Where We Come From Read online

  I

  Un favor

  1

  It bothered Nina that Rumalda looked her same age, like they might have been classmates in grade school and now had come to be reunited every Friday morning when Rumalda walked across the bridge to clean the house. Sixteen years younger was not nothing, yet Rumalda hobbled like an old mule with a bad leg that never healed. Bunions. A bone spur. A bad hip. Only God knew. The woman refused to see a real doctor, terca that the salve the curandera had prepared for her needed time to do its healing. Maybe leaving it on more than just overnight. Nina wondered who actually looked her true age, she or her maid. If she had been spared only by being born on this side of the river. If she shouldn’t go back to coloring her hair, like she did when she had more time, before she moved back home to take care of her mother.

  When the gray showed up she convinced herself she looked more her age, but then the gray began turning white and she didn’t know what age she was anymore and if it mattered, as little as she left the house these days. But how much older would the Matamoros Nina look? Would her feet be as calloused and scaly, as misshapen with bunions from walking six days a week for however long to the bridge to wait in line with the rest of the men and women coming to this side to work? How many shades darker? How much more haggard and spent from walking home on the other side of the river, where you never know when Los Mañosos, as Rumalda calls the narcos, might decide today is a good day to start killing one another in the streets?

  * * *

  —

  Two months earlier, before Nina’s nephew Eduardo asked her to take care of her godson Orly, Rumalda had asked for her own favor. She had arrived like every other Friday and set down her purse, removed her flats, and put the first load of laundry to wash. She came back to the kitchen when she was called over a few minutes later. Maybe this was the only house she cleaned where she was invited to sit and have coffee. Maybe she had coffee everywhere she went and never mentioned it out of modesty. It was a small gesture to pass the time, to treat her like a person and not some criada, as Nina’s mother sometimes called her. They paid her the standard forty dollars to do the laundry and clean the house. Even on a fixed income, Nina always set aside enough money for this expense. It was her only break from working around the house during the week. If Rumalda had extra time, she prepared the lunch and made tortillas so she could fill the rest of her workday.

  When she did finally sit, it was close to the edge of the seat cushion and avoiding much eye contact, instead staring into the black, unsweetened coffee before her. Other than Nina’s brother Beto occasionally coming to visit and the doctors and nurses they saw when she took her mother to her appointments, Rumalda was one of the few contacts Nina had with the outside world. Adelita Morales from down the street had died two years earlier and left her husband behind, who by that point was already going blind from the diabetes and now stayed indoors, afraid to venture even to his front gate. Most of her friends from work had moved on with their lives. Nina had tried to meet them for coffee or lunch, but this only happened on Fridays, the one day a week she could stray from the house knowing that Rumalda was there to keep an eye on her mother.

  Rumalda wasn’t much of a talker. But Nina was just happy to see someone else’s face, to see her smile or grimace when she shared some small detail about the last seven days of being here with her mother. And perhaps this is how it would’ve continued if Nina hadn’t been asking Rumalda so many questions, inquiring about her husband and the younger daughter and then the older one and her husband and their baby, instead of letting the woman sit and enjoy her coffee.

  At first, Rumalda had claimed no, everything was perfectly fine with her family, as always. Gracias a Dios. Then a moment later the story changed. She confessed that in truth she had a small favor to ask.

  She had started cleaning houses not long after her second daughter was born. This second daughter was a grown woman now, but born with Down syndrome. She stayed locked inside the one-bedroom apartment while her parents came across to work. Nina had only seen dated pictures of Paloma, ones that made it seem as though she hadn’t advanced beyond the age of eleven and still wore pigtails while her mother’s braided ponytail dangled past the middle of her back like the tongue of an old church bell, discolored with age and use. But the favor was for the other daughter, Noemí, the one married and with a four-year-old. The husband had crossed and found work with a plumbing company in Fort Worth, and now, after more than three years of being separated, he was sending for them. The plan was for next Friday morning Noemí and her little girl to walk across the bridge, pretending like they were only coming over to shop, and then wait on this side for a time when they could be taken from the border up north to Fort Worth. To do this they needed a place to wait until someone came for them.

  If la señora would concede her this one favor and allow these guests at her house, Rumalda promised they would be picked up as soon as possible. Waiting on this side would be safer than paying a coyote to pass them in the middle of the night, with the risk of getting across the river and then over or around the wall without being seen by the authorities. And imagine, with a four-year-old. Even on this side of the river, they would still have to worry about how to get past the interior checkpoints that the Border Patrol had set up some eighty miles from the border, forcing many of the immigrants to walk through an untamed and merciless land where hundreds had died. But for that Rumalda’s son-in-law already knew who to call, someone who could drive her daughter and the child hidden in a trailer to get through the checkpoints. She was asking Nina because of all the houses she cleaned this was the only one where she could ask in confidence. La señora wouldn’t have to do anything other than allow her daughter and granddaughter to stay until the ride came for them. Before Nina could consider the question and how this would work, what type of people would be coming to her front door, Rumalda suggested they could stay in the little pink house. Only for a night. Two nights at the very most. “Por favor, señora.”

  Nina felt like she did when she used to drive across to shop or eat in Matamoros, back when it didn’t feel like she was risking her life, and as she approached the bridge the blind and maimed beggars would come to her with their cupped hands, pleading just outside the car window. Only now it was happening at her kitchen table.

  This was the favor the woman wanted. For her to hide people behind her house? And not even her house but her mother’s. Her mother who she had to remind practically every Friday to stop talking about los mojados when she knew the word was offensive and more so because to her they were all mojados, rich or poor, legal or illegal, whether they floated across the river in an inner tube or drove over the bridge to bring their kids to the private school. And then for her maid to plan out the entire mess before she even asked her. To have visitors, papers or no papers, was one thing. To hide them so they could be taken—smuggled, to say it more clearly—was something different.

  To Rumalda it was just a little favor, but who would land in trouble if someone reported them? The young woman and her little girl would be taken away, processed, transported back across to Matamoros, where they had started. Nothing gained, nothing lost. And meanwhile Nina locked up. Nina calling a lawyer. Nina with nobody to take care of her mother. Nina on the front page of the Brownsville Herald. But that’s how they were, these people from across. For them everything had a simple solution. If there was a problem that could be fixed, by whatever means, then there was nothing to worry about. They were geniuses of the world when it came to finding another way. And if it turned out the problem had no solution, no way of it being mended or substituted with something else, no way of being glued or duct-taped, then there was nothing to worry about either. Ni modo, they said and moved on. They never stopped to consider what would happen next, after the solved or unsolved problem brought a whole new set of problems. Then what? For that they had no solutions. They came with so little it was only ever about t
oday, and tomorrow was tomorrow, another day to worry about when it arrived, if it arrived. Life, when one lived on this side of the river, was almost never that easy. But try explaining that to your cleaning woman.

  * * *

  —

  Nina didn’t answer her question one way or another, not even to say maybe or that she needed more time to consider it. All she told Rumalda was she had errands to run, the same as she told her every Friday.

  She lost no time at the Walgreens. No lingering at the cosmetics counter, no gazing at the magazines she liked to flip through but rarely ever bought. They had a special on Ensure and she loaded two six-packs and a few other items into the shopping cart. She had to veer to the edge to avoid two little boys, barefoot and rolling hula hoops down the aisle, while their young mother sat nursing another child in the waiting area next to the prescription counter and blood pressure machine.

  After the store, Nina drove to the bank to get money. If possible, she paid Rumalda with a combination of smaller bills, fives and tens and ones, so it looked like she was paying her more than she was. The three lanes of the drive-thru were full, each with at least two cars waiting in line. She pulled up behind a small truck on the far right. She was searching her purse for the checkbook when an SUV came up behind her. Without fully looking in the rearview, she knew it was him. She sensed Jorge’s presence the way she had grown to sense when her mother was about to call her to come lower the bed rail or find the remote or bring her water in the middle of the night. Her one excursion from the house, other than taking her mother to her appointments, and this is who she saw. The last time had been at the Oyster Bar a year ago for her mother’s birthday. He’d walked by their table like he hadn’t recognized her, which may have been true but either way was probably for the best.

  The wife was with him this time. Her visor was down, her face up close to the vanity mirror as she applied her makeup. In the rearview, it almost looked like he was alone.

  Jorge was born on this side, but most of his family still lived in Matamoros. After retiring from the navy, he had settled in California and then a couple of years ago talked his second wife, a gringa originally from Dallas, into moving down here so he could be closer to his mother. That was the chisme, anyway, what Nina had heard from a friend who knew another friend whose cousin knew his sister. Not that she was asking, but people liked to talk. Even almost fifty years later people liked to talk.

