PART THREE

20


The Santa Marta Jail in the south of Mexico City was the biggest beauty parlor in the world. The bitter and citric scent of hair dyes, hair sprays, and nail polish permeated the rooms and passageways of the building.

The odors took me back to the day that Maria had her harelip fixed. It was the day a kettle of vultures circled above our home. And it was also the day my mother was angry with the Acapulco fortune-teller because the woman never predicted that my mother would have to bury someone.

Did that fortune-teller tell my mother that her daughter was going to go to jail?

In the prison office where I was booked there was a blackboard on the wall. A scrawl of white chalk kept track of the foreign inmates and children. In the jail there were seventy-seven children who were all under the age of six. There were three inmates from Colombia; three from Holland; six from Venezuela; three from France; one from Guatemala, one from the United Kingdom, two from Costa Rica, one from Argentina, and one from the United States.

After I was booked in and my photograph and fingerprints were taken, I was given a pair of clean beige sweatpants and a beige sweatshirt and told to change. The clothes were worn so thin I could see my skin beneath the weave. How many women had placed their arms in these sleeves before me?

The jail was a chessboard of beige and navy-blue squares. The women in beige were awaiting trial and the women in blue had been sentenced. In jail I learned that everyone would get hungry for yellow or green, as if colors had turned into food.

No one gave me a pair of shoes or sneakers.

I walked through the jail in my red plastic flip-flops with traces of Acapulco beach sand between my toes.

A female prison guard pushed me through the octagonal maze of corridors toward my cell. Instead of windows, long rectangular openings in the cement walls, like slashes from a knife, looked out on the main yard where a few women in navy blue kicked a ball around.

On the other side of the building, across the yard, was the men’s prison. It was close enough to hear shrieks and cries coming from over the wall. The men and women prisoners could wave to each other from certain points.

My cell contained a bunk bed. When you are charged with killing the daughter of one of the country’s most important drug traffickers you get special treatment. You get to share a cell with only one other prisoner. Most of the inmates had to share rooms with at least four people, two to a bed. I was placed in a cell with a foreigner because this makes it harder to be killed by orders from outside. I knew this. The person who killed that little girl had no chance of living, not for long.

The woman who shared my cell was also dressed in beige and was so small her sweatpants were rolled up around her ankles so she wouldn’t trip. Her hair was pulled into a long black braid down her back and, when she turned toward me, I could see her left sleeve hung loose and empty, falling from her shoulder as if it were a flag on a day without wind.

Since the moment I had been taken from the house in Acapulco and brought to the jail, I could not hear my mother’s voice. It had almost been forty-eight hours of silence. I heard the rush of my own blood through my body and it was the sound of Acapulco’s ocean.

When I looked at the tiny, childlike woman, my mother’s voice came back. Her words crossed the jungle, soared above the pineapple and palm trees, traveled over the mountains of the Sierra Madre, past the Popocatepetl volcano, down into the valley of Mexico City, and moved through the treeless streets straight into me.

So what the hell happened to your arm? I heard her ask.

Chop, chop, chop, the woman answered.

In a few moments I figured out that everything the woman said was plunk plunk this and splash splash that and clonk clonk, quack quack, bang bang.

I could hear my mother again. Right inside of my head she said, Well, well, well, look who’s here! It’s Miss Onomatopoeia herself!

Miss Onomatopoeia’s name was Luna and she was from Guatemala. She pointed up at the top bunk with the pointer finger of her right hand, her only hand, and told me the top bunk bed was for me. She had long and square fake acrylic fingernails pasted onto her real nails and each nail was painted black and white in a zebra pattern.

One woman from El Salvador was up there, but she left yesterday. I hope it’s clean, Luna said.

I am sure it’s fine.

Nothing in here is fine. All that woman ever said was God. She said God all day long as if the word were her heart beating.

A woman dressed in blue appeared and stood within the door frame. She was so large she blocked out much of the light from the corridor. She had short black hair and long fingernails that were painted yellow. She’d been sentenced. If you wore blue, you had no hope. If you wore beige you had hope.

So you killed the baby, she said. It was you.

I shook my head.

Touch the floor.

I paused for a second and she said it again, Touch the floor!

I crouched and touched the ground with my fingers.

You’re in jail, she said. I tell everyone who comes here to touch the ground as soon as they get here so they know exactly where they are. Now you have to decide if you left your pussy outside or if you brought it in here with you!

The woman moved to one side and the light from behind her body filled my cell. She smelled like blood and ink. She smelled like red and black. I was still crouched, touching the floor when she left.

Violeta, that’s Violeta. She’s killed two, no, three, no, four, no, many men. Bang bang, but with a knife, slice, slice, stab, stab. How many men?

Many. She tattoos everyone and loves jail because there’s so much skin in here.

The sunlight that fell through the narrow slat of the room’s window was cold.

I never knew the sun could be cold.

Luna explained there was no place to keep anything but that I could store my belongings in a space under her bottom bunk bed.

I have no belongings.

You will in time.

No. This is a mistake.

Did you kill her? You did, right?

I looked into Luna’s black eyes.

She was a small, dark brown Mayan Indian from Guatemala with straight black hair. I was a medium-sized, dark brown mix of Spanish and Aztec blood from Guerrero, Mexico, with frizzy, curly hair, which proved I also had some African slave blood. We were just two pages from the continent’s history books. You could tear us out and roll us into a ball and throw us in the trash.

What do you think? I asked.

What?

Think I killed that girl?

Of course not, she answered. They say here that it was an AK-47. You can’t know how to use one of those.

My mother’s voice echoed through me. I heard her say, This Guatemalan Indian is a piece of candy.

Luna said I could borrow any of her things except her toothbrush.

Even though it was only midday, I climbed up into the bed and lay down. The beauty parlor smell of the prison was concentrated up there. It smelled like acetone nail polish remover mixed with lemon hair spray. The unpainted concrete ceiling was a foot away from my face. If I turned over and lay on my side, I could scrape my shoulder and hip against the rough cement.

In jail everyone is missing something, Luna said.

I curled up and tried to forget I was cold. I didn’t have a blanket. If I wanted a blanket or pillow I had to buy it. Everything in jail had to be bought.

There was some graffiti written in black ink on the wall, exactly at my eye level and at the eye level of hundreds of women who had lain in the top bunk bed before me. Most of the graffiti consisted of lovers’ hearts with initials in them. Also, carved into the cement was the word Tarzan.

I closed my eyes. I could hear my mother say, So you had to go to jail and share a room with a one-armed Indian woman from Guatemala!

I also knew that even though we were proud to be the angriest and meanest people in Mexico, my mother could not stop crying because her daughter was in jail. The flies were drinking her tears.

When I thought of my house, I also knew that the drug trafficker’s blue plastic asthma inhaler was still lying in the green grass under the papaya tree. I knew it would lie there for hundreds of years.

I slept for the rest of the day and all through the night. The dawn light awoke me along with the new sound of traffic. It was the first time I had risen without hearing birds. It was raining outside, which made the cement walls and floor seem like walls and floors of ice.

During the night Luna had covered me with a blanket and a couple of towels. Small acts of kindness could turn me inside out. I never would have believed that someone who had shot a child in a break-and-entry robbery, killed twelve old ladies for their wedding rings, or murdered two husbands could loan me a sweater, give me a cookie, or hold my hand.

Luna had also placed my feet inside plastic supermarket bags so they would not get cold in the night.

Julio had said, Life is a crazy place where the drowned can be walking on dry land.

Now I knew he was right. It only took me one day to figure out that being in jail was like wearing a dress inside out, a misbuttoned sweater, or a shoe on the wrong foot. My skin was on the inside and all my veins and bones were on the outside. I thought, I better not bump into anyone.

21


I was tied to a train, the migrant train that goes from the south of Mexico to the US border, tied with a blue plastic clothesline, Luna said.

I could see her blood move through her veins and down her left arm and stop at the small stump, which was all that remained of her arm, like a tree limb that has been badly pruned with a dull saw.

I knew what Luna was talking about because Julio had told me that in Mexico there were two borders that cut the country into pieces. The horizontal border is the one between the United States and Mexico. The vertical border leads from Central America, through Mexico, and to the United States. Mostly men take the train from Central America to the border. It’s much cheaper. Women prefer taking the bus because it is safer. Julio, like everyone else, called the train The Beast.

You took The Beast?

We tied ourselves to the train because you fall asleep, Luna explained. You can’t help it. Imagine falling asleep in that speed. I was tied outside to a handrail. I went to sleep and slipped and fell beside the track and the train tore off my arm and I lost my arm and I almost died.

She said all of this and did not take a breath.

Luna said she liked being in jail because she could urinate whenever she needed to.

You don’t want to get off to urinate when the train stops for a few minutes and the men get off because they’ll watch you, make fun of you as you squat by the tracks, or rape you. All the women, all of us hold it in. It hurts. You don’t want to drink and if you don’t drink, well, you know, you die.

Did you leave Guatemala by yourself?

The train tore off my arm and I almost died and they still wanted to deport me. The migration police didn’t believe me when I said I was Mexican. They told me to sing the Mexican national anthem if I was a Mexican.

Do you know it?

Luna shook her head.

This reminded me of the day I sat under a papaya tree with Paula and Maria going over the words of the national anthem. Paula and I learned it all so easily as if it was senseless sounds, but Maria took the actual words very seriously. What does that mean, exactly? she said. Why are we singing about Mexico going to war? Why does the inside of the world tremble?

I didn’t kill that girl. I could never do that. I was in the car, locked in a car.

Luna unrolled a piece of toilet paper and handed it to me so I could blow my nose.

I’m not crying, I said.

