The Heart Is Not a Size by Beth Kephart

Concha working at the sink—one of them washing our dishes, one of them drying, a bare yellow lightbulb hanging above their heads. Leonor wore a checkerboard towel across one shoulder; as she talked, Concha laughed, as if washing dishes were the best part of their day. I thought about home and all my complaining when I had to load the dishwasher, and I stole a look at Riley, whose mother had a rule against doing any kitchen work herself. The sun had burned the mist across her nose. She was charming the hell out of Sophie.
    “Now I know, because I hear you talking, that you minded doing battle with the dust,” Mack went on. “And I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I like it myself. Anapra was desert before it was a colonia . It wasn’t a place that people chose to live until the maquiladoras —the assembly plants—went up along the border. Good for the economy, maybe. Bad for the environment and for the people who need to find a place to live somewhere close to their employment. The aquifer thatJuárez shares with El Paso is drying up. Tuberculosis and malaria and hepatitis are constants.
    “So the dust is bad; it’s devastating. But more than that, for people who aren’t blessed like you and I have been blessed, it kills. Not long ago in Anapra, a seven-month-old boy choked to death on it. His lungs were thick with the stuff; his house had been open to the wind. He was a baby, and the air killed him. And this is life as thousands know it in Anapra.”
    I saw Drake close his enormous eyes. I saw Mrs. K. reach to touch Catherine’s hand. Jon crossed his arms, and Corey did, then Sam and Neil crossed their arms, too, as if they could protect themselves from the news they’d heard, or from the heartache of Anapra. I wouldn’t look at Riley to see how she felt. I didn’t need to know.
    “It’s one thing to come to Juárez and be reminded of your own good fortune,” Mack continued. “But the question is: Will that be enough? Is simply knowing that you are better off going to define you?”
    He left the question hanging. He stood up, and Lobo stood with him, the dog’s nose high and hopeful, as if Mack had some treat stashed in a pocket. Manuelappeared from out of the shadows. The lightbulb had gone off above Leonor and Concha.
    “The day is getting on,” Mrs. K. said.
    We sat there, still. Riley had turned and was looking my way—one quick, small glance. Hurt eyes. I shrugged. Made like I didn’t care.
     
    In Cities of the Plain , McCarthy’s book, John Grady is a cowboy who loves whatever he finds so much that he makes it his business to protect it. He loves the horses on the ranch where he works with his best friend, Billy. He loves the pup whose brother dies, loves the epileptic prostitute whom he finds in a whorehouse in Juárez. He takes the whole throb of life upon his shoulders, and he’s a hero, but he’s also doomed—you can just feel it; you know he’s not going to survive the excess of his self-inflicted caring. You grow up being told that responsibility is a good word, that you should step forward first, that you should manage. But the truth is: Too much responsibility gets you into trouble. It boxes you in, divides you into two very different, separate people. Your responsible, solid version is what everybody comments on: Georgia’s reliable. Georgia will do it. Georgia always knows what she is doing. She will come through. Your private, hidden self, meanwhile, would shout a different story.
    That night, after Mack’s talk, I told myself that I didn’t need Riley, that I could do without her, that she was wrong, dead wrong, and apologizing was her business. That I’d wait for her to come to me—wait her out, ignore her so bad that in the end she could no longer afford to ignore me. I sat alone as if I didn’t mind the alone. Studied the photos I’d taken that day—spinning them backward and forward on that little, glassy screen. Riley before the fight. Anapra afterward.