Page 46

El Gato smiled at her. He commented that she would do well in America.

“You have such a wise and questioning mind,” he said.

Then he’d told them of the great many jobs that America offered pretty girls like themselves. Ones that paid cash to work as a waitress in restaurants, to clean houses and offices, even to watch over young children, jobs that the gringos called “nannies” and “au pairs.”

More money tha

n they could believe, he’d said, more than enough to live on in great comfort and still send plenty back home to their families.

Juan Paulo Delgado said that once the girls were across the border he would introduce them to some of the others he’d helped. They were ones he called his “growing family,” he said with a smile. Then he said he’d set up Ana and Rosario, as he had the other girls, with work. He’d even help show them how to wire their extra money home.

Extra money! Rosario had heard.

Not just money, but extra!

Rosario-who people often confusedly assumed was Ana’s older, wiser sister despite the fact that Ana was far more grounded-leaned over and whispered in Ana’s ear: “Juanita!”

Juanita Sanchez, Ana knew, was a cousin on the other side of Rosario’s family, the one whose telephone number they had lost in the river. Juanita had been sending money home to Honduras, first from Dallas in Texas. Then it had come from the ciudad called Newark, in Nuevo Jersey, where the cousin now worked-though Rosario was not sure for whom-as a criada, a maid-servant.

Rosario had told Ana that she knew that was true because she’d gone once with Juanita’s mother to collect the money-five hundred dollars, which came out to be more in Honduran lempiras than the aunt earned in half a year. Juanita had wired the money from the United States to the bright yellow-and-black Western Union office nearest their Tegucigalpa barrio.

And that, in fact, had been what encouraged Ana and Rosario to start on their journey north.

Standing on the side street near the international bridge, Ana looked her cousin in the eyes and anxiously considered their options.

That had taken no time whatsoever. They had no money and no other place to go save for the streets of Matamoros or the Mexican system of child protective services.

“Bueno, El Gato,” Ana had said. “What do we do?”

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.