Yes, you are.

No, I’m not.

Luna explained that, even though my mother was supposed to be notified, as I gave the administrators who booked me in her number, they probably would not call her.

They’re slow, slow, slow about everything here if you don’t have money. Money is a car race. Money is speed.

I could feel Mrs. Domingo’s diamond on the inside of my palm, closed in my fist.

You must borrow a person’s telephone, Luna said. You have to call your mother or someone. Is there someone else?

No, there’s no one else.

Are you married? Luna looked at the gold band on my finger.

No.

Georgia will let you make a call. She’s the only one who might lend you her phone without making you pay.

Does everyone know that I’m here because they think I killed that girl?

Yes.

Someone is going to kill me, right?

Luna did not answer. She turned and left the cell.

I thought, If Mike’s alive, he’s dead.

In the small cell the bunk beds took up most of the room. Inside the cave-like space of Luna’s bed, she’d hammered nails into the wall. On these nails she’d hung at least ten sleeves that she’d cut off of sweaters, blouses, and long-sleeved T-shirts. They were all beige and looked like a wall covered in snakes.

After only a few minutes, Luna returned and stood beside me as I looked at the sleeves hooked on the wall.

I did not take my arm into consideration, she said. I didn’t give it a special place in my life. I am saving these sleeves because I am going to make an altar to my arm.

That’s a good idea.

Do you give your arms a special place in your life?

No. No, I have not.

Listen. Stick to me. Don’t go walking around alone.

Do you believe me, Luna?

Yes, maybe, maybe I believe you. Maybe.

There was a knock on the door. A woman was standing there dressed in navy-blue sweatpants. She had a canister on her back and was holding a long, thin metal hose in her hand.

No, no, Luna said. She stood up and held her one hand up in the air.

Do you want bedbugs and fleas? the woman asked in a whisper.

The old, dented tin fumigation canister was corroded at its seams and a dark yellow paste, like mucus, formed around the spout.

Shit, Luna said. Let’s get out of here. She’s going to fumigate. Do what you have to do, Aurora.

Aurora was as pale as one of those centipedes or worms one finds under rocks. They are pale because the creatures have never been in the sun. As a child I used to pry rocks out of the ground or kick them over in search of white or transparent insects. Aurora’s light brown hair was so thin her ears stuck out from her hair.

This is Ladydi, Luna said.

I know, Aurora said in her drafty voice. Get out or stay in. It’s up to you.

She pursed her lips tightly together so that the fumigation fumes would not get in her mouth. The tips of her ten fingers were deep yellow.

Do you have any aspirin? Aurora asked.

Luna didn’t answer and I followed her out of the room. Behind us we heard the whooshing sound of the spray as insecticide filled our cell.

The truth is who wants fleas and bedbugs? Luna said. You look pretty clean, but it’s for the best. We won’t be able to go in there for a while. That stink stays around and gives you a headache you can’t shake off for days. You must be hungry by now. Let’s get some food.

The rain had stopped but the sky was still cloudy.

I followed Luna down the labyrinth of corridors that all seemed the same. The men’s prison could be seen through the long open glassless windows in the concrete walls. The faces of men at the windows looked in our direction. Every now and then one of them cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed something or lifted up a white T-shirt and waved it madly at us. It was as if the women’s prison was a ship passing by and the men’s prison was a deserted island with hundreds of shipwrecked sailors. In one short morning, I learned that the men do this non-stop, all day long, and if a woman waves back, it’s love forever after.

And, unlike the male prison across the patio, this world overflowed with rubbish bins filled with bloodied cotton and rags. In this women’s world blood was exposed in the garbage, in the un-flushed toilet bowl, on sheets and blankets, and on the stained panties soaking in the corner of a sink. I wondered how much blood left this place in a day and coursed through the underground sewage system of Mexico City. I knew I was standing on a lake of blood.

Luna took me to a large room with long tables and benches. Prisoners sat around occupied with different activities. Some were eating, others were knitting, and some women breastfed their babies. Two boys, who were about four or five years old, played on the floor with a train set that was made of small cereal boxes attached with knitting wool. One long table was laid out with dozens of bottles of nail polish and nail polish remover. At least twenty inmates were sitting around painting their fingernails.

Painted on the back wall of the room was a mural framed by a banner that said The Mural of Hearts. The content of the work, which I later found out had been painted by the inmates over a span of several years, consisted of portraits of famous Mexican women. I looked at their faces and read the names: Sor Juana, Emma Godoy, Elena Garro, Frida Kahlo, and Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez.

As breakfast was no longer being served, Luna bought us each a sandwich from one of the prisoners. In jail everyone had a business and everything had a price, even toilet paper or Kotex.

Luna said she had no income but received help from a Guatemalan family in Mexico who were part of an evangelical organization that tried to convert prisoners.

They’re all trying to convert us, Luna said. Mormons, Evangelists, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics. Everyone. The missionaries come to the jail on Sunday, and sometimes they get in on other days, you’ll see. Every God is in this prison.

Luna suggested we go out and eat our sandwiches in the yard.

We can get some coffee there and watch the football and then see if we can talk to Georgia who has the telephone, she said.

To one side of the yard, twenty or so women were playing football. The other prisoners sat around on benches. When I looked up I could see a colony of faces. Dozens of women peered out from the windows. When I looked up to the opposite side, I could see the men’s jail and their faces were also looking out of windows. Looking out of windows here was an activity. It was a way to live.

Those men, Luna said, pointing in the direction of the men’s prison, they’re looking for wives. Do you have a husband?

No.

If you get married he can come and visit you. They give you a room with a bed and everything.

No. I’m not married.

None of those men over there at the jail want to marry me, Luna said. Because of my arm. I really don’t want a man, I want a baby. I want someone to love.

Even if they take the child away from you?

In jail a woman could only keep her child until the age of six.

It’s six years of love at least, Luna said. And then you can have another. Do you want a baby?

Yes.

That’s Georgia, Luna said, pointing to one of the women playing football.

Georgia was a tall, slim woman who looked thirty years old. She had blond hair and blue eyes. In the prison yard, she stood out among all the dark skin and hair. She looked like a stick of butter on a table.

She’s from England, Luna explained. A woman from the British Embassy comes and visits her and gives her money, and her family sends money too.

Why is she here? What did she do?

She was coming to Mexico for a fashion show, Luna said. She worked in fashion. She had shoes.

Shoes?

Yes, two suitcases filled with them, the platform shoes, you know, the shoes with the big platforms?

Yes.

Those platform shoes were filled with heroin.

Heroin! Heroin! You’ve got to be kidding! What idiot brings heroin into Mexico?

That’s what everyone says.

I thought of the hills and valleys around my house planted with red and white poppies. I thought of the towns on our mountain like Kilometer Thirty, or Eden. These were the towns along the old road to Acapulco and not the new highway that tore our lives in two pieces. These were the towns that you could only enter by invitation. If you accidently went there no one would ask you your name or ask you what time it was, they’d just kill you. Mike once told me that there were huge mansions in those towns and incredible laboratories that were built underground to turn the poppies into heroin. He said that a miracle occurred at Kilometer Thirty a few years ago. The Virgin Mary appeared in a piece of marble.

Passenger buses always went on this road in convoy. They were scared that they’d be stopped and robbed. This was the highway where decapitated bodies were hung from bridges. This was the highway where the bus drivers swore that at night they’d seen the ghosts. They had seen the ghost face of a clown or the vaporous image of two little girls holding hands as they walked down the side of the road.

No one on this highway stopped to buy tamarind candy or live turtles or starfish with five rays wriggling and squirming in the dry air.

There is an American girl living in the town of Eden. Now that is a backward story, Mike told me. Who comes here?

He said that one of Mexico’s most important drug lords brought her back and she’s only about fourteen years old. She’s the man’s third wife and she likes to take care of everyone’s babies. She keeps to herself, Mike said. She likes to bake cakes.

The young American girl became a legend inside of me. I imagined her walking along our roads, drinking our water, and standing under our sun.

Mike told me that at Christmas the drug lord brought in fake snow and covered the town with mountains of the white powder to make the American girl happy. He also ordered the building of a huge Christmas tree, which was made out of dozens of pine trees that were delivered from a pine-tree nursery near Mexico City. The drug trafficker placed the tall tree in the middle of the main square and had it covered with Christmas decorations.

But that was not the best thing he did, Mike said. The best thing he did was to bring reindeer to the town. He flew them in on one of his private airplanes from a ranch in Tamaulipas.

Have you seen this? I asked.

Yes. Imagine, he turns a piece of Guerrero into the North Pole.

Surrounded by cement, far from the ocean and seabirds and my mother, I thought, How the hell did Mike know all of this?

My hand ached to slap him across the face.

I listened to his stories and never really listened. Now I knew why he had all this information and why I was in jail accused of killing a drug lord, the drug lord’s daughter, and having a package of heroin, worth a million and a half dollars, in my possession.

Where are you, Mike?

I thought, I am going to pray for you, Mike. I’m going to pray you remember me. I’m that deep line, from pinkie to thumb, in the palm of your right hand, Mike. The lifeline that gets full of dirt when you forget to wash.

In my mind I was talking to Mike, but in my eyes I was watching two dozen women playing football. One had Chicharito tattooed on her arm. Another woman had the full body image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the outside of her right thigh.

They play football every day, Luna said. Even if it’s raining they have tournaments. The three teams are Rainbow, Liberty, and Barcelona.

