Chapter 12
Zaragoza Street

‘Listen to me, Mr. Missionary—these two should stick together,’ Vargas was saying. ‘The circus will buy them clothes, the circus will pay for any medicine—plus three meals a day, plus a bed to sleep in, and there’s a family to look after them.’

‘What family? It’s a circus! They sleep in tents!’ Edward Bonshaw cried.

‘La Maravilla is a kind of family, Eduardo,’ Brother Pepe told the Iowan. ‘Circus children aren’t in need,’ Pepe said, more doubtfully.

The name of Oaxaca’s little circus, like Lost Children, had not escaped criticism. It could be confusing—Circo de La Maravilla. The L in La was uppercase because The Wonder herself was an actual person, a performer. (The act itself, the alleged marvel, was confusingly called la maravilla—a lowercase wonder or marvel.) And there were people in Oaxaca who thought Circus of The Wonder misleadingly advertised itself. The other acts were ordinary, not so marvelous; the animals weren’t special. And there were rumors.

All anyone in town ever talked about was La Maravilla herself. (Like Lost Children, the circus’s name was usually shortened; people said they were going to el circo or to La Maravilla.) The Wonder herself was always a young girl; there had been many. It was a breathtaking act, not always death-defying; several previous performers had been killed. And the survivors didn’t continue to be The Wonder for very long. There was a lot of turnover among the performers; the stress probably got to these young girls. After all, they were risking their lives at that time when they were coming of age. Maybe the stress and their hormones got to them. Wasn’t it truly wondrous that these young girls were doing something that could kill them while they were having their first periods and watching their breasts get bigger? Wasn’t their coming of age the real danger, the actual marvel?

Some of the older dump kids who lived in Guerrero had sneaked into the circus; they’d told Lupe and Juan Diego about La Maravilla. But Rivera would never have tolerated such shenanigans. In those days when La Maravilla was in town, the circus set up shop in Cinco Señores; the circus grounds in Cinco Señores were closer to the zócalo and the center of Oaxaca than to Guerrero.

What drew the crowds to Circo de La Maravilla? Was it the prospect of seeing an innocent girl die? Yet Brother Pepe wasn’t wrong to say that La Maravilla, or any circus, was a kind of family. (Of course, there are good and bad families.)

‘But what can La Maravilla do with a cripple?’ Esperanza asked.

‘Please! Not when the boy is right here!’ Señor Eduardo cried.

‘It’s okay. I am a cripple,’ Juan Diego had said.

‘La Maravilla will take you because you’re necessary, Juan Diego,’ Dr. Vargas said. ‘Lupe requires translation,’ Vargas said to Esperanza. ‘You can’t have a fortune-teller you don’t understand; Lupe needs an interpreter.’

‘I’m not a fortune-teller!’ Lupe said, but Juan Diego didn’t translate this.

‘The woman you want is Soledad,’ Vargas said to Edward Bonshaw.

‘What woman? I don’t want a woman!’ the new missionary cried; he’d imagined that Dr. Vargas had misunderstood what a vow of celibacy entailed.

‘Not a woman for you, Mr. Celibacy,’ Vargas said. ‘I mean the woman you need to talk to, on behalf of the kids. Soledad is the woman who looks after the kids at the circus—she’s the lion tamer’s wife.’

‘Not the most reassuring name for the wife of a lion tamer,’ Brother Pepe said. ‘Solitude doesn’t bode well—widowhood awaits her, one might conclude.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Pepe—it’s just her name,’ Vargas said.

‘You are an antichrist—you know that, don’t you?’ Señor Eduardo said, pointing to Vargas. ‘These kids can live at Lost Children, where they will receive a Jesuit education, and you want to put them in harm’s way! Is it their education you’re frightened of, Dr. Vargas? Are you such a convinced atheist that you’re afraid we might manage to turn these kids into believers?’

‘These kids are in harm’s way in Oaxaca!’ Vargas cried. ‘I don’t care what they believe.’

‘He’s an antichrist,’ the Iowan said, this time to Brother Pepe.

‘Are there dogs at the circus?’ Lupe asked. Juan Diego translated this.

‘Yes, there are—trained dogs. There are acts with dogs. Soledad trains the new acrobats, including the flyers, but the dogs have their own troupe tent. Do you like dogs, Lupe?’ Vargas asked the girl; she shrugged. Juan Diego could tell that Lupe liked the idea of La Maravilla as much as he did; she just didn’t like Vargas.

