Jillian in the Borderlands

By Beth Alvarado
Black Lawrence Press, 2020, 143 pages

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In this imaginative collection of linked stories, “the borderlands” seem to refer not only to the territory along the U.S.-Mexico border–a landscape traversed by the central character, Jillian Guzmán, and her family–but also to metaphysical boundaries that are magically porous to Jillian: between life and death and between the material and spiritual worlds. Collectively, her experiences in these dimensions create a portrait of deep empathy, and of the powers of hope and redemption, even amid suffering.

The stories follow Jillian from childhood in the Desert Southwest to a time when she has children of her own. Unable to speak, Jillian expresses herself and her perceptions of the world through drawings. And those perceptions extend far beyond the ordinary. As her mother, Angie O’Malley, observes, “Jillian, swimming in the warm amniotic fluid, had known everything she needed to know even then.” She arrives in the world with an awareness of past and future events, with a store of “all sorts of random data,” and with an ability to see the dead. All of these things prove to be as trying as they are beneficial. As one example, Jillian foresees tragedies that will befall her father, leading him to depression and drinking. Yet her powers also enable her to help others.

A series of stories are connected to an incident that upends Jillian’s and Angie’s life: a motorcycle accident that seriously disables Angie’s sister, Glenda, and results in Glenda needing around-the-clock care. This eventually becomes Angie’s responsibility, leaving her stressed and overwhelmed. Then Jillian witnesses something on the Oprah Winfrey Show that might help: the powers of  a healer in Magdalena, Mexico–Juana of God. This inspires her and Angie to take Glenda to Juana, even as Angie, weighted down by worries and stress, is in need of her own kind of healing.

Jillian’s powers of empathy are always great–at least in part, it seems, because of a preternatural ability to sense the emotional states, as well as the past and future, of others. Yet they seem to heighten after she, Angie, and Glenda arrive in Magdalena and attend one of Juana’s healing sessions:

Ultimately, Glenda isn’t the only one to benefit from the healing session, in which Alvarado vividly melds the physical and the spiritual and offers an edge of suspense. For Jillian, in particular, the experience becomes a turning point. She forms a lasting bond with Magadalena and with Juana, who tells her, “You have a gift, Mi’ja.” Jillian is able to perceive and draw the spirits that work in concert with Juana, and who are channeled by Juana’s dog, Junie.

In one exceptionally affecting story, Jilllian’s father, Bobby Guzmán, comes back into her and Angie’s lives after having vanished for years. When he appears on their doorstep, he says to Angie, “My liver is as bumpy as a toad.” What he means is that he has terminal liver cancer, caused by trichlorethylene-polluted water where he’d been living, on the south side of Tucson, Arizona. (In real life, there have been many stories like his, and both Hughes Aircraft and the city of Tucson were sued for dumping TCE, an industrial solvent, in the city’s water supply for twenty-nine years.)

Jillian is able to visualize the history of the pollution, and to see ghosts of those who have died from it. She is also able to see backward and forward in her father’s life, an ability that is as painful as it is illuminating:

Yet …

The final stories are, sadly, all too timely, touching on the dangers that migrants from Mexico and Central America have faced on the journey from their countries to the United States, and on the inhumane treatment many of them have received at the U.S. border, especially under the Trump Administration. At this point of the book, Jillian is pregnant with twins and has become involved with the Good Samaritans, a real-life migrant-aid organization that has left supplies of food and water, as well as medical kits, along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Jillian’s special powers give her an edge over the other Samaritans: she can find where those who are wounded or nearly dying of thirst are hiding, having the ability to “hear lost or escaping souls.” For some migrants, Jillian is able to draw maps that show them where to find water, how to avoid capture, and ultimately, how to make their way to their destination safely.

Eventually, Jillian’s own life–and the lives of her unborn twins–becomes threatened when she becomes lost on an aid mission. Yet her ability to connect with the dead proves salutary, and in one moving scene, her father’s voice comes to her, guiding her:

The spirits of the dead help her in other ways, as does Juana of God, who returns to the scene and draws Jillian–and eventually also Angie and Glenda–back to Magdelena and a larger mission to help others: refugees, elders suffering from dementia, veterans who have been wounded physically or mentally, and migrant children who have become separated from their parents.

The stories in this inventive, emotionally resonant collection never shy away from darkness, and at times they plunge deeply into it. Yet, throughout, they offer glimmers of hope and a sense of possibility. In times like these, that has never felt more welcome.