They drove through Chinatown into Downtown. At Wilshire Boulevard the truck turned west, winding past MacArthur Park where Catherine saw the lake glittering in the sun and people sitting on the grass. The roads and buildings were bigger than anything she’d seen since the jungle except the pyramids, but the people looked the same as they had in Mexico. Beyond MacArthur Park and Lafayette Park, the truck rolled to the corner of Wilshire and Vermont, where there was a great deal of traffic and a policeman stood in the middle of the intersection, giving directions in lieu of a broken blinking traffic light. On the corners stood pedestrians waiting to cross. The driver pulled to the side of the street and put the truck in park. He turned to his passengers in the back and pointed across Vermont Avenue.
“America,” he said.
“America?” they said.
They all sat gazing across Vermont Avenue as a stream of traffic lurched by. The driver sat patiently, letting them take it all in. Catherine looked across the street, looked at the other four passengers and then at the driver. Holding the white kitten to her chest, she started to laugh. The others turned to her as she laughed for several moments; when she stopped she said to the driver, “You think we’re imbeciles.”
“What did she say?” the driver asked the Mexican who spoke English.
“I said,” Catherine retorted without waiting for the translation, “you must think we’re imbeciles. This is no border,” and now she was becoming angry, “look at all the people just walking across. Don’t you think I’ve crossed enough borders by now to know one when I see one?”
“What’s she talking about,” the driver said with some agitation to the Mexican, who was also becoming agitated.
Catherine turned in the back of the truck and threw open the back flap. “Hey!” said the driver; and with her kitten and her scarf of one gold coin, she stepped out of the truck. She looked once to see if the others would follow; they were frozen in their places. She snorted with disgust. The driver was now out of the truck and coming at her, and as she stepped onto the sidewalk, she dodged his reach and ran for the intersection, clutching the cat to her.
She got to the corner and started for the other side. By now the driver was some yards behind her, torn between pursuit and the risk that the others might also leave the truck. Catherine stepped into the middle of the street and heard someone call her; it was the cop in the intersection. He pointed at her and yelled something, and suddenly she believed she had made a terrible mistake, this was a frontier after all, and the border guard had immediately identified her as a trespasser. She jumped back onto the sidewalk and looked at the driver, who was also backing away from the cop. Catherine turned from both of them and ran down Vermont Avenue, where she hid behind an electronics shop, people on the sidewalk watching as she fled.
The cop whistled again and then looked at the driver of the truck. “You’re in a no-park zone, mister,” he said. “Move it if you don’t want to get cited.” The driver waved in acquiescence. He got back in the truck, took one more look in the direction the girl had run, and quickly drove his cargo across the street.
She hid in an alley until long past dark. Then she wrapped the kitten in her scarf with the coin and came out to the empty intersection, where the broken traffic light was still blinking. Once in a while a car would drive up Wilshire from either direction and cross Vermont at will. Catherine saw no sign of police. On the other side of Wilshire under a street light sat a taxicab, the red glow of someone’s cigarette floating in the dark behind the wheel. I can pay him my last gold coin to drive me over the border into America, she thought. She kept looking for guards and looking at the cab, from which the man behind the wheel was now watching her. Because of the way he looked at her, she changed her mind. I’ve had enough of navigators, she said to herself. They’ve gotten me nothing but trouble; she considered Coba, the professor at the pyramids, the truck driver. From now on, she said to her scarf, we transport ourselves. The kitten did not answer. She walked from the shadows of the street, turned suddenly and bolted across Vermont, greeting her first midnight in the new land.
By morning she was famished. The kitten in her scarf was squeaking with hunger. The two of them started west on Wilshire, where they entered a coffee shop. Catherine held her one last coin in front of her. “Only dollars here,” said a woman behind the counter, “can’t come in with bare feet anyway.” Catherine continued to hold the coin out, then gestured to her lips that she wanted to eat. The woman behind the counter was looking around at the other customers. “That money’s not good here,” she said; she pointed at the coin and shook her head. Catherine was crestfallen. She unwrapped the kitten from the scarf and held her up to the woman, now pointing at the kitten. The woman sighed heavily, gave Catherine two pieces of bread, a tin of jelly, and two tiny cartons of cream. Catherine took them in her hands and put them in the scarf as the kitten started to scoot under the tables. “Oh Lord,” said the woman behind the counter. But Catherine got the kitten back and offered the coin again; the woman shook her head and frantically waved Catherine and the kitten out the door.
On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant Catherine opened the tiny cartons of cream and held them up to the kitten. Then she put the jelly on her bread and
