CHAPTER ONE LegaciesArizona/Mexico Border and Brooklyn, April 26-June 6, 2004Once, when I was six, I leaped in front of a moving car. My lip split halfway to my ear. As a doctor stitched my cheek, I decided that motor vehicles were death machines and should be avoided. This is why I live in New York City: subways. On the rare occasion I find myself in the driver's seat, I'm haunted by visions of children darting across the road -- perhaps images of my former self. I grip the steering wheel at eleven and one o'clock, lurching and braking.Like now. I'm sputtering down Interstate 10 in a '92 Mazda, en route from Los Angeles to my parents' house in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Today is the Tucson-El Paso leg. I veer off the highway onto an isolated farm road curving along the Mexican border and wind up in a desert choked with cactus and brush. This is my ideal driving scenario: no one to hit. The air conditioner has perished, so it is hot as blazes. I roll down the windows and contemplate my thirtieth birthday, which is a month away. My twenties were consumed by my first book, a memoir about traveling around the Communist Bloc. During the decade it took to research, write, and publish it, I grew keenly aware that I was living backward, more in my past than in my present. It is time to move on, but where? To what?When asked this on my book tour, I had a ready reply: learn Spanish.
Despite being third-generation Mexican-American (on my mother's side) and growing up 150 miles from the Texas-Mexico border, my Spanish is best described as Tarzan Lite: a primitive vocabulary spoken entirely in the present tense. My mom faced so much ridicule for her accent growing up that she never taught my sister or me how to speak the language properly. I mostly picked up curse words in school (pendejo!) and opted to learn Russian in college. Studies show that only 17 percent of third-generation Mexicans can speak Spanish fluently, but it riddles me with guilt -- especially now that I've entered the publishing world. I'm turning down invitations to speak to groups I supposedly represent because I literally can't communicate with them.A logical life plan would be to venture across this desert and explore the land and tongue of my ancestors. Yet the very notion terrifies me. Ask any South Texan.
To us, Mexico means kidnappings and shoot-outs in broad daylight in Nuevo Laredo, or the unsolved murders of young women in Juarez. It means narco-traffickers in every cantina and explosive diarrhea from every comedor. When I was in high school, a college student got snatched off the street while partying in Matamoros during spring break. Bound and gagged, he was driven to a ranch run by a satanic cult. Next thing you know, he was menudo. One worshipper wore a belt made of his victims' spinal cords.So go to Mexico? Thanks, but I'd rather return to Moscow and track down my old mafiosi boyfriend.I'm cresting a small hill now.
Glistening pools of water appear on the road up ahead, then evaporate. It is dizzyingly hot. I glance down at the gas gauge. It's nearly empty. Cell phone: roaming. Not a soul has passed me on this road. If the Mazda breaks down, I'm toast. Better turn around and rejoin the main highway.
My foot hovers above the brake as I grasp the clutch.Something appears in the distance. Objects in the middle of the road. Moving sluggishly, then quickly. Bears? What kind of bear prowls around the Arizona desert? No. They must be wild dogs, big ones, standing on their hind legs and.running?No. They are people.
One figure seems to be a child. My lifelong phantom has actualized. I slam the brakes. They must be Mexicans fleeing the border. I blare the horn."Agua! Tengo agua!" I scream out the window.They must need water. I have two bottles.
I must give one to them.But.what if water isn't all they need? What if they ask me t.