The Dead Women of Juarez

If there was a constant in Juarez, it was trucks: going to the maquiladoras or coming back from the maquiladoras. When the streets jammed up with American cars trying to escape north from their holiday destination, the trucks were always with them, spewing black diesel smoke as they idled, sweaty drivers behind the wheel, lungs turning to asphalt with every breath.

From where Kelly sat he could see the same line of factories just visible from his apartment. From a distance they were all the same, but stamped on the boxes in the backs of all those trucks were American names. Kelly had GM practically on his doorstep. Out there it was easy to find General Electric, Honeywell, Du Pont, even Amway. Kelly thought maybe this was why he stayed here; so much of America lived right across the border that it was possible to be in two places at once. Kind of.

In the end his pulse stilled and his stomach settled. His lungs no longer burned. Kelly hopped down from his perch. The urge to run had passed, so he walked like he always did, aware of new pains in his joints and muscles that hadn’t been there before but feeling better about having them. He wondered whether this was what giving a shit was like; it had been so long, he didn’t remember.

EIGHT

THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS QUIET when Kelly returned. He heard a radio playing norteno somewhere. Kelly recognized the song: “Un Rinconcito En El Cielo,” by Ramon Ayala y sus Bravos Del Norte. The song was called in English “A Little Corner in the Sky.” It was about a man separated from his woman, and because they could not be together they would look on the same spot in the stars and be together in spirit.

Kelly thought it was sappy as hell, but Ayala and his band were huge in Mexico and in the States. They did their recording Stateside and lived there, too. Mexicans bought their own music back from American companies. Kelly didn’t understand that, either.

He climbed the steps to his apartment and heard the voice of Eliseo Robles, Ayala’s singer during the band’s boom years, crooning over the bouncy accordion:

Un rinconcito en el cielo

Juntos, unidos los dos

Y cuando caiga la noche

Te dare mi amor…

Breakfast was as burly as if Kelly had fought the night before. He’d forgotten how ravenous he got after running. He ate to fill the hole in his belly and even washed dishes afterward.

He still had energy when normally he’d be tired. He prowled the apartment and realized just how little he had to do; he was too keyed up for television and he hadn’t listened to music since his CD player broke.

In the end he wrapped his hands and stepped out onto the balcony out back to hit the heavy bag. His first punches weren’t much; just enough to put fist to leather and feel the firmness and weight behind it.

Kelly paid more attention to form than power. A real punch came from the hips, torquing the whole body behind the shoulder to apply mass that two knuckles on the punching hand didn’t have. A good punch sounded a tone in the flesh like a deep, ringing bell. Out in the ring for Ortiz, taking hits and bleeding, he never felt the magic of a punch well thrown, but he could have it here if he could make his muscles remember the way.

Sweat came fast, and hard breathing, just like on his run. Kelly found himself holding his breath when he punched, and he reminded himself breathe, breathe after that. Punching without air sucked oxygen right out of the muscles. A fighter lost all his power without breathing right, and he could even pass out. Kelly wiped his forehead with the back of his arm.

He didn’t want to punch himself out, but it felt good to do something the same way it felt good to get out there and run even though his lungs weren’t up to it and his legs didn’t have the power they ought. He worked the heavy bag until he felt weight in his arms that made it hard to throw punches correctly and then he stopped.

Across the plain of roofs he saw a line of trucks come out of the GM maquiladora. Below, at the foot of Kelly’s building, a cat rummaged through tall grass and discarded junk – tires and boxes and half-broken cinderblocks – looking for a mouse or a lizard to eat. Kelly sucked air greedily. It was only when he stopped blowing that he went back inside, put his wet wraps over the back of a chair to dry and started a shower.

In the summer even the cold water wasn’t completely cold. Kelly soaked the oil and sweat from his body, stood with his hand underneath the spray and let his skull hang forward until the ligament at the base of his neck popped.

Endorphins still skidded around his system. He wouldn’t feel any of this until tonight or tomorrow. Right now he only had the good tired and the pleasant ache of exertion. He enjoyed it for the same reason he avoided it all these years: because it reminded him of before.

After his shower he toweled off and lay on the bed letting the still, dry air wick away the last moisture from his skin. This, too, he’d forgotten for good or ill. He drowsed for a little while and then fell asleep for less than an hour before waking to a room that looked and felt exactly the same, as if time hadn’t moved forward at all.

He felt different, and it wasn’t just the mixture of energy and tiredness that followed a good workout and a better nap. Kelly vaguely recalled dreaming of Paloma and Esteban, too. The place and the happenings were mixed up in his memory and fading quickly, but he knew that everything he’d done this morning had to do with them.

The telephone rang. Kelly got up naked and left the bedroom. The thin carpet felt oily and gritty on his clean soles and he resolved to borrow a vacuum cleaner from Paloma to do something about that.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Hola,” Esteban said on the other end. “?Que tal?”

“Nothing,” Kelly said.

“Hey, listen, I’m going shopping tonight. How’s your face look?”

“All right,” Kelly said. The bruises were pretty much gone, though his nose was still healing up on the inside. He didn’t look like a zombie anymore.

“That’s good. That’s good. Hey, listen: you up for shopping? Two, three hours and I’ll cut you in for the usual. What do you say?”

Kelly looked around the apartment. It seemed too small to him now. Something was going on in his head and maybe getting out would cure it. “Okay,” he said. “What time you want to meet?”

“Meet me at nine,” Esteban said.

“Nine,” Kelly said. “All right.”

NINE

ANY NIGHT IN CIUDAD JUAREZ WAS at least busy when it came to hookers and booze. It was too easy to cross the border and good times came too cheaply for workingmen in El Paso to say no, despite all the warnings about pickpockets and muggers and drug dealers and AIDS. They came over the walking bridge as daylight failed, sometimes straight from work, their trucks parked in clusters in lots laid out expressly for pleasure seekers headed south. Sometimes they were already a little bent and the idea of Mexico entered their brain through the bottom of a beer mug or in a shot of yellow-tinged tequila.

Shopping with Esteban happened on Fridays and Saturdays. These were the nights when the crowds were heaviest, the white faces most common, and cops had a harder time figuring out who was who and doing what.

They met outside the farmacia where the turista Juarez stopped and the Juarez of the Juarenses began. The place was open long hours, had broad aisles and a well-lit, clean atmosphere. A tacky green-and-red “trolley,” just a bus made up to look like a streetcar, ferried Americans back and forth across the border in air-conditioned comfort and dumped them right on the doorstep. Around the farmacia the white people were mostly older and looking for cheap drugs to fill their American prescriptions, but there were plenty of younger folks, too, picking up steroids and Viagra and other things, things that kept the party going all night long.