Crossing The Border #34

San Miguel #34

We drove into San Miguel on the two-lane highway from Queretaro that ran along the railroad tracks. Paco passed three trains, one carrying passengers, the sides of their faces, glasses, hats, hair—also their suitcases up in the shelf above the opposite aisle seats—all of this visible but distorted from half a futbol field away and through small double-hung dust-filled windows, each open to a slightly different degree than the next.

The next two trains hauled large metal boxes with corrugated siding and giant markings indicating point of origin and content information. I sat in the back with Eden again in the small seats and we watched the cars Paco passed. As we eclipsed a blue Ford Fairlane, we spotted a man driving, looking forward intently, his moustache showing some silver hairs that had not yet found their way to his head which was full of thick black hair. The woman was in the passenger seat, her blue and white stripe dress following the contours of the single car seat covered in beige felt that stretched from door to door. She had her head turned toward the backseat and was saying something to two kids back there who sat, listening, staring at her, their heads not quite reaching the top of the seat. We couldn’t see her mouth but we could tell from the way her right cheekbone and the skin underneath it were moving, we could tell from this that she was speaking loudly or even yelling. The man reached over and put his right hand on the woman’s knee. She turned to look at him and we could see red lipstick and long eyelashes and bangs and brown hair pulled together loosely in the back and resting in a pony tail on her right shoulder. He moved his head slightly as he glanced at her and back at the windshield. She opened her mouth slowly and turned back to the kids, moved her cheekbone again, but slower this time, and then she turned to the front and ran both of her hands back and forth across the front of her thighs like she was wiping away dress wrinkles.

Eden always started.

The kids are tired of the trip.

Then I would continue.

Yeah. And the Mother is angry.

Uhuh. but not just that. She cussed at them.

Cussed?

Eden lowered her voice.

Yeah like, God Damnit kids.

I had heard my Mom say God Damnit a lot.

Uhuh.

Eden continued.

Or like shut the fuck up, kids.

This one I hadn’t heard.

Fuck….up?

Dunno what it means but Mom says it when she’s really pissed at Paco.

What does Paco do?

Dunno, maybe he’s putting his seed in another woman or something.

Really?

Dunno…maybe.

Diez minutos ninos.

This was Paco giving us the ten minute warning before I was to be dropped off at the Pink Palace.

I looked back at the blue Ford Fairlane and it was too far back now to see the faces of the man and woman, certainly not the kids in the back. The windshield was reflecting miniature forty-five degree versions of the telephone poles, one appearing after the other, rolling across the winshield in perfect rhythm like the flicker of a movie reel.