"The Lost"

The Lost

He holds fast to my hand, his skin damp and soft as wilting flowers. The air smells of city refuse and azaleas, an odd mix I think, as we make our way to the wharf. Streetlights and palm trees spread out before us as soldiers in formation, and all the while my heart jumps in my throat, beating as a broom against a window sill. My grandmother’s favorite proverb reverberates in my mind: “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” The words lie heavy on my tongue, a metallic taste that won't go away. But for Julius’s sake I feign a smile and whisper in his ear, “It’s not much farther now. You see that ship ahead. That’s the Columba. It’s our way out of here.” He looks at me for a long moment, his eyes tinged with fear, his lips rounded, as though he is about to speak. But he hasn’t spoken in over a year, not since that day our lives turned inside out.

In broad daylight the AES— Aryan Exterminators of Subhumans— gunned down five construction workers of African American and Latino heritage. Dario, Julius’s father and my husband of fifteen years, was taken away from us that day. He is one of the “Desaparecidos” or the Disappeared. He’d been simply crossing the street to get back to us when an AES soldier spotted him, beat him with a club, handcuffed him and then pushed him into a waiting black AES truck. They didn’t stop—not even for me, a white woman holding out her hand with all that I had left to give— a gold heart-shaped locket given to me by Dario on our wedding day. Nor did they stop when Julius’s cries hit the earth like a thunderbolt. Had his skin been a shade darker he too might very well have ended up with Dario in that truck. In the end they took my heart anyway. Because when you become one of the Desaparecidos, you never come back.

Maybe Julius’s way is better. Maybe silence in a world of chaos is the only way to be—the only way to heal oneself from the inside out.

No one is allowed to speak of them—at least not in public, unless you want to become one yourself. Because the official story put out by our oligarchy government is that there is no organized violence against Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Jews, Muslims or LGBTQ people. No one has disappeared; they have merely left of their own volition. A lie as dark and hot as a scorching tarmac.

The Columba stands out against the wharf like a great mythical winged bird. I imagine it taking flight with Julius and me at the bow, our bodies pressed together so tight we can never be separated. I imagine it taking us to Dario.

Julius stops and squeezes my hand. A figure is weaving its way through the darkness. My body trembles at the thought of it being an AES soldier. Julius, even though he can pass, is still of mixed heritage. And to the AES it matters only that you’re white.

Illuminated by streetlight the dark figure emerges: a Latina woman and her baby. She is “uno de los olvidados” or one of the forgotten ones. The middle-class is nearly non-existent; the rest of us lives in poverty. Because wages, even for skilled workers, are too low to keep up with the high cost of housing, health care and higher education.

She holds the infant close to her heart, one hand caressing the child’s flushed face. And I know before I even ask that her child is ill.

“Ayudame!” she pleads. “My son needs medical attention.”

My hand tightens around Julius’s. The nearest hospital is on the other side of town. If I stop to help her the ship will leave without us.

I pull out my wallet and hand her what little I can spare, but she pushes my hand away. “It’s the best I can do.”

“It’s not enough. They won’t see me, not without insurance, but…”

She hangs her head, her eyes trained on her shoes. I know what she’s tacitly asking, what I’ve been asked before but have refused because it's too risky. She wants me to take her baby to the hospital and pretend that he is mine. I wonder how she knows that I have health insurance, and then I realize: I’m still wearing my nurse’s badge from last night’s shift.

I shake my head and mouth the words I cannot say aloud: I can’t.

Her eyes glisten, her lips tremble. And I can tell she is on the edge of panic. “You can tell them you had the baby at home. A lot of women do that these days.”

I could get away with it because the nearest hospital is not the one I work at, but if I help her I miss my chance to get out of here. I’ve already booked my cabin, and I can’t afford to go by plane. Julius and I are headed west—to California. We’ve been told that the Sierra Nevada is one of the better places to hide out. The AES is not as prolific or as organized out there.

I cannot meet her eyes. So instead I look away and try not to think about the sick baby in her arms.

“I can’t let him die.” Her breath catches, and tears roll down her cheeks and fall onto the baby’s forehead. His face is red and splotchy. Measles, I think.

When Julius was two he had a high fever and a croupy cough, and although I knew he hadn’t come down with the whooping cough, I couldn’t shake the fear that he might die. The panic I felt then I now see reflected in the eyes of the mother standing before me. And at that moment we are one in the same: A mother.