  She and Jorge had gone around in high school. He was two years ahead of her when they met her sophomore year. Only she had to be careful with her brothers, who at first had paid little attention to her but then when she got to a certain age were always following her, on orders from their father, especially when he learned the boy was from across, which he wasn’t—it was his mother’s family—but it didn’t stop them from referring to him as her mojado boyfriend. Her father’s father had actually been born in Reynosa, but that didn’t mean her father had to approve of his only daughter going out with someone from that side of the river. After Nina was born, the family had stopped following the crops up north and her father got his commercial license to work as a long-haul trucker, which meant he was on the road for weeks and sometimes months at a time and during these stretches her two oldest brothers, Raúl and Luis, were in charge. One night they caught Nina talking to Jorge in his car, nothing more, outside a dance at the Civic Center, and pulled him out through the window by the lapels of his tuxedo. Her little brother, Beto, only eleven years old at the time, was there too, in the front seat of the car where he could watch all the action and later remember who was meant to run the family. When a couple of policemen happened to drive by the parking lot her brothers backed off, pretending they were just playing around. She had to promise Raúl she would get in their car if they just let Jorge go.

  Later, after Jorge was back from Vietnam but still in the service, it was only Luis following them around because by then Raúl was married and starting a family. Luis wasn’t so brave as to try anything alone, but he still followed his sister, waiting outside the Majestic for her and Jorge to come from watching a movie or sharing a burger at Rutledge. But not always, because after a while she learned how to give Luis the slip, paying for a matinee but then skipping out the back exit just as the lights turned off, or walking out of the restaurant without Jorge so it seemed like she was leaving on her own and then down the block she’d step into a fabric shop and her brother would decide to leave rather than waste half an hour waiting for her to come out. Most times she and Jorge just went down the street to Washington Park or someplace else where they could talk without being watched. It became a game for them, how to make the friendship look innocent enough that Luis would never suspect they might be walking a few blocks in the other direction and crossing the new bridge to Matamoros where they could be together at his tío’s house. She loved Jorge—he was all she thought about during the long stretches he was away. She wanted nothing more than to be alone with him those few afternoons when he was back in town, and at the same time she didn’t. She was afraid of what might happen, not if Luis caught them but, rather, if he didn’t and she kept crossing the bridge with him. She told herself, then and still now, that the situation would’ve been different if Jorge had been living here and not just coming back for short visits and if each time he didn’t feel a tiny bit more distant, and not because he was adjusting to being back in his hometown but because he was adjusting to being away from his new home, and if she didn’t feel the need to hold on to him in some way that lasted a little longer, even if that meant feeling guilty for their afternoons together.

  It startled her when she heard the bank teller’s voice thanking her over the intercom and a moment later the canister arrived in the chute. She removed her money and stuck the envelope in her purse. Behind her, the vanity mirror was still down. She pulled forward and tried to imagine herself as the one being driven and not the one driving to run someone else’s errands. It wasn’t until she was halfway home that she realized she had forgotten to ask for smaller bills to pay Rumalda.

  * * *

  —

  With the left side of the carport blocked from view by the neighbor’s wooden fence, the property was hidden from anyone not standing in front of the house. She had to pull in all the way before she could see into the backyard. Sometimes she forgot the little house was there. Tried to, anyway, because Beto was always bringing it up, telling her how they were letting good money go to waste when they could be renting it and making something extra to cover expenses. What he really meant was to cover the expenses so he wouldn’t have to pitch in. He had already taken advantage of her kindness by having her be the only one taking care of their mother since Raúl had passed and Luis had moved thousands of miles away. Beto reminded her that she was the only girl in the family and had to do it. So when it came time, yes, she had left her work to come care for her mother, but not to be a landlord to strangers living behind her, hearing their problems about what needed to be repaired or replaced, collecting their late money. She didn’t need more headaches every month. The headaches she already had inside the main house.

  She was setting down the shopping bag in the kitchen when she heard her mother banging her drinking cup on the overbed tray.

  “Until finally she came back. The one who likes to be in the streets.”

  “Less than an hour. You say it like I was gone for a week.” The room was brighter now than when she left.

  “As soon as you left I needed to go sit down.”

  “I asked you.”

  “Bah!” She flicked her hand. “You think my body is only waiting for you to say when? And with these bars on the bed, when I told you to leave them down.”

  “You could have called Rumalda to come help you.”

  “Esa mojada, you think she is going to know more than me about how to lower the bars?”

  “Let me help you now.” She lowered the railing.<
br />
  “¿Ya pa’qué?”

  “Then to clean you.”

  “Clean yourself,” she said. “It passed. I had to go then and not now. But it almost happened and with me just thrown in the bed like a sack of flour.” She turned away.

  “Maybe I should call Dr. Robles.”

  “Yes, your answer for everything. Call Robles, call Robles. The man’s going to think you want something more than pills from him.”