‘Promise me something,’ Lupe said to Juan Diego, holding his hand.

‘Sure. What?’ Juan Diego said.

‘If I die, I want you to burn me at the basurero—like the dogs,’ Lupe told her brother. ‘Just you and Rivera—nobody else. Promise me.’

‘Jesus!’ Juan Diego shouted.

‘No Jesus,’ Lupe told him. ‘Just you and Rivera.’

‘Okay,’ Juan Diego said. ‘I promise.’

‘How well do you know this Soledad woman?’ Edward Bonshaw asked Dr. Vargas.

‘She’s my patient,’ Vargas replied. ‘Soledad is a former acrobat—a trapeze artist. Lots of stress on the joints—hands and wrists and elbows, especially. All that grabbing and holding tight, not to mention the falls,’ Vargas said.

‘Isn’t there a net for the aerialists?’ Señor Eduardo asked.

‘Not in most Mexican circuses,’ Vargas told him.

‘Merciful God!’ the Iowan cried. ‘And you’re telling me that these children are in harm’s way in Oaxaca!’

‘Not a lot of falls in fortune-telling—no stress on the joints,’ Vargas replied.

‘I don’t know what’s on everybody’s mind—it’s not clear to me what everyone is thinking. I just know what some people are thinking,’ Lupe said. Juan Diego waited. ‘What about those people with minds I can’t read?’ Lupe asked. ‘What does a fortune-teller say to those people?’

‘We need to know more about how the sideshow works. We need to think about it.’ (That was how Juan Diego interpreted his sister.)

‘That’s not what I said,’ Lupe told her brother.

‘We need to think about it,’ Juan Diego repeated.

‘What about the lion tamer?’ Brother Pepe asked Vargas.

‘What about him?’ Vargas said.

‘I hear Soledad has trouble with him,’ Pepe said.

‘Well, lion tamers are probably difficult to live with—I suppose there’s no small amount of testosterone involved in taming lions,’ Vargas said, shrugging. Lupe imitated his shrug.

‘So the lion tamer is a macho guy?’ Pepe asked Vargas.

‘That’s what I hear,’ Vargas told him. ‘He’s not my patient.’

‘Not a lot of falls in lion-taming—no stress on the joints,’ Edward Bonshaw commented.

‘Okay, we’ll think about it,’ Lupe said.

‘What did she say?’ Vargas asked Juan Diego.

‘We’re going to think about it,’ Juan Diego told him.

‘You can always come to Lost Children—you could visit me,’ Señor Eduardo said to Juan Diego. ‘I’ll tell you what to read, we can talk about books, you could show me your writing—’

‘This kid is writing?’ Vargas asked.

‘He wants to, yes—he wants an education, Vargas; he clearly has a gift for language. This boy has a future in some kind of higher learning,’ Edward Bonshaw said.

‘You can always come to the circus,’ Juan Diego said to Señor Eduardo. ‘You could visit me, bring me books—’

‘Yes, of course you could,’ Vargas told Edward Bonshaw. ‘You can practically walk to Cinco Señores, and La Maravilla also travels. There are occasional road trips; the kids will get to see Mexico City. Maybe you can go with them. Travel is a kind of education, isn’t it?’ Dr. Vargas asked the Iowan; without waiting for an answer, Vargas turned his attention to the dump niños. ‘What is it you miss about the basurero?’ he asked them. (Everyone who knew the niños knew how much Lupe missed the dogs, and not only Dirty White and Diablo. Brother Pepe knew it was a long walk from Lost Children to Cinco Señores.)

Lupe didn’t answer Vargas, and Juan Diego silently counted to himself—adding up the things he missed about Guerrero and the dump. The lightning-fast gecko on the shack’s screen door; the vast expanse of waste; the various ways to wake up Rivera when he was sleeping in the cab of his truck; the way Diablo could silence the barking of the other dogs; the solemn dignity of the dogs’ funeral fires in the basurero.

‘Lupe misses the dogs,’ Edward Bonshaw said—Lupe knew it was what Vargas had wanted the Iowan to say.

‘You know what?’ Vargas suddenly said, as if he’d just thought of it. ‘I’ll bet Soledad would let these kids sleep in the tent with the dogs. I could ask her. It wouldn’t surprise me if Soledad thought the dogs would like that, too—then everyone would be happy! Small world, sometimes,’ Vargas said, shrugging again. Once more, Lupe imitated his shrug. ‘Does Lupe think I don’t know what she’s doing?’ Vargas asked Juan Diego; both the boy and his sister shrugged.

