strip of fabric had been tied around her lean waist beneath the now ankle-length cloth that served as her only cover. Hanging from this strip were more cactus pads, already cooked and softened, a dead rattlesnake with a bite torn from behind its head, and a hand that had a tattoo of a star between the thumb and forefinger. She remembered the cactus pads. They’d become a staple, sustaining her with their watery green flesh. She also had a flash of a memory of the snake, when she’d run on all fours to catch it. But how she’d come by the hand she had no idea, and why it only had three fingers, she was at an even greater loss to answer.
Her eyes followed the helicopter as it swept the length of the fence, its spotlight roving in great, searching arcs. She’d kept the twenty-foot-tall divide on her left for a full day as she’d sought a way through. Here and there she’d spied a camera, and once she’d seen a man standing on the other side, as if he were on a ladder or a ledge, a rifle in his hand, pointing in her direction. But she’d always kept far enough away that they couldn’t get to her.
***
Her eyes caught everything in freeze-frame simplicity, even the puff of smoke from far across the sand as it exited the barrel of the rifle. The bang was an afterthought, punctuating the round roaring through her brain, sending her into a dead fall. She felt both surprise and the recognition of the inevitable, then she felt nothing at all, until the scorpions brought her around once more.
Dimly she knew that what she’d always wanted was on the other side. She had a place reserved in the American Dream and a bill to pay whether she was able to make it there or not. But it had become less of a drive and more of a memory of something she’d never had. Instead, another choice had come to her, one that resided at the base of the tree.
The noises of the scorpions now spoke volumes to her— each click-clacking a memory, a dream, a favorite food, a perfect morning, her mother’s laugh from before she knew the truth, the roar of evening traffic outside her Harbin apartment’s window and even her father’s smile before she was the counterfeit daughter, all coming together combining into a chitinous opus of her life. They communicated in a language that was at once harsh and beautiful, entreating her to sit beneath their tree, to join them, to listen to their story of her life, of other lives, of everyone’s life.
And she wanted to.
She wanted to go there. She wanted to change her direction, to change her mind, just as she’d hoped her father had changed his mind in the face of the execution squad, realizing that he really did love her and not just because her becoming precious had given him a chance to have a son.
The helicopter’s spotlight arced towards her. She pulled the folds of the cloth over her head and turned away. It would never see her. It never did. All it ever saw was the darkness of the desert. It never realized that there was intelligence here. It never realized there was something different. It roared off into the night, leaving her alone and wanting the scorpion song once more.
How was it she’d gotten there before? Why couldn’t she go there now?
Then she saw them: six Mexicans picking their way carefully through the cacti. The one in front used a walking stick to prod the ground in front of him while the others held onto the pack of the person in front of them, moving carefully in line. She wasn’t aware that she’d already selected the one in the middle until she heard herself growl.
Then she was off and running on all fours. Her arms and legs somehow conformed to allow her to move swiftly, like a feral beast. When she struck, she screamed.
***
“Why is it you want to leave?” the Snakehead had asked.
“Does it matter? I thought you only wanted my money.”
He smiled. “It matters,” he’d said simply.
She’d thought for a moment as the memory clouds in her mind roiled. “All my family is dead,” she finally said.
“Your father was executed. Did you learn what he did?”
She remembered how her mother had screamed at him as he’d been taken away.