Where We Come From Read online

  * * *

  —

  Nina goes inside to grab her purse and car keys. She had promised her mother she would bring Orly by the rehab center to visit tonight. She does this now because earlier she was busy getting things ready for Daniel to leave and couldn’t get to the rehab center, and because she needs something to get her mind off his leaving. She tells Orly he can bring his computer to keep him company in case he gets bored watching the TV with them.

  Like most things in Brownsville, the rehab center is only a ten-minute drive from the house. It isn’t as busy as a hospital in the way Orly had imagined it when Nina first told him about coming to visit his great-grandmother. From her other visits, Nina knows the security guard and two of the nurses at their station. Mamá Meche’s room is down the hall from the visiting area and looks out onto a courtyard.

  “I brought you a guest this time,” Nina says. “You remember Orly?”

  “Bah, now she thinks I broke my head and not my hip when I fell.” Her mother straightens herself up in the bed. “Tell me how I’m not going to remember my great-grandson, el hijo de Eduardo?”

  “I was just checking.”

  “Check yourself,” she says and calls Orly over so she can give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Tonight, you are going to sit right next to me.”

  She tells him to set the extra chair alongside the bed and takes his hand in hers, which is nice and all but means he can’t use his screen. He follows most of her new novela and how the tequila baron doesn’t want his daughter falling for the lowly jimador and how he’s already picked someone else for her to marry but the other guy only wants her money. They watch the first half of the novela before Mamá Meche dozes off during a commercial break, which Nina says has never happened during one of her programs. She tries to gently rouse her mother but stops when she hears her snoring. Nina goes to ask the nurse if they changed her mother’s medication or if she missed her afternoon nap.

  Orly still has his hand in hers and slowly slips his fingers out of her palm, which she keeps tightening as if she might be dreaming. Her other hand is bruised and partly bandaged from the IV she had in the hospital. On the hand closer to Orly the veins that cover the back of her hand bulge like the exposed roots of an ancient tree. One of the larger veins starts near her wrist and runs up to the dip between the knuckles of her forefinger and middle finger. She even has veins on her fingers, though they’re not as thick. Following them with the tip of his finger reminds Orly of all those nights he fell asleep in his dark bedroom feeling the different grooves on the paneled wall. He closes his eyes and follows this vein to that vein that dips between another pair of knuckles and crosses another and another and another vein, the pattern even more random and mysterious than the gaps in the wall. His father, his brother, his Nina, his tío Beto, all his other tíos alive and dead, they all came from these hands. Her skin feels thin enough that Orly imagines he could peel it back to her wrist, then her elbow and shoulder, neck, head, and then do it over and over, layer by delicate layer until he uncovered the little girl with the giant bow in the photo album. Nina wanted to show him where they came from, but where they came from is nothing more than that—where they came from. It isn’t where his story ends, only where it begins.

  * * *

  —

  Back at the house, it’s late when Nina says the prayer with Orly and gives him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Where do you think Daniel is now?” he asks her before she can leave the room.

  “I don’t know, mijito. It’s only been two hours since he left. It might take a few days before he sees his father again.”

  “But we were kind of like his family. You were like his mother or a grandmother and I was like his brother or a cousin maybe.”

  “For a little while, yes.”

  “Do you think we could keep being his family, even if he lives somewhere else? Not all our family lives in one place.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Maybe we’ll see him again someday.”

  “Maybe, but it would be difficult. He’s going to have a different life now.”

  “But family is family.”

  “It is, mijito, but sometimes being in a different place, even if the place isn’t that far away, makes it hard to get back.”

  Nina gives him another kiss and tells him they can talk more in the morning. For now he needs to rest. So does she. She’s exhausted after her long day and feels like curling up on the sofa and going to sleep in her clothes. It’s all she can do to put away the dishes Orly used for one last bowl of cereal and then get herself ready for bed.

  She’s about to get into bed when she hears a sound at the back door, not exactly a knock, more like a thump. She tells herself no, to stay where she is, to not be fooling herself imagining someone at the back door. At this hour Daniel may already be somewhere north of the final border checkpoint. Her mind is playing tricks on her. That’s what happens when you haven’t been sleeping, worried about your mother, worried about two young boys you need to take care of. But there it is again, the thump. And a second later La Bronca starts barking.

