Chapter One
Javier
Sweat rolled down my forehead into my eyes. The salt burned, but I blinked it away letting the air hit my face. The heat dried the moisture against my skin, wicking the sweat away and into the air. “That went smooth,” I told Maricio as we made our way back to the spot.
The streets of Juarez go from black top to rock depending on which road you walk, or in our case, ride a bike. Not that it made a damn difference to us. This was home.
We passed the infamous bridge where the bodies hung in warning.
Yes, bodies, as in more than one, hung naked and sliced under a bridge. The stench, the gruesome display of violence, and the regular occurrence brought fear into our community. Strangers didn’t understand and locals simply knew to walk the line.
For us, this was normal, but to the tourists who drove into Mexico from the United States, they were shocked, appalled even. In Juarez the line was drawn in the sand, either your family stood with the Silvia Cartel or against it.
And being against the Silvia Cartel was a death sentence.
Honestly, Maricio and I hadn’t felt like most people here. They all said there was no choice. Every time the Federales caught someone, they always said, “it was life here and they had no way out.” It was what they felt was a clever excuse or way to avoid trouble.
Liars. All of them were liars.
Life was what you made it, like Paco, our handler, always said. We had the chance to make something for our families, something for ourselves. Or we could walk the other way. We wouldn’t get a second chance, he told us, so we had to make our decision swiftly. That was a few years ago now.
So while the masses watched our city like it was the portal to hell, we were proud.
To us, this wasn’t coerced, forced, or pushed on either of us. No, we saw our situation as the opposite actually. We were given an opportunity by Paco to serve the Silvia Cartel. We had a choice. There was no gun to our head. In fact, what we did was exceptionally lucrative considering the options we lacked in life here.
Today, we did a job and would be compensated for it—end of story.
A job.
A simple task to carry goods across a border, pick up a tag alerting our handlers of our completion, and return back to Juarez. A job.
Adults overthought everything. Keep shit simple. That was how we would survive and thrive.
This was about getting paid.
“Get this bag back to Paco and go home to pretend like we aren’t the pequeña mierdas we are,” Maricio joked as he stood and pedaled his bike.
We both laughed. “Little shits. Nah brother, we’re badass boys skippin’ school to run drugs into El Paso and get home before Mamá finds out. We can repent of our sins on Sunday mass.” I joined him standing as I pedaled and took in the hot desert air.
With our spirits high, we made the trek to our drop point to return the empty bag with the tag that alerts our boss that our job was completed. It was a dangerous world we had embarked into but the school of hard knocks hadn’t left us tons of options and open doors. We weren’t forced into this life, but it was definitely something that appealed to two boys like us.
Maricio and I had been making this run for a few years now. Once, sometimes twice a month we skipped school to pedal our bicycles to the border. We stayed out of the federal police officers’ way by not going to the crossover point while also avoiding well-known spots for smuggling. We had a few carefully placed bushes that hid a gap in the United States’ precious fence line. Gaps that were small enough for two skinny boys to crawl under and shove a bag between them. We carried a decent amount. It definitely wasn’t the amount of dope they could push through with a car, but those damn dogs they kept at the border now made it almost impossible to keep the trade going that way. At least that’s what Paco told us.
Personally, I didn’t care why we got called to do the job or when we got called. The only thing that mattered to me was being able to give money to my mother to help keep the lights on, food in the cabinets, and clothes on our backs.
If the drug trade wasn’t so good in our area, I don’t know how we would have gotten by. The uproar and debate every election in America was laughable. Americans should really think about whether they love their precious border, or their drugs? The majority would stand up proudly for their country saying to keep the drugs out. While the smaller portion of the population would take down that fence and those checkpoints to open up the trade. It didn’t make shit right, but the bottom line stood that twenty percent of the population addicted to dope controlled more money than the eighty percent of the population trying to stop the drug deals.
One thing I knew for sure in my life, drugs equaled power. They weren’t going anywhere and the earlier you could have some control over them, the earlier you began the pursuit of power.
The whole thing was crazy. If we really stopped and thought about it. The fact that grown ass men would trust two punk kids with their drugs wasn’t the smartest of ideas.
Then again, it worked and it worked well because we had been at this for years. I guess to them they had enough security in place that it was still better to let us take the fall if we got caught than to take it themselves. The risks if we got caught were minimal compared to what our adult handlers would face. As minors crossing illegally into the United States of America, the penalties were what some might see as harsh if they were American. In the end, though, it wouldn’t be followed through with—that’s what most people didn’t understand. They would simply ship us back across the border to Juarez after charging us with drug trafficking. Those city officials knew their system and their budget restrictions in America. Therefore, they wouldn’t want to reform two thugs like us. We would be tossed back to our home country. Once returned here to our corrupt judicial system, we would be lost in the wash. Crime in Juarez was a way of life and the police knew it as much as the mothers begging their boys to stay out of it did. We lived in a city with the highest crime rate in the fucking world so it should be no surprise two young boys with no men in their lives would find themselves neck deep in illegal activities.
Juarez, Mexico—the city of murder and mayhem.
We had to provide the only way we knew how. It was about survival for us.
