HOLLYWOOD—Here they waited, unwashed and fetid, the human cargo of the coyotes, anxious for friends and family to pay their captors the remainder of what they were owed for smuggling their loved ones across the border. Thrilled at the prospect of resting their weary bones and joints at long last—after withstanding unforgiving deserts and the merciless suspension of old trucks, where they shared the payload with dirt-caked vegetables—they gratefully greeted the mattress-strewn floor. They were housed, two and three to a mattress, in a basement playroom, as evidenced by a folded ping-pong table in one corner.
Here was sad-eyed Candelaria, even sadder now. Her high cheekbones were more pronounced, giving the appearance of two doorknobs stuck inside her cheeks. Darkness enfolded behind her eyelids. The instant her tired, sunburnt flesh touched the mattress, Candelaria fell fast asleep. She dreamed of treacherous terrain, feet dragging across the desert in torn, bloody shoes. A thousand times Don Ignacio wailed over the body of Doňa Rosa, his wife murdered a thousand more times by the heat and dehydration.
The basement was heaven compared to that nightmare. Despite the meanness of their close cold quarters, the basement dwellers did manage to exchange seasonal gifts. A hearty symphony of sniffles, sneezes and cough rose from their huddled ranks. And they got three squares. Three times a day they ate ramen, washed down by Coca-Cola. Steam billowed from the hot styrofoam cups of soup and warmed their cold cheeks and noses. A TV set was left on all day in the corner, without sound. Upstairs their captors listened to soccer matches and oompah banda music at full blast, and the people below could hear their footsteps creak. There were moments when an angry voice raised to a relative short in cash could be heard over the thundering tuba and the operatic soccer announcer.
New people came by night. And they left by night, as soon as their relatives paid the ransom. Some faces Candelaria saw only once. She blinked and they were gone. Signs on a highway.
Now only Don Ignacio was left of their original group who’d trekked across the Arizona desert. The streetwise kid was first to go in Phoenix. Ignacio was the sole person who kept active. He walked around the basement’s perimeter and touched his toes every morning.
Ignacio’s son-in-law had lost a job, and they were scraping together what they owed the coyote any way they could. The last he heard, they were trying to sell their car.
“I am an old man,” Don Ignacio sighed. “Nobody cares about me. I am only waiting for my time to come. I didn’t even want to undertake this journey,” he said. “I did it for Rosa. To humor her, and now I’ve lost her.”
It made Candelaria’s heart sore to conjecture about why her brother did not respond to her calls. The coyotes let her call the number she had, and each time she left a message saying she was finally in Los Angeles. But her brother didn’t respond. Candelaria marked the days by pressing a finger-nail into the drywall behind her mattress.
Through an opening in one fogged glass window, the captives were offered glimpses of the routine and the luxury that prevailed outside. America. It was so near and so far. A shiny-coated German shepherd dog ran and yelped. Yellow school buses lumbered past to a nearby school, whose bells and squealing children on recess could be heard. Backpack-bearing children tramped by at 8 a.m. They filed en masse the other direction at 3 p.m. One day a week sombreroed men pushed noisy machines across lawns so smooth you could roll pearls across their emerald green expanse. The days elapsed uneventfully; the sun came up and imbued the land in a wash of wintry light. From all this they were separated by doors chained and padlocked and windows barred.
Candelaria kept leaving messages for her brother, till his phone accepted no more. Then his phone was disconnected.
What could be the matter? She thought of how there were times, back in El Salvador, when he went dancing and drinking for three days. But he was young and reckless. Now that he had a child, he was more responsible and the devilish gleam in his eye had subdued.
Candelaria drew nourishment from the watery sodium-packed ramen broth; more nourishment she drew from Don Ignacio’s words: “I have done everything I wanted to do. Traveled to places—I’ve been to Canada. Danced with beautiful women. Let me give you a piece of advice. If you ever face a problem, immediately remember something good that happened to you,” Don Ignacio said. “It will add years to your life.”
(to be continued)
