We Never Drive at Night 

1

Even though the president’s thrown all the gang members in jail, we don’t hang around El Cuco after dark. It’s edgy: Blokes stumble past with faces caved in from fights, drunks lean on decades-dead pinball machines, and men without homes sleep in the children’s park opposite the bottle shop.

We talk about staying here—surely it would be cheaper than where we are—but when I follow a sign advertising habitaciones for rent along the beach, I mistake the rooms for toilet cubicles. They have black metal doors and no windows. It isn’t a place for two sleep-deprived surfers and their 18-month-old baby: not the cubicles, not the town.

Our son is oblivious to our fear. He beams at the fighters and the drunks and the homeless. He waves his small, star-like hand at them. Blows tiny besos. And the men—surprised into broken, gap-toothed grins—wave and blow kisses back. 

2

We drink margaritas, tart with wild lime, at a beachside bar. A celebration—we’re surfed out. Our backs are burned violet. Our eyes are bloodied by sun. We’ve been so busy chasing waves that we’ve washed the baby in freshwater only once this week. His ringlets are matting into dreadlocks.

We watch two fishermen steer their lancha toward shore. They offload dorado and a glistening of dead prawns. With the weather closing in, it might be their last catch for a week. It’ll certainly be our last surf for a week.

Our gazes shift back to the baby. He’s about to eat a lit mozzie coil. Now he’s fishing through my bag, finding a plastic-wrapped tampon, poking it up his nose. Now he’s trying to hook a used COVID mask over the head of a cat.

We whisk away the coil, the tampon, the mask, and he hits us, screams, “Park!”

A couple of little girls appear. 

“Wow,” he says, looking from girl to girl, forgetting about us. Then he trundles after them.

The old señora brings us two more margaritas. “Que hermoso, he’s beautiful, look at that hair!” She frowns slightly. “Look after him…”

“Of course!” we say. 

She shakes her head.

“I mean, don’t let him out of your sight. Not here. And especially not with el huracán.”

They call them hurricanes instead of cyclones in this part of the world.

3

A few months into the trip, after a week of extraordinary waves along Mexico’s Oaxaca coast, my husband said to me, “We may as well be drug addicts. We’re miserable after a shit surf. We’re psyched after a good one. But even if we have a good surf, the feeling of elation doesn’t last. The next day, we’re back to zero. The cup’s empty. We need our next hit.”

He’s right. I don’t have the sores of an ice addict, but I do have bone starting to seal up both ears. I’ve got the telltale scale of a pterygium in my left eye. I’ve got skin cancers that need lancing. And that’s just how surfing’s savaged my body. What about the money we’ve spent on chasing waves? We could be hitting the stratosphere in our careers. Could have a house, the baby’s education sorted.

My husband joked, “It’s a good thing they don’t have gringo child protection here in Mexico. They’d be coming for us!”

I laughed and repeated the joke to my mum during a Zoom call with the baby.

She didn’t think it was funny.

4

We’re awake the moment he starts screaming.

Those teeth, like tiny icebergs, surfacing in a storm of pain.

I get up, put my nose to his fair hair, hold his small body to mine.

“Where’s your bottley, sweetie?”

I fill his bottle with water and place him back in his cot, his rancho rojo. He settles under the hum of the AC. The rain, which was falling steadily when we put him down, is now torrential.

On my way back to our bed, I feel something underfoot. A hallucination of worms. Hundreds of them. I nudge one with my toe. Real. They’ve risen from the earth to escape drowning. 

5

I awake to voices outside our room. Who’s crazy enough to drive into a surf camp in El Salvador  late at night? We never drive at night. At night, people go missing. Cars are jacked, bodies catch on fire, roadblocks materialize, and along the highways there’s a steady traffic of narcos and ghosts.

I assume the newcomers are surfers, and it sounds like they’re all men. They settle outside our window and open beers. My husband stirs. “Brazilians,” he mumbles. We listen to them for a bit, understand the words that are similar in Spanish. Then my husband groans, pulls on his boardies, and stumbles outside. For a moment, they’re quiet. First in English, then in Spanish, he says, “Do you mind keeping it down? We’ve got a baby asleep in here.”

But the voices resume.

Within minutes, the baby is awake again.

What are we doing here? I think as my husband lifts him from his red ranch and pats his bum. What the fuck are we doing in a surf camp full of men?

6

By five, the baby has been up for an hour, and I can’t contain him any longer. I let him loose outside. “Where’s your potty, my little man?”

He finds it. Drags it back and forth outside the Brazilians’ room. The plastic makes an awful screech on the tiles. I fumble for my phone and record a video to post on Instagram. When mum sees it, she messages, “You’ve turned into your father.”

I can’t reply because the internet drops out. Then the air conditioning. Then the water.

 7

“I want to go back to Oaxaca,” I say to my husband. “There’ll be no surf this week, the—”

The baby’s got his bucket and is scooping water from the toilet. I rush into the bathroom. “Yucky! That’s yucky! What was I saying? Yeah. I’m over it. He’s not sleeping. We’ve got fuckwits staying next door. They’ll probably be—”

“Ny!” the baby says, staggering outside toward the table where a knife lies amid a lava flow of pawpaw flesh and pips.

