They’d waited to cross but there were too many patrols on the other side. At that part of the river, there’d been no hint of breeze or even life. Just brush, tumbleweed, straw-colored dust that she’d expelled into tissue. She’d breathed so much sand she pictured it coating her lungs, its own desert beside her heart, a dune under her ribs.

But tonight was opposite, dry ice. It hurt to breathe. The mud was cold. She knew the water would be too. She knew the cold would wipe the fear, and she wanted to be there already, in the water, floating on her back, though she knew that wouldn’t be the case.

“I don’t want to go in,” the little girl in pigtails whispered beside her, teary.

“You have to,” Ana told her. “It’s going to be okay.”

“My mom is on the other side,” she said.

“We’re going to be okay.”

The girl reminded Ana of herself, of the trunk of a car, the cold of metal, of hospital machines. Of when she’d been motherless for days after her mother’s detention, taken in by a stranger and wondering if she’d ever see her own family again.

The pollero got the call. Border Patrol agents switched shifts and would leave their patrol cars empty with the headlights on. A one-hour window, what they’d waited for all day. He whispered directions, thrust their tires.

Motherless, motherless again.

The adults pushed the kids forward as best they could. A few sniffled and whimpered; one yelped when her feet touched the water. Ana gripped her plastic bag with one hand and dragged the tire with the other. Her feet touched the icy water, and the mud became thicker, more greedily sucking. She lifted each foot with effort and finally gave up and slid through the muck.

The water was thicker than she had imagined. She’d pictured a swift river and currents she’d have to battle with all her might. But the river was rather narrow, and the water swampy, muddy. Ana could barely see before her, but she was guided by the shapes on the other side. She plodded until the water drenched her waist, and she remembered the pollero had told them to swim. She waded with one hand holding the bag on her head and the other grasping the tire. All around her, the others did the same, quiet, the only sound water splashing. Ana tried to wipe her eyes with her forearm but streaked mud across her face. Her eyes stung. She had only waded for minutes but already her arms felt tired, her shoulder muscles burned. She kicked and kicked but was making it across at a crawling pace. Maybe there was a current.

Ana heard a yelp and the commotion of splashing water.