Rat was chain-smoking as if he found Earth’s atmosphere toxic and only tobacco fumes were keeping him alive. (And the truth is, he wasn’t the only one to find the atmosphere at that time and place highly toxic: with air pollution levels at about 200 on the Metropolitan Index of Air Quality, during the summer of 1994, breathing was an extreme sport.) He smoked every cigarette right down to the end, until the smell of the burning filter reminded him that it was time to light the next. His voice was nasal and, being on the point of breaking, fluctuated between the deep baritone it would become a few months later and the squeakiness of childhood. Maybe that’s why he rarely said much. He glanced at me suspiciously, as if he had something important to say but was thinking the better of it even before opening his mouth. When we got to the corner of Taxqueña and Miramontes, Rat seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second. He threw down his cigarette, this time only half-smoked, turned to face me, and, putting his hands on my shoulders as if to prevent me from being distracted by the chaos of vehicles and ambulant street sellers, asked: “Do you know where the fuck your mom is, child?”
I was finally able to show Rat that I wasn’t a child, that I knew what was going on, knew even more than Mariana. “Yes,” I said, sure of myself for the first time that night. “She’s in Chiapas. She’s gone camping.”
Rat’s face was transformed. He clearly hadn’t expected that reply. Just as his voice sometimes betrayed his former age, his astonished expression brought back the face he must have had years before—before the beer, cigarettes, and temporary tattoos. He attempted to recompose his degenerate-maudit teenage features and scrutinized me as if trying to work out whether I was conscious of the implications of my reply.
“I want something to eat,” I said in an attempt to change the subject, but also because the pangs of hunger had suddenly returned. “I fell asleep in the capsule and haven’t had anything all day.” The peseros and trolleybuses were forming a solid wall along Avenida Taxqueña. Rat went to a street cart, leaving me a few steps behind, and bought a can of Coca-Cola and some Japanese cracker nuts. The woman pushing the cart had no change for the two-hundred new-peso bill that Rat proffered her, and he had to rummage in his pockets for coins. He handed me the plastic bag containing the booty: “Here you go, crackbrain.”
I was beginning to weary of his offhand manner, but the adventure of going beyond the bounds of my neighborhood in the company of someone more popular than any of my friends made me swallow my pride: there was something bigger at stake.
Rat beckoned me to follow him and hurled himself between the trolleybuses and peseros without waiting for the traffic signals to change. I thought we were going to die, but followed him anyway, because the idea of being left alone on Avenida Taxqueña was even more frightening. We crossed the street to the sound of polyphonic horns, dodging weary pedestrians laden with packages and suitcases, and arrived on the outskirts of the Terminal Central de Autobuses del Sur. In front of it, the Taxqueña market engulfed the pesero stop and the entrance to the metro, stretching out like an ocean of junk.
A woman passed near me carrying a live, flapping hen by its bound feet. For a moment I watched two children in rags playing a game that involved throwing stones at a bottle.
Just before we reached the terminal, Rat once again seemed to hesitate momentarily. “I’ve got a hunch Mariana might be here, inside. She knows where your old lady is too.” He stressed the last sentence, as if demonstrating that he’d been aware of just what was going on before I told him.
Something didn’t quite add up: if my sister was looking for me, why would she go to the bus terminal? I’d never expressed any interest in traveling anywhere by bus. I sometimes used to talk about flying in a jet plane, or even sailing on a ship, which to me seemed exciting and strange, but buses were, in my opinion, ordinary and unattractive. Teresa, Mariana, and I had once gone to Tepoztlán on a bus that had departed from that very terminal, and the stink of vomit seeping from the restroom had made me feel sick ten minutes into the journey. If Mariana knew anything at all, she’d be looking for me at the Rec, or on the slides, or any other place in Educación, but not in the bus terminal by the Taxqueña metro station.
Rat worked out that something was bothering me. I suppose it was obvious (when I’m worried I frown deeply, even nowadays). He spoke quickly, nervously; for the first time I understood that he didn’t know exactly what we were doing either: “Look, crackbrain, Mariana was a bit canned. Don’t tell anyone. We’d been drinking in her room. When we couldn’t find you anywhere in the house, she started crying, thought something had happened to you. Then she began babbling on about your old lady, said she was in Chiapas and something about going to look for her. I wasn’t really listening. I thought she was afraid of getting a bawling out. She told me to stay and wait for you and ran out of the house. But she’s been gone for around two hours now.” Rat paused, allowing me to take all that in before continuing, “Do you understand that there’s a war in Chiapas? Tanks and soldiers. We have to find Mariana.”
It wasn’t easy to digest all that information. That Teresa, a woman with a monotone voice and firm convictions,
