ACTING OAXACAN

ACTING OAXACAN
Around noon, he reaches Ixtepec, a southern crossroads in Oaxaca, the next state north, 285 miles into Mexico. As his train squeals to a stop, migrants jump down and look for houses where they can beg for a drink and a bite to eat. La bestia might be behind them, but most are still afraid. Two of them are too frightened to go into town. They offer Enrique 20 pesos and ask him to buy food. If he will bring it back, they will share it with him.

He takes off his yellow shirt, stained and smelling of diesel smoke. Underneath he wears a white one. He puts it on over the dirty one. Maybe he can pass for someone who lives here. He resolves not to panic if he sees a policeman, and to walk as if he knows where he is going.

He takes the pesos and walks down the main street, past a bar, a store, a bank and a pharmacy. He stops at a barber shop. His hair is curly and far too long. It is an easy tip-off. People here tend to have straighter hair.

He strides purposefully inside.

“¡Orale, jefe!” he says, using a phrase Oaxacans favor. “Hey, chief!” He mutes his flat, Central American accent and speaks softly and singsongy, like a Oaxacan. He asks for a short crop, military style. He pays with the last of his own money, careful not to call it pisto, as they do back home. That means alcohol up here.

He is mindful about what else he says. Migra agents trip people up by asking if the Mexican flag has five stars (the Honduran flag has, but the Mexican flag has none), or by demanding the name of the mortar used to make salsa (molcajete, a uniquely Mexican word), or inquiring how much someone weighs. If he replies in pounds, he is from Central America. In Mexico, people use kilos.

In Guatemala, soda is called agua. Here in Mexico, agua is water. A jacket is a chamarra, not a chumpa. A T-shirt is a playera, not a blusa.

At one point, Enrique glances into a store window and sees his reflection. It is the first time he has looked at his face since he was beaten. He recoils from what he sees. Scars and bruises. Black and blue. One eyelid droops.

It stops him.

He was 5 years old when his mother left him. Now he is almost another person. In the window glass, he sees a battered young man, scrawny and disfigured.

It angers him, and it steels his determination to push northward.

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NEXT: CHAPTER 4