with tattoos. The night I met them they were driving a big, old blue car with huge shiny rims. I’m pretty sure they’re spending time on the east side.”
“Tatuirovannyye litsa? A lot of tattoos?” he asked.
“Yeah, a lot. The one they call Indio basically has a black face by now. He’s easy to spot.”
“This is a good thing. This will make finding them easy. Guillermo say anything about money to you or are you paying me?”
“Yeah, Guillermo said you can pick up the dough with Sandra.”
“If you pay, I give you discount, but if Guillermo pay, I will accept it all. That zhir ublyudok is too lazy for a discount, he has to pay full price. And you should have brought me the money to some place. Last time, it was nice talking to you. I enjoyed learning about your saint and your trip across the border. This city is full of people from other places. This is something I like. It makes us invisible.”
The Russian chuckled and then coughed. Payment had been discussed and I’d given him everything I had on the mareros. Now I only had to wait until this nightmare was officially over.
“Thanks. Please let me know when…you’ve taken care of things.”
“This I will do.”
The Russian hung up. He didn’t ask for my number or tell me how long he thought it would take. However, having someone like him gunning for Indio made me feel better. Ese pinche culero no le iva a cortar la cabeza a nadie más. Soon those tattooed monkeys would be nothing more than a bad memory. The Russian was going to make them disappear forever. The death of someone else had never made me feel so good.
I texted Guillermo saying I made the call and then stuck the phone back in my pocket. Then I sat there in silence, staring at the deep darkness in Santa Muerte’s eyes. For those of us who were on her good side, that darkness was welcoming, like a place to hide in a violent storm. For those who were on her bad side, that darkness was a promise of death that brought destruction of the soul as well as of the flesh. The thought almost made me smile.
6
La frontera redux
The blood of innocents – La migra
Pinche gringo pendejo
Skeletons
What happens when you cross la frontera is that you leave a place to enter a void. You vacate a known reality and change it for something that you have to force yourself to believe, to accept, to understand.
What happens when you cross la frontera is that you shed un pedazo grande of your identity and become a different thing, something that’s part apparition, part useless flesh, and part broken memories. You abandon familia, amigos, lenguaje, and the streets you know for a place where you have no rights and are not even considered a citizen, a country in which you will live like a stowaway rat, always afraid of being discovered. So you change. You morph. Te vuelves otra cosa. You start speaking English fast in hopes that your brown skin will be ignored if you at least communicate well. You dress yourself with the comics you read and the books you hated in school and the movies you’ve watched since you were a kid and that thing becomes el nuevo tu. You cover your tatuajes and learn that people on the streets will remember you only if you speak Spanish in their presence. You do everything in your power to become a gringo, to fit in, to become as unnoticeable as the cracks in the sidewalks. Then you start walking with less confidence because everything is mysterious and new and scary and you never feel bienvenido.
What happens when you cross la frontera is that la frontera keeps a piece of you, cuts you inside, hasta el hueso, where you can’t heal yourself. It slashes you in places no blade or bullet can reach and cripples you in ways you don’t understand.
Cruzar la frontera fucks you over en formas que no sabías que podías ser jodido.
What happens when you cross la frontera is that your body becomes a magnet for the bad stuff that has piled up all along that awful
“Tatuirovannyye litsa? A lot of tattoos?” he asked.
“Yeah, a lot. The one they call Indio basically has a black face by now. He’s easy to spot.”
“This is a good thing. This will make finding them easy. Guillermo say anything about money to you or are you paying me?”
“Yeah, Guillermo said you can pick up the dough with Sandra.”
“If you pay, I give you discount, but if Guillermo pay, I will accept it all. That zhir ublyudok is too lazy for a discount, he has to pay full price. And you should have brought me the money to some place. Last time, it was nice talking to you. I enjoyed learning about your saint and your trip across the border. This city is full of people from other places. This is something I like. It makes us invisible.”
The Russian chuckled and then coughed. Payment had been discussed and I’d given him everything I had on the mareros. Now I only had to wait until this nightmare was officially over.
“Thanks. Please let me know when…you’ve taken care of things.”
“This I will do.”
The Russian hung up. He didn’t ask for my number or tell me how long he thought it would take. However, having someone like him gunning for Indio made me feel better. Ese pinche culero no le iva a cortar la cabeza a nadie más. Soon those tattooed monkeys would be nothing more than a bad memory. The Russian was going to make them disappear forever. The death of someone else had never made me feel so good.
I texted Guillermo saying I made the call and then stuck the phone back in my pocket. Then I sat there in silence, staring at the deep darkness in Santa Muerte’s eyes. For those of us who were on her good side, that darkness was welcoming, like a place to hide in a violent storm. For those who were on her bad side, that darkness was a promise of death that brought destruction of the soul as well as of the flesh. The thought almost made me smile.
6
La frontera redux
The blood of innocents – La migra
Pinche gringo pendejo
Skeletons
What happens when you cross la frontera is that you leave a place to enter a void. You vacate a known reality and change it for something that you have to force yourself to believe, to accept, to understand.
What happens when you cross la frontera is that you shed un pedazo grande of your identity and become a different thing, something that’s part apparition, part useless flesh, and part broken memories. You abandon familia, amigos, lenguaje, and the streets you know for a place where you have no rights and are not even considered a citizen, a country in which you will live like a stowaway rat, always afraid of being discovered. So you change. You morph. Te vuelves otra cosa. You start speaking English fast in hopes that your brown skin will be ignored if you at least communicate well. You dress yourself with the comics you read and the books you hated in school and the movies you’ve watched since you were a kid and that thing becomes el nuevo tu. You cover your tatuajes and learn that people on the streets will remember you only if you speak Spanish in their presence. You do everything in your power to become a gringo, to fit in, to become as unnoticeable as the cracks in the sidewalks. Then you start walking with less confidence because everything is mysterious and new and scary and you never feel bienvenido.
What happens when you cross la frontera is that la frontera keeps a piece of you, cuts you inside, hasta el hueso, where you can’t heal yourself. It slashes you in places no blade or bullet can reach and cripples you in ways you don’t understand.
Cruzar la frontera fucks you over en formas que no sabías que podías ser jodido.
What happens when you cross la frontera is that your body becomes a magnet for the bad stuff that has piled up all along that awful
Similar Books