‘Children sharing a tent with dogs!’ Edward Bonshaw exclaimed.

‘We’ll see what Soledad says,’ Vargas said to Señor Eduardo.

‘I like most animals better than most people,’ Lupe remarked.

‘Let me guess: Lupe likes animals better than people,’ Vargas told Juan Diego.

‘I said most,’ Lupe corrected him.

‘I know Lupe hates me,’ Vargas said to Juan Diego.

Listening to Lupe and Vargas bitch about each other, or to each other, Juan Diego was reminded of the mariachi bands that forced themselves on tourists in the zócalo. On weekends, there were always bands in the zócalo—including the miserable high school bands, with cheerleaders. Lupe liked pushing Juan Diego in his wheelchair through the crowds. Everyone made way for them, even the cheerleaders. ‘It’s like we’re famous,’ Lupe said to Juan Diego.

The dump kids were famous for haunting Zaragoza Street; they became regulars there. No stupid stigmata tricks on Zaragoza Street—no one would have tipped the niños for wiping up any blood. Too much blood was routinely spilled on Zaragoza Street; wiping it up would have been a waste of time.

Along Zaragoza Street, there were always prostitutes, and the men cruising for prostitutes; in the courtyard of the Hotel Somega, Juan Diego and Lupe could watch the prostitutes and their customers come and go, but the kids never saw their mother on Zaragoza Street or in the hotel courtyard. There was no verification that Esperanza was working the street, and there may have been other guests at the Somega—people who were neither prostitutes nor their clients. Yet Rivera was not the only one the kids had heard call the Somega the ‘whore hotel,’ and all the coming and going certainly made the hotel appear that way.

One night, when Juan Diego was wheelchair-bound, he and Lupe had followed a prostitute named Flor on Zaragoza Street; they knew the prostitute wasn’t their mother, but Flor looked a little like Esperanza from behind—Flor walked like Esperanza.

Lupe liked to make the wheelchair go fast; she would come up close to people who had their backs turned to her—they never knew the wheelchair was there until it bumped them. Juan Diego was always afraid that these people would fall backward into his lap; he would lean forward and try to touch them with his hand before the speeding wheelchair made contact. That was how he first touched Flor; he’d meant to touch one of her hands, but Flor swung her arms back and forth when she walked, and Juan Diego unintentionally touched her swaying bottom.

‘Jesus Mary Joseph!’ Flor exclaimed, spinning around. She was very tall; she’d been prepared to throw a punch at head level, but she found herself looking down at the boy in a wheelchair.

‘It’s just me and my sister,’ Juan Diego said, cringing. ‘We’re looking for our mother.’

‘Do I look like your mother?’ Flor asked. She was a transvestite prostitute. There weren’t so many transvestite prostitutes in Oaxaca in those days; Flor really stood out, and not only because she was tall. She was almost beautiful; what was beautiful about her truly wasn’t affected by the softest-looking trace of a mustache on her upper lip, though Lupe noticed it.

‘You look like our mom, a little,’ Juan Diego answered Flor. ‘You’re both very pretty.’

‘Flor’s a lot bigger, and there’s the you-know-what,’ Lupe said, passing her finger over her upper lip. There was no need for Juan Diego to translate this.

‘You kids shouldn’t be here,’ Flor told them. ‘You should be in bed.’

‘Our mother’s name is Esperanza,’ Juan Diego said. ‘Maybe you’ve seen her here—maybe you know her.’

‘I know Esperanza,’ Flor told them. ‘But I don’t see her around here. I see you around here, all the time,’ she told the kids.

‘Maybe our mom is the most popular of all the prostitutes,’ Lupe said. ‘Maybe she never leaves the Hotel Somega—the men just come to her.’ But Juan Diego didn’t translate this.

‘Whatever she’s babbling about, I can tell you one true thing,’ Flor said. ‘Everybody who’s ever been here has been seen—I can promise you that. Maybe your mother hasn’t been here at all; maybe you kids should just go to sleep.’

‘Flor knows a lot about the circus—it’s on her mind,’ Lupe said. ‘Go on—ask her about it.’

‘We have an offer from La Maravilla—just a sideshow act,’ Juan Diego said. ‘We would have our own tent, but we would share it with the dogs—they’re trained dogs, very smart. I don’t suppose you see any circus people, do you?’ the boy asked.