For me, I took pride in what we did. It took a huge load off my mother’s plate. Since the fucker she loved wouldn’t be a man to provide for his family, I would. In a matter of an hour, we reported to Paco who released us with cash for services rendered. Everyone knew Paco reported to Manny, who was the right hand to Miguel Silvia, the head of the Silvia Cartel. A fearless man who demanded loyalty from everyone in his association. I was loyal, prideful, and dedicated to becoming one of his elites one day. If life was going to hand me a bullshit hand, then I would damn well play that hand until I turned life from black to green, as in money green.
One day, I would be feared by my enemies and strangers alike. And I would be revered by my peers. I had goals, plans, and none of them were law abiding. I would be the king of my world and at my side would be a queen who had strength to the outside world and weakness only to the love we would share. I had it all figured out.
“Mis hijos,” My mother greeted Maricio and I as soon as we stepped inside the house. We weren’t both her sons in the biological sense. I was her son by birth, Maricio was her son by love. Just as his mother would call us her sons because Maricio was born to her but she loved me as deeply. It was the life we lived and it was this way for as far back as I could remember.
Getting by just like our house, it just managed to get by. Shack really would be a better way to describe our home, but whatever, we got by together. The concrete blocks that made up our walls were chipped in bullet ricochets from a turf war years before Miguel Silvia rose to power. The floor was once linoleum that had worn through in some places revealing a rotting subfloor and even bare dirt from the ground in spots. Disgusting really, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do for a few more years.
In my mind, though, well in my mind, in my future plans, I was going to give my mamá a real house with a yard and I’d even make sure she had someone to clean for her. After all the shit she put up with from me, she deserved a break in life and I would be the one to give it to her.
Our fucked up familia was built by two women with asshole men who took off to America to work in some farmer’s field for pennies while they had to make due with whatever the fuck was sent home. If and when it was sent home. It definitely wasn’t a regular occurrence either, especially from my father. We were an afterthought to him. Maricio’s dad was more consistent but over the last few years no matter what he sent back here, it wasn’t enough and would never be enough.
That was life for me, Maricio, and his sister. My older sister Luciana found her way out, but had lived ‘slumming it’ with us, as she would say, for her whole childhood. She promised herself a better life in America and went for it when Frederick came along offering her a new life. Too bad she left us behind to do it. Then again, maybe it was in our DNA to leave our family behind. I was a little bitter with Luciana, but what teen boy wouldn’t be when she abandoned us? The letters home and the little bit of money weren’t enough and not because of the struggles. We missed Luciana. There was this hole in our little family that only she could fill.
I couldn’t remember the last time I saw my padre. Couldn’t really say he was a man I’d want to see anymore of in this lifetime either. Too much time had passed and too many struggles to overcome without him to lean on left me hardened.
The piece of shit left when I was five or six. He said it was to give us a better life in America. Ten years later, once a month if we were lucky, I got the privilege of escorting my mother to the store in order for her to claim the money he wire transfers over. That was all we got. The fucker lived life in the land of the free while I slept with a gun under my pillow to protect my mother in the slums of Juarez, Mexico.
At sixteen, I towered over my mother as I wrapped her in my arms to hold her close. “Mamá.”
Releasing her, I stepped inside our home to find Maria Luisa, Maricio’s mom, on our couch with a washcloth on her head and wrapped in a blanket. This was not an uncommon thing, but painful nonetheless. In the last few weeks, the Dominguez family had been staying with us because Maria Luisa had gotten worse.
“Estás bien, Maria Luisa?”
She replied and my heart sank, “No.” It was more of a murmur and I knew deep inside my soul she was fighting a losing battle. She was not okay, far from it actually. We all knew it and we were all helpless to do anything about it.
Maricio rushed from behind me to his mother’s side where he sank to his knees. “Rest, Mamá. No talking. Sin hablar.”
We had watched her go downhill for months. There was no extra money for medicine. The Dominguez family had lived next door all of my and Maricio’s life. Until these last few weeks where they had stayed with us. Only a wall separated our families and that was it. There wasn’t a memory that didn’t have them in it.
Mamá always joked that God gave her Maria Luisa and the Dominguez family so she wouldn’t have to have any more babies. My sister Luciana begged Mamá for a baby sister so she and Mari Belle could have another girl to outnumber Maricio and me. This was us, Luciana, Mamá, and me alongside Maria Luisa, Maricio, and Mari Belle. Well, now without Luciana, but she did send home what she could letting me know we were always in her heart. But, her heart didn’t keep me fed, and it didn’t give me my sister to talk to.
Trudging down the hallway, I went to the room I used to share with Luciana. She was seven years older than me. I never thought she would leave, but she did. All for a fucking man and a better life.
That stung deep every time I thought about it.
Dwelling didn’t help a damn thing, I reminded myself pushing the anger down.
Like everything else in my life, I swallowed the bitter pill down and kept at it. I would get all of us to the States no matter what. And unlike my sister, I’d take everyone with me—Mamá, Maria Luisa, Maricio, and Mari Belle, we would all get there one day.
Together.
This was life, always chasing the American dream. Even in Juarez, Mexico.