Pedro had sent him some money to pay a man to guide him across the border on foot through the Sonoran desert. Five men, three women and four children had crossed the 80 miles with him. In the 42-degree heat, with the mother screaming on the bankside, Consuelo had watched one of the children drown in a river they had been forced to cross. When Consuelo arrived, he was harrowed. The terror of life in Mexico had been replaced by the terror of living in a completely foreign land. The terror of getting caught and having the chance of a better life obliterated. Consuelo felt like an outsider. He and Pedro had manufactured their lives with a mindset of survival. An achievement mentality was a luxury not given or taught to them. Success was a new pair of shoes, a liter of Pepsi, the money they could wire back home. Despite leaving their country behind and the stoicism with which they conducted themselves, because of that terror, they clung to all the familiar parts of their culture for dear life as if trying to turn America into a new and improved Mexico. With the ongoing threat of a wall being built between America and Mexico, and the increased vigilance of the feared ICE immigration agents, their lives could only get worse.

Aria looked around the room. On the wall in the corner was an altar topped with religious relics. A green and orange statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe stood front and center upon it, her virtue and blessing presiding over the store. The altar below her had been draped with a bright yellow mesh scarf. Beside her was a collection of fake flowers displayed in a vase. A gunmetal rosary hung off of the corner so as to display the Catholic cross at its base, and beside that, a long green candle in a glass container with a painting of San Judas Tadeo. The candle had been turned upside down. As per tradition, the candle would remain that way until the wish that Lolita had made on that candle had come true. She had wished for a kind and responsible man to come into her life and never leave her.

To Aria’s left, at another of the small tables, a group of four women sat around a game of loteria. Like bingo, the little place cards were arranged in front of them with pennies covering what squares had already been called. Aria could just make out some of the “tarot meets tattoo parlor” drawings on the squares. The women were betting on the game with quarters piled in the center of the table. Despite it being a game based entirely on chance and luck, they parlayed the money they would win, buffering the unpredictable and uncontrollable reality of the game with superstition.