PRESENT TENSE
Chapter Seventeen
Friday, May 9, 2003
Early the following morning, Tommy, Helga,
and Sophie arrived to pick up Rose. Fabrizio’s funeral was not being held until
3:30, but with so many roads having been destroyed, there was no telling how
long it would take to get to the tiny village that Fabrizio’s family lived in,
a small farming town some forty miles south of the border and thirty-five miles
inland.
Rose slowly made her way down from her dorm
room, dreading the funeral. Ever since both her father and her maternal
grandfather had died within a few weeks of each other, she had hated funerals.
But she would not miss the chance to say good-bye to a friend.
Sophie ran up and gave Rose a hug as soon as
she reached the lobby. Rose hugged her back, almost crying. She could only
imagine what Sophie had felt, hurrying back to her car to find that Trudy had
been crushed by the tree. Then the added blow of losing another close
friend...Rose shuddered inwardly, thanking God that it hadn’t been worse. At
least the four of them were healthy, and Jack would be all right, in time.
The group slowly made its way out to the
parking lot. Although both Tommy and Helga had cars that were still intact,
they had decided to take Tommy’s old, battered car down to Mexico. It was safer
that way, especially since they couldn’t do what some American visitors did,
leaving the car on the American side of the border and walking down into
Mexico. That worked well for visitors to Tijuana and other border communities,
but forty miles was much too far to walk.
They traveled in silence for a while,
sometimes driving along the freeway, other times taking detours onto highways
and back roads where the earthquake damage was worst. Helga stared out the
window in silence, half-watching the scenery go by. She dreaded this afternoon
more than any of them, because it was as though the funeral would make it real.
A part of her had been kept away, hiding from the reality that her husband, to
whom she had been married only two weeks, was dead. She wouldn’t have many
opportunities to visit his grave, either, although she did not begrudge his
family the chance to have him buried in Mexico, near to other members of his
family.
Tommy concentrated upon the road, his face
grim. He had been opposed, at first, to his cousin marrying an illegal
immigrant, worrying that Fabrizio only wanted to marry her to gain legal
status. His fears had proven unfounded, though. Fabrizio had been determined to
gain his citizenship, with or without Helga, and his reasons for marrying her
had more to do with love than with any economic or legal concerns.
Rose and Sophie sat in the back seat, Rose’s
crutches between them. Although neither of them had known Fabrizio as long, or
as well, as Helga and Tommy, they had still been friends, and Fabrizio’s sudden
death was a shock. Rose blamed Titan Construction for the collapse of the
Sunpeak building, with their willingness to bribe building inspectors rather
than do a good job of constructing buildings in the first place. The Sunpeak
building had been particularly bad. Rose had walked down the hall on the second
floor several times while running errands for Cal, and the poorly constructed
floor had shaken and creaked even under her meager weight. There had been an
extremely obese manager working there, and his weight had caused the floor to
shake violently and occasionally even crack, although the floor should have
been strong enough to hold the weight of someone who weighed four hundred
pounds. It was a simply a very poor case of construction.
Sophie had known Fabrizio through Helga. They
had both worked at Dairy Queen the previous summer while Helga was looking for
a nursing position and Sophie was saving money for college. They had become
friends while working there, and Sophie had first met Fabrizio when he came by
to pick Helga up after work one day. Sophie had liked him, though she had
wondered if Helga was being a bit incautious, getting engaged to someone who
was not quite on the right side of the law. Still, they had gotten along well,
although it was Rose who had somehow brought the whole group together and made
them close friends. Rose had always had a talent for bringing people together,
though Sophie still didn’t know how Rose had met Jack, and neither of them had
ever been inclined to talk about it.
They crossed the border around noon. It was a
warm day, though not as hot as it would be later in the season. They slowly
made their way south, hoping not to get lost; none of them had ever been to
this part of Mexico before. There had been some earthquake damage here, too,
although not so severe as in Masline and the surrounding cities. The road was
buckled and cracked in places, and occasionally blocked by rocks or fallen
trees. As they drew closer to Fabrizio’s village, the road changed to dirt,
bumpy and narrow.
In spite of her grief over the deaths of her
friends, Rose was intrigued by what she saw. She had never been to Mexico
before, in spite of the fact that she had spent most of her life within two or
three hours of the border. Many of the reports she had read about poverty in
Mexico were true, to her observations, and she understood why so many people
left Mexico and came to the United States seeking work. They had passed by a
couple of shanty towns close to the border, and they were as rundown as any
homeless enclave that Rose had seen in the United States, but worse, because
they were much larger. Rose had seen poverty in the United States—it was
unavoidable, no matter how hard people tried to ignore it or sweep it under the
rug, and Rose was one of those who deliberately went into the poorer areas, the
more rundown areas, because she had little fear of them and because she wanted
to learn—but it was different, seeing it in another country. And yet, she knew
that there were people in Mexico who lived well, despite the country’s rampant
socioeconomic problems, some of them preying upon those less fortunate. The
United States and Mexico had more in common than either wanted to admit.
The village itself was a small, ramshackle
collection of buildings, mostly consisting of houses, but also including a
couple of stores, a cantina—the Mexican equivalent of a bar—a small
school, and, surprisingly, considering how few cars there seemed to be, a gas
station. A few of the houses had cars or trucks parked near them, most as well
worn as Tommy’s car, but the prevalent means of travel in the town was by
walking. Cars weren’t really necessary when most friends, family, and
businesses were within a couple of blocks of home.
The businesses seemed to be fairly well kept
up, even the cantina, although there were a few broken windows and
cracked walls and roofs. The damage appeared to be fairly recent, probably as a
result of the earthquake. The village was about one hundred forty miles from
the epicenter, but the earthquake had been so powerful—9.18, one of the most
powerful earthquakes in recorded history—that damage had occurred far from
where the trouble itself had started. Rose had read in the newspaper that
damage had been reported as far away as Mexico City, so it wasn’t surprising
that there had also been some destruction here.
Rose eyed the houses with interest as they
passed. Instead of the usual identical, uniform buildings that many American
towns sported, the houses were an interesting mixture of sizes, shapes, and
building materials, not unlike the way that American neighborhoods sometimes
looked after they had been in place for forty or more years. There were a few
trailers and battered motor homes, some inside yards, others placed in whatever
corner could be found. There were some wooden structures, though many of them
looked old and weather-beaten. There were also some newer wooden structures, as
well as some houses that appeared to built out of sheets of metal and some that
were a combination of materials. Rose saw a couple of buildings that appeared
to be made of local stone, and one crumbled building that had probably been
built from adobe, which was a useful material in regions with sparse rainfall
and hot summers, but tended to crumble during earthquakes. A few other adobe
buildings remained standing, though some appeared to be ready to crumble at the
least provocation.
The roofs of the houses were also of a
variety of materials. Some had shingles or tiles on the roofs, though many of
those with tiled roofs appeared to have suffered some damage during the
earthquake. Other buildings had wooden roofs, or roofs made out of tin or other
metals. A few houses had roofs thatched with local materials—grass, brush,
reeds—that were cheap and easily available, and, if put on correctly, fairly
efficient at keeping rain out of the houses. The drawback to these materials
was that they needed to replaced fairly often, since they rotted more easily
than most materials.
The doors and windows of the buildings also
sported an interesting array of covers. Many of the houses had open doors and
windows, with no covering at all, while others had screens or pieces of
material covering the openings. A few windows were boarded up, and some of the
glass windows were broken. Some of the doors on the houses were made of wood or
metal, and Rose saw one house with a door that appeared to constructed of
thatch on a wooden frame, a clever idea. The people of the village were poor,
but they made do.
Many of the houses had fair-sized yards,
especially on the outskirts of town, and, while a few of the yards were mostly
filled with trash—a few old appliances, broken tools and implements, a few
rusted vehicles—others had patches of bare ground and weeds, intermixed with
gardens, outdoor work areas, and clotheslines. It was a pleasant day, so many
people were outside, working, talking, and supervising young children. Most of
the people that Rose saw appeared to be fairly young—few seemed to be older
than their late forties or early fifties—and she surmised that the harshness of
life tended to take people at a younger age. She saw a few older people,
possibly in their sixties or even seventies, but most people seemed to be
younger. Some of the houses had been built close together, with shared yards,
and Rose recalled a custom that some Hispanic families in the United States
observed, with close relatives living near to each other, rather than
scattering far and wide as many white families did. The custom seemed to be the
same in this Mexican village.
Even with many of the school-age children in
class at this hour, there were still large numbers of children running around,
playing in the yards or napping in the shade. Many of them were small children,
or older ones who no longer went to school, but there were some school-age children
about, as well. One small boy darted into the street as they passed, only to be
pulled back by an older sister, who scolded him loudly in Spanish. A few people
eyed them suspiciously—not many Americans visited their town—while others
watched them curiously. Some people gave them only a passing glance, and some
ignored them completely, more concerned with their work and conversations than
with a battered carload of American visitors.
Fabrizio’s family lived near the southeastern
edge of town, and as Tommy slowly navigated the narrow dirt streets of the
town, Rose saw the small church that served as a religious and social center
for the community. A girl of about eight years of age sat on the steps in front
of the church, looking forlorn, and Rose recognized her as Fabrizio’s youngest
sister, who had been present at the wedding almost three weeks earlier. There
had been eight children in the de Rosa family—Fabrizio, the eldest at
twenty-three; Carlos, twenty years old and working for the local farms; Maria,
eighteen years old, married, and living about two streets away; Esther,
seventeen; Tomas, fourteen; Angel, twelve; Luz, the eight-year-old they had
seen at the church; and Joaquin, six years old and the youngest of the de Rosa
children. Fabrizio’s father had died about six years earlier, just before
Joaquin was born, leaving Fabrizio’s mother, Ana, and the older de Rosa
children to support the family. Fabrizio had first attempted to enter the
United States in 1997, at age seventeen, but had quickly been caught by the
Border Patrol and sent back. He had tried again the following year, and had
again been unsuccessful. Finally, in 2001, he had made yet another attempt,
this time going farther east and crossing the border in Arizona, and had been
successful. He had been back to Mexico only once in that time, after he had
obtained the fake documentation and stood less of a chance of having to stay in
Mexico. He had still been challenged by the Border Patrol coming back, but Jack
had accompanied him, and the presence of someone who was clearly an American
had helped convince the Border Patrol agents to let him through.
It took awhile to find the house—none of them
was familiar with the town—but finally, near two o’clock, after about
twenty-five minutes of driving around the village, Sophie spotted Fabrizio’s
mother standing in front of her house, watching for them, and they came to a
stop.