Stranger (12 page)

Yes. Number 333. He pointed, and ran off.

She entered the lobby and climbed the stairs and knocked on number 333. She held Gabriel's shoe. Her hands were shaking. The woman who answered was young. She wore a yellow skirt and a yellow shirt with her name, Beatrice, on it. She was barefoot. She looked at Íso and she looked at the shoe and she must have known because she made a sharp sound in her throat.

Íso looked down. My name
's Íso Perdido, she said. It's your son.

The mother took the shoe. Gabriel, she said.

Yes, Íso said.

Where is he?

Íso shook her head. He
's gone, she said.

The mother said the son's name again and she turned and went inside and the door was still open and Íso could hear her inside and it was as if she was talking to someone.

She waited. She could smell something cooking. She stepped inside and closed the door. The mother was sitting at the table, alone, the shoe before her. She looked up and motioned for Íso to sit down. Please.

She did.

You're hungry, the mother said. And thirsty.

Yes.

I have a lot. Please.

The mother stood and placed the shoe on her chair. She took a bowl from the cabinet and she ladled food into the bowl and she placed it before Íso. It was stew, or soup, and it smelled of meat and tomatoes and beans.

Please, the mother said, and placed a bottle of hot sauce and a tortilla before her.

She ate a full bowl while the mother stood and watched, and then she took another.

When she was finished eating, the mother picked up her bowl and cleaned it in the sink, and then she turned and asked about her son. Tell me, she said.

Íso lowered her head and told the mother about the boy. Then she said, I
'm sorry, señora. And she began to cry. She put her face into her hands, and the noises she made surprised her, but she could not stop. The mother sat and touched Íso's knees with her
own, but she herself did not cry. She waited until Íso had finished and then she said that there was nothing to be done, that
Íso
had done everything possible.

And then she whispered that
Íso
was welcome to stay for the night. Stay, she said. This is my home. You are welcome.

S
HE STAYED A WEEK WITH
B
EATRICE, GATHERING STRENGTH,
and during that time, when Beatrice was at work, she went out and investigated, and she discovered a nearby library where she could sit in a comfortable chair and watch the people come and go. There were many regulars who looked poor, and who seemed to think that the library was their living room. They played chess and they sat in groups and talked, and very few of them were interested in the books. Returning home in the afternoon, she usually stopped and bought groceries, and then made supper. Beatrice was very pleased, and so they sat in the evenings and shared the meals and talked. On her second-last day, she set about to make a special dinner for Beatrice. She fried chicken legs in oil and she baked beets in the oven and she opened a tin of corn and fried that in a pan with red peppers, sprinkling it with
chilies. As they ate, Beatrice wanted to hear again about Gabriel, what he was like, and so Íso repeated what she had already said, that Gabriel was a beautiful boy who was full of curiosity and energy. He was very strong, Íso said. And she flexed her arms like a body builder. And then Beatrice said, But not strong enough. They were silent for a time, and then Beatrice spoke of Gabriel's birth, what a fighter he was, and of his father, who still did not know that his son was dead. I cannot, Beatrice said. Not yet. His father has nothing, and I have something, and so we thought that Gabriel's life would be better here, with me. And so he sent him. He shouldn't have.

That night Gabriel came to Íso in a dream and she asked him what it was like to be dead, and he said that he wasn't dead, he was only gone for a bit, and she woke from this dream and knew that she had to leave.

The following day, when Beatrice was at work,
Íso
went to the bus station where she'd first arrived, and she bought a ticket to Saint Falls for the next morning. The ticket was almost one hundred dollars one way, and after paying, she had seven hundred and forty-three dollars remaining in her pocket. That night she told Beatrice that she would be leaving.

Of course, Beatrice said. It is time.

I'm sorry, Íso said.

No, it's clear.

In the morning, Beatrice gave her a lunch and a dinner for the bus, and she passed her an envelope and said that it was necessary. You took care of my son, she said. She had not cried up to this
point, and now there were tears in her eyes, but she brushed them away. She said that she would go home soon. To her husband. And they would have another child. We do foolish things sometimes, she said. I was foolish.

Then she touched Íso's face, and she touched her shoulder, and she hugged her.

Beatrice had made chicken sandwiches and boiled eggs and there were apples and bananas and carrots. Coconut cake and a chocolate bar. As the bus left the city limits Íso munched on the carrots and watched the landscape slide by and she thought that there was no more beautiful place than her home on the lake.

She had written her mother a message on one of the computers at the library, and she said that she was safe, and she was living with a woman in Houston for a time, a woman whose son had travelled with her, and that she would be travelling farther north very soon. She said that she would write only if she was having trouble. Having little contact is best. If you don't hear from me, that means I am safe. And then she wrote, Do not worry. It is all good.

T
HE
city of Saint Falls and the land around the city was flat, and travelling in by bus she'd seen the Mississippi, and she'd seen large fields the colour of gold and in the fields were machines and trucks and there was a grey dust that rose into the air and obscured the sun. The days were long, and the nights were short, and even though she arrived at nine in the evening, the sun was just setting when she climbed from the bus. She spent the night at the bus
station and tried to sleep but a security guard kept waking her. She was told that sleeping wasn't allowed in the station.

She left the station and wandered the streets. It was very quiet, and the part of the city she found herself in appeared to have no houses, and the stores and restaurants were all closed. She saw and heard a train at around 1 a.m., and after that there were no more trains. Cars were few. The first time she saw a police car she stepped into the entrance of a building and pressed herself against the wall. The police car passed slowly. She saw the heads of two men inside the car. They didn't look at her. She kept off the streets then. She found a sheltered place behind the stadium, inside an alcove that led to two large metal doors. It was dark in the alcove and private and she laid out a sweater on the concrete and used her backpack as a pillow and she slept and woke and then slept some more. When she woke in the morning she saw a pair of boots without laces and she saw bare legs and knees and she sat up quickly to discover an abuela standing over her, staring intently as if to figure out her reason for being. The abuela stood beside a shopping cart that was full of plastic bags that in turn were full of emptied and crushed cans. The abuela said, Ya can't be here. Her voice was quick and whispering and at first Íso didn't understand her, and then the abuela repeated the words and Íso gathered up her sweater and her backpack and began to move on.

The guards'll get ya, she said. Lock ya up.

When Íso looked back she saw the abuela moving away, pushing at her cart as if it were a large boulder.

In a fast food restaurant on one of the main streets she used
the toilet and washed her hands and face. Other women came and went, and when she had a moment alone she brushed her teeth quickly and rinsed her mouth. She bought a coffee and an egg sandwich and ate it sitting at a booth near the back of the restaurant. There was very little Spanish spoken here. She'd noticed that already on the bus riding north. The closer they got to Saint Falls, the more English she heard. She wondered what colour of hair the baby had. At birth her hair had been dark and her eyes had been black, but
Íso
knew that colours could change as a baby grew, especially the eyes. She wondered what name the doctor had given the girl. Her mother had wanted her to name the girl, but Íso said that there was no point in naming a child she couldn't hold or speak to.

She finished her sandwich and held her coffee cup in both hands. It would be a warm day, it had already felt warm when she woke. She had an address, and she planned to find a map of the city, and she planned to locate the house where the doctor and his wife lived with her baby. Beyond that, she had no plans. She returned to the bathroom and used it once again, and then washed her face once more, and she looked at herself in the mirror and thought that she was okay. Her chapped lips had healed, and her eyes were no longer puffy, and she looked normal, though her T-shirt was a little dirty. She went back into the bathroom stall and changed into a clean shirt. She still had the money taped to her abdomen and she thought that now that she had arrived, she might be able to carry the money in her pocket, or her backpack.

Outside, standing on a street corner, a young woman holding a dog on a leash smiled at her, and Íso took this as a good sign,
and she asked the young woman where she could find a map of the city. The young woman said she wasn't sure, but maybe one of the hotels had a map to offer and she nodded up the street. The woman walked off. She was wearing sunglasses and so it had been difficult to read what the nod had meant. Íso wandered off in the direction of the nod. She saw the abuela with the shopping cart coming towards her, and so she turned around and walked back and crossed the street at a light and took the opposite side.

There was no hotel. Not that she could find. She went into a drugstore and asked if they sold maps of the city, and the young girl said that she could buy a map at the bookstore in the mall. She turned away before Íso could ask where the mall was located. She stepped outside. She was surrounded by tall buildings, and she had no sense of where the sun was, and therefore she did not know where she was. Though, even with the sun, she wouldn't have known where she was.

She walked. The streets were fuller now with men in suits and carrying briefcases, and women pulling suitcases behind them. The women were dressed in skirts and dresses and they wore high heels. Everyone walked very quickly, with great purpose, and no one spoke or even said hello to the others on the street. She came to the train tracks and she sat on a bench and watched as the trains came and stopped and as people erupted from the doors. Two policemen walked by and when she saw them she opened her backpack and pretended to be looking for something. When they had passed, she stood and walked away from them, and crossed the tracks at the green light, and she came up against a large building
that had glass windows and inside the windows there were mannequins wearing beautiful clothes and she thought that this must be the mall.

She spent that day and the next walking and exploring the city, which was divided into rich and poor. The rich lived in enclaves that were numbered as zones and the poor lived in abandoned warehouses, or in small rundown shacks that appeared to circle the city centre. The rich worked downtown in buildings of glass and steel and then made their way back to the safe zones, and sometimes returned to attend games at the stadium or to sit in the caf
é
s on the street. There were police everywhere, and the ones to be feared most were those walking, or on horseback, or on bicycle, for they were close to the ground and they moved slowly, their black helmets swivelling, looking for anyone who might be threatening. This meant anyone walking aimlessly, or anyone with a certain slouch or attitude, or anyone who looked reduced. And so, when she walked she did so with her eyes forward, striding decisively, as if she had a destination, even though she didn't. She learned that it was safer to be on a bus, because this meant you were one notch above the poorest, who had only their feet to move through the city. She learned that the poor sometimes rose up in protest, and that this led to battles and rock throwing and the bite of tear gas. One day she saw what she thought was a parade—many people marching in one direction down a large street, calling out, singing—and then the police swooped in and began to round up the people and everyone ran, Íso included, even though she was just a spectator. She found herself surrounded by
bodies, and she smelled smoke and she heard shouting, and she was carried along with the crowd like a cork bobbing in a river. She fought sideways, trying to free herself, calling out, Please, and Help, and No. A police horse floated by and a club came down and hit the man beside her. He fell. She looked down at him, and pushed on, eventually escaping the crowd by stepping into a shop that sold computers. The owner was standing behind the counter. He held a rifle, and he pointed it at her and told her to leave. Out, he said. She stepped back into the street and hugged the wall until the crowd had dissipated. A few stragglers ran by, young men wearing bandanas and calling out again and again a single word that she finally recognized as “Pigs.” The slap of shoes against the pavement. And then quiet.

She began to avoid larger crowds, though sometimes it was impossible. She continued to take refuge in her alcove by the stadium and one evening there was a game taking place and there were thousands of people inside the stadium and their voices rose in unison and the noise moved the concrete beneath her, and the noise moved through her body, and at one point the roar was like a mammoth choir, beautiful to hear. She might have been lonely but she wasn't. She was full of anticipation and vigour and hope. She had her map, and she had marked the spot on the map where the doctor's house was, and the map was in her backpack, dry and safe, and she had learned the bus route that she would take to get to the doctor's house, and she knew that it would take anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. She planned to go in the morning. She sat and listened to the crowd, and she watched people pass by
her alcove, and because she was in the darkness, no one paid her any mind. She ate the remainder of a hot dog that she had bought that afternoon, at a stand near a park. The smell had driven her to spend too much money, and she had immediately felt guilty, and so she'd eaten only half and saved the rest for now, here, in her shelter. She ate slowly. The bun was soggy. She drank water. She laid out her sweater and settled in, comforted by the noise of the crowd that she could not see. She woke to thunder. And lightning. The wind was driving the rain into her alcove and when she woke her sweater was soaked, and so she was wet as well. She stood and twisted the water from her sweater, her back against the cold rain. She spent the remainder of the night squatted against the far corner of the alcove, where it was driest, her head between her knees. The rain fell sideways and reached for her, soaking her shoes. In the morning, when the rain had finally quit to a slow drizzle, she walked to her restaurant and in the bathroom she warmed her hands and face on the hair dryer, and then she went into the stall and changed into dry pants and a dry T-shirt and then used the blower to dry her wet clothes. She bought coffee and warmed her hands on the cup and stared out at the wet street and the folks pushing past under their umbrellas.

She took the number 15 bus and transferred to the number 32 and within an hour, when she disembarked, it had stopped raining. The trees were still dripping and the cars that passed at great speed threw up walls of water and she stuck to the inside of the sidewalk so as not to get wet.

Zone 7, where the doctor lived, was a walled district with one
entrance, and at the entrance stood two guards who allowed people to come and go. She approached one of the guards at the gate. He was young, almost a boy, and he held a rifle and he wore high black boots and a black uniform. He asked for her permit. She said that she'd come to visit a friend. The guard said that a visitor permit was required. She asked how she might get a permit.

The guard studied her carefully and said that her friend should have provided one for her.