-
24. The Border
- University of Arizona Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
172 24 TheBorder She thought: It must be Wednesday. She thought: Wednesday was washing day in Alabama. Sheets and towels flapping on the line or drooping down in the still heat. The same day as any day in Atlanta. Up, dress, egg on toast, brush your teeth, school, my green satchel, parts of a leaf, the pilgrims, Betsy Ross. She thought: My mouth is so dry. My body: a list of bruises, aches and pains, my hip half asleep from sleeping on the hard ground. She could see a line of black ants walking through the grass, carrying provisions. One carried a leaf like a banner. I could kill an army, she thought, with a single blow. I will just stay here until my body goes drier and drier, thin, pared down to hollow bone and sinew stretched tight. I will stay until a strong wind blows away what’s left. No houses spinning or small dogs yapping to confuse the issue. Just me, dry and fragile as a leaf. Nothing anyone would ever notice. She heard someone urinating close by. The sound a rush of water, a sigh midway. Voices. I will close my eyes and feign sleep or death. I am tired of walking, moving, moving on. I am tired. I am sick of everyone leaving. Of loving everyone who leaves. Ringing the clearing where she lay were banana trees, a waxy green shrub whose name she’d never learned, and a heliconia, with its spiked red and yellow flowers. A hummingbird large as her fist drank from first one flower then another. It was enough to lie here and watch. But the voices grew louder. They would never believe she was dead, would be sad to find her dead, would wake her as if she were sleeping; there was no reason she should be dead. Bombs killed people, not grief, 173 not being left behind. No, there was no escaping the voices. She rolled onto her back and sat up, a little lightheaded, and waited. When the sun had crept entirely over them in an arc and was yellow through the ferns, Tomás made them stop and rest. “The border?” Kira asked. He nodded. “What are you thinking?” “I don’t know,” he said. “Just try to get close. See what’s there.” “Neva?” he asked. “I’m all right,” she said. “I’m not an invalid.” They each took a swallow of water, holding it in their mouths and letting it work its way slowly down their throats. “There are camps on the other side of the border. We should be able to hear them when we get closer.” Camps. She and Harker had gone to camp. Three summers. Red camp, her parents called it, joking. At their first rest they ran out of water. “I should go look,” Tomás said, picking up the canteen and rising to his feet. “There’s not time,” Kira said. “And we’re out of iodine.” Tomás rubbed his face with the back of his hand. “We’re close,” Kira said. “If we don’t hear them in two hours, we’ll look for water. It’s strange,” she said. “There ought to be patrols. I don’t understand why we haven’t seen anybody.” “Maybe they’re behind us.” Tomás reached a hand down for Neva. “You’re right. We should go on.” And after that, she didn’t remember. Didn’t remember anything clearly and didn’t remember most of what happened before she woke up in a tent, her mouth so dry her lips felt glued to her teeth. Only she knew that she had started dreaming, hallucinating, that her parents were walking just ahead and she kept calling them and calling them. She began calling them by their first names when they didn’t respond to “Mom” or “Dad” or “Mother” or “Father.” She knew someone had carried her part of the way because she could remember the press of a shoulder against her abdomen. And Kira’s voice saying, saying more than once, “It’s close, Neva,” saying “Can you hear me?” then “Is she all right?” And she was sick, sick, sick. Put me down, she thought. I don’t like this at all. I think I would like to sleep a while longer. But turn it out, turn out that bright light before you go. When she could get up and move around a little, when someone found her...