Rosa was limping along as well, and it occurred to me that she had had to leap from the moving train too, though from a lesser height. “Are you okay?” I asked, turning to her bruised face. Her cheek was swollen and discolored where the man had struck her with the bottle.
“I’m just so tired,” she said, hugging my good arm and resting her head on my shoulder for a moment as we walked.
Manuel kept glancing back, and I knew he was worrying about Chuy and Benito.
“What do you think happened to them?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Hard to say. They’ve been through this before. They’ll be okay,” he said, but his face showed his doubt and concern. “Thanks for saying I was your brother,” he added, his face softening.
My cheeks burned as I said, “Thanks for staying with us. You didn’t have to.”
Our eyes met briefly, and he looked away first. Why had he chosen to stay? Was it possible he cared for me? But how? I wasn’t beautiful, like Rosa—yet he seemed to like me.
We walked a bit in silence and then, gazing at the horizon, he said, “We are definitely in Oaxaca and probably close to Ixtepec. They sometimes stop the train before it gets too close to a city. But I’m not sure how far that would be on foot.”
“Do you know how far we are from Oaxaca City?” Rosa asked, but Manuel just shook his head.
On either side of the road, farmland stretched on forever, only a few small buildings in the far distance ahead to the right. As the sun rose, and with no trees for shade, we began to feel its heat.
To distract myself from the heat and the pain, I did what I often do to pass the time; I played with numbers in my head. I pictured in my mind a blank piece of paper and a freshly sharpened pencil. First, I found the point at which we were walking and then the buildings beyond, imagining a perfect diagonal line. Then I formed a right triangle with this diagonal as my hypotenuse. So, as I trudged along between Manuel and Rosa, I created measurements and computed distances in an effort not to focus on the pulsating pain in my shoulder and leg.
If it was two kilometers north, squared, plus 2.5 kilometers east, squared, that’d be . . . 10.25. Square root of 10.25 is about . . . 3.2 kilometers. The buildings are 3.2 kilometers away. Now, if it was 2.5 kilometers north and . . .
Suddenly Rosa dropped beside me, first onto her knees and then over on her side. I sank down, screaming out both in pain and alarm. “Rosa, Rosa!” I shook her shoulders with my good hand. Her eyes rolled back and drool oozed from the corner of her lip and down her cheek. Her lips were dry and cracked.
Manuel helped me move her limp body off the hot pavement and onto the field beside the road. I reached into my pack for water, but my bottle was empty. Manuel pulled a half-filled bottle of murky water from his sack, then taking off his T-shirt, he wrapped it over the opening. Supporting Rosa’s head with one hand, he tipped the bottle up. The water that dripped through the shirt, he aimed at her lips, explaining, “I got this water from a stream, but a guy told me this might make it safer to drink.”
Rosa moaned and her eyes fluttered, then opened. “Alma? Alma?” she called my name, in a little girl’s voice.
“I’m right here. It’s okay. Estoy aquí.”
“Everything is spinning. And my head is pounding.”
Manuel sat back on his heels and looked toward the buildings in the distance. “I’ll see if I can get help. I’ll be right back.” He sprinted shirtless, in the direction of the buildings.
I stretched out beside her and stroked her arm. “Just relax. It will be okay.”
Tears began to stream down her cheeks. “Oh, Alma. What have we done?” she asked, squeezing my arm. “Maybe we should just go back.”
“Go back? What are you saying? To Tito?”
She shook her head, “No, no of course not. I don’t know what I mean,” then softly, “I miss Mamá and the boys . . . and Papá.” She was quiet for a moment; then a sob erupted as she said, “Maybe Mamá’s right. He must be dead. Otherwise we would have heard something.”
“Rosa,” I said firmly, for her statement that Papá might be dead only made my will stronger. “The only way we can know anything is to go looking for ourselves, all the way to el norte, asking questions, maybe even finding Dolores Huerta.” I sat up and leaned over her, feeling her warm breath on my face. “Dolores is an important woman. If we can find her, maybe she can help us; she’ll know who to ask and where to look. You’ll see.”
Suddenly her face relaxed and she smiled. Her hand reached up and stroked my cheek. “Oh Alma, you are so like Papá. Do you know that? You remind me of him every day. Your face, your spirit, the way you talk. Just like him.”
Tears filled my eyes as I curled up beside her.
“We certainly can’t go back to Chiapas,” she sighed, “and I’m not sure what we can do in Oaxaca. I guess I am just overwhelmed by fatigue. Everything seems so difficult when I’m tired—and right now I just want to sleep for ten days.”
Relieved that she was herself again, I closed my eyes. I hugged my arm
