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right balance. When you were done loading, you kicked the mule in the shins. Two hands would appear from beneath the boxes, bundles, suitcases and pieces of furniture. They’d throw rope around the pile, making a web, and then the mule’s fingers tied the ropes tight around his chest. You kicked the mule in the calves, so that he knew it was time to go, and he carried your belongings home.
    Mules didn’t live long. They looked ninety, but the oldest they lived to be was about thirty-five. Usually they died from being mules, but sometimes they died at the hands of the military or the secret police, who liked to use mules for torture practice and then throw their bodies into unmarked common graves. I’d learned about the lives of mules when we were in Ayacucho, because a mule had been telling his story to a school kid with a typewriter in the main square. Bob and I were sitting on the next bench. The mule spoke in Quechua, but the kid translated out loud into Spanish as he typed. At the end of the story, the mule said in Spanish, “My name is Señor Condori Mamani, and this is my story.” He’d wanted his story to be written down, and the kid had promised to take it to the library for him. The kid tucked the mule’s story into the pocket of his starched white smock and then turned to the next person in line.
    That night, from the bus window, I watched as the big-city guy kicked and spat on the old mule who stood in perfect stillness, his dignity intact. I was sorry that Peru wouldn’t be our last stop. I wanted us to join the resistance here so we could help the angry teenagers in the streets and the little boy outside the hotel and the chambermaid whose children were dying of diarrhea and the Indian family who had carried the tables and chairs for the Austrians and this old mule take the streets and squares and mountains and make Peru their own. I’d be ready to participate in whatever way they wanted me to.
    A TIGHT CIRCLE of men pushed in on us, hands shifting in their pockets. Night had fallen at the Copacabana bus station. We’d made it safely across the border, and Mami and Ale and I were holding down the fort while Bob searched for accommodations. Surrounding us now was a group of Bolivia’s best pickpockets. My mother stabbed the air in front of her face with a rusty butcher knife she’d pulled out of her bag.
    â€œOne step closer and you’re dead, sons of bitches,” she snarled.
    Ale and I clung to her like the koala bears from Australia we’d seen pictures of. We must have looked ridiculous, because we were both taller than she was.
    â€œDon’t worry, my precious little girls. I’ve got everything under control. Watch and learn, kids, how to deal with motherfuckers.”
    Mami took a step forward, dragging us with her. The tip of her knife touched the chin of one of the pickpockets. The circle broke, and the men scattered. I wondered if they had gone to get reinforcements to really do us in.
    As we waited for Bob, I replayed the border scene for the millionth time.
    We’d changed buses in Puno, a small city on Lake Titicaca. “Documents. We’re at the border with Bolivia,” the driver had announced soon afterward. When I caught Mami and Bob glancing at each other, a shard of terror pierced my gut. Now I got it: They were carrying something. They were carrying something dangerous in their packs. Bob’s Adam’s apple moved up and down, and my mother’s nostrils flared. I remembered Uncle Jaime, my father’s best friend in Chile. They said before he was shot by the firing squad, his tongue and testicles were burned black. As we moved toward the front of the bus, I saw men in dark glasses with guns and German shepherds waiting at the door. An invisible axe struck me in the chest. But when the men with guns had asked my mother what she had in her pack, she’d looked them in the eye, shrugged her shoulders and