Finally, Rat tired of making inquiries, and we sat in waiting room No. 2, next to a stand selling backpacks that also had plush toys and ham and cheese sandwiches. The seat Rat took was falling apart; mine had a basic penis design drawn in indelible ink. The whole terminal smelled strange, a mixture of burnt food and gas.
Rat seemed undecided, as if his vaguely ambitious plan to rescue Mariana from who knows what danger had balked at the first hurdle (what’s more, a predictable hurdle, since it was unlikely that we would have found my sister just sitting waiting for us in the Taxqueña terminal). Perhaps he’d expected the first person he asked to tell him which bus she’d boarded so we could get on the next one going to the same place, or intercept it in a cab before it left the city. The idea of the two of us taking a bus somewhere, without any clear indication of my sister’s whereabouts, must have suddenly seemed less enticing. Like a fly, his eyes rested on one object after another. I asked if he’d given up on going to Chiapas, if he’d given up on searching for Mariana, given up on helping me. I asked a torrent of questions, but Rat responded with only an evasive gesture that seemed to say, “stop bugging me.”
That indecisiveness was another disappointment. Not only did Rat take a shower before leaving home, meekly obeying his mother, but he also shrank before the slightest danger. His fame as a rebellious teenager once again appeared unjustified. I thought about snitching on him to the gorillas who were normally to be seen hanging around him at the Rec, explaining that their idol was nothing but a scared kid with a breaking voice who pretended to possess levels of maturity, and even evil, he’d never attain.
I spotted a terrifying trend: according to all the available evidence, my mother and sister had been capable of pitching themselves into the battle without giving it a second thought, guided by their convictions or by passions that raised them onto the untamed flanks of History. On the other hand, my father and Rat, different but complementary models of masculinity—the omniscient provider, the hardline rebel—remained on the margins of events, watching reruns of soccer games or applying temporary tattoos like self-obsessed loudmouths. What that pattern held in store for my own life was frightening: the world was a place infested with cowardly men who spilled beer down their clean shirts, and the women who put up with them for a time. At that instant, it occurred to me that if I wanted to do something worthwhile with my time on earth, I should, at least symbolically, become the woman whom destiny or genetics had prevented me from being at the moment of conception. If not, I’d be condemned to repeating the mistakes of my father and Rat, to crying over games lost in overtime or hanging around on the neighborhood streets, my hair freshly washed, accompanied by my minions, without the courage to do anything by myself.
Head bent, sitting in waiting room No. 2 of the Taxqueña bus terminal, Rat was inspecting the laces of his sneakers, the dirt under his fingernails, the wide legs of his grubby, torn jeans. His mouth seemed larger, as if gravity were dragging his lips downward, giving him an expression of childlike concentration.
I don’t know where I found the confidence and willpower to do it, but I was suddenly on my feet, facing Rat, telling him that we had to take a bus to Chiapas, that we had to follow Mariana and my mother to the war itself if necessary. The words issued from my mouth of their own volition, my voice was charged with emotion. Rat looked at me uncertainly and mumbled something I didn’t catch. Then he said that he wanted to see my sister, too, but that it was a bad idea, that she probably hadn’t gone to Chiapas, that she’d return home on her own when the drink had worn off and she realized that she was in trouble. I glared at him. The scorn I felt took the form of a tangled knot of emotions that threatened to become tears. I thought that if I went on looking him in the eyes, I’d end up hitting him, even while I was aware he could easily overpower me.
When he understood that I was willing to do whatever it took to find my sister, Rat went back on the attack with new arguments and a tougher tone. He told me that we had no damned idea where Mariana was; she could have taken a bus to Chiapas or a pesero to Ciudad Satélite, there was no way of knowing. I’d never been to Ciudad Satélite, but it sounded like somewhere in another part of the galaxy, and I was surprised you could take a pesero there. I sat down again on the rickety seat, next to Rat. Our options were running out. The clock at the far end of the waiting room showed 8:40 in the evening. I thought that if my father hadn’t already arrived back from work, he soon would. A homeless man stopped in
