Blood, gore, corpses under the water.
Hector’s niece is a nurse who works in a hospice for terminally ill babies. Babies who won’t live out a year. She feeds them, and cleans them, and loves them, and every night she whispers over them, “Grow, little baby, grow.”
That’s what a hero does.
Not this.
I shiver.
Paco puts his hand on my back. “Ok,” he says. “Let’s go.”
20 MARIA
Denver. The Greyhound Station. The bus to El Paso. His unruly hair brushed, his face shaved. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, cowboy boots. The clear green of his eyes twinkles.
Our lips part.
He looks at me.
Not my best. Pale, bruised, and a beanie hat on to cover the bandage above my right ear.
“Do you really have to go back?” he asks.
“I do,” I tell him. “If I don’t, my boss, my mom, and my brother will all get in big trouble.”
He grins. “So the Cubans think you’ve been in Mexico this whole time?”
I nod.
“Quite the little secret agent,” he says.
The bus driver starts the engine.
“It’s a long drive to El Paso. You got something to read?”
I shake my head. “I’ll think.”
“Four hours from now you’ll be sorry.”
“Maybe.”
He looks at me. I look at the ground.
“Well,” he says. “You better…”
“Yeah.”
I kiss him again. This time chastely on the cheek. I pick up my bag.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Paco?”
“Plenty,” he says and grinds his hips.
“Not that,” I say, laughing. “I’m serious.”
He considers it.
“You saved me,” I explain. “I owe you.”
“My mother has cancer,” he says.
I peer into his face. He has never talked about his family. In fact, I know nothing about him at all. Brothers? Sisters? Orphan? He’s a cipher, a nowhere man.
“Your mother has cancer?”
“Yes. It’s breast cancer. The doctors rate her chances as fifty-fifty. I’d like to increase the odds, if possible.”
“Bring her to Cuba, we have some of the finest doctors in Latin America. They will treat her. I’m sure it’s better than Nicaragua. Bring her. And besides, I, I’d like to see you again.”
He shakes his head. “I’d like that too, but I can’t bring her to Cuba. She’s not well enough to travel and I have to earn money in the U.S.”
“What do you want me to do?”
He clears his throat. “If you have the time I would like you to light a candle for me at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
“Our Lady of Guadalupe? I’ve heard of it but I’m not sure what it is exactly,” I reply.
“It’s in the north of Mexico City. I know you’re in a rush to get back, you have a plane to catch, but if you get the time.”
“I never pegged you for the religious type,” I say with a little smile, and as soon as the words are out I remember that time I caught him praying.
Paco grins. “In many ways, Maria, you’re not very observant at all.”
“What does that mean?”
The smile widens. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
I punch him on his arm. “Ever since you saved my life, there’s a sly confidence that’s come over you that I don’t like at all.”
“Oh, you like it.”
The bus driver revs the engine. All the other passengers are on. I kiss him one more time. Lips. Tongue. Lips.
“The shrine of Our Lady,” I say seriously to let him know that I will do it if it means that much to him.
He clasps his hands together in fake prayer.
“God is generous to virgins,” he says and begins muttering in pretend Latin.
“I’m not a-”
“Sssh, you’re spoiling it.”
“Are you getting on or not?” the driver asks me in Spanish.
“Hurry,” the driver says.
“Say goodbye to Esteban for me.”
“I will.”
“And watch out for the INS.”
“I’m one step ahead.”
I get in. Doors close. I find a seat at the back.
Paco waves as the bus pulls out onto Broadway.
The last thing I see him do is hail a cab.
The Denver to El Paso bus is all Mexican, and before we’re even out of the city, I’ve been offered cake, seen baby photographs, watched part of a telenovela, and entertained one semiserious offer of marriage.
Eventually I pretend to fall asleep. South through New Mexico.
Gone are the mountains, the great spine of North America. Gone is the snow. My last look at snow until after the Castro brothers leave us. But it’s ok, I’ll remember it, cold and white on the lakeshore and red from our footprints dipped in the blood of dead men.
The #4 subway train to Martin Carrera. The #6 to Villa Basilica. Thread through the religious souvenir stands. The knockoff merchants. The lame. The halt. Pickpockets.
Traffic, street noise, the kind of density of people and vehicles you never see in Havana. Motorcycles, scooters, ice cream vendors, big cars, small cars, trucks.
The stalls are there to cure you of piety. Jesus pictures with eyes that move. Gaudy life-size statues of Maria. A photographer who will take a picture of your kid and produce a print of him sitting on Christ’s lap in a shady dell. The tip of the iceberg as you get closer to the Basilica of Our Lady. Crosses of every type, Maria pics, holy water, holy blood, holy dust. Hundreds of icon merchants and thousands of people buying stuff. Worry beads, rosaries, postcards.
Everywhere the sick, the old, the young, parties of school children, pilgrim tourists from all over Latin America, Europe, the United States.
The hill of Cerro Tepeyac.