The women ran and called out to each other. From here I could see Violeta who played with a lit cigarette in her mouth. She ran back and forth and never stopped puffing. The smoking butt sat in her mouth as she moved. When she approached a scuffle for the ball, she would throw her head backward, in a gesture that reminded me of a bird drinking water. She did this so that she would not burn anyone with the fiery tip of her cigarette. Her extremely long fingernails that were painted yellow yesterday now were green. From where I sat, only a few feet away, her fingernails looked like long parrot feathers coming out of the tips of her fingers.

Violeta is the captain, Luna said.

As we watched the game Aurora, who had finished fumigating our room, slunk toward us. She was still carrying the canister on her back. She sat down beside us.

You can go to your room now, Aurora said.

I squirmed a little from her odor. I had noticed her yellow fingertips but, outside in the daylight, I realized her skin and the whites of her eyes were also jaundiced.

No, we’re not going in for a while, Luna said.

Do you have any aspirin? Aurora asked.

Don’t tell me you’ve finished all yours again? You’ll get a hole in your stomach!

My head hurts.

Aurora lay down. She curled up on her side on the ground on the cold and damp cement. It seemed like the coldest piece of the planet on that cloudy morning. I wanted to touch her and caress her head as if she were a stray dog in the street. But, as with a stray dog, I was afraid to touch her because she might give me a disease. As she lay beside me, I even thought I could see mange on the side of her head, under her stringy hair.

If my mother were there she would have said, She deserves to be run over by a car!

The football game ended and Luna called out to Georgia to come over. Georgia walked slowly while Violeta followed behind, still puffing on a cigarette. When they reached us Violeta squatted down on her heels in front of me so that we were eye-to-eye. She rested her hands on her knees so that her nails were stretched out before her. Close up her nails no longer made me think of feathers. Instead, they were like the talons of hawks and vultures that swarmed above my house back in the jungle. Violeta’s nails looked like they could pick up a rabbit or a mouse and carry it off. The nails could tear at flesh. They could scratch someone’s face to pieces.

So this is Ladydi? Georgia said. She looked at me. Her blue eyes and my black eyes met. I knew she was thinking, So, this is the dark and ugly creature who has my beautiful princess’s name!

I wanted to say, I’m sorry, but I had never said I’m sorry to anyone.

I thought of all the Ladydi dolls I had at home. To this day, the Lady Diana dolls my father brought me back from the United States were still in my room in their original cardboard and plastic boxes so the jungle mold would not destroy them. I had a Lady Diana doll in her wedding dress, a Lady Diana doll in the gown she wore to meet President Clinton, and a Lady Diana doll in riding clothes. My father had even given me a plastic jewelry set of Lady Diana’s pearls. These I wore until they broke. The white plastic pearls were kept in a cup in the kitchen.

I felt like counterfeit money, fake designer clothing at the Acapulco market, like a Virgin of Guadalupe made in China. I looked at Georgia and turned into cheap plastic. My mother had given me the biggest fake name she could find. How could I begin to explain to this British woman that my name was an act of revenge and not an act of admiration? How could I explain that my name was payment for my father’s infidelities?

Close up, Georgia was so pale I could see the blue veins under her skin. Her face was covered in freckles, even on her lips and eyelids. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were colorless and so her eyes were unframed and looked like two sky-blue marbles resting on her cheeks.

I hear you want my phone, she said.

Yes. Please.

I’m not going to charge you this time because we’re both British, right? And, after all, you’re a princess.

Violeta and Luna laughed at this. Aurora didn’t seem to listen. She was still curled up like a white-yellow centipede beside me. I could smell the insecticide rise from her body in small gusts every time she took a breath.

Georgia reached under her sweatshirt. She took out a phone from under her clothing that was hidden in a seam. It was cloaked in a Cadbury’s chocolate bar wrapper. She gave me the phone and I could see her hands were also covered with freckles.

Good luck, Princess, she said.

And then she curtsied.

Georgia was liked because she was a foreigner and had money. But no one respected her stupid crime. Everyone in jail made fun of her and gave her shoes as presents on her birthday and at Christmas. There was always someone who would tease her and yell things like, Hey, Blondie, why don’t you bring some tacos or some guacamole to Mexico too?

Those of us who had killed were different. It was not exactly respect that we were given. It was like the respect for a rabid dog. People circled around us. Here no one wanted the killers to cook or handle food. The prisoners were superstitious about eating food touched by a killer’s hand.

Georgia and Violeta turned and walked away. Aurora stirred on the ground beside me.

I’m hungry and thirsty, Aurora said. Does anyone have any gum?

Aurora was just like Maria. Maria used to think that gum was a substitute for water and food. This unexpected memory of Maria made me want to cover my eyes with my hands and disappear from the prison into the dark skin of my palms. The last time I saw Maria, my half-sister, my sweet friend with her harelip curse, had been when they’d wheeled her into a cubicle in the emergency room at the Acapulco clinic with a bullet in her arm.

We’d better go back to our cell so you can make that call, Luna said. You don’t want to get caught, and they’ll catch you anywhere else.

We stood up and walked toward the building. Aurora stayed behind and continued to lie curled up on the cement ground.

Georgia teases everyone, Luna said. Don’t feel bad about that. She doesn’t give a shit about my arm. She’s always throwing things at me and yelling at me to catch. Sometimes she calls me Catch. That’s my nickname.

As we walked in the blue-and-beige chessboard world, my eyes longed for green plants, yellow-and-red parrots, blue ocean and sky. The colorless color of cement made me feel hot and cold at the same time. So, when I sat in my cell, which still smelled of insecticide, I didn’t only call my mother. I called the leaves, palm trees, red ants, jade-green lizards, yellow-and-black pineapples, pink azaleas, and lemon trees. I closed my eyes and prayed for a glass of water.

Luna sat beside me. She sat so close I felt her ribcage against me where she should have had an arm. Her face was full of anticipation and hope.

Oh, let’s pray someone answers, she said.

Luna pressed so close to me I felt she wanted to slip on my flip-flops, get in my worn jail uniform and into my skin. It was as if she were calling her own mother.

Of course my mother had been standing at the clearing all day and all night. She held her telephone up in the air until she felt the tired ache and burn of her muscles down from her fingers to her waist. I knew she’d been standing there pacing and pacing. No one was there. Everyone had left the mountain and she stood there alone and thought about how our world fell apart. Paula was stolen and then she and her mother left forever. Ruth was stolen. Augusta had died from AIDS and Estefani was living in Mexico City with her grandmother and siblings. I wondered where Maria and her mother were, but I knew they’d left our piece of land and sky. After everything Mike had done they must have looked for a place to hide. In the state of Guerrero no one wonders if someone is going to come and get you, you know they will get you, so you don’t stick around.

My mother was the last living soul on our mountain. She stood alone with the ants and scorpions and vultures.

The phone rang and she answered.

Thank God I have been a robber all of my life, Ladydi!

It was the first thing she said.

Thank God I have been a robber all of my life, Ladydi!

It was the second thing she said.

I’m going to sell everything. Thank God I’ve been a thief all my life now I can sell it all. Ladydi, listen to this. I have five gold chains, several pairs of earrings, and six silver teaspoons buried in a can of milk at the back of the house. No one would think of looking there! Isn’t that just perfect? Tell me where you are, sweet sugar baby. I’ll be there in two days. Goodbye.

My mother hung up her phone. She had not even waited for me to tell her where I was.

So, is she coming? Luna asked.

Yes. In two days.

My mother would never come for me, Luna said. She’s in Guatemala. She doesn’t even know I’m here. She doesn’t even know her little girl has lost an arm. Of course she won’t care.

She won’t care about your arm?

You don’t know her.

You’re her daughter.

When she sees me she’s going to ask me where I left my arm as if I’d left a sweater or a hat behind and need to go back and get it. She isn’t going to want me around with one arm. She’s going to say I can’t work in the field and that no man will ever want to look at me.

She has to understand.

My mother is going to say, What can you carry?

Oh, really?

I never buried my arm, Luna said. Does one bury parts of oneself?

I don’t know.

I don’t know. I don’t know where it is or what happened to my arm.

Why did you leave Guatemala?

Because I wanted to have dollars. I hated my life in Guatemala, Luna said.

It was bad?

My husband beat me every day. No. He did not beat me. He slapped me across the face. That’s what he did. Slap, slap, slap. All day long. My cheek became a part of his hand.

So you came alone?

Yes, Luna answered. I thought anything was better than that, but I was wrong.

Yes, you were wrong.

All kinds of people are trying to go north, she said. You cannot imagine the things people take across the border to the United States. I saw stacks of dried-out stingrays that looked like sheets of black leather. I saw boxes filled with orchids. The police X-ray the trucks and buses. The X-rays find the white skeletons of immigrants. They see the human bones twisted with rickets and they find pumas and eagles, they see the bird skeletons. One man had two baby toucans in his jacket pocket.

Yes, I said. In Acapulco people steal turtle eggs.

Luna said we had to hurry and give Georgia back her phone. She’ll never lend it again if we don’t quickly give it back. She’s counting the minutes.

We left our cell and went back to the large room where the inmates gathered together. It was late afternoon and some of the prisoners were taking workshops. Classes were offered in collage, painting, computers, reading and writing.

In the room every other inmate was having her hair done. Two women were sitting in front of a small mirror gluing false eyelashes onto their upper eyelids.

Georgia was sitting at a table with Violeta. I handed her the phone hidden in the chocolate-bar wrapping and thanked her.

No problem, Princess, she said. You’re my princess so you can have it anytime.

Yes, thank you.

She’s getting her birth certificate here, right? Georgia asked Luna. You told her?

Yes, Luna said.

How old are you?

I’m sixteen.

You know you don’t have to be here, right? The law says you’re still a child, Princess.

My mother will be bringing my birth certificate. She knows.

