the lady, the baby, or the diaper?

Salt Lake City to LAX; late March, 2004

The benches near my Southwest Airlines departure gate are empty: I miscalculated the length of the drive and arrived nearly an hour earlier than I needed to. I buy myself a bottle of water, then find a nice empty spot on the bench were I can spread out a bit. I take out my laptop and start working on my novel, finally; I haven’t had nearly as much time for this as I would have liked. My fingers glide across the keyboard and I successfully tune out the outside world. Until…

“Excuse me.”

I look up to see two young women standing in front of me. Woman 1 is holding a baby, a baby blanket and a diaper bag. Woman 2 is only holding a purse. “Yes?”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

I nod.

“Good.” Woman 1 smiles. “She’s never flown before,” she gestures to Woman 2. “And she doesn’t understand any English. Do you mind just telling her when they’re about to board?”

“Sure.” I shrug. “But aren’t you…”

“Great,” Woman 1 interrupts me before I can ask her where she’s going or why she won’t be around with her friend. She turns to Woman 2 and quickly trades the baby for the purse. Then she’s gone.

For a moment, the click of her high heels echoes on the linoleum floor as her figure recedes until she’s disappeared and we’re left only with the crowd and the din of people waiting for our flight. And Woman 2, who tells me her name is Rosa, and the baby.

Rosa and the baby sit next to me while I finish my work and close up my laptop. The baby has big brown eyes and huge cheeks just begging to be pinched. She’s 9 months old, or so Rosa tells me. And so good: calm, quiet, alert and smiley. Much more smiley than her stoic mother.

People start to line up for the flight in boarding groups. As I had promised the disappearing stranger, I tell Rosa to follow me to Group A’s line. Rosa smiles, picks up the baby, the diaper bag and baby blanket and joins me in line.

“Where are you from?” I ask as we’re waiting.

“Guadalajara.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Five years.” Five years and she’s somehow managed to develop absolutely no English skills. In Utah.

Her glance dances around the terminal and her posture seems tense.

“Are you afraid of flying?”

“A little,” she says.

I explain what it’s like: takeoff, the pressure buildup in your ears, how to get rid of it, not to worry if the baby cries.

“Will you sit next to me?” she asks.

“What’s in Los Angeles?” I ask, desperate to change the subject.

“I have an aunt there,” she says. “We’re going to meet her.”

The line starts moving and I let her go ahead of me with the baby. I suggest that she might want an aisle seat and watch her settle in with the baby. I pass them and move to an emergency exit row. They’re on the flight, I think; my work is done.

The flight fills quickly. I’m surrounded by businessmen coming home early from a retreat somewhere near Salt Lake City (and who plans corporate retreats in Salt Lake City in late March?). They joke with each other, and sometimes with me, for most of the flight. I’ve almost forgotten about Rosa and her baby until we start deplaning.

Of course, they’re waiting for me. Rosa’s standing next to her seat, and they’re both looking at me with enormous eyes.

“We’re here,” I tell her. “Los Angeles. You can get off.”

She nods and picks up the smiling baby and the diaper bag.

“Did she cry?” I ask.

“No,” Rosa says.

We walk out into the terminal.

“Well, have a good trip,” I say as I start walking toward the exit.

“Wait.” Rosa grabs my arm. “Please.” Her voice is higher, tighter, panicked. “I need to find my aunt.”

“You have to go to baggage claim,” I point toward the exit. “Visitors aren’t allowed in here. Not at the gate.”

Rosa nods. “Where is that?”

I sigh. Why can’t I seem to just get rid of these people? “Follow me.”

Through the terminal, down the escalators, out into the baggage claim area. She looks around and I start walking to the exit. She runs up to me and tugs at my sleeve again.

“She’s not here.” Now she’s really panicked.

“Maybe she’s late. There’s traffic.”

“I think I was supposed to meet her by the gate.”

“I’m telling you, you can’t get in there without at ticket. Just go and get your bags and she’ll come.”

“Bags?”

“That’s all you have?” I point to the diaper bag, the fuzzy baby blanket, her small purse.

She nods.

“Just wait. She knows you’re coming. I’m sure she’ll find you.”

She still hasn’t let go of my arm. And I realize that I haven’t heard the baby make a single noise yet.

“Please. Help me find her.”

“I’ve got to go…”

“Please. I have a phone number here. Please help me call her.”

Sometimes, I am definitely too much of a good Samaritan for my own good. I walk her over to a bank of pay phones. We attempt to call.

“No, no. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.” Rosa’s body stiffens and her hand shakes as she holds the receiver. “…okay, okay.” She hangs up.

“She says she’s looking for me inside,” Rosa tells me.

“That’s impossible,” I say.

“We need to go back up there.”

“You can’t,” I shrug. “Not now.”

“She says she was there looking for us.” Rosa sounds angry now, agitated, afraid. It turns out she has no money in purse at all, not even enough for another phone call.

Whoever this aunt was, whether she was at the gate or not, she didn’t recognize Rosa or the baby. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your aunt?”

Rosa shakes her head and starts to cry. “I need to find her.”

I start walking to the exit, dragging my suitcase. She follows me, crying as she clutches the baby.

“Do you need some help?” a woman in an LAX uniform asks.

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“Si”

"This woman,” I say, switching back to Spanish now. “She needs your help.”

As the sliding glass doors close behind me, three other people in LAX uniforms are surrounding Rosa and her baby.

Later I wondered what exactly had gone on back there. Who – or what – was being trafficked?

• Rosa? (I had just come back from a trip to southeast Asia and had been reading rather obsessively about sex trafficking and slavery. There were houses of captive women in various suburbs and cities around the US, and the women didn’t even realize they could escape).
• Drugs? (which might have been easily concealed in the baby’s diaper)
• The baby? (a few weeks later on an entirely different trip, I met a man from Salt Lake City who somehow mentioned that Utah had become a hub for smuggling babies in from third world countries and then selling them to couples here desperate to adopt)

Later still, I learned that those people in LAX uniforms were actually under cover Border Patrol agents.

To this day I wonder where Rosa ended up. Was she better off not finding her aunt, or finding her? I still wonder where that baby ended up, and if it was really even Rosa's at all...