The Dead Women of Juarez

motivosa was as common as the odor of wholesome perspiration. Skater punks from the US came to show off their skills and score at the same time. Sometimes Kelly and Esteban sold here.

They bought some tamales from a snack vendor and sat underneath a metal awning to watch a trio of Mexican kids run their BMX bikes up the sides of a nine-foot practice pond. The kids hit the upper lip and caught big air before crashing down wheels-first for another run. Kelly liked the rubbing buzz of the bike wheels on cement, but not the bone-jarring rattle of metal returning to earth. That took him back to something he would rather forget but could not. A part of Kelly wondered whether he agreed to come here for the reminder.

The tamales were good: spicy and filling. Kelly and Esteban ate with their hands, spinning the packed, corn- meal cylinders of the tamales out of their cornhusk jackets. Some people liked to pour sauce over theirs, but Kelly enjoyed a tamale eaten plain and Esteban shared his tastes in most things, including this.

They filled up and had some more beer. The BMX kids moved on. Kelly and Esteban stared at the empty practice pond. “Why did you tell Paloma I wouldn’t come with you to Mazatlan?” Kelly asked at last.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t, or I wouldn’t ask,” Kelly said, and he looked right at Esteban.

“Hey, don’t to make me feel bad, man. You know I love you. But nuestra familia, they got some – how do you want to call it? – they got some old-fashioned ideas in their heads.”

Kelly turned away. He looked over to the next practice pond, where a group of skateboarders, Mexican and white, traded stunts on steep concrete walls. He considered getting up and moving closer, but there was no good shade there and he was comfortable already.

Esteban continued: “I see you, I see a good guy. Paloma, she loves you. But you know how some vieja gente can get with white boys. And my sister is una mujer fina; she deserves the best.”

“I know,” Kelly said, and he knew before Esteban explained. He wondered why he asked in the first place, knowing the answer was just going to make him feel lousy. The tamales didn’t sit right anymore, huddled in the pit of his belly.

“Maybe next time,” Esteban said.

“Next time. Sure,” Kelly replied. It was as though he were talking with Paloma about it all over again. He stood and stretched, but put his hands on the wooden crossbeam rather than on the corrugated aluminum roof of the awning; the metal was hot enough to sear meat.

“I tell you one thing,” Esteban said after the silence grew too long, “you got to stop putting your face in front of those young boxeadores. Ain’t you ugly enough?”

“I got to be handsome now?”

“No, but you can’t get nobody’s respect looking like you got hit by a truck. I don’t know how Paloma can look at you. I wouldn’t kiss nobody look like you do. People talk, man. They call you ‘Frankenstein.’”

“That’s funny. What people?”

“Ain’t no joke, homes. Just people. Paloma, she has respecto. More than you or me.”

Kelly nodded, but said nothing. He finished off his bottle and rooted around in the slush of the cooler for a fresh one. Bending over he felt the booze in his head, a good kind of sleepy and stupid that a strong batch of motivosa could bring on in a hurry. It was where he liked to be.

“But I tell you,” Esteban said, “you two get married, no matter what no one says on their own, they won’t disrespect you on your wedding day. That’s not the way we do it.”

“You won’t take me to see some cousin get married, but I can be your cunado?” Kelly asked.

“No, no, listen to me: that will show them: when you put on a white suit and get your blessing from the padre under the eyes of God, you’ll be as brown as my ass,” Esteban said.

“That’s pretty goddamned brown,” Kelly said. He sat down again.

“Fuck you, man,” Esteban said without malice.

“Yeah, fuck me,” Kelly said.

SEVEN

HE WOKE BEFORE THE SUN CAME up and lay on his bed in the dark thinking about everything and nothing. Usually when he stirred out of sleep this early he’d bumble around with the lights off, and smoke a cigarette (or something stronger) until the day really started. This time when he rose, he brushed his teeth and washed his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. “Frankenstein,” he said out loud.

Kelly put on some sweats and went outside.

Mexico is hot and the border is no exception, but Ciudad Juarez is a city in the desert and deserts grow very cold at night no matter what the season. The dirty exhaust of the maquiladoras trapped heat and grit close to the ground, but even dozens of smokestacks couldn’t defeat the forces of nature; Kelly saw his breath in the air.

Stretching made his legs and back hurt, but not so badly that he felt like stopping what he was doing… whatever he was doing. His calves were especially tight. He had muscle from walking, but no flexibility. He couldn’t remember the last time he could touch his toes without having to bend his knees.

Lights were on and people were on the street. There were many women traveling together for safety as much as company. Some wore surgical masks, an echo of the swine flu scare. Occasionally a maquiladora bus rumbled down the main thoroughfare splitting Kelly’s neighborhood. In the States the buses would be lit up from the inside, but this was Mexico and pennies mattered, so riders sat in the dark.

Kelly sucked in deep lungfuls of air through his busted, healing nose and blew out through his mouth. He did this twice before a coughing fit snaked up from the bottom of his lungs and doubled him over. He hacked up a glob of something nasty and spat it on the sidewalk. The sky in the east turned red.

This time when he breathed deep he didn’t cough. His lungs felt shallow, and though Kelly tried to let the air fill him up from belly to sternum, he could tell he’d lost a lot of his capacity. Five years seemed like ten.

He forced himself to breathe in and out, hard and full, until his ribs ached and early-morning colors grew vivid at the edge of hyperventilation. When his lungs were as saturated as he could get them, Kelly ran.

Compared to his memories of running, this was nothing; he picked up an earnest, low-speed shuffle that wasn’t much faster than a brisk walk. Almost immediately he began to sweat and his body demanded more air to feed his rapid heartbeat, but he knew he had to keep his breathing even for as long as possible, or everything would spin out of kilter and he’d have to stop sooner rather than later.

The pink telephone pole came up quickly, aglow in the first rays of the sun. The numberless flyers demanding justicia fluttered as Kelly passed, as if trying to draw his attention away from silly pursuits and into their world of the dead. Kelly managed to make it to the end of the block before he had to stop, the telephone pole twenty yards behind him and a broad street busy even at this hour with the traffic of business.

Kelly put his hands on his knees, his sternum throbbing with his struggling heart. A wave of nausea passed over him, but it wasn’t as bad or as long as he feared it would be. A few feet away in a concrete bus shelter a dozen woman in maquila uniforms – neat, plain blouse and pants and rubber shoes – watched him as the sun chased away the veiling shadows. They didn’t laugh or point; Mexicans were not as rude as gringos.

He straightened up and ran some more, past the bus shelter and along an uneven sidewalk in the shade of apartment blocks just like Kelly’s. Again he had to stop, this time in the parking lot of a tiny convenience store beside a taqueria. He coughed like he had before and spat up another gooey mouthful of something foul. The taste made him gag.

Three more times he pushed himself to run until he felt his pulse beating in his gums and everything hurt too much to continue. He finally came to rest on a low bridge crossing a broad concrete flood ditch. Sitting on a cement buttress, he let the wind from passing trucks whip him. The sun was free of the horizon now and the night chill evaporated.