While Nacho curses me out, Charlie’s not faring any better. People are beginning to move pretty quickly.
“Nacho?”
“Fine. Put me on speakerphone.”
I approach Charlie and show him the phone. He grinds his jaw but nods.
“Nacho, do you know what’s going on?”
“More or less.”
“Can you tell these folks I’m not ICE?”
Nacho begins translating for Charlie while Erik attaches a portable speaker to my phone. After a long beat of silence, a middle-aged woman ventures back and begins asking questions.
“Uh, Bram? She wants to see my face. Not sure that’ll go well with the tattoos and stuff.”
Looking at the woman he’s speaking to, I answer, “Not sure you have any other choice. Here, I’ll pull up FaceTime.”
When the screen switches to his pillow-creased, slightly disgruntled face, I can’t help but smile.
“El es tu novio?” the lady asks, looking between us.
Nacho chuckles.
“What did she just ask?”
“She wants to know if you’re my boyfriend.”
I rub the back of my neck, my cheeks heating.
She says something else, which makes Nacho laugh even harder, and that sets her off as well. Her laughter draws everyone in, and I decide I’ll wait to get into that tomorrow.
They go back and forth, and it’s clear Nacho is being incredibly kind to the lady. She’s asking Charlie and Erik the kinds of questions that leave no doubt about the nature of what they do. While Nacho’s doing a good job keeping a neutral face with the lady, I can tell he’s not loving the answers he’s translating.
Thankfully, though, he’s able to translate the answers to the woman’s satisfaction, and Charlie is able to call in his volunteers. While we’re waiting for them, Charlie asks us to find out if they encountered any abuses along the way, and a couple of the women point to the driver. Charlie and I spend a few moments with them as Nacho translates, and…it’s bad.
As Nacho illuminates us about their experiences, Charlie’s face transforms from concerned seriousness to barely concealed rage.
He waves Erik over.
“Anders is flying back tonight, right?”
Erik nods. “Already on the plane.”
“Get him on the phone.”
I don’t know exactly what it means for the driver that Anders is on his way back, but it isn’t good. In the end, the driver ends up hogtied under a tarp in the back of Charlie’s truck, and neither Levy nor I have any objections.
Refocusing on the brave women, Levy and I give them a few comforting words to get through these next days and promise to support them while we find counselors who speak Spanish. They hug us and kiss our cheeks and say lovely things to Nacho.
He wipes a tear as they walk away. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this conversation,” he says with more authority than I’ve ever heard from him.
Watching Nacho listen to these women with such tenderness makes my heart run headlong into feelings I didn’t know I was capable of. I wonder if I haven’t felt this way about him since the beginning.
I look up, and Levy’s doing that thing where he reads my expression and knows too much without me saying a word. He shakes his head, and I know we’re way overdue for an awkward—and unavoidable—conversation.
The people are loaded onto school buses to be taken to the old convent, and most of the guys who ran off circle back around and rejoin the group.