‘I don’t do dwarfs. You have to draw the line somewhere,’ Flor told them. ‘The dwarfs have an unreasonable interest in me—they’re all over me,’ she said.

‘I won’t be able to sleep tonight,’ Lupe told Juan Diego. ‘The thought of dwarfs all over Flor will keep me awake.’

‘You told me to ask her. I won’t be able to sleep, either,’ Juan Diego said to his sister.

‘Ask Flor if she knows Soledad,’ Lupe said.

‘Maybe we don’t want to know,’ Juan Diego said, but he asked Flor what she knew about the lion tamer’s wife.

‘She’s a lonely, unhappy woman,’ Flor answered. ‘Her husband is a pig. In his case, I’m on the lions’ side,’ she said.

‘I guess you don’t do lion tamers, either,’ Juan Diego said.

‘Not that one, chico,’ Flor said. ‘Aren’t you Niños Perdidos kids? Doesn’t your mother work there? Why would you move into a tent with dogs if you don’t have to?’

Lupe began to recite a list of reasons. ‘One: love of dogs,’ she started. ‘Two: to be stars—in a circus, we might be famous. Three: because the parrot man will come visit us, and our future—’ She stopped for a second. ‘His future, anyway,’ Lupe said, pointing to her brother. ‘His future is in the parrot man’s hands—I just know it is, circus or no circus.’

‘I don’t know the parrot man—I’ve never met him,’ Flor told the kids, after Juan Diego had struggled to translate Lupe’s list.

‘The parrot man doesn’t want a woman,’ Lupe reported, which Juan Diego also translated. (Lupe had heard Señor Eduardo say this.)

‘I know lots of parrot men!’ the transvestite prostitute said.

‘Lupe means that the parrot man has taken a vow of celibacy,’ Juan Diego tried to explain to Flor, but she wouldn’t let him finish what he was going to say.

‘Oh, no—I don’t know any men like that,’ Flor said. ‘Does the parrot man have a sideshow act at La Maravilla?’

‘He’s the new missionary at the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús—he’s a Jesuit from Iowa,’ Juan Diego told her.

‘Jesus Mary Joseph!’ Flor exclaimed again. ‘That kind of parrot man.’

‘His dog was killed—it probably changed his life,’ Lupe said, but Juan Diego left this untranslated.

Their attention was then diverted by a fight in front of the Hotel Somega; the altercation must have started in the hotel, but it had progressed from the courtyard into Zaragoza Street.

‘Shit, it’s the good gringo—that kid is a liability to himself,’ Flor said. ‘He might have been safer in Vietnam.’

There were more and more of the American hippie boys in Oaxaca; some of them came with girlfriends, but the girlfriends never stayed long. Most of the draft-age boys were alone, or they ended up alone. They were running away from the war in Vietnam, or from what their country had become, Edward Bonshaw said. The Iowan reached out to them—he tried to help them—but most of the hippie boys weren’t religious types. Like the rooftop dogs, they were lost souls—they were running wild, or they drifted around town like ghosts.

Flor had reached out to the young American draft dodgers, too; all the lost boys knew her. Maybe they liked her because she was a transvestite—like them, she was still a boy—but the lost Americans also liked Flor because her English was excellent. Flor had lived in Texas, but she’d come back to Mexico. Flor never changed the way she told that story. ‘Let’s just say my only way out of Oaxaca took me to Houston,’ she would always begin. ‘Have you ever been to Houston? Let’s just say I had to get out of Houston.’

Lupe and Juan Diego had seen the good gringo around Zaragoza Street before. One morning Brother Pepe had found him sleeping in a pew of the Jesuit temple. El gringo bueno was singing ‘Streets of Laredo,’ the cowboy song, in his sleep—just the first verse, over and over again, Pepe had said.

The hippie boy was always friendly to the dump kids. As for the fracas that had started in the Hotel Somega, it appeared that el gringo bueno hadn’t been given time to get dressed. He lay curled on the sidewalk in a fetal position, to protect himself from being kicked; he wore just a pair of jeans. He was carrying his sandals and a dirty long-sleeved shirt, the only shirt the dump kids had seen him wear. But Lupe and Juan Diego had not seen the boy’s big tattoo before. It was a Christ on the Cross: the bleeding face of Jesus, crowned with thorns, filled the slender hippie’s bare chest. Christ’s torso, including the pierced part, covered the hippie’s bare belly. Christ’s outstretched arms (Jesus’s sorely abused wrists and hands) were tattooed over the hippie boy’s upper arms and forearms. It was as if the upper body of Christ had been violently affixed to the upper body of the good gringo. Both the crucified Christ and the hippie boy needed to shave, and their long hair was similarly matted.

