Enrique's Journey Chapter One

Finally, he enters the house, picks open the lock to a bedroom door, then jimmies the back of his aunt's armoire with a knife.

Enrique's father bathes, dresses, splashes on cologne and follows her.

He grows quiet, introverted.

Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches.

But their odyssey comes to a humiliating halt.

She has hopes for him: graduation from high school, a white-collar job, maybe as an engineer.

Alone now, he and his father's elderly mother share a shack 30 feet square.

They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits and gang members deported from the United States.

Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Thousands, shelter workers say, make their way through Mexico clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains.

Hidden beside a wall scrawled with graffiti, they inhale glue late into the night.

Feverishly, the scavengers reach up into the sliding ooze to pluck out bits of plastic, wood and tin.

Hidden beside a wall scrawled with graffiti, they inhale glue late into the night.

Enrique's uncles careen off the road.

Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches.

If she were here, he knows where he might well be: scavenging in the trash dump across town.

Hidden beside a wall scrawled with graffiti, they inhale glue late into the night.

The coyotes, as they are called, are often alcoholics or drug addicts.

He imagines gnomes and fixates on ants.

Many, including Enrique, begin to idealize their mothers.

They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits and gang members deported from the United States.

To Enrique, it is another rejection.

The wooden door pries only partway open, and the single window has no glass, just bars.

She commiserates with a friend whose mother has also left.

Lourdes crosses into the United States in one of the largest immigrant waves in the country's history.

She unintentionally became pregnant, and now he has been deported.

Others flee abusive families.

On a well-worn rock nearby, Enrique's grandmother washes musty used clothing she sells door to door.

At 10 p.m., the family returns to find the bedroom ransacked.

Enrique clings to his daddy, who dotes on him.

Worse, he is sullying the only thing her family owns: its good name.

"What's that?" she asks, reeling away from the fumes.

They must make an illegal and dangerous trek up the length of Mexico.

He stands on top of the teacher's desk and bellows, "Who is Enrique?"

He has no vendor's license, so he keeps moving, darting between wooden carts piled with papayas.

Unwittingly, Lourdes sows it herself.

Sometimes he hallucinates that someone is chasing him.

Lourdes, 24, scrubs other people's laundry in a muddy river.

He is dressing like a slob--his life is unraveling.

Lourdes does consider hiring a smuggler to bring the children but fears the danger.

If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel.

Neither he nor his mother realizes it, but this kernel of an idea will take root.

She is proud that her money pays Belky's tuition at a private high school and eventually a college, to study accounting.

She grows angry when he comes home late, knocking on her door, rousing the household.

Enrique's bewilderment turns to confusion and then to adolescent anger.

Feverishly, the scavengers reach up into the sliding ooze to pluck out bits of plastic, wood and tin.

It is embarrassing when girls see him peddle fruit cups or when they hear someone call him "the tamale man."

Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches.

If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel.

Here in El Infiernito, they carry chimbas, guns fashioned from plumbing pipes, and they drink charamila, diluted rubbing alcohol.

"We need money just for food," says his grandmother, who suffers from cataracts.

Trudging up the hill to her house, he encounters his father.

As the youngsters sort through the stinking stew, thousands of sleek, black buzzards soar in a dark, swirling cloud.

To her, it seems that Belky struggles with an unavoidable question: How can I be worth something if my mother left me?

Enrique's bewilderment turns to confusion and then to adolescent anger.

As the youngsters sort through the stinking stew, thousands of sleek, black buzzards soar in a dark, swirling cloud.

Here in El Infiernito, they carry chimbas, guns fashioned from plumbing pipes, and they drink charamila, diluted rubbing alcohol.

Its walls and ceiling are charred black.

They live on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, in Honduras.

Instead, he orders Tania to stay indoors indefinitely, for her own safety.<

Nonetheless, she takes him in.

Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents.

Her disappearance is incomprehensible.

Now, for the first time, Enrique clambers aboard.

When he comes down, he becomes hysterical and insulting.

A trickle of cloudy white sewage runs past the front gate.

She is proud that her money pays Belky's tuition at a private high school and eventually a college, to study accounting.

Jose was terrified.

He is lucid enough to tell Belky that he knows what he has to do.

There they approach a freight train near the depot.

A few feet beyond is his privy--a hole with a wooden shanty over it.

They navigate by word of mouth or by the arc of the sun.

Marco is a money changer on the Honduran border, and his family, including a son, lives in a five-bedroom house in a middle-class neighborhood of Tegucigalpa.

Enrique pleads with him.

They have a bleak future.

A bricklayer, his father takes Enrique to work and lets him help mix mortar.

view The view through a fence at the home where Enrique lived with his paternal grandmother.

She will become a resident and bring her children to the United States legally.

Mexican rail workers have encountered 7-year-olds on their way to find their mothers.

Since the 1990s, Mexico and the United States have tried to thwart them.

Although the women struggle to pay rent and eat in the United States, in the imaginations of their children back home they become deliverance itself, the answer to every problem.

At night, they huddle together on the train cars or next to the tracks.