  She feels her way to the kitchen without turning on any lights in the house or outside. She knows it won’t help her see whoever it is moving in the shadows who doesn’t want to be seen.

  “¿Quién es?” she says. “¿Quién es?” But then a moment later without thinking what she’s saying, it changes to “¿Quién eres?”

  Who are you? She realizes she’s saying it no louder than a whisper because she’s only saying the words to herself. She realizes this is the first time she’s ever asked herself this question. “¿Quién eres?”

  Someday, not too long from now, as much as she hates to think about it, she’s bound to lose her mother. It could happen from one day to the next, faster than Nina or Beto wants to believe. She doesn’t know if she’ll hold on to the house, if she would even want it, knowing Beto is likely to fight her on it. But either way it doesn’t mean she can’t have her own life now. It doesn’t mean she won’t be here or somewhere else for when her Orly wants to visit her. It doesn’t mean that later things won’t be different and she’ll have reasons for changing her mind about some of her choices.

  This time the thump against the screen door is followed by a woeful meow and the fury of La Bronca, especially when it leads to Nina setting out a bowl of milk for the stray cat.

  After the cat has had its fill, Nina goes back inside and searches her purse for the scrap of paper the driver gave her before leaving with Daniel. From the hallway closet, she pulls down the second photo album and flips through the first half of it until she finds a blank page. With the plastic peeled back, she unfolds the paper with the phone number, lays it flat, and seals it up, where she can find it later. She still has plenty of pages to fill.

  Acknowledgments

  So many people helped me in large and small ways to tell this story. I want to thank Hipólito Acosta for his books Deep in the Shadows: Undercover in the Ruthless World of Human Smuggling and The Shadow Catcher: A U.S. Agent Infiltrates Mexico’s Deadly Crime Cartels. His advice and insight helped clarify several sections of this novel. My gratitude goes out to Antonio Almazán, a San Antonio–based attorney, who educated me on the particulars of immigration law. Dr. Barbara Bergin, Dr. Felix Hull, Dr. Mary McCarthy, and Dr. Tony Zavaleta each gave their time and expertise toward helping me better understand my characters. Oscar Saldaña, a Border Patrol agent in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, opened my eyes to the current trends in human trafficking and directed me to the sites of former safe houses along the border. The International Boundary and Water Commission added detailed information about the width of the Rio Grande River in South Texas. Jody Agius Vallejo, with her book Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican-American Middle Class, documented a vital story that helped inform the world of some of my characters. At the University of Texas at
Austin, Liz Cullingford (Department of English), Domino Perez (Center for Mexican American Studies), and Richard Flores (College of Liberal Arts) secured the time I needed to research and write this book.

  My agent, the tenacious Richard Abate, never stopped believing. Thank you to Tim O’Connell, my editor, for seeing what more this book could be and then knowing just what to say to get me there. Thank you to Anna Kaufman for guiding me handily in all those moments when I needed it most. Thank you to Michelle Tomassi and everyone else at Knopf for all you’ve done to bring this book into the world.

  My prima, Loida, gave voice to my voice. My tío Nico’s words inspired my words. Laura Furman and Antonio Ruiz-Camacho brought clarity and promise to the first draft of this novel. My brother and sister-in-law, Idoluis and Toni, and my longtime friends Letty and Bitty served as my memory when I couldn’t get back home to Brownsville. Alfonso Saldaña (and his family and friends) became my eyes and ears in Matamoros. My son, Adrian, guided me through his virtual world of Minecraft. My sister, Sylvia, and my cuñado, and my close friends and confidants Scotty, Manuel, Joel, Mr. John and Ms. Pat, Heide, JHC, TJ, Bill K, and Josie and Murray encouraged and sustained me through the long haul it took to see, understand, and finish this book. And thank you to my dear family, Becky, Adrian, Elena, and Luna, for the love and the joy and the wags, and for making time for me to walk out our front door and take those eighteen steps to my office door.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OSCAR CÁSARES is the author of Brownsville, a noted collection of stories now included in the curriculum at several American universities, and the novel Amigoland. His fiction has earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Copernicus Society of America, and the Texas Institute of Letters. Originally from Brownsville, he now lives in Austin with his family and teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.