We Are Not from Here

Waiting all day for the train, Pulga angrily turns aside Pequeña’s offers of bread. He thinks Pequeña is sorry for making him keep going, though she tells him bluntly that staying will not bring Chico back. On the train, Pulga tries to distract himself from the moment of pulling away by listening to the mixtape, but his father’s words now sound like lies to him, similar to the lies he told Chico and Don Felicio to comfort them as they died. Pulga feels he will cry and mourn forever, sinking more deeply into guilt and remorse for pushing Chico to keep going.

Night stretches on and a storm brings lightning and rain. The rain provides water for drinking and refilling bottles but is cold and stinging as the train continues on its journey, called the “hell route” (251). Pequeña has another vision, seeing God in her surroundings as a mother cups rainwater into the mouth of her child. Pequeña’s next vision is of a pretty house with a woman on the porch. She tries to get to the house but feels stuck outside. Later, Pequeña is on the porch holding the hand of “someone I might love. Someone who doesn’t exist but might. Someday” (253). At the same time, she wonders if the house is full of “ghosts.” Pequeña worries that Pulga will have no spirit left even if he survives the trip.

Pulga sees lost-looking migrants at the next stop as they wait for another train. Pequeña points out that Pulga’s notes for how to make the trip stop soon in his notebook, but Pulga can only see the town name Lecheria, where Chico died. Pequeña guesses aloud that they will get to a town called Altar, where they will rest and prepare to cross the desert, but Pulga just shrugs without emotion.

The train comes through but does not slow down, so the waiting migrants cannot climb on. Pequeña hears an old man who attempted this boarding in the past say that there is a bend an hour’s walk up the tracks where the next train will slow enough to board. Pulga is very difficult to motivate into walking, but she tells him to “stay and fight” (259), appealing to his remaining spirit. They begin walking.

The teenagers come to the bend in the tracks but wait for “two sunrises and two sunsets” (261), during which time Pequeña tries to ask about Pulga’s dreams and goals. Pulga claims he has none but listens to Pequeña talk about hers: “Maybe a…counselor, or a therapist, or something” (261). Once on the train, Pequeña tells him the story of a woman so wracked with grief over the death of her son that she died on his grave; others re-opened the coffin so as to place her body with that of her son. Pulga is angry and just wants to be finished with any attempt at the journey. Pequeña tells him that the next train they board will be the last one.

Pequeña feels relief and amazement when traveling aboard La Bestia is finally over, but as they enter the town of Altar, she senses terrible danger. A street peddler tells them he can sell them anything they need for the desert crossing for a price. Pequeña says they just want to find a shelter, and the man ominously tells them nothing is free, and gets on his phone as they walk away. The teenagers try a shelter with a sign advertising a rate of 40 pesos per person a night, but the proprietor wants double that amount. When Pequeña mentions the sign, the proprietor increases the price to 100 pesos per person per night. They try to leave politely but the proprietor follows with a vicious dog. They run for a church and the dog attacks Pulga, biting him on the shoulder. A nun comes out of the church with a shotgun and wards off the proprietor and his dog. She takes Pulga and Pequeña into a “maze” of rooms under the church where she and a priest, Padre Gonzalez, tend to Pulga’s wound, stitching him up without any pain medication. The woman gives them apple juice and crackers before the priest takes them to a shelter that he runs.

Pulga knows their time on La Bestia is over but doesn’t feel like he can escape what happened to Chico. His guilt worsens. At Padre Gonzalez’s shelter, a woman named Carlita welcomes them to shower and eat. A stranger playing cards acknowledges that the trip is very bad but tells Pulga that he will be okay. Pulga wonders why God did not help Chico. That night, Pulga has a nightmare about La Bestia. The next morning, Pulga and Pequeña meet a man, Alvaro, his wife, Nilsa, and their son, Nene, and two other young men who are brothers. All are planning to cross the desert to the United States. Alvaro thinks maybe their coyote—a paid guide who smuggles people across the US-Mexico border—might be willing to take Pulga and Pequeña as part of the group as well. Pequeña asks Alvaro to find out, saying she will pay the money the coyote wants. Pulga tells her to go on without him, but Pequeña tells him she won’t.