You have to get out before you’re eighteen or you’ll never get out. Isn’t this true?

Violeta nodded her head. That’s what happened to me. I came in at seventeen, but I was sentenced to thirty years when I was eighteen!

Make sure you get out before you’re eighteen! When’s your birthday?

Not until November.

So you have plenty time, Georgia said. But hurry up. Hurry! I’m telling you this because you’re my princess.

Violeta coughed. Her hands were on her hips and her long fingernails curled toward her stomach.

If you stay here you have to imagine that there is nothing else but this. Nothing else exists but this jail and the women in it. If you think that there is anything else, you won’t survive, Violeta said in a hoarse smoker’s voice.

Damn, you don’t need to tell her that! What are you trying to do, break her heart? Georgia said.

Yes. Yes. She needs a broken heart, Violeta said.

That night there was nothing to do in the cell but lie in bed and talk to Luna. Some women had radios in their rooms, but Luna had nothing. There was no light, as she didn’t have money to buy a light bulb for the fixture in the ceiling. She bought toilet paper by the square.

I lay in my bunk bed in the dark above Luna on my cement bed, which had no mattress. The room still smelled acrid from the fumigation. Luna’s sweet voice came to me from the bunk below.

When I look at Georgia I remember my mother once told me that rain falling while the sun is shining causes freckles, she said.

That’s what makes a rainbow.

Yes, but also freckles.

Why is Violeta in here?

She’s killed many men but she’s in here because she killed her father. She does not regret it. She will tell you this over and over again. She has no regrets. She’s happy to be here. Her father killed her mother. Violeta did it for her mother and everyone agrees she did the right thing.

Has she been in here a long time?

Yes. Her father never hugged her but when she killed him, as he died, he held on to her. She says she had to kill him for him to hug her.

She doesn’t seem to like me.

She loves Georgia. She even made a collage for her as a present.

Luna explained that some of the inmates liked to take the collage workshop. It was given by a man, an artist, who had been teaching at the jail for years.

We cut out things from magazines, glue them on cardboard, and tell the stories of our lives. Will you come too? she asked.

Yes. Of course.

When you make a collage, you can really admire yourself.

I could hear Luna swallow and turn in the bunk beneath mine.

And what about Aurora? I asked. Why is she here?

Aurora. Aurora. Aurora. Luna said her name like a sigh.

Why is she here?

Aurora put the rat poison in the coffee.

22


The next morning when I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was the word Tarzan carved into the wall. It was as if the wall was tattooed to remind me where I was not. There were no birds, or plants, or the scent of overripe fruit.

Luna was already up and I heard her moving around. She sounded like a squirrel beneath me. I could hear her rummaging through plastic bags or dumping them out and scratching through them.

Damn, someone stole it, she said. Damn. Damn.

I didn’t have the energy to ask what she was missing. I lay in silence. I heard a baby crying down the hall and I thought of the list on the blackboard in the administration office. There were seventy-seven children in this jail and in the morning they made a lot of noise.

Yesterday, when we had walked around the jail, Luna had taken me past two small rooms that were the children’s school. Children could be in jail with their mothers until the age of six. The women got pregnant during their conjugal visits, which the jail allowed. Some of them also got pregnant because they were hired out as prostitutes by the guards at the criminal courts and tribunals. These encounters took place in the bathrooms.

Inside of the jail’s makeshift school a poster of a tree was pinned to the wall. If you are born and have grown up in jail, you have never seen a tree. There were also flashcards taped to a board that showed images of a bus, a flower, and a street. There was a flashcard of the moon.

Damn, Luna said again beneath me. Did you steal my lipstick?

I said, Jesus, Luna, who could want your jailbird lipstick with your jailbird saliva all over it?

The rustling below me stopped.

She did not know that it was my mother who had just spoken out of my mouth.

I climbed down from my bunk, sat on the edge of Luna’s bed, and watched her make up her face.

When she’d finished, she placed her rouge and mascara in a plastic sandwich bag and pushed it under the bed. Then she turned and held my chin with her hand and looked at me.

You will see your mother soon and begin to get out of here. Get through these days, Ladydi. Don’t fall down and scrape your knees yet, she said.

Why are you here? You have not told me. Will you get out soon?

Come to the collage workshop. It’s fun. We all go.

Who?

Well, Aurora, Georgia, and Violeta and a few others of course. Ladydi, let’s go.

I slipped on my flip-flops and followed her down the corridor.

On the plastic worktables were stacks of magazines, pieces of cardboard, kindergarten scissors, and tubs of glue.

The teacher introduced himself and told me to look through the magazines and cut out images that would then make up a story I wanted to tell. His name was Mr. Roma. He had been giving these workshops at the jail for years. The reason many of the prisoners liked to take his class was that they made collages about their own lives but also because they were fascinated by Mr. Roma. He was a painter. His hands were speckled with white oil paint. He had long, light brown curly hair that he tied into a ponytail. He was about fifty years old.

As Mr. Roma showed me to a worktable and pulled out a stool for me, a few other women came in and sat at other worktables. They were all dressed in blue. Some shook the teacher’s hand and others kissed him on the cheek.

Luna walked over to a cupboard where sheets of cardboard were stacked on shelves and took out her collage. She held the cardboard between her teeth and picked up a pair of scissors and glue. She sat beside me. She managed to get all her materials organized by using one hand and her front teeth.

There was a sudden quiet in the class as one prisoner walked past toward the sunless patio. I had not seen her before, but I knew she was jailed here. Everyone in Mexico knew about her. She was a celebrity. Four or five prisoners surrounded her, guarding her. Her frizzy black hair was combed upward so it looked like a crown. She was tall and wore navy blue, but I could see it was navy-blue velvet; it shimmered like a furry spider. Her wrists were covered with gold bangles and there was a gold ring on every one of her fingers, even on each of her thumbs. The prisoner was Lourdes Rivas. Her nickname was “the nurse.” She was the wife of one of Mexico’s top politicians. She was caught stealing millions of dollars from the Red Cross, which she had run for over twenty years.

Everyone in the class turned to look at her as she walked past.

I remembered hearing about her on the news. Someone had calculated that, thanks to her theft, thousands of ambulances were not purchased and hundreds of health clinics were not built. Her house was in San Diego, California, and was filmed for a television documentary about corruption in Mexico. My mother and I had watched it. We had even seen her bathroom sinks that were made of gold.

We watched her walk past with the small army of women prisoners that she paid to keep her safe. Everyone hated her. Everyone wanted to kill her. It seemed like every Mexican had a story about an ambulance that had never arrived.

On the table Luna’s collage lay beside my empty piece of cardboard.

From the pages of Vogue, People, National Geographic, and soap-opera magazines Luna had cut out dozens of pictures of arms and had glued this collection all over her cardboard. In the middle of this mosaic of limbs, there were two infants with big blue eyes in diapers that looked as if they had been cut out from an infant formula advertisement. In the dimpled chests of both little girls, Luna had pasted red pieces of paper, cut in the shape of drops, falling from the bodies to a pool of cutout drops. They were like cutout Valentine’s Day hearts.

You killed those children? I asked. I wanted to cover my mouth and take the words back into me, but it was too late. The words were there, in the air between us, and Luna swallowed them.

Yes. I killed them. It was snip, snip, snip. Children are so soft. The knife goes right in like cake.

She answered as if she were giving me a recipe.

Were they yours?

Oh, yes, of course, Luna answered. All mine. My two little girls.

Why?

They were always hungry, Luna answered. They always wanted to go to the swings in the park and I didn’t have time for that. There are enough girls anyway. We really don’t need any more.

Prisoners began to arrive for the classes. In other areas of the room knitting and computer classes were being held.

Georgia and Violeta appeared and sat down on the empty stools beside me. Georgia was dressed in a clean and new blue sweater. She was also wearing new tennis shoes and thick, fluffy white socks that were folded over at the ankle and covered the top of her sneakers. She placed a large red box of chocolates on the table and opened it.

Good morning, Princess, Georgia said. Have some English chocolate.

The chocolates looked like brown marbles. I took one and let it dissolve in my mouth. The creamy milk chocolate coated my teeth and tongue.

Georgia loved the collage workshop because of the fashion magazines. They reminded her of the catwalk world she used to belong to back in London before she and the Cobbler, as Violeta liked to call Georgia’s boyfriend, filled up dozens of wedgies and pumps with heroin.

Violeta took the workshop very seriously. She lined up her glue and scissors with meticulous care. She had to move things around and organize her space with the pads of her thumbs because she did not want to break her long nails. Before she began, she lit up a cigarette and looked at her collage for the time it took to finish smoking the whole thing. By the end of the class she had smoked at least thirty cigarettes one after the other.

In her raspy voice she told me about her work. She told me the story of her life.

Here, she said, pointing to the far right of her collage, is the beginning of my life. See. Look. I was happy.

In this area of the cardboard Violeta had glued photographs of roses and two yellow-and-white furred kittens playing with a ball of wool.

Then my mother and my father began to fight, Violeta said and pointed at a cutout photograph of Brad Pitt, which she had used to be the image of her father.

Don’t leave out how he used to beat her, Georgia said.

He used to beat her badly, Violeta said and pointed to a photograph of an old lady from a cake-mix advertisement. The fighting went on for years and years.

Now comes the sad part, Georgia said. Get out your Kleenex.

Then I met a man, a bad man, Violet said. She pointed to the cutout image of the Marlboro man and his horse. He gave me drugs.

In the space on the collage between the Marlboro man and a cutout fire, which looked like the image of a gas explosion, Violeta had glued images of syringes and pill bottles. Under these drug images she used letters to spell out the word prostitute.

