She held my hand tightly as she said in a firm, even tone, “I have heard your story before—at least part of it.” She paused. “The first half.” Then she sat up straight, keeping a grip on my hand. “Over a year ago, perhaps two, in San Diego, I was approached by a young man who asked if I’d met a young woman looking for her father—a young woman named Alma Cruz.”
I gasped.
She took my hand now in both of hers. “Manuel, tu novio,” she said gently, the face softening again. “He said his name was Manuel, and he was trying to find you. He thought that perhaps—since you were looking for me—that I might have some knowledge of you, of where you were. What city at least.”
“Manuel is alive?” My hands burned cold, as if I had placed them on a slab of dry ice. “¿Está vivo?” My mind whirled. How many years had it been? “San Diego? He is in San Diego?”
She shook her head. “No, he had only come there because he knew I was speaking at a rally. A priest had told him, I believe. No, he was working somewhere else, with a brother, I think. But sweetie,” she began, as I interrupted.
“Temecula? Was it Temecula?”
She reached up and took my face in her hands. “Listen to me. I have a number. He gave me a number in case you found me. He insisted.” She laughed. “Oh, he was as passionate as you—he insisted that you would find me one day, and when you did, he wanted me to give you this number.”
I could barely catch my breath. Manuel, alive. I could call him, speak to him . . . see him?
Dolores continued, “It is in my purse, which I’m afraid I left at my friend’s house. I didn’t want to carry it on the march. But it is here in Los Angeles, and I’ll find it for you this evening. Don’t worry. I’ll get it to you tonight.” Her eyes were narrow slits as she smiled, her dark lashes glistened with tears. “I put it behind a photograph of my mother in my wallet. I told her to keep it safe.” She shook her head. “I haven’t thought of that paper in months, but I’m sure it’s still there,” she reassured me.
“I can’t believe he’s alive. I thought . . .” I stopped, unable to speak beyond the image that formed in my mind.
She held her hands open as Luz approached and began placing stones, one by one, in Dolores’s palm. “I can add a few details to your story, if I remember correctly.”
I held my breath.
“He is the one who carried you to the hospital, leaving you at the entrance and then hiding in the shadows. That night, while sleeping in a parking garage, he was caught by authorities and eventually deported—all the way back to Guatemala.”
Poor Manuel! After all of that. Guatemala! But the look on Dolores’s face spoke of even more misery. I placed my hand over my heart and listened.
She was frowning as she said, “He spent time in the hospital, for his lungs, I think. He wasn’t well for many months, he said. Then, I believe, a brother helped get him over the border again. They were working together somewhere in Southern California.” She stopped and turned to me, “This was a while ago, remember—one year, maybe close to two.”
I took this in, imagining the torment of his journey south and the numbness of his journey north again. “How did he look?” I asked, hungry to be in that moment.
She looked down at the stones, rolling them between her fingers. “He was thin—tall and thin, I remember that. His hair cut close to his head—almost in what we used to call a crew-cut. And a scar,” she said gently, “along the side of his face.” Her fingers closed over the tiny stones as she lifted her hand to her face and traced a line straight down from temple to chin.
It didn’t sound like Manuel—tall, thin, no mass of hair over his brow, but then it had been a few years—and I no longer looked like the Alma he knew. And the scar . . . we were both scarred, that was certain.
Suddenly Dolores’s face lit up. “Oh yes, I remember something else! I was to tell you that he has . . . a little book of math?” She looked at me questioningly. “Does this mean something?”
I couldn’t answer, for my breath wouldn’t come, but I nodded furiously as tears streamed down my face. Gathering a puzzled Luz to my chest, I rocked her and finally managed to whisper to Dolores, “Gracias. Gracias. Gracias.”
The number that Dolores gave me reached someone Manuel had once worked for in Temecula. His name was Nuñez, no first name offered. He stated simply that the brothers worked the area often, but they weren’t there just now. He’d put my message on the board; I was welcome to keep checking in.
I was not disappointed. Julie and Diego kept at me, suggesting we drive down and ask around, but I smiled at their impatience and shook my head. “There is no hurry. It will happen,” I said.
Diego thought I was shy or perhaps worried that Manuel had found someone else. Julie thought I was afraid I wouldn’t know him anymore. But they didn’t know yet what it is to share a journey, and they didn’t understand the comfort in just knowing.
What I knew for certain was that distance is never a barrier, nor time, for love keeps multiplying even when miles—or borders—divide.
Epilogue
The Writing Journal of Luz de Rosalba Cruz
Los Angeles: August 2017
I am not like my mother; I do not like numbers. For me, it is
