***

“Mamá! Mamá – I’m sorry! I only wanted to see what it was like to ride in a car like that. Don’t be mad. I’m sorry!”

But Mamá is silent.

Then finally, there at the end of the dirt path is their house. Skinny palm trees stick out of the lawn on either side of the house, arching over the wavy, orange roof, bending under the relentless pounding of the rain. Two clothes lines reach from the pila to the house like lines on his notebook paper, mamá’s bright dresses and his tee shirts and socks hanging like soggy letters on a page.

They burst into the kitchen, which is dry and smells sweet and spicy all at the same time. And while Mamá yells and rants about strangers and black cars and pink toenails, Martin buries his face in the lovely folds of abuela’s squish squash stomach.

***

That night, Alejandra goes out to the pila where she washes the clothes and removes a brick from the crumbling facade. Reaching back her hand closes around the sock. She pulls it out and takes out a wad of money wrapped tightly in an old hair band, and counts it. There are two hundred lemps more than she remembered in the wad. She smooths the money out and counts again.  Same amount as the first time. She must have remembered wrong, she thinks.  It is the only explanation. The houses are dark, the sky clear. A neighbor’s cow tugs on its chain, lets out a low bellow as the cicadas play their deafening concerto. And Alejandra walks softly back into the house. She puts the money in the inside pocket of her backpack. Then, fits the rest of the items in like a puzzle; twenty-one tampons, two sets of clothes in Ziploc bags, Tylenol, tooth brushes, water bottle. She slips out onto the street, a few houses down, there is one more thing that she needs. Then she checks on her boy, who is tangled in his sheets and snuggled up tight with his osito.

Resolve is a quivering thing. But tonight she doesn’t have to grip it quite so tightly to steady it. The bright full light of the moon staves off anything that might lurk in the shadows.

***

The next morning, just as the sun crests the hills, Mamá slips Martin’s Spiderman backpack over his shoulders, tells him that they are going on an adventure. It was the smallest size they could find for school, but it still hangs down to almost the back of his knees.

“You will have to be strong and carry your own backpack. Can you do that?”

She pulls the straps tight over his shoulders, and he feels like a turtle with a too big shell. Martin hugs his fuzzy, blue osito tightly, rubbing him against his cheek.

Mamá puts on her own backpack. They cross the soccer field, the footbridge, the churning muddy river, swollen from the rain. When they get to the edge of the paved road, the one that leads to and away, Martin looks up and sees that his fierce jaguar of a mother is crying. Wordlessly, he hands her osito. And even though Martin always feels better when he holds osito close, for some reason, it makes Mamá cry even harder.

They walk for a few minutes along the road when from behind them, there is the sound of an approaching vehicle. The rumble and choke of an engine. And even though Mamá had told Martin that he would have to be a big boy and walk, suddenly she grabs him, picking him up and holding him tight to her body until he can hardly breathe.

“Mamá!” he protests.

But she is running now. Her own backpack bumping up and down on her shoulders.  Martin hooks his ankles around her waist, his arms around her neck. He did not know that his mother could run.  He watches osito, tight in his fist, go up and down with them. His own backpack is smushed up against his back, Mamá’s arm belting them together. She is panting and gasping from the effort, their hearts smushed up against each other.

The brakes on the truck behind them squeal, rubber tires against wet pavement.

Mamá closes her eyes and pushes Martin’s head into her neck.  He can hardly breathe. She falls onto her knees, pressing him underneath her.

Someone pushes the passenger side door open.

Waits.

It is a rusty blue pick-up truck.  White hair, craggy face.

“Need a ride, Seňorita?”

Mamá stands up trembling, lifts Martin into the cab of the truck. Her arms are shaking.

“The border,” she manages to get out. Martin sits on her lap, clutching his backpack.  Mamá strokes his hair gently, presses her lips to his head again and again. She has one arm around Martin and one hand tight around the handle above the window. He can feel her heart against his back, wild and fast. As if a hummingbird would burst out of her chest at any moment. Air blows through open windows, hot and heavy. “I waited too long,” she whispers to no one.

The old man drives for what feels like forever, eyes darting back and forth between the rearview mirror and the road. Suddenly, he yanks on the wheel and the truck swerves to the side of the road and stops. Mamá leans over and pushes the passenger side door open. Her shirt is soaked through with sweat.

“Take that to avoid the checkpoint, m’hija,” he says, wiping his brow and gesturing to a barely visible footpath.

“Gracias,” Mamá whispers, pushing the door shut.

The truck makes a U-turn and they watch as it becomes smaller and smaller as it heads back towards the hills. Towards home. Until it is the size of a matchbox car. Gone. They turn and peer into the lush green jungle, the yawning hole of a footpath, dirt packed down by a thousand feet before them. And before he can tell Mamá that he has changed his mind about the trip and really just wants to go home, she grabs his hand and drags him, running into the dense green of the dripping jungle canopy. So fast his feet barely feel the ground. They are flying. His mother is flying. Wet leaves hit his face, and he puts his head down, lets Mamá pull him, lift him, watches the blur of those neon pink sneakers, bright against the mud and leaves running until she is too tired to run anymore. Until they are far, far, far. And not for the first time they stop in a place that is too far and never far enough from the house the color of the sun, the valley in the hills, and abuela’s hugs.

That was home.

This is beyond.

 

Meghan Steed is a former teacher and current stay-at-home parent to three little boys. She lives in Northampton, MA.