Free Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

from his dead uncle; his rustic armoire, where he hangs his clothes. He crosses town to say good-bye to Grandmother María. Trudging up the hill to her house, he encounters his father. “I’m leaving,” he says. “I’m going to make it to the U.S.” He asks him for money.
    His father gives him enough for a soda and wishes him luck.
    â€œGrandma, I’m leaving,” Enrique says. “I’m going to find my mom.”
    Don’t go, she pleads. She promises to build him a one-room house in the corner of her cramped lot. But he has made up his mind.
    She gives him 100 lempiras, about $7—all the money she has.
    â€œI’m leaving already, sis,” he tells Belky the next morning.
    She feels her stomach tighten. They have lived apart most of their lives, but he is the only one who understands her loneliness. Quietly, she fixes a special meal: tortillas, a pork cutlet, rice, fried beans with a sprinkling of cheese. “Don’t leave,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes.
    â€œI have to.”
    It is hard for him, too. Every time he has talked to his mother, she has warned him not to come—it’s too dangerous. But if somehow he gets to the U.S. border, he will call her. Being so close, she’ll have to welcome him. “If I call her from there,” he says to José, “how can she not accept me?”
    He makes himself one promise: “I’m going to reach the United States, even if it takes one year.” Only after a year of trying would he give up and go back.
    Quietly, Enrique, the slight kid with a boyish grin, fond of kites, spaghetti, soccer, and break dancing, who likes to play in the mud and watch Mickey Mouse cartoons with his four-year-old cousin, packs up his belongings: corduroy pants, a T-shirt, a cap, gloves, a toothbrush, and toothpaste.
    For a long moment, he looks at a picture of his mother, but he does not take it. He might lose it. He writes her telephone number on a scrap of paper. Just in case, he also scrawls it in ink on the inside waistband of his pants. He has $57 in his pocket.
    On March 2, 2000, he goes to his grandmother Águeda’s house. He stands on the same porch that his mother disappeared from eleven years before. He hugs María Isabel and Aunt Rosa Amalia. Then he steps off.

TWO

    Seeking Mercy
    T he day’s work is done at Las Anonas, a railside hamlet of thirty-six families in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, when a field hand, Sirenio Gómez Fuentes, sees a startling sight: a battered and bleeding boy, naked except for his undershorts.
    It is Enrique. He limps forward on bare feet, stumbling first one way, then another. His right shin is gashed. His upper lip is split. The left side of his face is swollen. He is crying.
    His eyes are red, filled with blood. He dabs open wounds on his face with a filthy sweater he has found on the tracks. Gómez hears him whisper, “Give me water, please.”
    The knot of apprehension in Sirenio Gómez melts into pity. He runs into his thatched hut, fills a cup, and gives it to Enrique.
    â€œDo you have a pair of pants?” Enrique asks.
    Gómez dashes back inside and fetches some. There are holes in the crotch and the knees, but they will do. Then, with kindness, Gómez directs Enrique to Carlos Carrasco, the mayor of Las Anonas. Whatever has happened, maybe he can help.
    Enrique hobbles down a dirt road into the heart of the little town. He encounters a man wearing a white straw hat on a horse. Could he help him find the mayor? “That’s me,” the man says. He stops and stares. “Did you fall from the train?”
    Again, Enrique begins to cry. Mayor Carrasco dismounts. He takes Enrique’s arm and guides him to his home, next to the town church. “Mom!” he shouts. “There’s a poor kid out here! He’s all beaten up.” Lesbia Sibaja, the mayor’s mother, hears his urgent tone and rushes