'Why not?'
'No mailing addresses. The colonias do not officially exist, at least as far as the Postal Service is concerned. So the Census Bureau must send workers in, to go door to door, to count the residents. But they are too afraid.'
'The workers or the residents?'
'Both.'
'We have boxes of forms in the back of the Suburban. We can give them the forms, and they can fill them out and mail them in.'
'Mrs. Bonner, these people do not go to the post office, and most cannot read or write.'
'The forms are printed in Spanish, too.'
'They cannot read or write Spanish or English.'
'But we've got to try!'
Lindsay Bonner prided herself on being a positive person who never lost hope-not when volunteering at the food bank or the AIDS clinic or even the homeless shelter in Austin-but the heat and the stench and the filth now seemed to suffocate her spirit that day. She fought back tears.
'We can try.'
The congressman offered a grandfatherly squeeze of her shoulders and a sympathetic expression.
'Yes, Mrs. Bonner. We can try.'
They walked down the dirt road and stopped at a shanty with a covered contraption sitting above an open fire like a cookout. The congressman leaned over the pot and sniffed.
' Tesguino. Homemade corn liquor.' He called into the home.'?Hola! '
A hand appeared and parted the blanket that served as the front door. A young Mexican woman peeked out; she held an infant in her arms. Lindsay smiled and spoke to her in Spanish.
' Buenos dias, Senora. I am Lindsay Bonner. We need you to be counted for the census.'
' No habla, Senora. No habla. '
The woman pulled the blanket shut in Lindsay's face. But, of course, she did habla. They walked down the dirt road, deeper into the colonia. Lindsay approached every woman she saw, but she received the same reception. No habla, Senora.
'I travel all over Texas, and people always want to talk to me. But not here.'
The congressman patted her shoulder as if consoling her.
'Do not be offended, Mrs. Bonner. These women, they do not know you are the governor's wife. They do not even know who the governor is. They have no television, no cable news, no English newspapers. These people do not live in our world. Here in the colonias, you are just another Anglo whom they fear.'
'Where are the men?' Lindsay said.
'Gone. For good or for the day. They come and they go, leaving pregnant women behind. The men who do stay leave before dawn and return after dark. And you do not want to be in the colonias after dark.'
'How do they get through the gate, with the Border Patrol?'
'They do not. They came here to work construction in Laredo, but the wall prevents that. So now they work for the cartels in Nuevo Laredo.'
'Where do these people get food?'
'Across the river.'
'They work and shop on that side and sleep on this side… This is just a suburb of Mexico.'
The breeze blew stronger, and she gagged at the foul smell from the river. The congressman held out a white handkerchief to Lindsay. She took the handkerchief and covered her mouth and nose. For a moment, she thought she might throw up.
'Perhaps we should go back?' the congressman said.
'No.'
She removed the handkerchief from her face and marched down the dirt road to a shack constructed of old garage doors for walls, a black tarp for the roof, and a dirty blanket for a door. A clay flowerpot with a single yellow sunflower sat outside.
'?Hola! '
A small brown face peeked out. A child's face. A haunting dirty little wide-eyed face. Lindsay smiled at her, and the child smiled back. Lindsay reached into her pocket and pulled out a peppermint from breakfast at the hotel. She stepped closer and leaned down and held the candy out to the girl. The child hesitated but took the candy. Then she was gone. Lindsay stood straight and faced the congressman.
'We've got to get these people counted, so we can get that federal money. So we can help them.'
'But I am afraid that they do not trust us.'
'Is there anyone here they do trust?'
'Yes. There is such a person.'
'Who?'
'The doctor.'
FOUR
'Is your mama a llama?' I asked my friend Jane.
'No, she is not,' Jane politely explained. 'She grazes on grass, and she likes to say 'Moo!' I don't think that is what a llama would do.' 'Oh,' I said. 'I understand now, I think that your mama must be a… Cow!' ' '
Bode Bonner felt about as goddamn stupid as a grown man could possibly feel, reading Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino, a story about a little llama named Lloyd looking for its mama llama. He hated these events, but reading to elementary school kids had become a ritual for politicians these days-a ritual usually performed by this politician's wife. But she had bailed for the border that day. So the governor of Texas found himself facing twenty-four kindergartners.
He'd rather be facing twenty-four Democrats.
He flipped the book around so the kids could see the picture. A collective 'Aah!' went up, and one boy said, ' Vaca,' which Bode knew from his experience working cattle on the ranch with the vaqueros meant 'cow.' The kids started chattering in Spanish, which made him wonder if they even understood the words he was reading. Tacked to the wall were colorful posters with numbers and colors and shapes and explanations printed in English and Spanish, just like the state's official documents: uno /one… dos /two… tres /three… blanco /white
… rojo /red… azul /blue… circulo /circle… rectangulo /rectangle… cuadrado /square. He wondered how many of these kids had just come up from Mexico with their parents for spring harvest. Back when Bode was growing up in the Hill Country, Mexicans worked the ranches and farms, but their children did not attend public school. They couldn't. He didn't think about such things back then; that's just the way it was. But he thought about such things now.
Because he was the governor.
And the most difficult job for the governor of Texas-for any of the fifty governors, all of whom faced massive budget deficits in this Great Recession-was figuring out how to pay for public schools. Which is to say, how to pay to educate the state's poorest children. During his tenure in office, at his wife's relentless urging, he had doubled the K-12 budget to $50 billion- $10,000 per student — but SAT and achievement test scores still hovered near the bottom among the fifty states, just ahead of Mississippi, not exactly a bragging point at the annual governors' conference. Most politicians blamed the teachers for the failure of public education-the first rule for politicians being, Blame someone else before the voters blame you — but the statistics made the job seem utterly hopeless: five million students in Texas schools speaking a hundred different languages but almost two million unable to read, write, or speak English; the highest teenage pregnancy and dropout rates in the nation; the lowest literacy and graduation rates; and the fourth highest poverty rate. And fully one-half of the nation's child population growth over the last decade had occurred in Texas. All poor children.
How the hell was the State of Texas supposed to educate so many poor, pregnant, non-English-speaking kids?
