Orlando’s apartment was on the third floor above a store front, a 7-Eleven in fact. Señorita Garcia said that after driving a bus, Orlando wanted to live where he could walk to shops and restaurants, and 7-Eleven provided him with pretty much everything he needed. It was a narrow street lined with shops—a barber shop next door, a restaurant with a red canopy directly across. It could have been charming except for the electrical poles that lined the street and their maze of wires that stretched above and across in a crazy crisscross fashion.
Orlando lived alone in a small one-bedroom apartment. Not one book was visible, only a large television in one corner and a few soccer magazines on the coffee table in front of the blue sofa. He seemed so unlike his sister and father. Slender, a mass of thick black hair, no balding at the top, he was soft spoken with kind eyes. Perhaps he took after his mother.
Señorita Garcia hugged him fiercely until he pulled away laughing. “Mi hermano! My baby brother,” she said. “I’ve always been like a second mother to him. I was twelve when he was born. He was a bit of a surprise for my parents,” she added with a chuckle. He shook his head and rolled his eyes upward.
After offering us each an ice-cold bottle of fruit-flavored soda and discussing his plan for dinner from a local take-out restaurant, he explained that we would be leaving very early in the morning, so it was wise to get a good night’s sleep. He asked Manuel to accompany him to the restaurant, and when they returned, there was an ease between them that made me smile. Over dinner, brother and sister argued about sleeping arrangements, for Señorita insisted she would take the sofa and Orlando his own bed because he needed his sleep for the long drive ahead. That’s when we learned about the bus’s separate compartment near the luggage that relief drivers use to sleep. On a long haul, two drivers took turns, one drove, one slept below. There would be no second driver tomorrow, so this was where he planned to put Manuel, dressed in a bus driver’s uniform—in case of checkpoints, just to be safe.
“They don’t happen often, and when they do, they generally check the passengers only,” he reassured us. “But if you are caught, which I don’t expect—again I’ve never had a problem—but if you are, I know nothing about it. ¡Nada! You stole the shirt and hid away there, okay?”
Manuel nodded with wide eyes.
As we prepared to turn in for the night, we said our real goodbyes to Señorita Garcia, for we would be getting up before light, and she would be heading back to Oaxaca shortly after we left. Both Rosa and I once again thanked her repeatedly for all she had done. But this time, instead of her usual response of “It’s nothing,” she paused, and what followed revealed a side of her quite different from the Maestra I knew. Even Orlando, who was standing in the doorway on the way to his room, turned at the tone of her voice. It was low and sad.
“I do hope I am doing the right thing here,” she began. “My father was right in laying out all the dangers, if you do decide to try to cross the border, but there was a time in my life that I wish I had taken a risk. Something I wanted to do . . . someone . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Orlando leaned in as if straining to hear her thoughts.
“What happened?” I was surprised to hear Rosa’s voice behind me.
Señorita lifted her chin. “He was right,” she turned toward Orlando, “Papá tenía razón. The worst happened, and . . . Raul . . . lost his life.” I watched as a single tear dripped down her cheek.
“Raul?” Orlando asked. Clearly, he knew nothing of this.
“Another teacher I worked with long ago, when I first started. He was helping a group in western Oaxaca, an indigenous tribe, the Triqui, helping them organize. I wanted to go with him that summer, but . . .”
“Papá wouldn’t let you.” Orlando said, matter of fact.
She shrugged. “There was an ambush, police or paramilitary, doesn’t matter. So . . . he was right.”
“Was he?”
They looked at each other across the room in silence. Finally, she spoke, almost in a whisper, “I do wonder. If I had been there, it might have ended differently. Tal vez. I might have sensed something or persuaded him to do something else. Who knows?” Her voice broke, “I might have saved him . . . or died with him. ¿Quién sabe?”
Orlando crossed the room and gathered her into his arms. “I’m so sorry, Elena.”
He held her while she sobbed, and then, taking a deep breath, she sat back and wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “It was a long time ago,” she said.
“I must have been away at soccer camp? Wait, was that the year you went to stay with tia Irene?” Orlando asked.
“Yes,” she answered, “although I spent some time with Raul’s parents first. We were secretly engaged, you see. Mamá and Papá knew nothing, but his mother knew. She understood the depths of my grief.”
“Not even Mamá?”
“No,” she looked up with a frown, “you know how she was. Papá always came first. She would have insisted on telling him, and he would have put an end to it.”
Orlando grunted. “Did Papá ever know the whole story?”
She laughed sarcastically. “Actually, yes. After Mamá died, when he told me I could never understand his feelings, because I had never loved a man. Oh, I was so