Enrique, now 15, gathers his clothing and goes to his maternal grandmother.

Lourdes sends Enrique $50 a month, occasionally $100, sometimes nothing.

He sells the few things he owns: his bed, a gift from his mother; his leather jacket, a gift from his dead uncle; his rustic armoire, where he hangs his clothes.

Unlike half the children from his neighborhood, he completes elementary school.

On one occasion, Jose is threatened by a man who wraps a chain around his neck.

He is sniffing glue.

She will become a resident and bring her children to the United States legally.

Work is plentiful.

Feverishly, the scavengers reach up into the sliding ooze to pluck out bits of plastic, wood and tin.

Then she scolds herself.

For two years, he is entrusted to his father, Luis, from whom his mother had been separated for three years.

Belky notices cloudy yellow fingerprints on Maria Isabel's jeans: glue, a remnant of Enrique's embrace.

Enrique is sobbing quietly in his bed, cradling a picture of Uncle Marco in his arms.

Enrique is bruised and limping, and he misses Maria Isabel.

"What's that?" she asks, reeling away from the fumes.

Enrique is bewildered.

Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents.

To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, the children jump on and off the moving train cars.

Finding them becomes the quest for the Holy Grail.

This time she smells acetone and hears the rustle of plastic.

She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is 7.

If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel.

Next to the rock is the latrine--a concrete hole.

He scrambles aboard again.

The guard has a son 23 years old, and the slaying impels the young man to go to the United States.

When he is, their talk is clipped and anxious.

After school, Enrique sells tamales and plastic bags of fruit juice from a bucket hung in the crook of his arm.

The guard has a son 23 years old, and the slaying impels the young man to go to the United States.

He comes back before crossing the Rio Grande and tells Enrique about riding on trains, leaping off rolling freight cars and dodging la migra, Mexican immigration agents.

A priest at a Texas shelter says they often bring pictures of themselves in their mothers' arms.

But Rosa Amalia thinks the separation has caused deep emotional problems.

She only wants him to work and to be honorable, so that he can hold his head up high.

But their odyssey comes to a humiliating halt.

"You are a lazy bum! A drug addict! No one wants you here."

She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel and finally the emptiness.

Enrique is banished to a tiny stone building seven feet behind the house but a world away.

She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel and finally the emptiness.

Feverishly, the scavengers reach up into the sliding ooze to pluck out bits of plastic, wood and tin.

Employers pay poorly and treat them badly.

Unwittingly, Lourdes sows it herself.

Sometimes they abandon their charges.

"Negrito," he calls him fondly, because of his dark skin.

The youngster had left Puerto Cortes in Honduras three months before, guided only by his cunning and the single thing he knew about her: where she lived.

A woman in Long Beach, whose house she cleans, agrees to sponsor her residency.

She shrieks.

Near Tierra Blanca, a small town in Veracruz state, authorities snatch them from the top of a freight car.

She and her new daughter, Diana, 2, are living in a garage, sometimes on emergency welfare.

It is enough for food, but not for school clothes, fees, notebooks or pencils, which are expensive in Honduras.

She is his salvation.

He has no vendor's license, so he keeps moving, darting between wooden carts piled with papayas.

Enrique ended the strained calls by saying "I want to be with you."

Enrique is sobbing quietly in his bed, cradling a picture of Uncle Marco in his arms.

His hands tremble.

Although he is in his teens, Enrique is small, just shy of 5 feet, even when he straightens up from a slight stoop.

Typically the children are teenagers.

They navigate by word of mouth or by the arc of the sun.

Gutters carry rain off the patched tin roof into two barrels.

They find coconuts to sell for bus fare and go home.

Each year, he is disappointed.

The thieves shoot Uncle Marco three times in the chest and once in the leg.

If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel.

To her, Enrique is an economic burden.

She is overwhelmed.

One week, as his uncle's security guard returns from trading Honduran lempiras, robbers drag the guard off a bus and kill him.

She is proud that her money pays Belky's tuition at a private high school and eventually a college, to study accounting.

Neither he nor his mother realizes it, but this kernel of an idea will take root.

He looks at himself in disgust.

If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel.

Belky, now 9, is furious about the new baby.

The boys never linger.

If Enrique doesn't pay up, the dealer vows, he will kill Enrique's sister.

Her gifts arrive steadily.

Scrubbing floors bloodies her knees, but she takes extra jobs, one at a candy factory for $2.25 an hour.

They console each other.

Some nights, at 10 or so, they climb a steep, winding path to the top of another hill.

The stone hut becomes his home.

She kneels and kisses Belky and hugs her tightly.

The cheapest coyote, immigrant advocates say, charges $3,000 per child.

His uncle trusts him, even to make bank deposits.

When he comes down, he becomes hysterical and insulting.

One day she awakens at 2 a.m.

They take their joints partway up a hill to a billiard hall, where they sit outside smoking and listening to the music that drifts through the open doors.

As soon as he says it, he flushes with shame and guilt.

If she asks a question, the response is delayed.

