Жанин Камминс - American Dirt

Luca and Beto talk quietly nearby, swinging their feet from the planter, banging their heels against the wall beneath them. Beto scratches a twig along the top of the planter like a pencil. Luca plucks two leaves off a shrub and intertwines their stems, twisting them around in his fingers. So Lydia is worried about all these things, and yet, she has a new understanding about the futility of worry. The worst will either happen or not happen, and there’s no worry that will make a difference in either direction. Don’t think . She leans her elbows on her knees.

When he arrives, El Chacal finds the sisters without trying.

‘ Dios mío, ’ he says, by way of introduction, shaking his head.

Soledad can feel him assessing them, the angles of their faces, the problem of their beauty. She feels the hesitation this causes him, and she likes that hesitation is the thing it causes rather than something else. She’s relieved as she watches him push past his reluctance. He nods at them.

‘Soledad?’ he says.

‘Me,’ she responds. ‘And this is my sister, Rebeca.’ She pinches her sister’s elbow, and Rebeca nods.

He’s a small man, only slightly taller than the sisters. His face is handsome, with angular cheekbones and a clean shave. His cheeks are a shade rosier than the rest of his skin, which makes him look more cheerful than he otherwise might. He’s wiry and lean in his clean Levi’s and red Gap T-shirt. He looks like a migrant himself, except his Adidas sneakers appear brand-new. ‘Where are the others?’ he asks.

‘They’re sitting,’ Soledad says. ‘Over there.’ She walks toward them and the coyote follows.

‘ Ay, ’ he says, when he sees them. ‘A lady and two kids?’ He shakes his head.

The boys are already in earshot, and they both hop down from the planter.

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ Beto says. ‘I’m twenty-three. I just have a growth disorder.’

Beto knows the words growth disorder because one of the kids he knew in el dompe had a growth disorder, and even though that kid was the same age as Beto, he stopped growing when they were both six, and Beto kept going until he was twice that boy’s height. It was one of the visiting priests from San Diego who told them about growth disorders. It didn’t matter anyway, because knowing the words didn’t make the kid start growing again. Beto grins at the coyote.

‘Twenty-three, de verdad ?’ El Chacal says.

‘Plus, I have the voice of an angel,’ Beto says, and then he places one hand on his heart and breaks into song. A very loud, not entirely off-key rendition of some pop song Luca’s heard before but doesn’t know the name of. When he gets to the rap part, El Chacal holds up one hand to shush him. ‘Impressive, though, right?’ Beto says. ‘They called me the J Balvin of el dompe .’

The coyote looks unblinkingly at Beto, who does an impromptu tap dance right there in the middle of the square.

‘Okay, okay, siéntate .’ El Chacal doesn’t like to draw attention.

Beto hoists himself back onto the edge of the planter.

Lydia stands. ‘My son and I have come all the way from Guerrero. We rode La Bestia. We are capable; we won’t slow you down.’

Rebeca speaks up. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things that little dude can do. He could walk a week in the desert if he had to.’

The coyote frowns, turns to Soledad. ‘Your cousin told you I have a good track record, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know why I have a good track record?’

She shakes her head.

‘Because I don’t take kids. I don’t like leaving people behind. I don’t like people dying in the desert. So I choose people who won’t die.’

Luca holds on to his mother’s hand. ‘I have no intention of dying,’ he says.

El Chacal turns his attention to the boy. ‘No one intends to die,’ he says to Luca.

‘Yes,’ Luca concedes. ‘But I intend not to die.’ Lydia holds her breath. She can see that Luca’s making an impression. ‘There’s a difference,’ Luca says.

‘Oh?’ The coyote leans back to get a better look at Luca’s face beneath Papi’s cap.

‘Yes,’ Luca says. ‘I have considered it.’

‘You’ve considered it!’ El Chacal laughs. ‘You have considered dying?’

‘Of course,’ Luca says.

‘And?’

‘And I’m not interested in dying yet.’

The coyote nods. ‘I see.’

‘So I will stay alive.’

‘Okay.’

‘With or without your help,’ Luca says. Lydia pinches the back of his neck lightly. ‘But of course, your help would be a significant advantage.’

