That thought gave me pause. Nidia wasn’t a citizen. Unlike me, once she crossed the border, she had no legal way of getting back. Though she’d need to be in Mexico awhile, maybe even until her grandmother’s death, it seemed to me that Nidia’s family was abandoning her to indefinite life in Mexico.
Was that so bad? Maybe I was being an American chauvinist. Except there was a reason so many Mexicans, including Nidia’s parents, had come to El Norte. I wondered why Nidia’s mother hadn’t taken it on herself to go back and take care of her ailing mother, instead of sacrificing the hopes and plans of a daughter just on the cusp of adulthood.
“Nidia,” I said, picking up my cell phone, “I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”
She nodded, undisturbed.
I went out to the pool area-it was deserted now, though the water glowed an inviting warm turquoise-and made a call.
Serena picked up on the third ring. “Hailey, what’s up?” she said. “Where are you? Mexico?”
“We’re still in Texas,” I said. “Listen, I’m getting a funny feeling about this.”
“What’s wrong?”
“What do you really know about this family?” I said. “Did you know any of them except Teaser?”
“Why? What’s wrong?” she repeated.
I sat down on a chaise, still looking at the calm water of the pool. “Well, Nidia’s only nineteen,” I said. “Once she crosses the border, who knows if she’ll ever get back? Most Mexican parents who bring their families across do so at great risk, so their kids can have better lives. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense that they’re forcing her to go back.”
“Maybe it makes sense because their grandma is sick and needs help,” she said. “Mexicans are very family-oriented, and-”
“No. No way,” I said. “Don’t even start with that you’re-white-you-wouldn’t-understand rap. This girl’s fiancé died in Iraq, and then the cancer patient she was taking care of died, and now she’s going off to live in the middle of nowhere with an invalid? I think she’s had enough death and dying. I don’t think it’s right.”
There was a second or two of silence before Serena spoke. “Has she said she doesn’t want to go?”
A beat passed before I admitted, “I haven’t asked.”
“Well, she packed her stuff and got in the car, prima. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“I’m going to ask her straight out.”
“I don’t think you should interfere,” she said. “This is about family. If this were your father, if he were sick, how far would be too far for you to go to take care of him?”
I closed my eyes. Nowhere, of course. I would have gone to the other side of the planet.
“Hailey?” she prompted.
“If I ask Nidia directly and she says she doesn’t want to go to Mexico, I’m not taking her,” I said.
“Fine,” Serena said, her tone short. “Go ahead. I can tell you what she’s gonna say, though.”
“I’ll call you later.”
I disconnected the call and walked back to the room. “Nidia,” I said as soon as I’d closed the door behind me, “are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”
“Como?” she said, confused.
I set my cell phone down on the dresser and said, “You’re undocumented. Once you cross the border, you can’t come back. Not easily. The U.S. is allocating more money to border security all the time.”
She seemed on the verge of speaking, but I needed to finish. “My hand to God, no one can make me muscle you off to Mexico if you don’t want to go. Just say the word, and I’ll turn around and take you back. If you can’t go to your family, Serena would take you in. I’m sure she would, for Teaser’s sake.”
It seemed like an odd thing to say, given the testy exchange we’d just had on the phone, but I knew Serena. If push came to shove, she’d help this girl.
“No,” Nidia said, straightening, and there was a sharp tone to her voice I hadn’t heard before. “I want to go. No one’s making me. You aren’t going to change your mind about driving me, are you?”
I licked my lower lip, surprised at how adamant she seemed. “Nidia,” I began. Then I turned and walked over to the window. The sheer inner curtains were drawn, but I could see the parking lot outside, the peach glow of the lights. I wasn’t looking for anything or at anything: I was about to say something delicate.
“I don’t want to offend you by talking about something that’s personal, but Serena told me about Johnny, your fiancé,” I said slowly. “He obviously cared about you a great deal. What do you think he’d advise you to do here?”
There was no hesitation before I heard her say, “Johnny would want me to go.”
I turned around to face her. There wasn’t any doubt in her green-hazel eyes. “Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll take you.”
She relaxed. “Good,” she said. Then she added, “My abuela needs me. That’s why.”
I picked up my cell phone from the dresser. “Listen, I’m going to go out and get a drink,” I said, scooping up my hoodie off the back of a chair. “Don’t wait on me. Get some sleep.”
I called Serena as soon as I was far enough away from the motel room not to be overheard through the walls. She obviously recognized my number on caller ID and answered with, “So?”
“She wants to go,” I said, turning my face up against a light breeze. “I’m taking her.”
“Told you.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, watching the white lights of the freeway in the distance. “Serena, you know I love you, right?”
“Wow, you get over being mad quick,” she said, amused.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” I told her. “What I’m saying is, I love you, but don’t ever throw my dead father into a conversation to score points off me again.”
I’d hoped that the world-weary-but-nice-looking guy from poolside would be in the bar, but he didn’t show in the time it took me to nurse two margaritas, so finally I just paid and left.
ten
Mexico.
Crossing the border wasn’t a big deal. The traffic was the worst of it, inching up to the low brown structure of the border checkpoint, where forbidding signs advised that bringing a firearm into Mexico was punishable by Mexican law. But after showing our various forms of ID-my driver’s license and passport, Nidia’s Mexican birth certificate-we were told to drive on. They didn’t even ask about a gun. I smiled and finger-waved like an excited tourist as Nidia and I pulled away, the Airweight taped under my seat.
Then we were into the crush and color of Juarez, American logos competing with old Colonial architecture. Most of it I’d expected from pictures. Little things surprised me, though, like passing a storefront church advertising meetings of Alcoholicos Anonimos. You didn’t expect things like that in Mexico.
After that, we drove on the main highways in broad, bright daylight, jockeying among big semi-trailers. It was hot, and I worried about the air-conditioning straining the Impala’s engine, no matter how new and well-maintained the car, so I cycled the a/c on and off, alternating with the whipping wind of two rolled-down windows.
Our second day, we started out early, because this was the day I believed I’d get Nidia to her destination. I wanted to leave us plenty of time to navigate the smaller, secondary roads we’d take once we got off Highway 16. We’d be climbing up into the mountains, and I had visions of the Impala inching along behind a flock of sheep being driven by a sheepherder on foot, or following a lumbering farm truck at twenty-eight miles an hour.