The next day around noon, Ana walked into my room and pulled the stained white curtain around my bed. Tugging at her own clothes, she removed her blue nurse’s smock and pants, revealing a second set underneath.
“Let’s get these on quickly,” she whispered, helping me out of my patient gown and into her uniform. Then she placed the patient gown back over the smock. In a flash, she disappeared into the hall, returning with a wheelchair. After helping me into the chair, she slipped blue shoe covers over my bare feet, then covered me from the waist down with a blanket. I could hear the woman in the bed beside me snoring deeply, while the TV blared with religious music and a man’s voice ranted rhythmically. Whisking back the curtain, Ana wheeled me casually down the hall. We turned right twice, ending up in a short, deserted hallway. Ana helped me to my feet, removed the blanket and gown, and folded up the wheelchair.
Placing it to one side, she turned to me and said, “Let’s see if you can make it down one short flight of stairs and out the side door. My car isn’t far. If we pass anyone, just act like we’re on our way out for lunch. Be casual and relaxed. Keep your head down. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Todo saldrá bien.”
We walked around a corner and headed toward a door marked “Stairs.” My legs felt weak, but my heart pounded with such fervor, I felt I could fly. One step at a time, I descended down the metal staircase. No one passed us. No one saw us step out the door. Once in the parking lot, we walked toward a small white car—two nurse’s aides on their lunch break. Once settled in the front seat, I glanced up and saw a tall, slender tree, graceful as my Rosa, swaying gently beneath a vivid blue sky. I closed my eyes, and for a very brief moment, I let myself hope.
13
Not Knowing
My “escape” resulted in momentary chaos, a review of security policy, several reprimands, and a wide range of gossip. None of it touched Ana, for as she had expected, no one even noticed her presence that Sunday afternoon. And since it had not been her usual shift, she was not even questioned that evening when she appeared for work.
“I am hardly noticed when I’m there anyway,” she had told me quietly, a fact that clearly brought her pain, but worked to our advantage this time.
Ultimately, they concluded that whoever dropped me off at the emergency entrance had picked me up. Ana said Dr. Ramírez was quite upset and feared my life was in danger. Some official told him they’d let him know if I turned up on a coroner’s table.
Ana lived with her mother in a small, sparse apartment not far from railroad tracks, so as I lay on the sofa, I could feel the walls tremble and hear that familiar sound each time a train passed by. Strangely, it brought a comforting ache to my heart, just like the little shrine her mother had set up on the floor in one corner of their living room. In Guatemala, just as in Oaxaca, their shrine was arranged on the floor. Each evening, her mother, a tiny frail woman, would kneel on a small cushion before it, light the candles, and lift the rosary that lay in the painted dish in the center. She prayed for the souls of her husband and son who had been killed during the civil war in her country years before, and now she prayed for me as well.
Since they shared the only bedroom, I spent my days and nights on their dark green sofa wrapped up in a colorful afghan that one of them had crocheted. They left me to myself, let me sleep through the day, never questioned when I sat in the dark, and never lectured if I didn’t finish the food they offered. Neither did they object when I began to watch television from early morning, sometimes through the night. They seemed to know the necessities of this passage.
And bless their souls, they never panicked when my spine-chilling screams pierced the silent night. Dark dreams of snakes slithering around my limbs, tightening their grasp and pulling me down beneath sinking desert sands, or of large powerful hands bursting through the ground as I walked, grabbing my ankles, then my calves, and yanking me down, down, down through the earth. It became my ritual to wrap myself tightly in the afghan, my arms and feet safely cocooned inside and unexposed to the whim of any beast that might happen by in the night. Ana and her mother remained calm and patient during these outbursts. They would wake me from my terror gently, and then, while her mother would prepare warm atole, Ana would rub my back, switch on the television, and search until she found some light diversion.
One such night I saw an ad on TV for free legal aid for immigrants. Silently, I memorized the number and recited it to myself like a prayer. 1 520 629-8327. 1 520 6AYUDAR. Numbers always brought me comfort. As I chanted it softly to myself over and over, another number suddenly materialized in my mind: 1 818 555-7475. It was Berta and Diego’s phone number in Los Angeles. I thought of the tiny white paper that Rosa had carried in her bag and how she feared she’d lose it. I thought of my little box of stars and of my calla lily journal that Manuel had given me. Were they weathering beside Rosa and Manuel’s blessed bones? Or had they been trampled and scattered to pieces like my soul?
I imagined a pencil in my mind and tried to erase the numbers imprinted there, but they wouldn’t fade. I turned back to the telenovela I had been watching and turned up the
