Pedro didn’t have a spouse, parent or sibling living legally in the United States, so no one could sponsor him to get a green card. Even if he had, the price of becoming legal, as set by the American government, was more than $20,000, which was more money than any member of his family could ever dream of accruing. And whoever sponsored him would need to prove that they had an income of more than $30,000. No employer would pay him salary and insurance plus the legal fees necessary to legitimize him for work. And the American government would not recognize him as a refugee in need of asylum. With no options, Pedro had been living his life between the cracks of American society, wiring money to his family back in Mexico whenever he could.
So many men, like Pedro, had left to find work that many of Mexico’s towns and cities had been reduced to ghost towns. Only old people and wives with children remained. Deprived of life and the animation of commerce, the dust of the desert was eating them away. Crime was a last resort for people who had no other way to make a living, and like roaches, men looking to make a living on that crime inherited the forgotten towns. Consuelo was Pedro’s younger brother. Being too young to leave with Pedro to begin with, he had stayed in Mexico to help take care of the family, including the wife and children Pedro had left behind. When he was old enough to work, Pedro concocted a plan to get Consuelo to the United States so that together they might make enough money to bring the rest of the family across the border.
Pedro had sent him some money to pay a man to guide him across the border on foot through the Sonoran desert. Five men, three women and four children had crossed the 80 miles with him. In the 42-degree heat, with the mother screaming on the bankside, Consuelo had watched one of the children drown in a river they had been forced to cross. When Consuelo arrived, he was harrowed. The terror of life in Mexico had been replaced by the terror of living in a completely foreign land. The terror of getting caught and having the chance of a better life obliterated. Consuelo felt like an outsider. He and Pedro had manufactured their lives with a mindset of survival. An achievement mentality was a luxury not given or taught to them. Success was a new pair of shoes, a liter of Pepsi, the money they could wire back home. Despite leaving their country behind and the stoicism with which they conducted themselves, because of that terror, they clung to all the familiar parts of their culture for dear life as if trying to turn America into a new and improved Mexico. With the ongoing threat of a wall being built between America and Mexico, and the increased vigilance of the feared ICE immigration agents, their lives could only get worse.
Aria looked around the room. On the wall in the corner was an altar topped with religious relics. A green and orange statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe stood front and center upon it, her virtue and blessing presiding over the store. The altar below her had been draped with a bright yellow mesh scarf. Beside her was a collection of fake flowers displayed in a vase. A gunmetal rosary hung off of the corner so as to display the Catholic cross at its base, and beside that, a long green candle in a glass container with a painting of San Judas Tadeo. The candle had been turned upside down. As per tradition, the candle would remain that way until the wish that Lolita had made on that candle had come true. She had wished for a kind and responsible man to come into her life and never leave her.
To Aria’s left, at another of the small tables, a group of four women sat around a game of loteria. Like bingo, the little place cards were arranged in front of them with pennies covering what squares had already been called. Aria could just make out some of the “tarot meets tattoo parlor” drawings on the squares. The women were betting on the game with quarters piled in the center of the table. Despite it being a game based entirely on chance and luck, they parlayed the money they would win, buffering the unpredictable and uncontrollable reality of the game with superstition.
Aria worked her way around the chunks of chicken to lift the large kernels of hominy onto her spoon. The broth was spicy, the tomato base disguised by the heavy flavor of oregano and the richness of the chicken fat that glazed the top of it. When Aria had finished what she could of the soup, she opened the little fluorescent orange package of Gansitos that Lolita had placed on the table in front of her. The smell of them reminded her of Hostess cupcakes. She bit into the synthetic sweetness, white sponge cake with a stripe of strawberry jelly and pastry cream coated in a film of chocolate and topped with chocolate sprinkles. She ate both of the cakes in the package, trying to savor the taste of them.
Watching her struggle with her drink, Lolita came over with an opener and popped the top off of the bottle of mandarin-flavored Jarritos soda. “Mija, let me do that,” she said, taking the metal cap with her to return to the