That’s what I was, she said.

After the word she had cut out dozens of men’s faces from shaving cream and shampoo ads. Among these unknown men’s faces, I could make out the face of Pelé.

If you follow the sequence of my collage, Violeta explained, you can see clearly that it was after the fire that I killed my father.

Good for you! Georgia said without looking away from her Marie Claire magazine.

Do you know that man there? I pointed to the face. That’s a photo of Pelé, the greatest football player of all time.

Are you sure?

Of course I’m sure.

Georgia peered out of her magazine and looked down at the collage. Yes, that’s him, she agreed. That’s Pelé.

Oh well, Luna added from where she sat working on the cardboard land of her lost arm and dead children.

Just cover him up with another damn face. Who the fuck cares? Georgia said.

At this moment Aurora arrived like a stray cat that creeps in and rubs up against your leg. She slid onto a stool next to Violeta and folded her arms on the table and rested her head down.

Mr. Roma stood at our table with his hands in his pockets and looked at Violeta’s collage. It’s almost finished, right? he said.

It’s just missing one part.

Oh. What’s that?

You know I’m honest, teacher. You know I’m a delinquent.

Everyone paused and looked up when Violeta said she was a delinquent. Georgia put down her magazine. Luna looked up from her collage where she was applying some fresh glue. Aurora did not move but opened her eyes and looked straight at Violeta.

You know I’m a delinquent, Violeta repeated. When I get out of here I only have one goal, one thing I am going to treat myself to. I want to eat you from head to foot. I want you in my bed, in my arms, smelling your rich, delicious essence, or, in other words, I want to have sex with you.

We looked from Violeta to Mr. Roma to see what he would say.

Yes, Violeta, he said.

I’m serious. I’ll be ringing your doorbell.

I know.

I guessed he’d heard it hundreds of times.

Mr. Roma, Violeta said, you smell like a man, a real man.

Even though Luna had placed a blank piece of cardboard in front of me at the worktable, I could not work on a collage. I could not pick up one of those blunt scissors. Just looking at them made me feel as if I were back in kindergarten.

Instead, I looked through a National Geographic magazine. I opened the pages randomly and found an article on manatees. There were five images of manatees nursing their calves. The sea animals seemed to smile as they held their infants with their flippers.

I don’t have to make a collage in order to talk about my life, Georgia said. I know that fucking tomcat is in a pub with who knows who, probably a wife, listening to Adele, while I’m here. I know he’s eating a pork pie.

Violeta turned to Georgia and said, Just keep thinking about the Cobbler. Drive yourself crazy.

Maybe he even has kids by now. It’s been three years and he’s never answered one letter I’ve written to him, not one. What do you think of that, Princess? she asked me directly.

What can Ladydi know? Violeta said. Why on earth do you ask her?

He was my love. If I were to do a collage, I’d just glue all the letters to him that have been returned to me, Georgia said. The collage can be called Return to Sender.

Everyone was silent for a minute.

Violeta cupped her hand over Georgia’s hand.

Aurora stirred beside her and stretched out her arms.

Don’t be sad, Aurora said.

And this was when I saw the inside of her arm, lying across the table of scissors, glue, and magazines like a piece of pale, almost white, driftwood. Her skin was so wasted I could see the blue veins clearly as if they were sitting on her skin not in her skin.

There are symbols that don’t need words like the cross, or the swastika, or the letter Z, or the skull and crossbones, which are on the label of any bottle of rat poison.

The symbol on the inside of Aurora’s left arm was of a circle, with a dot in the middle, made with the burning tip of a cigarette: circle, polka dot, pink circle.

When I looked at that symbol I looked at Paula sitting under a tree, right on the ground, with insects crawling all over her body. Paula had unfolded her arm and laid it out before me to show the round cigarette burns on the inside skin.

Someone, a woman, someone, decided on this a long, long time ago and now we all do it, Paula had explained. If we’re found dead someplace everyone will know we were stolen. It is our mark. Cigarette burns on the inside of your left arm are a message.

I reached across the worktable, my hand moved through the pots of glue, paintbrushes, and small stacks of magazines, and took hold of Aurora’s arm. I grabbed her wrist and twisted it even more so that I could look at her branding more clearly. Her arm was a map.

Aurora raised her yellowed eyes and looked into mine. Her face was so sad that it occurred to me that she’d never smiled. The skin on her face had never been creased with joy.

In her asthmatic, breathless voice, damaged and hoarse from the fumigation fumes, she asked, Are you really Ladydi? Are you Paula’s friend?

She spoke the words carefully as if she didn’t want to break the words with her teeth.

It was this human centipede who told me the story of my life.

Everyone at the table listened as Aurora spoke in a wheezy voice like a breeze falling over us.

At the collage table, in the recreational room of a jail, Luna, Georgia, and Violeta learned about Paula, Estefani, and Maria. My life had suddenly turned into a wishbone. Aurora had brought both pieces together. She was the joint.

In that cement jail, Luna, Georgia, and Violeta saw my mountain and heard how my people gave birth to the most beautiful girl in Mexico. They learned about Maria’s harelip operation and Ruth’s hair salon and later disappearance. When Aurora told them that Ruth was a garbage baby this shocked a group of women criminals who could not be shocked.

My God! Luna exclaimed. Who would let their baby die all alone in a garbage heap?

Aurora told the story about how we used to blacken our faces and cut our hair so that we would not look attractive and how we would hide in holes if we heard drug traffickers approaching. Aurora described the day we came upon the poppy field and the downed army helicopter. Through gasps and gulps, she also told about the day that Paula was drenched with Paraquat and we had to wash her off with water scooped out of the toilet bowl. Aurora told them that Mike had a pet iguana tied with a string that followed him everywhere until his mother made iguana soup with it.

That was not nice, Georgia said.

Iguana soup is an aphrodisiac, Aurora said.

Who the fuck is Mike? Violeta asked.

Maria’s brother, Aurora explained.

If I had been your mother, Georgia said to me, I would have run off that mountain as soon as Ruth disappeared. What was your mother waiting for?

No, Violeta said, I would have left as soon as your father went to the United States and had another family over there. He threw dirt at you. He buried you. I’m sure you have a bunch of English-speaking brothers and sisters living in New York.

Aurora said, No. No. No. Ladydi’s mother would never leave that mountain because her dream and hope was that Ladydi’s father would come back. That was her hope and, if she left their home, he would never find them.

I looked at Aurora and thought I was looking into a mirror. She knew my life better than I did.

And, let me tell you one thing more, Aurora said. Maria is Ladydi’s half-sister.

Oh, please! Violeta said. Don’t tell me that! Violeta threw down her short plastic glue brush and jumped up from her stool. Her long yellow nails flashed in the air like hornets. Oh, no, no, no. No! You’re not going to tell me that your father fucked Maria’s mother!

Georgia slapped her magazine down on the worktable. What a fucker!

Your poor mother, Luna said. She should have killed him. I would have killed him.

Georgia patted Luna’s hand across the table. We know that, Luna, Georgia said. You don’t have to tell us. Killing is your solution to everything.

Ladydi’s mother never would have done that. That would have been like killing Frank Sinatra!

Paula had told our story to perfection.

Aurora gasped and wheezed. Talking this much had exhausted her. Holding her body up was an effort. She leaned down and rested her head on her arm. Her frail pulse quivered in her slender wrists and at her temples.

It was Violeta who stopped Aurora from talking. She said, That’s enough, Aurora. You can finish the story tomorrow.

Violeta placed the glue brush in a jar of water. She stood and wrapped her clawed hand around the fumigation canister’s strap and threw it over her shoulder. Then, holding her lit cigarette between her teeth, she picked up Aurora in her arms like a bride or a baby and carried her off. Violeta looked like a bird of prey with a rabbit in its claws. I wondered if those canisters, and Aurora herself for that matter, might be flammable so close to Violeta’s burning cigarette.

Do you know how Violeta killed her father, Princess? Georgia asked me.

I shook my head.

You haven’t told her, Catch? Georgia said.

She didn’t ask.

In jail if you don’t ask, Princess, no one tells.

Maybe she doesn’t want to know, Luna said. Not everyone wants to know.

Oh, please! Everyone wants to know about murder! She placed her magazine on the pile in the middle of the table. It’s time to call Scotland, she said and walked off down the same corridor Violeta, with Aurora in her arms, had taken moments before.

Georgia called her father in Edinburgh every evening. She was her father’s only child. Georgia hadn’t seen her mother since she was a little girl. Her mother abandoned the family and ran off with a lover. Georgia’s father had spent most of his money to help Georgia have everything she needed in jail. Her father had even mortgaged their small house to pay for Georgia’s lawyers who were trying to get her extradited to the UK. Georgia swore she didn’t know the shoes were filled with heroin but no one believed her.

What about that betrayal? Luna said.

Do you think it’s true? I asked.

Of course it’s true. Yes. I have a golden rule. I always believe a woman over a man.

Everyone in jail hated Georgia’s boyfriend.

He better not show up at this jail, Luna said.

The truth was that only one man was adored in the jail and this was Georgia’s father. He had become a legend. There was not a single daughter in that jail who was loved by their father, not one. Every prisoner was hoping that Georgia’s father would scramble the money together to come to Mexico and visit. The women wanted to meet him and the ongoing project was to start a “Bring Georgia’s Father to Mexico” fund. Violeta had his name tattooed on her arm. It was blue on her limb and it went downward, like the down column in a crossword puzzle, and read Tom.

Georgia had new clothes, shoes, bedding, and bathroom articles because her father sent her packages and money every week. Her cell was filled with British sweets. Georgia shared her Cadbury bars and red boxes of Maltesers with everyone.

