She can’t really be typing that fast, Luca thinks. She’s pretending. She frowns.

‘No flights until Friday. Are you hoping to leave today?’

‘Yes.’ Mami leans her elbows up on the ticket counter. ‘What about Ciudad Juárez?’

Clack clack clack. ‘Yes, that would work, there’s a three o’clock flight, stopping over in Guadalajara. Arrives in Juárez at 7:04 p.m.’

Mami bites her lip. ‘Nothing direct?’

Clack clack. ‘There’s a nonstop at 11:10 tomorrow morning.’

Mami shakes her head. ‘Okay, let’s try Tijuana.’

This time the woman covers up the sound of her typing with chatter. She doesn’t even look at the screen or at her hands. They move in front of her as if they’re two animals, independent of her body. She turns her round face toward Mami.

‘Fun town. Ever been there?’

Mami shakes her head.

‘I used to fly. I was a flight attendant before I had the babies. Did the Tijuana route, so once in a while we got to stay overnight.’ She winks at Luca. ‘Hope you like to party!’

Luca digs his fingernails into the palms of his hands to stop himself from thinking about parties, and the woman returns her round face and her round eyes to the screen in front of her.

‘There’s a direct flight to Tijuana at 3:27 p.m. Gets in at 5:13 p.m. They’re two hours behind us.’

‘Perfect,’ Mami says. ‘Two seats?’

‘Sure. And when do you want to return?’

Mami looks down at her gold sneakers against the terrazzo floor. Luca doesn’t understand her hesitation, that she’s attempting to perform an algorithm of calamity in her mind. Lydia knows they have exactly 226,243 pesos left because she counted it on the floor in Carlos’s bathroom in Chilpancingo. They’ve already spent more than 8,000 pesos on the hotel and supplies and bus tickets. She also has her mother’s purse, with a bank card she’s afraid to use. Abuela had a savings account, and however much there is, they’re going to need it. They’ll have to pay a coyote when they get to the border, and if they’re lucky, there will be a small sum left over to sustain them until she figures out what’s next. They can scarcely afford to throw money away on a return airplane ticket they’re not going to use. But neither can they afford to tell this friendly woman, this stranger, this potential halcón, that they’re traveling only one way. Luca squeezes Mami’s hand. ‘Returning next week, same day,’ she says.

‘Very good,’ the woman says brightly, but Luca worries that her smile has turned a little stale. ‘We can get you on a return flight, let’s see, how about 12:55 p.m. Gets in here at 6:28 p.m., nonstop.’

Mami nods. ‘Good, yes, good. What’s the price?’

The woman adjusts her red scarf as she scrolls down. Her fingernails are square and they’re painted the color of concrete. They click when she taps on the screen. ‘Three thousand six hundred ten pesos each.’

Mami nods again, and swings her backpack around to balance it on her knee. She takes out her wallet from the side pocket while the woman continues clacking on the keyboard.

‘I can pay in cash?’

‘Yes, of course,’ the woman says. ‘I just need photo ID.’

Mami has separated their money into various places, keeping around 10,000 pesos in the wallet. Luca watches while she counts out the bills for the tickets, seven pink, two orange, one blue. She stacks the notes on the counter, and the woman picks them up to begin counting. Mami digs into the sleeve of the wallet then and retrieves her voter ID card, which makes a little snap when she places it on the counter. The ticket agent sets the money across her keyboard and picks up Mami’s ID. She holds it in one hand and types with the other.

‘Thank you.’ She hands the card back to Mami and looks at Luca.

‘And what about you?’ She smiles. ‘Did you bring your voter registration card?’

Luca wags his head. He obviously can’t vote.

She returns her attention to Mami. ‘So I just need a birth certificate or some documentation to verify legal custody.’

‘Of my son?’ Mami asks.

‘Yes.’

Mami shakes her head, and the skin around her eyes flushes pink. Luca thinks she might cry. ‘I don’t have,’ she says. ‘I don’t have that.’

‘Oh.’ The woman clasps her hands together and leans back from her keyboard. ‘I’m afraid he can’t fly without it.’

‘Surely you can make an exception? He’s obviously my son.’

Luca nods.

‘I’m sorry,’ the ticket agent says. ‘It’s not our policy – it’s the law. Every airline is the same.’ She’s neatening the colorful money back into its stack. She’s handing the stack back to Mami, but Mami won’t take it, so she sets it on the counter between them.