My husband races after him, pushes the knife out of reach. I follow them outside.

“So, you’re saying you want to leave?” he says, his voice loud above the rain. “In this weather?”

“We were happy in Oaxaca. ‘Best waves of our lives,’ you said. And anyway, what if the power doesn’t—”

The baby slips backward on the rain-slicked tiles. Cracks his head.

His scream is as red as Sturt’s desert peas.

8

Two hours later, we’re gunning it for the first border. Two miserable days later, on four hours’ sleep each, after a blown tire and a flat battery, we’re gunning it for the second. According to maps.me, we should make it just after lunch, should be across by late afternoon, should be on a beach in Mexico for gin and tonics by sunset.

But the CA-2 is gridlocked with traffic. A section of the highway washed away last week in one of the worst storms in living memory. The northbound lane is open for an hour. Then the police shut it down and open the southbound lane for an hour. The local prostitutes work their way from truck to truck.

The baby, blissfully, sleeps.

When we’re moving again, we inch through a chaotic Mayan kingdom of billboards. The jungle is waterfalled with plastic. The sky pours down the volcanoes like an oil spill.

There’s a line of people walking alongside the road. A mother with a baby in her arms. A father with a toddler on his shoulders. A group of 10 men in black singlets and jeans. Two young girls, belly buttons showing, thumbs out. Migrants, hundreds of them, pulled north by an irresistible dream of something better. When they get there, life will be different. They’ll be happy.

We pass them without slowing.

Half an hour from the border, the baby starts grizzling.

“Park,” he says. “Park.”

I swivel in my seat and stroke his foot. “No, my little love, no park. Not today.”

I turn to face the road. It’s spitting. My husband shaves 10 kilometers off our speed. The baby grizzles louder.

“How about your bottley? Where’s your bottley?” I fish around in a mess of sodden nappies and torn-up children’s books. He shouldn’t still be on a bottle. We’ll phase it out. “Here, sweetie.”

Now, a blinding deluge. A bolt of lightning hits the opposite side of the highway. Water slides into the car via the straps holding our surfboards to the roof. The baby’s bottle cracks against the window, and he starts to shriek.

“Can’t you give him his toy?” my husband snaps. “Where’s Patpat?”

As I’m looking for Patpat, I feel a stickiness at my feet. Worms. The floor of the car is alive with worms. I don’t think my husband has seen them.

He doesn’t take his eyes from the road.

Each of his knuckles is kissed white with fear.

9

We get to the border without aquaplaning into oncoming traffic. It’s nearly four. How long will it take to get the passports stamped? Go through the car’s paperwork? Two hours? Three?

The baby’s reading The Cowboy Frog. We’ve got a moment of quiet.

“It’s late,” I say to my husband. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“Well, what do you reckon?”

“Maybe we could stay here…”

The road is enclosed by a bottle-green lace of jungle. There’s a stand of rotten bananas on our left. A few wooden buildings on our right. A myriad of fuck hotels and American fast-food chains behind us. In front of us, a valley of touts and smugglers and hard-eyed customs officials. A valley where, two months ago, we saw old men with boulders strapped to their backs running from Mexico to Guatemala, eyes bright with speed. Where we saw a pulley system moving baskets of people under the bridge. Where we saw a no-man’s land nightclub and wondered what its walls would hiss about the traffic of weapons and women and children and drugs.

We should have sold the car. Flown. What are we doing here, at the edge of night?

“Let’s keep going,” my husband says. “We’ve done this border before. We know where the offices are. We’ll find somewhere safe to stay on the other side.”

10

Getting stamped out of Guatemala is easy.

But at Mexican immigration, we’re separated. Two men take my husband and demand the car’s paperwork. Another official ushers me into the passport office. A long queue. The baby squirms on my back. “Park!” he shouts. “Park!” I jiggle him for a couple of minutes. “Maybe we can visit the park tomorrow.” Then he starts crying. “Park!” I unstrap the ergo and ease him to the ground. He dashes for the door we’ve come in through, shouting, “My dadda! Park!”

“Daddy’s not here, my little love, come back.”

Thirty minutes. No sign of my husband. An hour. Still no sign. Our turn. I scoop the baby up and put our passports on the counter.

The immigration woman doesn’t touch them. “Why are you visiting Mexico?” she asks.

“We’re surfers. The waves in Mexico are world-class, they’re—” The baby grabs my passport and throws it across the room. Someone steps out of the queue and retrieves it for me.

“Gracias, gracias,” I gush.

“Where are you staying?” the immigration woman continues.

“Probably Talismán. We don’t like to drive at—”

Now, a blinding deluge. A bolt of lightning hits the opposite side of the highway. Water slides into the car via the straps holding our surfboards to the roof. The baby starts to shriek.

The baby’s hitting me in the face.

“Grosero!” I hiss at him. “You stop that!”

“It’s not safe here,” the immigration woman observes. She gestures to the baby. “You should take care.”