As Georgia walked away to call her father, a chill filled the room, and we heard thunder. Cool air blew through the corridors and glassless windows.

Mr. Roma placed his materials away in the short metal locker at the back of the room. Luna stood and laid her collage, along with the other cardboard sheets, on a table in the back. I stacked the magazines in a pile.

The teacher said goodbye to Luna and, when he said goodbye to me, he kissed my cheek. Welcome to the workshop, he said. I hope you’ll come back.

He smelled like beer.

I didn’t rub his kiss away with my sleeve.

As Luna and I walked slowly back to our cell, the wet male saliva dried on my cheek. I felt the place on my face for hours afterward as if his kiss had left a mark on me. To have a man kiss you in a women’s jail is a gift better than any birthday or Christmas present. It’s better than a bouquet of roses. It’s better than a warm shower. I could imagine living in this jail for years and living for every workshop day and that male kiss on my cheek. That kiss was rain, sunshine, and the sweet air of outside. Yes. I knew I’d even sit there and glue stupid things onto cardboard sheets just to get that kiss again.

Later that night, as I lay above Luna in our cement bunk beds, she chattered at me in the dark. The first night I thought she was just being nice and talking to me, but now I realized she had to talk to fill the darkness. Her chatter soothed and made me drowsy.

Luna said, Can you believe that there are only twenty-six letters to say everything? There are only twenty-six letters to talk about love and jealousy and God.

Yes.

Have you realized that the words of the day are not the same as the words of the night? Luna asked.

Yes.

In the dark I could hear large trucks and buses drive by the jail. The outside sounds could only be heard early in the morning and late at night.

If you’ve been here for two years, why haven’t you been sentenced or extradited? I asked.

Princess, I never called a lawyer, or the Guatemalan Embassy, or my family. I think everyone has forgotten that I’m here.

I’m sure they miss you.

No. You might ask how can the world forget about a human being, but it happens all the time.

But don’t the people here in the jail wonder?

They assume I’m working on it. No one can imagine that I’d rather be here than anywhere else, but it’s true.

You want to stay here?

Some like it better inside than outside, Luna said. This is the best place I’ve ever been. In my village the government massacred everyone.

In Guatemala?

I lost most of my family in just two years. I walked around thinking a cold bullet was going to pierce my body at any moment. A cold bullet.

The wind that had begun as a breeze during the collage workshop was now strong and the cold air entered the building in great gusts.

I thought going to the United States would be better. I heard all the stories, Luna said.

Some say there’s nothing worse.

I’ve heard people get so thirsty they cut their arms and suck out some blood. This is in the desert. Arizona. I’ve seen cuts on a man who tried to cross but was sent back. A border guard shoots you like a wolf, if you’re lucky. If a cartel kidnaps you, like the Zetas, then you go to the land of dead immigrants, a special death place, without a birth certificate or gravestone, and nothing is worse than this.

The first big drops of rain fell on the roof and the air smelled like a mixture of water and cement.

My father’s in the United States, I said.

Imagine that a gun shooting at you is the last thing you see when you die. Imagine that being the very last image of life that you take to heaven. Do you think that the last thing you see matters?

My father is in New York, I said.

Listen, no way do I want to be buried in a cemetery with all those dead people. I want to be cremated. Do you?

I feel cold.

Yes, it’s cold.

I need some blankets soon or I’m going to get sick.

You can come down here and sleep with me, Luna offered. I don’t mind.

I sat up and scrambled down the side of the bunk bed. Luna lifted up the covers for me.

Get in, she said.

We curled up together and her body warmth entered my skin.

There, there, she said and hugged me with her arm. I felt the ghost limb of her missing arm surround me. Luna used her teeth to clench the top of the covers and pull them up to our chins.

I had known the mercy of scorpions. Now I knew the mercy of a killer.

23


Aurora’s cell smelled like the fumigation poison. It was a larger cell than mine as it had two bunk beds and four women lived in the room. It also had a toilet, sink, and small shower all lined up in a row at the back of the cell.

Aurora received no help from the outside. She had to take the jobs that no one wanted. She had been the jail fumigator ever since she’d been sentenced over a year ago.

There was no one in the room but Aurora. She was lying down on one of the bottom bunks. She beckoned for me to come in.

I sat on the edge of her bed while she lay under the covers. On her bed, pushed up against the wall, were dozens of plastic supermarket bags and two fumigation canisters and their hoses. Aurora’s eyes followed my gaze.

There’s no storage space in this room, she said. We all have to keep our belongings on our beds.

Aurora’s plastic bags were filled with clothes and objects that prisoners had given to her. In jail there was a superstition that if you took your belongings with you, you would come back. Aurora was a pack rat and accepted everything.

When you leave here, don’t forget to give me your things, she said.

I don’t have anything, I said.

Oh, but you will, you will.

Through the transparent plastic of one bag I could see a collection of hairbrushes and spoons.

Earlier that morning, Luna had told me that no one liked to share a cell with Aurora because of the odor from the fumigation canisters and because she hoarded everything. Luna said that her cellmates would leave the room as soon as they could and go to the patio or the large room where everyone gathered for classes and meals. This meant that Aurora had the cell to herself for the day. She slept most of the time.

Georgia called Aurora Sleeping Beauty, Luna said. She sleeps because she prefers dreams, not because she’s tired. Aurora opens the spout on the fumigation canister and smells the poison, Luna continued. She takes the fumes deep into her body and this makes her sleepy. It’s her sleeping potion.

As I sat on Aurora’s bed, the smell was overpowering. The odor had penetrated her bed, belongings, clothes, and skin. No insect would ever come near her.

Do you have any aspirin? Aurora asked.

In that cluttered jail cell filled with poisonous fumes, I learned that Aurora met Paula at McClane’s ranch.

The day Paula arrived it was McClane’s daughter’s fifteenth birthday party, Aurora said. I was in a tent with the other stolen women. Most of them had been taken when they tried to cross the border into the USA. All these men kept coming in and looking us over. I was already older. This was the third time I had been sold. Paula said she was from outside Acapulco. She was so beautiful.

I nodded. Yes, she was.

I thought of our angry piece of land that once held a real community, but was ruined by the criminal world of drug traffickers and the immigration to the United States. Our angry piece of land was a broken constellation and each little home was ash.

Aurora struggled to breathe. She sat up on her elbows but stayed under the blankets. I perched on the edge of the bed, as there were so many bags and things around her. There was no room. Aurora’s bed was a garbage dump.

A man who was the son of a huge drug lord in Tijuana took me, Aurora explained. Because of this, I did not live on McClane’s ranch, but we would visit often and there were parties. Sometimes I would go to Matamoros or they would come to Tijuana. So, I didn’t see Paula that often, but I saw her. I remember once I went to McClane’s ranch for a birthday party and she had a tattoo that said Cannibal’s Baby on her arm. I’d never seen that before. Of course one of McClane’s nicknames was Cannibal. They called him that because he was always making jokes about eating people, especially women.

Did he really eat people?

He’d say things like, You’re so pretty, I want to eat your arm. I’ll shake some salt on you and roll you up in a tortilla. Things like that. We all knew that when we gave ourselves to these men it was like washing dishes or taking out the garbage.

What do you mean?

It was like being a urinal.

Aurora coughed and reached for a plastic bottle filled with water and took a long drink. When she finished, she offered the bottle to me. I didn’t want to, because she seemed so sick, but I took a sip. I knew I was drinking her spit.

Paula’s tattoo was something new, Aurora continued. I was surprised she had that done, but maybe she just had no choice.

Yes, she had that tattoo, I said. And the cigarette burns.

Those men loved tattoo parlors and they always went to one in Tijuana. McClane had Saint Death tattooed on his back and the Virgin of Guadalupe on his chest. I never saw Paula again and we never said goodbye.

She made it home. It was not expected.

The rumor was that she’d managed to run away. They said one night she just walked out of the ranch and walked and walked and never came back. We thought he might have killed her. You never knew. We hoped she had not tried to cross to the United States because she would have been stolen again for sure.

What happened to you? I asked as Aurora lay back on her bed. She had no pillow so she had to lie flat.

I took the rat poison out from under the kitchen sink and mixed it in with the coffee.

Aurora’s eyes were so pale they made me think of the light blue color of dead jellyfish on the beach in Acapulco.

Where are you from? I asked.

Aurora was from Baja California. She grew up in the village of San Ignacio. Her father worked as a tour guide taking tourists out in his boat to see the California gray whales.

Look at this, Aurora said.

She pulled out a piece of cardboard from under her pile of plastic bags. It was a collage of a beach with a whale on the surface of the water and several starfish and shells cut out from magazines and glued to the brown sheet.

I cut the starfish from black paper, she said. No magazine in this jail had a photograph of a starfish!

I like it, I said. It’s pretty. It reminds me of beaches on the outside of Acapulco. I’ve never seen a whale though.

You have to understand, the first time I was stolen I was only twelve, Aurora continued. I was only a small fish, the kind you always throw back into the ocean because it is too small to eat. They should not have done that! I was the only girl in the village with light eyes.

Her eyes were like the glass in a glass-bottom boat.

No one could believe it at the ranch. Who would ever have thought that Aurora, the sweetest and most obedient of all, could have done it, but I did.

I could see into Aurora’s eyes and down into her body of light brown sand and shells.

I killed five men. Isn’t that so special! They were gathered at the ranch for a meeting. It took them two days to die in a hospital in Tijuana. The police came and arrested me when the doctors proved that the men had been poisoned. The police tested the coffee cups and they tested positive for poison. And I’d even washed them over and over with Ajax! Everyone knew I made the coffee for the rats’ meetings. Everyone knew there was a bottle of rat poison in the rats’ kitchen under the sink. Rats need to be poisoned, right?

