‘Mami! They’re here,’ Luca says, and he starts to stand, but Mami tells him to sit back down again.
‘Luca, don’t look at them or talk to them yet,’ Lydia says. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s see how they are.’
Luca sits, even though he doesn’t fully understand what Mami means by ‘how they are’. They’re here! He was worried he’d never see them again. Mami leans forward in the dirty light. She asserts her face into his so Luca has no choice but to look at her.
‘Luca, these are very bad people. You understand?’
Luca hardens his lips against each other. He investigates a small tag of rubber tread that’s come loose from the sole of his shoe.
‘We have to be careful not to draw extra attention to ourselves now, okay? You have to be very quiet and still until we figure out what’s going to happen.’
Luca tugs at the rubber tag until it snaps.
‘Okay, mijo?’
He doesn’t answer.
Lydia is amazed by the girls’ arrival. She, too, presumed they would never see one another again. When the men were finished with the sisters, they could’ve chosen to keep them or sell them or kill them, and that’s frankly what Lydia expected, insofar as she permitted herself to expect anything at all. Lydia had buried that presumption in a shallow place, an unmarked place, for the last several hours. She’d pushed it away because she didn’t have room for it. The girls do not look well.
Soledad has a black eye and a scraped cheek on the same side. Her hair is wild and full of grit. Rebeca is bleeding at the temple. Just a thin, bright red cord against her skin. Her mouth is swollen and raw. A guard pulls them by the ankles, one at a time, toward the liftgate of the truck and flings them to the floor like sacks of rice. Soledad and Rebeca don’t complain with their voices or faces or bodies. They’re both limp – all the flinch has gone out of them. The sisters land near the far end of the line of migrants, and they don’t move from where they’re placed. Rebeca closes her eyes at once. Soledad keeps hers open. She lifts her chin, leans forward, and looks down the line until she sees Luca sticking out a little from the rest of the migrants. She nods at him once.
‘Soledad,’ he says, just loudly enough for her to hear. Because he knows without knowing that the act of saying her name in that moment is the flag she needs in order to return to herself.
‘Rebeca,’ he says also. But Rebeca squeezes her eyes shut even tighter. She’s not ready. She pulls her knees up in front of her and buries her face there.
Now the five men who were in that truck with the sisters are uncarefully unloading the backpacks. They wear untucked white T-shirts over their dark blue uniform pants, and Lydia wonders if they’re real agentes who also work for the cartel, or if the uniforms and trucks are just elaborate costumes and props. Qué importa. They stand in the bed and toss everything down in a heap. Luca can feel the whole line of migrants clicking to attention, their spines snapping them upright. A fizz of nervousness in the air. A few more men from the office come to join them, and soon the one in charge stands before them. The others call him comandante.
‘Is anyone here a Mexican citizen?’ he asks.
‘I am,’ Lydia says. Three or four other voices join hers.
El comandante steps up to the first man, seated directly beside Rebeca. El comandante nudges the migrant’s worn shoe with the toe of his boot. ‘You’re Mexican?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re not lying to me?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You wouldn’t lie to me?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘From Oaxaca.’
‘City?’
The man nods.
‘In what state is the city of Oaxaca?’ el comandante asks.
The man hesitates. ‘Oaxaca state?’ He is unsure.
‘Yes, amigo. The city of Oaxaca is in the state of Oaxaca. Congratulations. You must have done very well in school, in Oaxaca.’
The migrant squirms where he sits.
‘And tell me,’ el comandante continues. ‘Who is the governor of Oaxaca now?’
‘The governor?’
‘Yes, the governor. Of the state of Oaxaca. Where you are from.’
Another hesitation. ‘We, uh. We had elections recently. The governor, the last governor, he was um…’ The man shakes his head.
‘Surely you know the governor’s name?’ el comandante says.
‘Esperanza?’
El comandante turns to a guard standing behind him, who’s googling Oaxaca on his phone. He shakes his head. ‘Governor of Oaxaca is Hinojosa.’
El comandante returns his attention to the migrant. ‘Now. Would you like to tell me again where it is you’re from?’
The man swallows. He says quietly, ‘Oaxaca.’
El comandante draws his pistol and shoots the man between the eyebrows.
Rebeca jumps, her skin and her bones. Lydia cries out. Every migrant in the line cries out. Luca begins sobbing and screaming. He clamps his hands over his ears and squeezes his eyes closed and rocks himself. ‘No, no, no.’ El comandante clears his throat irritably, a tiny sound which is louder than all the reverberating noise in the room. With huge eyes and a cracked mouth, Rebeca is staring at the slump of a man beside her. His eyes are still open as he falls over onto her lap. He bleeds onto her legs. Rebeca doesn’t move.
‘Should anyone else be interested in lying to me about where you are from, allow me to suggest that you reconsider,’ el comandante says. ‘Now I will ask again: Who here is a Mexican national?’
Luca is shaking his head frantically, but Lydia takes a deep breath, and ‘I am,’ she says. This time she’s the only one.
El comandante turns and approaches her. ‘This is your son?’
She doesn’t breathe. ‘We are from Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero,’ she says. ‘The governor is Héctor Astudillo Flores, and the state capital is Chilpancingo.’
Before she can stop him, Luca moves swiftly to his feet. He’s trembling, but he stands up straight, tips his head back, and closes his eyes. His voice is clear as he takes over for his mami. ‘Although the site of Acapulco has cultural influences ranging back to the eighth-century Olmecs, it wasn’t established as a major port until the arrival of Cortés in the 1520s. The city has a current population of more than six hundred thousand inhabitants, and a tropical climate with distinct wet and dry seasons—’
‘Is he for real?’ el comandante interrupts. He’s looking at Lydia.
‘Yes,’ she says.
The man’s face looks very different when he’s smiling, as he now is at Luca. He looks grandfatherly. Portly. Wild, bushy eyebrows. A pebbly wash of gray around the temples. This man who just shot a shackled human being between the eyes.
‘Tourism is the main eco—’
‘Mijo, stop,’ Mami says.
Luca snaps his mouth closed and sits back down on her lap. He turns sideways there, so his body is mostly covering her. El comandante leans his hands on his knees.
‘Where did you learn all that?’ he asks.
Luca shrugs.
‘Did you make it up?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t lie to me?’
‘No.’ Luca would pee again if he wasn’t dehydrated. He buries his face in Mami’s neck.
El comandante straightens himself up again. ‘So you are from Acapulco.’