There were two thugs standing over the boy on Zaragoza Street. The dump kids knew Garza—the tall, bearded one. Either he let you in the lobby of the Somega or he didn’t; he was usually the one who told the kids to get lost. Garza had a territorial attitude concerning the hotel courtyard. The other thug—the young, fat one—was Garza’s slave boy, César. (Garza fucked everything.)

‘Is this how you get your rocks off?’ Flor asked the two thugs.

There was another prostitute on the sidewalk of Zaragoza Street, one of the younger ones; she had badly pockmarked skin, and she wasn’t wearing much more than the good gringo was. Her name was Alba, which means ‘dawn,’ and Juan Diego thought she looked like a girl you might meet for a moment as short-lived as a sunrise.

‘He didn’t pay me enough,’ Alba told Flor.

‘It was more than she told me it was going to be,’ el gringo bueno said. ‘I paid her what she first told me.’

‘Take the gringo with you,’ Flor said to Juan Diego. ‘If you can sneak out of Lost Children, you can sneak in—right?’

‘The nuns will find him in the morning—or Brother Pepe or Señor Eduardo or our mother will find him,’ Lupe said.

Juan Diego tried to explain this to Flor. He and Lupe shared a bedroom and a bathroom; their mother, unannounced, came to use the bathroom, and so on. But Flor wanted the dump niños to get the good gringo off the street. Niños Perdidos was safe; the kids should take the hippie boy with them—no one at the orphanage would beat him. ‘Tell the nuns you found him on the sidewalk, and you were just doing the charitable thing,’ Flor said to Juan Diego. ‘Tell them the boy didn’t have a tattoo, but when you woke up in the morning, the Crucified Christ was all over the good gringo’s body.’

‘And we heard him singing in his sleep—that cowboy song—for hours, but we couldn’t see in the dark,’ Lupe improvised. ‘El gringo bueno must have been getting that tattoo in the dark all night!’

As if on cue, the half-naked hippie boy had begun to sing; he was not asleep now. He must have been singing ‘Streets of Laredo’ to taunt the two thugs who’d been harassing him—just the second verse, this time.

‘Jesus Mary Joseph,’ was all Juan Diego said softly.

‘Hey, how’s it going, man on wheels?’ the good gringo asked Juan Diego, as if he’d just noticed the boy in his wheelchair. ‘Hey, fast-drivin’ little sister! You got any speedin’ tickets yet?’ (Lupe had bumped the good gringo with the wheelchair before.)

Flor was helping the hippie boy into his clothes. ‘If you touch him again, Garza,’ Flor was saying, ‘I’ll cut your cock and balls off while you’re asleep.’

‘You got the same junk between your legs,’ Garza told the transvestite prostitute.

‘No, my junk is a lot bigger than yours,’ Flor told him.

César, Garza’s slave boy, started to laugh, but the way both Garza and Flor looked at him made him stop.

‘You ought to say what you’re worth the first time, Alba,’ Flor said to the young prostitute with the bad skin. ‘You shouldn’t change your mind about what you’re worth.’

‘You can’t tell me what to do, Flor,’ Alba said, but the girl had waited until she’d slunk back inside the courtyard of the Hotel Somega before she said it.

Flor walked with the dump kids and the good gringo as far as the zócalo. ‘I owe you!’ the young American called to her, after she left them. ‘I owe you niños, too,’ the hippie boy told the dump kids. ‘I’m going to get you a present for this,’ he told them.

‘How are we supposed to keep him hidden?’ Lupe asked her brother. ‘We can sneak him into Lost Children tonight—no problem—but we can’t sneak him out in the morning.’

‘I’m working on the story that his Bleeding Christ tattoo is a miracle,’ Juan Diego told her. (This was definitely an idea that would appeal to a dump reader.)

‘It is a miracle, kind of,’ el gringo bueno started to tell them. ‘I got the idea for this tattoo—’

Lupe wouldn’t let the lost young man tell his story, not then. ‘Promise me something,’ she said to Juan Diego.