Aurora rummaged through one of her plastic supermarket bags. She unknotted a bag filled with buttons and a stack of nail files that were held together with a rubber band. From here she also pulled out a small pile of old newspaper clippings.

Here. Read this, if you don’t believe me. It was even in the newspapers!

I read the newspaper article and then handed the clipping back to her and she placed it back into the pile.

She was proud of killing those men. It was her act of justice.

I boiled the water. I added the coffee. I let it sit.

Yes.

I placed the cups on a tray with a bowl of sugar. I could hear the men talking in the dining room. I stirred the coffee grounds in the pot.

Yes.

Aurora paused and tried to take a breath. She only seemed able to breathe out. She tried to breathe in not only with her lungs but also with her whole body, in heaves, but failed.

How did you do it?

It just took one minute. It was easy. I took out the bottle of rat poison from under the sink. I poured it into the coffee. It was so easy. It was like adding sugar or Coffee-mate.

I reached over and took her arm. The surface of her skin felt coarse as if it were still covered in beach sand. I looked into the sea landscape of her eyes and saw the whales and dolphins.

Please tell me more about Paula and McClane, I said.

Aurora told me that McClane not only had ranches all over the north, he also had businesses and properties in the state of Guerrero.

Near you, Aurora said. I never saw this, but other women told me that he had a mansion outside of Acapulco where one Christmas he built the North Pole and even brought in real reindeer on an airplane.

Yes, I answered, I’ve heard about that.

Did you know that McClane loved his horse so much that he buried it in a coffin in a cemetery as if it were a person?

No, I did not know that.

They say he wants to be buried in his car.

The cemeteries are full of men buried in their cars. I have heard about this.

I watched Aurora take another sip from the water bottle. How did Paula make it back? Aurora asked. Did you see her?

Aurora rested her head back down on the mattress.

Did she tell you about McClane’s ranch? Aurora asked.

Paula’s mother fed her from a bottle, a baby bottle, and even fed her baby food, Gerber, from a jar, I said.

Aurora listened and yawned. Her eyes closed and opened a few times. Then she turned on her side and fell asleep.

I looked at her. With her face quiet, in repose, without struggling to breathe, I could see she had been beautiful. She had been worth stealing. Today she was like a malnourished dog lost on the highway.

I curled up at the bottom of her bed among the plastic bags and fumigation canisters and fell asleep too.

For the first time in jail I had a dream. I knew the poisonous fumes had given me the dream. It was about Julio. We were lying on the grass, side by side, in the garden of the marble house in Acapulco. We lay on our sides looking at each other. I could see inside of his body. Under his flesh I saw the stars and the moon and I knew he was born from space.

The sound of Aurora coughing in her sleep awoke me. The light in the room was dim and I realized I’d been dozing there for several hours. It was as if being with someone who knew Paula, who knew something about my life, had given me the comfort to be able to sleep. Aurora had carried me home.

As I opened my eyes, I saw the shape of a person in the bed across from Aurora. It was Violeta.

I sat up.

She was naked and her hair was wrapped in a towel. I could see a few drops of water trickle out from under the towel and behind her ear. On the floor there was a trail of water that led from the tiny shower stall to her bed.

On her bed, against the wall, she had many stuffed animals. In the pile I could make out a panda, a giraffe, and at least four teddy bears. It was a zoo.

Her body was covered in tattoos. Down the side of her upper arm that faced toward me I could see the word Tom. Around the wrist of that same arm she had tattooed bracelets that looked like barbed wire.

She was sitting cross-legged with another towel opened on the bed in front of her. On the towel she had a few ink jars. I could see red and green in the jars. She also had several syringes and long needles spread out on the cloth.

Violeta looked at me.

Good morning, she said.

Is it morning still?

Hey, don’t you want a tattoo? Everyone in here has a tattoo. I’ve got the works here. I can carve you up.

When Violeta spoke, Aurora stirred and awoke.

No. Not yet, but thanks. If I walk out of here with a tattoo my mother will kill me!

Violeta, let her be, Aurora said.

Did anyone tell you, Princess, that on the outside people cry over you for exactly three days and then they forget you exist? Violeta said.

She reached over and pinched the skin of my upper arm. She took my skin between her fingers and turned it as if it were a key in a lock.

Stop! That hurts!

Why? she asked and let go of my arm. Why do good people always think they’re right? Huh?

What did I say?

In here we are not people who turn the other cheek, she said.

Luna appeared at the doorstep. She was holding a thick beige-colored sweater in her hand. She held it out to me.

I got this for you. It’s yours. One of us got out today and said I could have it. Here, put it on. It will keep you warm, Luna said.

I didn’t even give it a thought. The jail was so cold I could feel my body turning into wet cement. I took the sweater, and pulled it over my head. It smelled like the body of another woman. It was like the smell of rice boiling on the stove.

Let me sleep, Aurora said. Please.

Violeta looked at Luna and then back to me. Here we sleep two in each bunk bed, head to foot, because it is better to sleep with someone’s foot in one’s mouth than their stinky face and bad jail breath.

Yes, Luna said. We know.

You two get to have your own bunks. That’s not fair!

Stop it, Aurora said. Since when did you go looking around for the world to be fair?

Let’s go. Come on, Luna said.

A tattoo will make you feel good, Violeta called out to me as we walked away. Think about it. I’m not expensive.

As I walked back to my cell with Luna at my side I thought this day was almost finished. My whole being was leaning toward Sunday Visitors’ Day. Only one more day and I would see my mother. I imagined that by now she was in a cheap hotel somewhere near the jail. I could feel it.

That Violeta! She’s such a glutton, Luna said. When she eats chicken she feels love. When she eats a steak she feels happiness. I’ve seen her eat a whole cake.

Why did she kill all those men? I asked.

It was just part of her gluttony, Luna said. I figured it out. Killing was like eating.

As we walked, I told Luna about my dream. I told her that the universe was inside of Julio.

You need to thank God for resolving your destiny in the dream and thank Him for His warning, Luna said. A long time ago I promised God that I would heed every single one of His messages.

What do you think it means? I asked.

It’s so obvious.

Well?

It means that you want to see the hands of the clock go backward. Back in time everyone is the same.

I don’t think so. That is not what it means.

What does it mean then?

I think I know. When I know I will tell you.

When I climbed up to my bed that night, there was a photograph of Princess Diana in a black ball gown and a tiara on her head that had been torn out of a magazine and stuck to my wall with Scotch tape. The real loveliness of the dead princess beside my body in jail dressed in worn beige sweatpants made me feel ugly and dirty. I tore the photo off the wall and rolled it into a ball in my hand. The black ink of her ball gown stained my fingers.

24


The next morning Luna and I went out to the outdoor patio and sat in a streak of sunshine. Almost everyone on the patio was looking for a ray of sunlight to warm their bodies. The long shadow cast by the men’s jail made most of the open yard sunless.

By eleven the patio was filled with women standing in groups talking while by the southern wall a football game had begun. I could see Georgia’s yellow hair running after the ball and Violeta on the sidelines watching the game. Luna bought a cup of coffee for both of us from a woman who sold coffee and sweet bread out of a basket.

Luna wanted to watch the football game and I did not. So I strolled over to a bench and sat down while she went to the other side of the patio to stand with Violeta.

I sipped on the lukewarm coffee and, after a few moments, I watched Aurora walk out of the prison building onto the patio. She squinted and flinched in the outdoor light as if it hurt her eyes.

I waved for her to come and sit with me. She moved slowly, on tiptoe, as if she were walking in slow motion or miming what it was to walk. The fumigation canister was on her back and she wore it as if it were a turtle shell.

She sat next to me and was barefoot. It was her feet hurting against the icy cement that had made her walk like that. She sat beside me and I gave her what was left of my coffee.

Here, you can finish it, I said.

Her pale, dry hand wrapped around the Styrofoam cup and exposed the pattern of cigarette burns on the inside of her arm. In the patio light the round scars looked like mother-of-pearl moons.

Where are your shoes?

Someone is always stealing my stuff. This morning they were gone.

Her feet looked stiff and blue. I was still wearing my plastic flip-flops. If I had shoes would I give them to her? I knew I probably wouldn’t. In only a few days the jail had modified me. I thought about what Violeta had said earlier, how people outside forgot you in only three days.

I took the canister off Aurora’s back and made her sit facing me on the bench. I placed her feet on my lap and covered them with my sweater.

Now we both need shoes, I said.

The truth was that, now when I looked at Aurora, after everything she’d told me about Paula, it was as if she were a road out of jail, through the streets of Mexico City, to the black highway and back to my home.

Aurora drained the last of the coffee, placed the empty cup on the floor, and then reached for my hand and held it. Even though Aurora was older than me, she was like a child. Her hand was small like a seven-year-old’s. I held on to it as if I were going to help her cross a street.

Aurora continued to speak as if our conversation from the day before had not been interrupted by a sudden exhausted sleep. The poison sleep.

We could not believe that Paula would run away, Aurora said. He would find her. She knew that. He would find her eventually. She knew that.

I don’t think he’s found her, I answered. Paula and her mother disappeared. They left. They’re hiding somewhere. No one knows where.

Aurora took her hand out of my hand and hugged her stomach as if it hurt.

You don’t understand, she said.

What?

My stomach hurts. My head hurts.

Is there a doctor here?

Only on Mondays. I don’t want to see him. He might not let me fumigate and then how will I make money?

It’s making you sick.

It makes me dream and sleep. But you don’t understand, she said again. Ladydi, you don’t understand.

