Señora Lopez paused in her prayers and placed her wrinkled hand, sparkling with green rosary beads, over mine. “His will be done,” she whispered. When I looked at her with pain and confusion in my eyes, she asked, “What? What is it?”
I tried to explain what was a jumble in my mind. “His will? But how could . . . what happened . . . be a part of God’s will?” This was the best that I could do, though it didn’t touch an ounce of what I felt.
She shook her head and sat in silence. Just when I thought she had no response to give, she squeezed my hand and said in a voice that I had to strain to hear, “My Ana doesn’t know all of what happened the night the soldiers took our men and boys.” She looked up into my eyes, her lower lip quivering. “Entiendo. I know your terror,” she said slowly, “I know your pain.” She paused and lifted the rosary to her lips and kissed them. Then closing her eyes, she continued, “It was part of our men’s torture to have to watch their wives and mothers,” she opened her eyes and nodded, “and then, when the soldiers were finished with us, it was our turn to watch the murder of our husbands and sons.” Her tears glistened in the candlelight, which flickered a moment as if in homage, then burned full and bright. Suddenly she sat up and, leaning toward me, said firmly, “Ana knows none of this, nada, not even of my presence at their murders. She was a child, sent ahead to el norte with my cousin.”
I nodded. “I’ll never say a word,” I reassured her. “Prometo.”
“And Alma, my dear, that was not God’s will,” she said, her voice now gaining strength, “that’s not what I meant. I meant the rest of my life, after that, I placed in God’s hands.”
I thought for a moment and then asked, “But how did you know? What His will was, I mean? How did you know what He wanted you to do?”
“Ah, that part is the blessing. La bendición. I simply didn’t seek anymore. It all just came to me . . . like you did.” With both hands, she took mine, and, winding the rosary beads around my fingers, she finished by placing the crucifix in the palm of my hand and folded my fingers over it one by one. I wasn’t sure what I thought about God’s will, but I had to admit, it brought some degree of comfort.
One week later, Ana returned from a church meeting to announce that a group of college students from Los Angeles, associated with an organization in Tucson called BorderLinks, had visited to inquire about the plight of migrants. They had toured parts of Nogales, Mexico, the border, and now Nogales, Arizona, interviewing citizens from both sides, as well as Border Patrol agents, migrants, and aid workers. She wondered if I’d be willing to talk to them about the children who ride the trains.
“You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. They don’t know anything else about you, Alma. I simply said I knew someone who had ridden the rails,” she said gently.
“They’re from Los Angeles?” I whispered.
Behind Ana, Señora Lopez’s eyes met mine.
Though the students were older than I was, I felt like the wise elder, and not just because they sat cross-legged on Ana’s floor while I was seated on the sofa above them. I felt decades older in body and soul. In fact, I wasn’t the least bit nervous about facing this group of college-educated Americans. Ana had arranged the meeting at her apartment, hoping to ease any anxiety I might feel, and perhaps this played a role in my comfort level. But once they entered and each shook my hand, I felt a calm that surprised me.
There were four girls—all with long hair pulled back in straight pony-tails that hung down their backs. One had brown skin, the rest, white. And with them, two boys as well, one dark-skinned and one white. All were dressed in jeans and T-shirts and carried backpacks, which they opened once they settled themselves on the floor. Taking out notebooks and pens, they looked up expectantly. It was the dark-skinned boy who spoke in perfect Spanish, asking me questions and then translating in English to his friends. When I told of my fall from the boxcar, they looked blankly at me while I spoke, finally reacting with wide eyes and gasps as he relayed the details moments later. It was surreal watching his animated face as he translated and then theirs as they reacted. That my life became this delayed story, repeated in a foreign language and listened to with expectation, made it seem less real—like it was, in fact, just a story. And so, as they asked questions that could have touched on sacred ground, I began to weave an elaborate tale, part real, mostly fiction, that could take me gently into the future. For so many reasons, I could not speak the truth.
I told them that I had been on my way to Los Angeles, where my half-brother lived. There was a job waiting for me, I said. I had been traveling with my sister and her boyfriend, but they decided to return home after our third deportation. I continued on, however, determined to make it to Los Angeles, but just as I crossed the border at Nogales, I told them that my coyote took