The baby shifts in her arms, and she turns and walks away, the soles of her shoes slapping against the pavement. My face flushes as I call out to her, “Lo siento.” But she doesn’t turn around; she just keeps moving, a dark, lonely figure slicing through the night. When I call out to her again, Julius wiggles free of my hand. “There isn’t time.”

And before I can stop him my son is chasing after the woman. For a moment I think she’s dropped something—the baby’s pacifier or a bootie—and Julius wants to give it back to her. When he catches up with her and tugs on the hem of her sweater, she turns around and looks down at him. He thrusts his fisted hand at her and unfurls his fingers to reveal what he’s been holding. Underneath the streetlight an object glints in his open palm, and it is only when I catch up to him that I recognize it is my gold heart locket—the locket Dario gave me on our wedding day, the locket that I’d offered up as a bribe to the AES.

The baby is crying now, wails that shatter the night’s silence. I think of Dario, of Julius keening over the loss of his father, of my tears puddling on the pavement. I think of all those who’ve lost loved ones to the wrath of the AES, who search endlessly for them on streets corners, hospitals and back-allies.

As the mother tightens her hold on the baby, swaddling him to her breast, a gunshot splits the night in two. My spine stiffens. Although the rain of gunfire is as common as the tolling of church bells, still I can never get used to it.

I feel of Dario’s gun in my jacket pocket; it is locked and loaded, but it offers me no comfort. Julius turns to me, his pupils dilated, ringed by fear. And I wonder if he too is remembering what happened to his father. Is he afraid the same thing will happen to me?

I grab his hand and motion to the woman to get out from underneath the streetlight. But it is too late. Footsteps surround us. A terror, as dark and expansive as space, rockets through my body. It roots me to the pavement, a sprig of grass caught in a crack.

“Don’t move,” a man shouts.

Two men stand on either side of him; clad in all black they blend in seamlessly with the night. Not AES soldiers, thank God, who prefer to stand out in the traditional patriotic colors of red, white and blue.

The man in the middle points a gun at us, spits on the ground. “Using your baby to hide the stash?”

The woman shakes her head and looks up at me. Does she expect me to save her?

“She isn’t carrying drugs,” I say, my words bitter as dandelions.

“Then what are you doing at this time of night?” He stares at Julius who balls up his hand into a tight little fist, the locket hidden.

What am I doing? I roll the truth over in my mind, the metallic taste thickening. Because I don’t know what it is anymore. The only thing I’m sure about is that Julius and I are not alone.

“You running from the law?”

The law has run away from us, I think. Separated us until we ourselves believe in the illusion. Until we forget just who we are.

He runs his hand through my hair, taps my cheeks with the pads of his fingers. His skin is rough as coral, his words sharp as barnacles. “Or are you one of them good-time girls?”

My hand brushes up against Dario’s gun. I shudder at the thought of using it. “The baby is sick,” I say, looking up at the mother and her child. “We are on our way to Mercy Hospital.”

He leans forward, his beard falling like gray moss over the infant’s head. If he recognizes the splotchy red spots as measles, he says nothing. He simply grunts and stuffs his gun back in his gun belt. “Move on,”he says, waving his hand in the air, as if he alone has the privilege to dismiss us.

“Wait a minute,” says the man on his left, crossing his arms over his chest. “You haven’t paid the toll.”

Reluctantly, I hand over a small wad of bills.

But instead of moving out of our way, he steps in closer to us, his breath hot on my neck. “Your wallet,” he sneers.

I look him dead in the eye and thrust out my chest as though I am his equal. My heart all the while bumping up against my ribcage.

“Luther,” he says, spitting on the pavement. “Look at that fine Latina woman here and that half spic.” He glares at Julius and then back at me. “The AES ought to be informed.”

But this time I do not freeze. A red hot lava pumps through my veins and turns my heart to ashes. And since I cannot flee I take a tiny step forward, and meet the blaze in his eyes with the wildfire in mine.

Julius screeches—a wild animal caught in a snare—and then thrusts his fist into the man’s face, the gold chain of the locket snaking through his fingers.

And just like that the coil of fear and anger I’d wrapped myself in for years falls away as an old coat that no longer fits. I take hold of the woman’s hand, tighten my grasp on Julius’s.

“Let ’em pass,” orders the man in the middle.

And so, as dolphins swimming out to sea, we move on. I do not look back at the Columba, waiting to take us away from here. Instead, I put one foot in front of the other, and together we walk toward Mercy Hospital as the dawn washes away the night.