“This road is a good road, a good road,” Mika said, and then decided it was a stupid thing to say—a false thing to keep courage up—and she became nervous, glancing over a shoulder.
Already the house belonged just to him, and to the past. He was the true enemy of the Antichrist, he had told her, beating it into her head like a drum, and she had given him credit for powers barely human.
He would burn rubber to the school, and his work shoes would thump as he ran to the office. She had left the gun and hoped he would carry it into school. Something bad will happen, she thought, and that’s good. Something bad enough to read about in the papers. They won’t like him anymore. The bastard.
Then she remembered the hummingbird in her pocket and let him go.
Once she boarded the bus with her pouch and her grip and Lillooet, she paid the fare. Maybe he would kill somebody or shoot himself. If I had stayed, I would have shot him, she thought. With his own gun.
No middle ground.
She sat on the long seat in the back of the bus next to a woman in a black hoodie wearing a mask. The woman reached into one of the hoodie’s pockets and held out more masks. “I have extra,” she said. “You and your girl should put them on.”
Mika took them and chucked her head in thanks, too shy to speak.
The woman in the hoodie tilted her head and pointed down the aisle. “You see?” she said, croaking the words in a scratchy voice. “All women aboard. Even the driver. You see? When men go off their rockers, we women all have to hightail it. And here we are.” She made a slight, creaking sound that might have been a laugh. “Look me in the eyes,” she said. “I can tell you’re also on the run.”
Mika did as requested and stared into the madwoman’s bright eyes. She smelled stale perfume and diesel fumes and felt dizzy. The woman’s eyes went deep. “If a man puts you in the cross, remember my eyes and ask me what to do. I will tell you, and you will hear what I say. And then what?”
“Huh?”
“And then, honey, you do it. Just do it. Used to be a slogan back in the day, remember? Just do it! Don’t take any guff from the swine.” She nodded as if admiring her own advice. “I’m Ava, honey. And you are?”
“Mika.”
“Beautiful name. And your little girl?”
“Lillooet,” Mika said, and added, shyly, “Wild Onion.”
“Beautiful name. Beautiful girl.” Ava nodded and kept nodding, as if she was a doll with a spring in her neck. “I like that. Remember what I said.” She stopped wagging her head and stared hard again. “You remember, yes?”
“Just do it,” Mika said, afraid to say anything else.
Ava continued staring until Mika turned away. She would never forget the look in the woman’s eyes.
Twice along the route the bus stopped and armed Militia entered and studied the faces of passengers, comparing them to photos on their phones. A heavyset man in a mask that was dark black and covered almost all of his face, like a balaclava, came to the back of the bus and motioned to Mika to lower her mask. She did so and stared at him, hard, thinking what Ava had said. Ava was doing the same and still had on her hoodie, which Mika thought took nerve. The Militia man ignored Ava but studied Mika as if she was a math problem. Finally he put his phone in a pocket and turned without a word. Mika watched him stomp down the aisle, thinking that he waddled like a putz. She put her mask back on.
When the bus later lurched to a stop, the end of the line, Mike offered to return the masks. Ava shooed her away. “Keep them,” she said. “Use them again.” She gave Mika a sign with one clenched hand. “And remember what I said.”
Mika took Lillooet by the hand. Outside the bus, they started walking, climbing a steep hill as her heart tattooed her ribs. They walked past swaybacked houses on the wrong side of town and she knew he was cruising the city, the gun on the seat beside him, but nobody bothered her and his green truck stayed lost.
“Let me see the hummingbird,” Lillooet said.
“It’s not the kind I can show you,” she said. When you give up being a slave, life becomes possible. Who had told her that? Her sister? “But we’re going to see Auntie, girl, and she has a hummingbird just like mine.”
She had given up smoking when she was pregnant; had given up drinking, most of the time, after he beat her nearly to death; and now, without a fight, she was giving him up, he who had always put a roof over their heads and food on the table, and had beaten her badly only a few times. Just now and then. Well, maybe there were other times, she realized, ones she might remember one day. He wasn’t that bad, was he? Maybe she should go back.
She bought a bag of burgers and rented a cheap room in a motel under a name that was not hers. The room was dumpy, and Lillooet frowned again. “I want to see your hummingbird!”
“Stomp your foot, why don’t you?” Mika teased. “But let’s eat first, okay?” A lot of talking would have to pass between them, but this was not the time. She could see neon blink through dirty gauze curtains on the room’s barred window. She heard the clank of a train on its tracks, a big truck switch gears, somebody close shout out swear words. None of it bothered Lillooet, done to a turn; she was soon asleep mumbling in her clothes, lying on the thin bedspread with the half-eaten burger beside her.
Mika, ravenous, finished it off and then devoured the last one with its thin disc of greasy meat. If that’s meat, she thought, stifling a laugh, I’m the queen of Sheba.
Anyway, the two of them had gone far enough for the day. Each day is a journey and begins with one step. Each long journey ends with a curse, like a man with a gun or a minister with a Bible standing over a gravestone and saying something so wrong that nobody near him can argue with it.
But there are drums and chants in the world too, music and sisters with room to spare, not just bad men with guns and Bibles and stupid thoughts. There was a ladder in her chest to climb, something besides regret to remember. And they were further west than they had been that morning, closer to the faraway ocean and to her sister, who would welcome them with open arms. She promised herself for Lillooet’s sake, and her own, that this would be an adventure, no trail of tears.
She clutched her pouch in one clenched hand, afraid to open it because the hummingbird might fly free. And laughed. There was no pouch to clutch, but there it was, in her hand. “Hummingbird Mika,” she said, and heard her voice echo in the sparse room filled with the soggy spirits of others.
She said it a second time for good measure. “Hummingbird Mika.”
No more Walking-On-Eggs.
Border Guards
“People are, like, heading north? You notice that?” Ava said.
He had just arrived. His uniform was crisp, but his dark skin already glistened with sweat even inside the guard station.
Ava stared with dull eyes. “Dude,” she said, “another drink.” She held out her empty glass.
“You angry at what I did last night?” he said. He poured her more vodka.
She tried to remember what he had done. Was he confusing her with some other puta? She put the tumbler on the table in front of her without taking a swig. “People are nice up north. Most of them, anyway. It’s cold sometimes. We stay safe in the cold.”
“Never been,” he said. “Down here? On the border? I feel safe. Keep out the ones who don’t belong.” The two were inside a small Butler building, predesigned with Thermawall panels and a standing-seam metal roof system. Secure. Sensors everywhere. An old air-conditioning unit did its best to keep the place tolerable. Ava’s khaki uniform needed a wash real bad. Her companion, young but bald-headed, maybe with his scalp shaven, had a broken front tooth. What was the story with that? He had only arrived yesterday, so his uniform was still starchy. He looked to Ava like a gap-toothed, dark-skinned clown. All he needed was face paint and lipstick. She laughed.
He scowled. “You shoot anybody?” he said. “You kill anyone?” Her two weeks were done. He was there to replace her. That’s what border security came to in this part of the desert. There was no wall. No water, either, for that matter—just the dry river wash, chicken wire, and sensors. Safer here than anyplace else, probably.