Now the coyote laughs harder. ‘ ¡Órale! ’ he says, holding his hands up in front of him. ‘Okay, okay.’

Beto hops down to the ground. The kid knows when to keep quiet; he doesn’t say a word.

‘Okay,’ the coyote says again. Then he looks at Lydia. ‘You can pay?’

She tries to make her face blank, her voice loose. ‘What is the price?’

‘Five thousand for you. Six each for the kids.’

‘Dollars?’ Lydia’s mouth drops open.

‘Claro.’

The sisters paid only four each. ‘But I thought—’

The coyote intercepts her argument. ‘It’s not a negotiation. I have enough pollitos to cross without you. I don’t need the money. If you want to come, that is the price.’

Lydia closes her mouth. She’s short. She doesn’t know exactly how short, but they don’t have enough. Her stomach drops, and for the first time in days, she feels like she’s going to cry. The flare of her nostrils, the swamp of fluid into her sinuses, it’s almost a relief. She wasn’t sure she was still capable of crying.

‘How much is that in pesos?’ Beto removes the wad of cash from his pocket, and is flicking through it, counting.

The coyote pushes Beto’s hands down out of sight. ‘Put it away,’ he says. ‘You trying to get killed or just robbed?’ Beto stuffs the money back into his pocket while the coyote looks around to see if anyone’s watching them. ‘Listen, if we’re going to do this, the first thing is, you have to not be an idiot, okay?’

Beto looks sheepish and doesn’t clown. ‘Okay,’ he says with genuine remorse. ‘Sorry.’

The coyote nods. ‘Don’t do anything until I tell you to do it, right?’

Beto nods again.

‘You don’t even piss or sneeze without my permission. And for God’s sake, you don’t ball out with a wad of money and start counting it in the middle of the street.’

‘Okay.’

El Chacal returns his attention to Soledad. ‘It’s going to be tight quarters in the apartment with the extra people, but it’s only a couple days.’

‘Apartment?’ she asks. She’s taken her backpack off to drink from her water bottle. Luca and Beto collect their things.

‘Yeah, a place I use for staging. You’ll be there a day or two until the others arrive.’ He begins to walk, and Lydia grabs her backpack to fall in step behind him.

‘I need to go to a bank first,’ she says.

He turns and looks at her, eyebrows up. ‘A bank?’ he says, as if she’s requested they stop by the moon for a moment.

‘Yes. To get your money,’ she says.

‘A bank!’ El Chacal says again. ‘Maybe I should’ve charged you more!’ He laughs when he says this, and although Lydia is cheered by his unexpected congeniality, by his quickness to laugh, she can’t manage to join him.

Lydia is relieved to find a branch of her mother’s bank nearby, and she leaves Luca outside with the sisters. The building looks freshly whitewashed, and it makes her aware of how worn-looking and dirty she is. She pauses to check her reflection in the window. She’s been wearing the same powder-blue, button-up blouse for three days. Her armpits feel damp, and her hair is a mess. She hopes she smells okay; she can’t tell anymore. Lydia never wore makeup when she was younger, but since she turned thirty, she’s taken extra care with a bit of powder most mornings, a light dusting to cover the lines across her forehead. At work, she wore a light coat of mascara and a slick of nude lip gloss. She washed her hair every second day, and usually wore it in a ponytail when she was stocking the shelves. The woman in the window looks nothing like that recent Lydia. This woman is thinner and darker, with ropes of muscles in her neck and arms. This unshowered woman has dark circles beneath her eyes and a grim visage. She wishes for the armor of her small makeup pouch at home, hanging by its drawstring from a wooden hook in the family bathroom, but the bewilderment is almost comforting; perhaps no one would recognize her from Javier’s photograph after all. She’d like to take off the floppy hat, too, and stuff it into her backpack, because she feels ridiculous, like she’s going to church in her bathing suit. But even with the changes to her appearance, she’d feel too conspicuous without it. Enough wishing. There’s a security camera mounted on a bracket above her, and Lydia doesn’t want to be on it. She lowers her face beneath the hat as she opens the door of the bank, and steps inside.