I nod. She’s right. Maybe we should keep driving to Tapachula. I’d liked Tapachula when we’d passed through, had thought it a languid city of salt haze and palm trees, reminiscent of the Caribbean. Then I learned the city’s 30,000 Haitians, having trudged north from Brazil, were homeless, sleeping in nests of rubbish and rats, frozen in a bureaucratic limbo while they waited for humanitarian visas.

I now know it is a poor city.

A hard city.

But maybe safer than here.

“Maybe we’ll stay in Tapachula.”

She looks at me suspiciously. “You just said you were staying in Talismán. Now you’re telling me you’re staying in Tapachula. Why has your story changed?”

11

It’s dark by the time my husband and I are back in the car with fresh visas. He clicks over the ignition. The car won’t start. He gets out. I get out, watch as he pops the bonnet.

He opens his mouth to say something, and a long black worm tumbles from his lips.

One of the wires connected to the battery is on fire.

12

I push the baby along the highway in the pram. We’ve salvaged the boards, the portable cot, and a rucksack. Left the kettle, the potty, and the coffee plunger until morning. If it’s all still there in the morning. Our car might join the long line of broken vehicles to our left, the words “in tow” spray-painted across their windscreens. They’re heading south, the opposite direction from the migrants, America’s refuse.

Ahead, there’s a sign for a “Hotel Quixote.” I wait outside reception and rock the baby back and forth. My husband says, “Buenas noches,” and inquires whether there are rooms available.

“We have rooms for three hours, six hours…” a woman says.

“For the whole night.”

“Ohhh,” she giggles. “Strong man.”

I step into view with the pram and glare at her.

13

The room’s serviceable: a television, an air con stuck on a frosty 8, and a king-size bed. Water weaves down the window glass, the edge of the hurricane.

For the first time in six months, I ache for home. I imagine it’s a winter’s night and the easterly is sweeping cold across the desert, pushing the spinifex flat. The baby’s warm and sleeping. My husband’s stirring a Bolognese fragrant with red wine and herbs, explosive with garden-grown chili. We’re listening to Kenny Burrell on vinyl, plotting our next narcotizing hit of surf, then talking about work. My husband is saying his new boss is “the kind of bloke who loves compliance, the kind of bloke who’d check your undies for skid marks!” and I’m laughing.

It’s been a while since we’ve laughed.

I put the rucksack on the bed and pull out the baby’s toothbrush, shampoo, Patpat, undies, and a book of short stories in Spanish—a wishful-thinking purchase. The worms are all through the rucksack. They’re multiplying. It’s as if everything’s rotten. But neither my husband nor the baby seems to notice, and, given the baby is content for the moment with his teething ring and Patpat, I don’t mention anything.

Then I realize we’ve left the block of nappies in the car.

Fuck.

“Honey, I’m going to have to go back to the car for the nappies,” I say.

My husband just stares at me. Shattered.

“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s only half a k away. I’ll be five minutes.”

The baby’s dropped his Patpat and is looking at me. “Mum?” he inquires.

“Mum’ll be back soon…”

“Muuuum?” The baby starts wailing, slides himself off the bed, and hooks his arms around my legs, a tiny anchor. It’s impossible to think. “You want to come with Mum? Come on, let’s give Dad a minny to himself.”

I grab the car key, a towel, and the baby, clocking the relief on my husband’s face. “Five minutes,” I say. He nods and reaches for his phone.

We walk across the wet agave shadows of the hotel’s car park and then beyond, into the darkness.

14

By the time we get to the car, despite the towel I’ve held over our heads, we’re soaked.

The car still has four tires.

“Now, wait here, my little love, while Mummy opens the boot.” I put him behind the steering wheel. Then I head to the back of the car and reach around for the nappies in the dark. Is there anything else I should grab? His potty. Maybe his plastic bucket, that’s always good in the shower. And his sippy cup… I feel for the shape of each item, gather them in a bag, then walk back to the front of the car.

There’s no baby behind the steering wheel.

“My love? Where are you?”

He isn’t on the back seat. Isn’t anywhere in the car.

Panic lifts like a sail. I recall the words of that woman at the beachside bar: Don’t let him out of your sight. Not here…

I circle the car. No baby. My gaze swings wider. To the side of the road is the line of cars “in tow”—a kilometer of cars. What if he’s inside one? How the fuck will I find him? He’ll be back in Guatemala tomorrow. With his perfect skin and angelic curls.

Crying now, I pivot 360 degrees.

That’s when I see it.

A park.

I start running.

The baby is sitting on a seesaw in the rain. “Park,” he says, beaming up at me, pleased with himself. “Park.”

15

Two weeks later, we’re back in Oaxaca, and the sky is deep blue in the wake of the hurricane. Racing from pointbreak to pointbreak, we drive through natural arches of cream-and-yellow blossoms. The baby’s hair is once again knotting into dreadlocks. The worms have disappeared, for now.

–

Madelaine Dickie is the author of the novels Troppo and Red Can Origami. Earlier this year, she released Some People Want to Shoot Me, a memoir co-authored with Western Australian Aboriginal leader Wayne Bergmann. She has won a Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award and has twice been short-listed in the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards.