All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands

110 9 The Woman in the Woods I see her everywhere now. SantaBarrazahadwarnedmeherspiritcouldlatchontomyshoulder,but the woman in the woods seems to have emblazoned my corneas instead. For monthsafterward,sheistheprismthroughwhichIviewalmosteverything.I seeherindarkspaces,likethecornersofclosets,butalsoinwhitespaces,like unadorned walls. I see her between the pages of books and ­flickering across computerscreens.Iseeheratnight,whenshewardsoffsleep.ThoughIheard scores of traumatic border-crossing stories while researching my last book, hers is the one I cannot release, despite knowing only its end. Maybe she was escaping war, or the ghosts of war, such as the ones that ravaged Guatemala and El Salvador. Maybe she was fleeing natural ­disaster, like the hurricane that obliterated much of Honduras, or social disaster, like the Mara Salvatrucha, which has infiltrated most of las Américas. The­murderous gang could have been pressuring her husband or son to traffic drugs across the border. They could even have been cajoling her. Or maybe she came for love. Her sister was in the United States, her cousin was in the United States, her absolutely favorite tío. Her husband was here, her child was here, her life, she was convinced, was here. Whatever the push/pull—war, disaster, violence, family, hope—it must have been fierce, tremendously fierce, if it propelled her to gather all of the money she could raise or borrow and relinquish it to a stranger. Whatever her thought process, whatever her reasoning, her conclusion must have been that possibly dying in El Norte was better than living on at home. And so she said good-bye to her mother and father, her siblings and cousins,allthetíasandabuelaswhohelpedraiseher.Shesaidgoodbyetothe friendswhomshegrewupwith,herclassmatesandcoworkers,the­neighbors who lived down the road. She said good-bye to her lover and possibly even her children, then summoned all of the courage within and boarded a bus The Woman in the Woods  111 heading north. Traveling across her homeland, she must have paused to take in one last sunset across her ancestral sky. Eaten one last pupusa that her mother had made, one last mango picked from her backyard tree. No matter where she came from, traveling across Mexico probably seemed worse. First there was jungle followed by mountains and rivers and desert,allinfestedwithterrifyingmentraffickingdrugsandgunsandpeople. Mexican immigration officials patrolled the highways, street gangs traversed the trains, and swindlers prowled the bus stations, yet somehow she avoided them. Chances are, she had a coyote to guide her, but if she didn’t—or if she did and he’d already abandoned her—she probably hired one at the border. He wouldn’t have been hard to find. He saw her shuffling around the bus terminal with her flowing black hair and her skinny black jeans, and he raised aneyebrowwithinterest.Heconvincedherthatheknewtheway;heensured her that he could be trusted. Houston, no problem, I got a group of forty there last night. Los Angeles, that’s easy, I was there a week ago. Something in his cocksure voice reminded her of her long-lost tío. Something said he was safe. Maybe she crossed into the United States by raft in the dark of night, current racing, cold water slapping her face. Maybe she crossed by folding herself into the trunk of a car or by squeezing between shipping containers in an eighteen-wheeler. Maybe she crossed by wading through sandy desert. However she did it, the odds were formidable. About a thousand people are caughteachdayalongthe2,000-mileborderandeitherdetainedorsentback home. Yet every day, unknown hundreds or thousands more slip through. One day or night, one of those lucky border crossers was her. The triumph she felt must have been extraordinary. ¡El Otro Lado! The Other Side. Whatever she came for, she must have imagined it would be waiting there, right across la línea. Her mother or brother or lover would be standing there, arms outstretched, ready to receive her. Or else, that cleaning or sewing or child-sitting job she’d heard about—the one that would finally allow her family to buy that house, pay off those debts, finance that car, and splurgeonherdaughter’squinceañerawhileshewasatit.Hernewbosswould be there, ready to stuff her pockets with gringo dollars. Whatsheprobablydidnotrealize—whatshecouldn’tbegintofathom— was that however far she had traveled, she was still only halfway to her destination .Theborderiswide;theborderisvicious.Hercrossinghadjustbegun. Undocumented immigrants generally spend their first nights in the United States at a stash house. Often located on the fringes of border [210.158.71.88] Project MUSE (2024-09-26 11:12 GMT) 112 The Texas-Mexico Borderlands towns, these rental homes or apartments...