He comes back before crossing the Rio Grande and tells Enrique about riding on trains, leaping off rolling freight cars and dodging la migra, Mexican immigration agents.

A teacher hugs him and mutters, "Thank God, Enrique's out of here."

Here people are less hostile.

They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits and gang members deported from the United States.

Some MS have been U.S. residents, living in Los Angeles until 1996, when a federal law began requiring judges to deport them if they committed serious crimes.

The cheapest coyote, immigrant advocates say, charges $3,000 per child.

His mother seldom calls.

Enrique misses her enormously.

It would melt her resolve.

She has hopes for him: graduation from high school, a white-collar job, maybe as an engineer.

Maria Isabel, Enrique's girlfriend, finds him sitting on a rock at a street corner, weeping, rejected again.

Belky notices cloudy yellow fingerprints on Maria Isabel's jeans: glue, a remnant of Enrique's embrace.

But their odyssey comes to a humiliating halt.

Pride forbids it.

He has no vendor's license, so he keeps moving, darting between wooden carts piled with papayas.

Some MS have been U.S. residents, living in Los Angeles until 1996, when a federal law began requiring judges to deport them if they committed serious crimes.

Through the dimness, she sees Enrique in his bed, puffing on a bag.

By mid-December, he owes his marijuana supplier 6,000 lempiras, about $400.

The officers take them to a cell filled with MS gangsters, then deport them.

It is for them she is leaving, she tells herself, but still, she feels guilty.

For Belky, their mother's disappearance is just as distressing.

To her, Enrique is an economic burden.

He is jumpy and nervous.

Although he is in his teens, Enrique is small, just shy of 5 feet, even when he straightens up from a slight stoop.

As he began to rebel, she asked him: "Dont you love me? I am going to send you away."

How can she justify leaving her children if she returns empty-handed?

Enrique despairs.

In their absence, these mothers become larger than life.

There is a small ceremony.

To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, the children jump on and off the moving train cars.

His uncle pays as much attention to him as he does his own son, if not more.

Others flee abusive families.

She is proud that her money pays Belky's tuition at a private high school and eventually a college, to study accounting.

Boxes arrive in Tegucigalpa bearing clothes, shoes, toy cars, a Robocop doll, a television.

Now Enrique's anger boils over.

He comes back before crossing the Rio Grande and tells Enrique about riding on trains, leaping off rolling freight cars and dodging la migra, Mexican immigration agents.

His temper is quick.

If she asks a question, the response is delayed.

Enrique and a friend, Jose del Carmen Bustamante, 16, venture into El Infiernito to buy marijuana.

The supplier accuses Enrique of lying and threatens to kill him.

As soon as he says it, he flushes with shame and guilt.

There are good months, though, when she can earn $1,000 to $1,200 cleaning offices and homes.

They speak bitter words that both, along with Enrique's Grandmother Agueda, will recall months later.

But the robbery finally convinces Uncle Carlos that Enrique needs help.

He hesitates.

For a large commission, would he exchange $50,000 in lempiras on the border with El Salvador?

Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents.

She and the others are consumed by the slayings of the two uncles; they pay little attention to Enrique.

A woman in Long Beach, whose house she cleans, agrees to sponsor her residency.

When he is, their talk is clipped and anxious.

They speak bitter words that both, along with Enrique's Grandmother Agueda, will recall months later.

She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel and finally the emptiness.

For a large commission, would he exchange $50,000 in lempiras on the border with El Salvador?

The journey is hard for the Mexicans but harder still for Enrique and the others from Central America.

Because of the security guard's murder, Marco swears that he will never change money again.

It had never occurred to him: If she will not come home, then maybe he can go to her.

For two particularly bad weeks, he doesn't recognize family members.

The youngster had left Puerto Cortes in Honduras three months before, guided only by his cunning and the single thing he knew about her: where she lived.

He tries to hide his habit.

It is no substitute for her presence.

Lourdes arranges for a brother, Marco Antonio Zablah, to take him in.

Some MS have been U.S. residents, living in Los Angeles until 1996, when a federal law began requiring judges to deport them if they committed serious crimes.

Uncle Marco gives Enrique a daily allowance, buys him clothes and sends him to a private military school.

"If I call her from there," he says to Jose, "how can she not accept me?"

One week, as his uncle's security guard returns from trading Honduran lempiras, robbers drag the guard off a bus and kill him.

She tries to comfort him.

Be patient.

But she develops a plan.

They know a girl whose mother died of a heart attack.

Some MS have been U.S. residents, living in Los Angeles until 1996, when a federal law began requiring judges to deport them if they committed serious crimes.

His father throws her out.

"We need money just for food," says his grandmother, who suffers from cataracts.

On a high, he grows quiet, sleepy and distant.

A policeman discovered a 9-year-old boy four years ago near the downtown Los Angeles tracks.

On one occasion, Jose is threatened by a man who wraps a chain around his neck.

She should thank her mother for leaving; without the money she sends for books and uniforms, Belky could not even attend school.

Lourdes does consider hiring a smuggler to bring the children but fears the danger.