Above The Law

CHAPTER 68

E LIJANDRO LIFTED THE POT FROM THE STOVE AND BEGAN BANGING it with a spoon. He smiled at Isodora and said they needed to celebrate. Paquita danced around his legs wearing an indigo crepe dress and jangling silver bracelets on her arms, bracelets belonging to her dead grandmother. The banging grew louder and louder. Paquita spun faster and turned into an enormous black whirl. The bracelets spilled to the floor like spare change and Isodora began to shout at Elijandro to stop it.

Isodora yelled so loud she awoke and saw a guard banging her metal food bowl against the steel door.

"Wake up," he said, speaking Spanish. "Come with me if you want to see your little girl. Now."

Isodora felt for the dirty sheet and pulled it close like a shawl. Her feet swung from the narrow bed and she staggered toward the door barely feeling her legs. Her mouth, too, felt numb, so when she asked where Paquita was it came out in a garbled mess. She followed the guard, though, without hesitation. Nothing mattered but Paquita.

Down a long hallway, past dozens of cell doors like her own, she followed the guard, her bare feet slapping the cold and dirty concrete floor. Slime oozed from the ceiling, discoloring the walls with a moldy fur. The smell of human waste fouled the air.

Outside the door, she saw the starry sky above the haze of a halogen streetlight. A single box truck sat idling, spewing diesel fumes into the wind that carried them her way. The guard rolled up the door in the back of the truck and there, in the dark, lay Paquita, swathed in a dirty sheet like her own, sleeping fitfully. A small shriek escaped Isodora's throat and she threw herself onto the bed of the truck, scrabbling to climb in.

The guard grabbed her legs, lifted, and shoved her forward. She wrapped herself around her little girl and Paquita's eyes fluttered open, glassy and unfocused. Isodora began to cry.

"What do we do with these?" a voice outside the truck asked.

"We're getting rid of them," said another.

The door rolled down, slamming shut with a shudder that Isodora felt in the floor beneath her. She could see nothing, but it didn't matter.

She held her little girl tight.