“There is the bus station.” Pancho pointed. “You can find out the schedule.”
“Is there no one we can tell about Ignacio?” I asked him.
“You can go, but it will be a waste of time, and you might miss a bus. No one will listen or do anything. No one will want to go out there to search for him, Delia. He is one of so many who are out there, and you don’t have enough money to pay anyone. You cannot do any more, Delia. You must do for yourself now. Buena suerte,” he said. “So much is luck after all.”
I watched him walk off, looked back into the desert from where we had come and where Ignacio might lie injured or dead, and then I walked to the bus station, where I bought a second-class ticket to Mexico City. I had nearly four hours to wait for a bus. I bought myself some tortillas and beef and a cold soda that was to me at that moment what the most expensive wine must be to my aunt, I thought.
After I ate and drank, I sat in the station and fell asleep for an hour despite the hard wooden seat. I was anxious to get onto the bus so I could continue sleeping. I would have plenty of time, since the trip would take more than thirty hours. There was a bathroom on the bus, but there would be stops along the way at terminals where passengers could get off and buy food. No one wanted to guarantee any time, not even the bus driver, when other passengers asked about destinations. At this point, I almost didn’t care. I was in Mexico, and soon I would be walking down the street to my family home and my grandmoth
er.
I’m sure I looked pretty bad. My hair was filthy, and so was my dress. I had no money for any new clothes, but I did the best I could cleaning myself in the terminal bathroom. I found a brush someone had left on the bus and cleaned it when we stopped at another station. I was still so tired, however, that I really didn’t care how I appeared. Sleep was all I craved. All of the muscles in my body were still very angry. The aches and pains actually grew worse while I was traveling on the bus. I was sure those who saw me wondered how someone so young could sleep so much, but the blessing was that it made the trip seem that much shorter.
When we arrived at the terminal in Mexico City, I searched for the best way to get to my village. The ticket agent told me I would have to change buses three times, but the last bus would take me home. I was anxious and excited, even though I had hours and hours to go.
It was just after midday before I reached my village. As the bus drew closer, my heart started to thump. I wasn’t sure how Abuela Anabela would greet me. Would she be so angry that even the sight of me would not calm her? Had my aunt sent word of my running away, with all that had happened? If she had, I was sure she had made me look terrible. Knowing my aunt, she would send it through Señor Orozco, the postmaster, so that everyone in the village would hear the story.
The bus stopped in the square. As soon as I stepped off, I stood gaping at everything. I felt like someone who had been blind for a while and had suddenly regained her sight. Everything looked beautiful; nothing looked too old or in too much need of repair. The church steeple loomed higher than ever, and the elderly people I saw sitting and talking no longer looked pitiful or lost to me. I wanted to run up to each and every one of them and hug him or her.
No one seemed to take much note of me. For a moment, it made me question whether I had actually been away. Had it all been some horrible nightmare? Did I just wake up in the square? The blisters and the aches were quick to tell me otherwise. I started for home, walking the streets I had walked all my life but never noticing as much as I did now.
When I turned the corner for our street, I paused. The great heat had not come there, I thought. It was comfortable. The sun didn’t burn, and the breeze was soft and refreshing. In the distance, I saw the smoke spiraling from someone’s garbage fire. I smiled at the dogs that lifted their lazy heads while they sprawled in the shade. Their curiosity was not enough to get them to rise to sniff around me. They had begun their siesta, and that was too holy to be violated.
I laughed to myself, eager once again to embrace this simple, unsophisticated, honest life. I gladly would sleep in a room smaller than Sophia’s closet. I would lie on a bed she would consider a joke. I would sweep and scrub floors that would never look rich and clean. I would work beside my grandmother, making our traditional foods and never thinking about gourmet cooking, and I would not regret a single moment. I even looked forward to seeing Señora Porres and hearing her warnings about the ever-present evil eye.
“I have looked into that eye, Señora Porres,” I would tell her. “I have looked into it as you never have, and I have left it blinded behind me.”
My elation filled me with new courage. I walked faster toward our home. No matter what Abuela Anabela had been told or thought, I would soon make her happy again. Tonight, we would say our prayers together, and we would fall asleep listening to each other’s breathing and be comforted.
The sight of our dry old fountain and the angels was never as wonderful, nor were the stubbles of grass, the shrubs, and the lean-to of a kitchen. I couldn’t take it all in fast enough and again heard Pancho’s warning to drink slowly, for this was to me like water in a desert. I was home.
I rushed up to the front door, paused to catch my breath, and then entered my house.
“Abuela Anabela!” I called. It was so quiet. Why wasn’t she preparing her midday meal? “Abuela!”
I went through the house in seconds but did not find her. The kitchen looked untouched, not a dish out of place, nothing in the sink, the table clear. In our bedroom, both beds were made. Her nightgown was folded as usual and lying on her bed, something that made me smile. Perhaps she had gone off to deliver some of her mole, I thought. I drank some water and pondered what to do. Search for her or just wait?
Then I heard the sound of footsteps and the front door opening.
“Abuela Anabela!” I cried, hurrying to greet her.
I stopped.
Señora Paz was standing there alone. “My sister said she thought she saw you walk up the street,” she told me.
Because she wasn’t smiling and showing her happiness at seeing me, I assumed I had been right to fear my aunt sending the news back here. The whole village thought badly of me. I would have to work at turning them around.
“Do you know where my grandmother has gone?”
She crossed herself and looked up. “She has gone to God,” she said.
Somewhere back in the desert, a coyote was howling over a fallen man, a buzzard was circling, scorpions crawled quickly toward the body, and snakes rattled and hissed nearby.
It wasn’t only in the desert where mercy was a stranger. It was everywhere there were hearts made to be broken.
The weight of my struggles, the weight of my dead hope and happiness, was too great to be ignored or resisted.
I folded to the floor like a flag bearer in a great battle, once full of determination, brave and strong, defeated in the end by the enemy he could not see.