El Gato smiled, then motioned with his hand over his head. He said that if they trusted him, they would also trust his friend Hector-who on cue suddenly came around a corner. As he approached them, Ana and Rosario saw that he was younger than El Gato, maybe even the age of Ana and Rosario, but far coarser-looking, with an acne- pocked face and bad teeth.
El Gato introduced them. Then he looked from one girl to the other and promised them (a) that they should have no worries with Hector, (b) that Hector would be their coyote and see that they safely got across the Rio Grande, and (c) that he himself would see them shortly on the U.S. side.
And then El Gato said his goodbyes.
Hector led Ana and Rosario around the dirty street corner to a battered and rusty yellow Toyota compact pickup. They all squeezed into its cab, with Rosario sliding across the torn fabric of the bench seat to sit in the middle. After about an hour’s drive on paved highway-during which an increasingly disgusted Rosario didn’t think Hector’s hand brushing her knees as he worked the gearshift was exactly an accident-the truck turned onto a narrow, bumpier macadam road.
Just past the corner, they passed a police car that was parked on the side of the small road. The officer made no effort to stop them. Ana even thought that she saw the man smile and nod.
Minutes later, the truck turned off the macadam road and drove a short distance down a tree-lined rutted dirt road. It then slowed and made an abrupt turn through some brush between the trees. The surprise turn caused Rosario to squeal, then laugh a little nervously.
Limbs scraped the side of the truck. One bough popped through the open passenger-door window. It struck Ana on the ear but caused no injury.
The Toyota pickup stopped fifty feet later, and Hector got out and motioned for the girls to do likewise.
They were upstream of Matamoros and standing alone on a small rise above the riverbank. The meander of the river made a tight bend here, almost turning back onto itself. The Mexico side was thick with scrub trees and brush, the low sun causing long dark shadows. The immediate area of the bank stank and was littered with trash- empty plastic bottles of fruit drink, empty snack bags, and dirty ragged discarded clothing, both men’s and women’s.
Ana then caught herself suddenly inhaling deeply. She nudged Rosario to look. Rosario followed her gaze and saw the tree with a dozen or more pairs of women’s panties dangling from its limbs. She thought she heard Hector chuckle.
They looked toward him and saw him reaching into a big cardboard box in the back of the pickup. Hector brought out some clothes, then gave them to the girls.
They held them up and saw that they were uniforms: tan cotton dresses with brown piping and off-white cotton blouses with frilled collars. Each had a plastic name tag pinned to the lapel. The tags were a darker brown color with etched white letters at the top-RGG amp;RC-and one reading ANGEL, one ROSA.
Hector then said that they were to change into the clothes. Right there.
Reluctantly, the girls stepped to the far side of the pickup for some privacy, and stripped to their panties and bras. Hector pretended not to watch, but it was clear that he seemed to enjoy every moment of it.
When they were done, Hector pulled out of the cardboard box three small tan backpacks with a Nike logotype stitched on them. He slipped one over his shoulder and gave the girls the others. It took Hector’s help for them to shoulder the bags, the contents of each weighing exactly ten kilos-just over twenty pounds.
Hector motioned for the girls to follow. They began walking along the shoreline, within the line of trees and out of sight of the other shore. They came to a small rapid where the river bottom was exposed and the murky green-brown river rushed over it.
Walk across? Ana thought.
Why didn’t we do this the first time? Instead of those stupid rowboats!
Could the policeman in the car have something to do with this? Maybe control this part of the river?
Hector pulled out a cellular telephone. In a flurry of finger movements, he typed then sent a very short text message.
Almost immediately on the U.S. side of the river border, not a hundred kilometers away, there was movement at the top of the rise above the river’s edge. It was some sort of small cartlike vehicle. It stopped, and a man got out of it. He was heavyset, like a larger version of Hector, and wore a uniform that was the same tan and brown as the outfits that the girls wore. He then started down toward the river, walking awkwardly under the weight of a long black bag he carried with both hands.
Hector started across the river shoal. The girls looked at each other, then followed.
Wading the shallows was uneventful save for Ana at one point snagging her foot on something underwater. She stumbled, and Rosario laughed. But when Ana went to free her foot and found it stuck in yet another pair of women’s underwear-this pair snagged on a submerged tree limb-Rosario’s smile quickly disappeared.
Once they reached the U.S. side of the river border, the heavyset man nodded a greeting but said nothing.
The girls watched as he and Hector exchanged the backpack for the long black canvas duffle. Hector grunted under the big bag’s weight, and when he slung its web handles over his right shoulder, the girls heard what sounded like metal pipe and dense plastic clunking against each other inside it.
Hector then said, “Jos?, he will take you the next step.”
And, without another word, he struggled with the long bag and went back across the river.
Jos? led the girls with their backpacks to the cartlike vehicle they had never seen before. It had four small tires, a dull scratched dark green body, and not much more than a steering wheel and a black vinyl-covered bench seat that could accommodate no more than the three of them. There was lettering on the front of the cart-though neither girl could translate it, recognizing only the same logotype that was on the badges of their outfits-that read RGG amp;RC MAINTENANCE.
Jos? smiled warmly but said nothing as he drove them down a narrow asphalt-paved path that Ana thought looked as if it had been made expressly for this vehicle.
They came to an automobile parking lot, where Jos? pulled to a stop. A sign there announced RGG amp;RC VALET PARKING ONLY. They were beside a dusty white Chrysler Town amp; Country minivan, which a very long time ago had had its sides professionally lettered KIDDIE KASTLE PRE-SCHOOL in a glistening red. They all got in it and wordlessly drove off, passing a grand sign at the entrance reading RIO GRANDE GOLF amp; RACQUET CLUB.
A half hour later, they turned into a neat neighborhood of nice-looking one-story houses. When Jos? pulled the minivan to a stop on the street before one of them with a single scrawny tree in the middle of its yard, he announced with no emotion whatever that their trip was over.
Elated, Ana and Rosario looked at each other and smiled.
Ana then shook her head in wonder. The whole trip back into the United States had taken no time compared to what they’d just gone through from the time they’d been caught by the polic?a Americano to when they’d been sent back across the bridge to Mexico.
Jos? relieved the girls of their backpacks, then showed them the two bedrooms where they’d be staying. The girls beamed when shown a closet full of girls’ clothing in various sizes. They were told to pick their outfits from the closet and return the brown uniforms they were wearing to him.
After they had gotten cleaned up and were getting dressed, they heard the front door open and close, and then voices speaking in English. They pulled back the thin curtain and looked out the window. Out by the KIDDIE KASTLE PRE-SCHOOL minivan was parked a bigger vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban.
Then they thought they recognized one of the voices, and when they went out into the living room, they found El Gato and another young Latin male drinking beers on the couch. The tan Nike backpacks that they had carried across the river were on the coffee table.
The girls were nervous at first, even somewhat scared, but Juan Paulo Delgado, switching back to Spanish, had been all charm. He played up the friendly El Gato, and introduced the newcomer wearing black jeans and T- shirt as “El Cheque.” The Check was no bigger than either Ana or Rosario, but looked meaner than a snake. He was twenty-five with dark features and had a scar on his cheek in the shape of a check mark.
El Cheque, El Gato said, as he and the girls later shared a dinner of delivered pizzas, soon would be driving Ana and Rosario north. He explained how they would be permitted to find their family while they were working to repay the costs of their passage. He said it was not uncommon for that to happen quickly.