‘Another promise—’

‘Just promise me!’ Lupe cried. ‘If I end up on Zaragoza Street, kill me—just kill me. Let me hear you say it.’

‘Jesus Mary Joseph!’ Juan Diego said; he was trying to exclaim this the way Flor had done it.

The hippie had forgotten what he was saying; he struggled with a verse of ‘Streets of Laredo,’ as if he were writing the inspired lyrics for the first time.

‘Say it!’ Lupe yelled at the dump reader.

‘Okay, I’ll kill you. There, I said it,’ Juan Diego told her.

‘Whoa! Man on wheels, little sister—nobody’s killin’ anyone, right?’ the good gringo asked them. ‘We’re all friends, right?’

The good gringo had mescal breath, which Lupe called ‘worm breath’ because of the dead worm in the bottom of the mescal bottle. Rivera called mescal the poor man’s tequila; the dump boss said you drank mescal and tequila the same way, with a lick of salt and a little lime juice. The good gringo smelled like lime juice and beer; the night the dump kids sneaked him into Lost Children, the young American’s lips were crusty with salt, and there was more salt in the V-shaped patch of beard the boy had left unshaven beneath his lower lip. The niños let the good gringo sleep in Lupe’s bed; they had to help him undress, and he was already asleep—on his back, and snoring—before Lupe and Juan Diego could get themselves ready for bed.

Through his snores, the gutteral-sounding verse of ‘Streets of Laredo’ seemed to emanate from el gringo bueno—like his smell.

Lupe wet a washcloth and wiped the salty crust off the hippie boy’s lips and face. She meant to cover him with his shirt; she didn’t want to see his Bleeding Jesus in the middle of the night. But when Lupe smelled the gringo’s shirt, she said it smelled like mescal or beer puke, or like the dead worm—she just pulled the sheet up to the young American’s chin and made some effort to tuck him in.

The hippie boy was tall and thin, and his long arms—with Christ’s mangled wrists and hands imprinted on them—lay at his sides, outside the bedsheet. ‘What if he dies in the room with us?’ Lupe asked Juan Diego. ‘What happens to your soul if you die in someone else’s room in a foreign country? How can the gringo’s soul get back home?’

‘Jesus,’ Juan Diego said.

‘Leave Jesus out of it. We’re the ones who are responsible for him. What do we do if the hippie boy dies?’ Lupe asked.

‘Burn him at the basurero. Rivera will help us,’ Juan Diego said. He didn’t really mean it—he was just trying to get Lupe to go to bed. ‘The good gringo’s soul will escape with the smoke.’

‘Okay, we have a plan,’ Lupe said. When she got into Juan Diego’s bed, she was wearing more clothes than she usually slept in. Lupe said she wanted to be ‘modestly dressed’ with the hippie boy in their bedroom. She wanted Juan Diego to sleep on the side of the bed nearest the gringo; Lupe didn’t want the sight of the Agonizing Christ to startle her in the night. ‘I hope you’re working on the miracle story,’ she said to her brother, turning her back to him in the narrow bed. ‘Nobody’s going to believe that tattoo is a milagro.’

Juan Diego would be awake half the night, rehearsing how he would present the lost American’s Bleeding Christ tattoo as an overnight miracle. Just before he finally fell sleep, Juan Diego realized that Lupe was still awake, too. ‘I would marry this hippie boy, if he smelled better and stopped singing that cowboy song,’ Lupe said.

‘You’re thirteen,’ Juan Diego reminded his little sister.

In his mescal stupor, el gringo bueno could manage no more than the first two lines of the first verse of ‘Streets of Laredo’; the way the song just petered out almost made the dump kids wish the good gringo would keep singing.

‘You’re thirteen, Lupe,’ Juan Diego repeated, more insistently.

‘I mean later, when I’m older—if I get older,’ Lupe said. ‘I am beginning to have breasts, but they’re very small. I know they’re supposed to get bigger.’

‘What do you mean, if you get older?’ Juan Diego asked his sister. They lay in the dark with their backs turned to each other, but Juan Diego could feel Lupe shrug beside him.

‘I don’t think the good gringo and I get much older,’ she told him.

‘You don’t know that, Lupe,’ Juan Diego said.

‘I know my breasts don’t get any bigger,’ Lupe told him.

Juan Diego would be awake a little longer, just thinking about this. He knew Lupe was usually right about the past; he fell asleep with the half-comforting knowledge that his sister didn’t do the future as accurately.