Of Women and Salt, Gabriela Garcia [100 best novels of all time .txt] 📗

a defining moment and you’re not even sure why. J-something, absentmindedly slicking gloss over her lips, scrunching her hair with fruity mousse each morning. J-something’s house, an exact replica of her mother’s but bare, devoid of any decoration or personality. She remembered how, before she knew anything of what was to come, she’d curled in bed with her and they’d laughed together.

She’d felt so guilty and anxious, even as a child confused about what happened, the thought that police had taken her without a word to this woman, that this woman had probably wondered for the rest of her life what had happened to Ana. The police always did things like that. Enemy. J-something must have been in her room when the officers came. She never came out. Ana thought of trying to find her online, years later, to explain. But Ana had spent only a handful of days with this woman; it seemed silly, an imposition even. And yet, when Ana first thought of returning to the United States, where she had no family, this stranger had inexplicably popped into her mind. Maybe she just wanted to thank her. For softening the blow.

Ana doubted she’d ever see her again, but she was going to make her way to her old neighborhood anyway. At least she’d be in Miami, where the terrain was the tiniest bit more familiar. Where she’d sourced those childhood flashes. Where high schools were used to girls with no parents and no social security numbers.

Ana could hear some of the children crying as the agents loaded them onto the van. She could hear one of the women saying, this is my daughter. One of the men saying, no, there’s no one else. She could hear muffled sounds from the agents’ walkie-talkies and the slamming of van doors. By the time the van’s engine roared and the lights disappeared, she wanted nothing more than to fold into the dirt and sleep. But she couldn’t stop now. How long before there were other vans? Men searching for tracks?

Right now there were no other vans, no other men, just the houses, the stores. An abandoned fishing pole, an abandoned Styrofoam cooler. Almost perverse, these marks of leisurely afternoons, maybe a splash in the river, the flick of a wrist. She wondered how many families looked across the river and thought of girls like her, said to themselves, Thank God that’s not us. If life had taken only the slightest turn, she’d have thought that too.

The path snaked through the dark brush like a river cutting earth. She tried to remember the pollero’s instructions, right—no, left—a highway? Lights ahead cast shadows over the ground like prison bars, and Ana could feel a false safety beckoning: Crawl into the light. How long since she’d slept a full night? How long since she’d—?

The adrenaline rush faded, only exhaustion in its wake, she couldn’t even finish a thought. Up ahead she heard the rush of a single car.

The Amtrak train dropped her in Hialeah after three days and who knew how many transfers. Of all the train terminals she had passed through, this one struck her as saddest of all. A convergence point for south and west, tired bodies, people who couldn’t afford plane tickets or had accrued too many DUIs to drive down. A man with a long red beard hoisted a duffel emblazoned with a Confederate flag onto his shoulder. A woman dragged three crying children who clung to her legs.

Ana emerged blinking into the violent sunlight. A fading, sun-bleached mural on one wall of the train station depicted the Miami she’d harbored in dreams, all swaying palm trees and impossibly blue sky, sky that bled into ocean until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. A metal cage covered half the mural and protected the air conditioner inside from theft. Beyond the train station, Ana could make out factory plumes and warehouses intersected by highway and the Miami-Dade Metrorail.

She’d done her research and knew she could take the Metrorail to Kendall and from there a bus to her old complex. She had the money all counted out in another ziplock in her backpack. She walked to the Hialeah station, passing boarded-up business fronts, check-cashing stores, pawnshops. Comforting, the Salvadoran pupusa spot, tucked between two abandoned buildings beneath an overpass. She couldn’t see inside, because someone had painted a countryside landscape complete with a horse carriage over the glass. Flyers for various performers and club nights were tacked over rolling hills. But she could smell the masa, the refried beans, childhood.

On the Metrorail, she sat between high schoolers making their way home from school, boisterous and happy and ignoring her, and downtown workers in suits reading books or staring blankly. Ana had taken improvised sink baths in terminal bathrooms, but she knew she looked a little wild. Sticky, salty. Her stomach rumbled.

Miami roared into a blur below—used-car lots, sprawling malls, pastel-colored condo complexes with pools and tennis courts, squat houses with metal bars, front yards strewn with broken appliances, corroding playgrounds. In the horizon, so many cranes rose into the sky like beanstalks, half-finished high-rises in their jaws. When night descended, the whole city lit up in purple and blue and white, an explosion of color.

Her stop was a mall parking lot, in the shadow of department stores and luxury jewelers. The bus snaked down Kendall Drive in the dark, and she recognized little. Every strip mall was different, full of businesses she didn’t remember. There were no more open spaces, big green lots. Every space filled by a new rental complex or a new strip mall or a new chain restaurant.

What would she even say? If she knocked on the door and the neighbor answered? If a stranger did?

She’d thought she’d be able to remember the path to her old home but was glad she carried an address with her. Nothing struck her as familiar—the whole complex was smaller than she remembered, grubbier than she remembered.