What?

Aurora rocked back and forth holding her stomach. Her eyes rolled back and I could see the whites of her eyes.

Listen, she whispered.

Listen, she whispered again. When you killed McClane why did you kill Paula’s little girl too? Why?

I’m sorry. I don’t understand. What?

When you killed McClane, when you killed Juan Rey Ramos, you know. What were you thinking? When you killed McClane why did you kill Paula’s little girl too? Why?

The words she spoke stood still in the air as if they were cooked with the poison she breathed in and out of her lungs. I felt as if I could reach out and catch the words suspended in the air and break them up in my hands like dry leaves. I could taste poison in my mouth.

When you killed McClane why did you kill Paula’s little girl too? Why?

I had seen the dresses drying on the maguey cactus. I had imagined the narrow, twig arms of a little girl coming out of the sleeves. They were almost dry and so they lifted and blew in the heat. On the ground beside the cactus there was a toy bucket and a toy broom.

When you killed McClane why did you kill Paula’s little girl too? Why?

Blood could smell like roses.

When you killed McClane why did you kill Paula’s little girl too? Why?

I closed my eyes and prayed to the radio. I prayed to the song on the radio, the song I had heard again and again in Acapulco. I heard it when I cleaned the house. I heard it on the beach. I heard it in the glass-bottom boat. I heard it. I heard it. I heard the narco ballad for Juan Rey Ramos:

Even dead he’s the most powerful man alive,

Even dead he’s the most powerful man alive.

The pistol that killed him also killed his girl,

And you’ll see their ghosts alive, pale as pearl.

Together, hand-in-hand, on the highway,

Together, hand-in-hand, on the highway.

For God save your prayers, don’t speak a word,

We sing for the man and the child butchered.

25


On Sunday morning most of the prisoners woke up early to get ready for Visitors’ Day. The women painted their fingernails, combed their hair into buns and braids or straightened it out with large curlers that they’d worn on their heads all night. Even prisoners who never had visitors would get fixed up just in case.

What everyone did know was that the queue of visitors waiting to get in outside the women’s jail was short. The queue for visitors to the men’s jail was long and went way down the road and covered a distance of at least ten blocks. It could take hours for visitors to finally get in and see the men.

It was Luna who had told me this.

There is nothing else one needs to know about anything, she said. No one visits the women. Everyone visits the men. What more do we need to know about the world?

The jail rules at the women’s prison were that the visitors were brought in to the patio first and, half an hour later, the prisoners were allowed out.

At eleven we lined up in the corridor that led out to the yard. I was pressed between Luna and Georgia in single file. Georgia had a huge wad of bubble gum in her mouth and I could hear it snap as she moved it around her mouth.

Do you have any more of that? I asked.

I had not brushed my teeth since I’d arrived.

Georgia pulled out a piece of pink gum from a pocket in her jeans and gave it to me.

Thank you.

Hold on to your prayers, she said, every religion known to man comes here on Sunday and wants to steal them.

Outside the patio was completely transformed. It was like a fairground. Everyone was dressed in reds and yellows. Visitors were not allowed to wear blue or beige so that they would not accidently get mistaken for a prisoner.

The space was filled with people carrying baskets of food and presents wrapped in bright-colored paper. To one side there were four nuns dressed in white habits waiting on a bench. There were many children running around. I expected to see a balloon man or a cotton-candy vendor appear at any moment.

Scanning over the drab prisoner colors and brightly colored visitors, I looked for my mother.

I didn’t see her.

She did not come.

And then I saw my father walking toward me.

I walked toward him through jungle leaves.

Iguanas scurried away as I moved under papaya trees and broke spiderwebs that grew across my path.

I could smell the orange blossoms in the trees around me.

It was not my father.

Maria opened her arms and, as they opened, I could see the ugly round scar on her upper arm and the huge chunk of missing flesh left from my mother’s gunshot. I could also see the faint scar on her upper lip left from the operation on her harelip.

I walked into her embrace. She kissed my cheek.

For the first time in my life I thought, Thank you, Daddy. Thank you, Daddy. Thank you for fucking around and giving me Maria.

I took Maria’s hand and walked her to one side of the patio, far from everyone. All the benches were taken and so we sat down on the cement ground with our backs resting against the wall that divided the area from the men’s prison.

I could see Luna sitting with the nuns. Georgia and Violeta were talking to a woman in a gray business suit. I didn’t see Aurora anywhere.

At least you’re safe here, Maria said.

Maria told me that her mother was dead. Maria had hid in the hole and listened to a group of men fire machine guns at her house and into the body of her mother.

I was saved by the hole. Imagine, Maria said. The hole saved someone.

It saved me once too.

The trees and grass were covered in her blood, Maria continued. I knew if I looked up, the sky would be covered in her blood. I know the moon is covered in her blood. It always will be.

I caressed Maria’s hair in long strokes from the top of her head down to her neck. Maria shivered.

I didn’t dare come out of the hole for days, she said. I would look up at the sky from the hole and see the vultures.

Yes.

I could hear the ants moving.

Yes.

After four days, I was so thirsty, I couldn’t cry.

Yes, I know.

I was so alone.

Yes.

I heard one man say, Be grateful we are killing you. It could be worse.

Yes.

My mother knew I was in the hole. Kill me, she said.

Yes, you can keep on telling me. Tell me more, I said.

I was in that hole for days. When I looked up, the sky was covered in blood.

And then what did you do?

I ran to your mother’s house. Where else could I go? Where else could I go? She took care of me and let me sleep in your bed.

I placed my arm around Maria.

The ground here is so cold, she said.

Yes, in this place even the sun is cold.

As we sat on the cement in the meager sunlight, glass began to fall out of the sky. Glass dust fell from the stars.

Everyone in the yard looked up at the clouds.

There was silence.

The shards fell and children held out their hands and caught the dust. The crystal glittered. The ground and all surfaces were covered in glass snow.

The Popocatepetl volcano had dropped its cloud of ash on our prison.

26


One of the senior prison guards came out in the yard and announced to the visitors that they had to leave and told the prisoners they had to get inside. The volcanic ash was filled with microscopic shards that could cut up your lungs and eyes.

Maria and I stood up. Our dark hair had turned a gray white from the ash.

Did you know Paula had had a baby? It was McClane’s.

No.

Mike killed Paula’s child. I was with him that day. And he killed McClane.

Maria covered her mouth with her hand. This was a gesture she’d always made to hide her harelip. Even after the operation she continued to hide her broken face.

They’ll find us, she said behind the gate of her fingers.

Her body began to tremble.

I sat in Mike’s car, I said. I didn’t know. I wasn’t in there.

Did you see the girl?

I saw her dresses. Where’s my mother?

She’s here. She’s done the paperwork. You’re not eighteen. You can’t be here.

I’ll go to the juvenile jail for a year and then I’ll be back here. I’ve learned all about that. It’s how it works, Maria.

You’re out tomorrow. She didn’t want to see her baby in jail like a jungle bird, or like a wild parrot, in a cage. That’s what she said. Those words.

Where is she?

At the hotel. She told me to tell you that love is not a feeling. It’s a sacrifice.

Yes.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

Yes.

Stay in the shadows. Don’t get into trouble. Walk in the shadows.

Goodbye.

Here’s a bar of soap.

Can you give me something?

What?

Give me your earrings.

Maria was wearing a pair of plastic pearl studs. She did not ask what for, which I loved. She had always been like that. She never asked why. Maria assumed you knew what you were talking about.

Maria took off her earrings and dropped them in my hand.

See you tomorrow, she said.

Maria stood and I watched her as she walked through the crowd of robbers and killers to the exit.

She walked in the glass snow.

That night I gave Luna the earrings.

Thank you, Luna said. Do not try and rhyme, you know, understand, anything that happened to you here.

27


The Gods were angrier than we thought, my mother said.

These were the first words she spoke to me. She didn’t expect an answer.

Outside the jail I walked through a landscape where there were no trees or flowers. It was a terrain of discarded clothes as if the land had become cloth. I walked through the beige and blue fabric prisoners had stripped off their bodies and left behind in the street.

Volcanic ash still covered most surfaces and our steps left footprints in the glass powder.

My mother handed me a red sweater. I threw the worn sweatshirt Luna had given me on the ground where it became part of the blue-and-beige patchwork.

Outside the jail’s parking lot my mother had a taxi waiting for us. Maria was sitting inside. We got in the back seat beside her. I sat between them. Maria placed her arm around me.

To the South Station bus terminal, my mother said to the taxi driver.

Take off those flip-flops, my mother said.

She took a pair of tennis shoes out of her bag and reached down and pulled the flip-flops off my feet as if I were a little girl. Then she threw the flip-flops out the window as if they were candy wrappers.

Where are we going, Mama?

I’m going to wash all the dishes in the United States, my mother said.

We’re not going to wait around, Maria said. You have a meeting with the Social Services later today and they will probably place you in a juvenile delinquency center.

As soon as you turn eighteen, they place you right back in that jailbird birdhouse, my mother said.

I thought of Luna’s words about immigrants going to the United States. I could see my mother, Maria, and me swimming across the river.

Shit, think of The Sound of Music! my mother said. It will be like that.

Yes, Maria said.

We’re going to the USA and I am going to wash dishes. I will wash all the dishes, all that steak blood and cake icing. You’re going to be a nanny to a family. You and Maria can be nannies. And we will never tell anyone where we came from.

Yes, Maria said.

Do you know why?

Why? I asked.

We’re not telling where we came from. It’s simple, my mother said. It’s simple because no one will ever ask.

Mama, I said, I have something for you. I stole something for you.

I opened my hand and took off the diamond ring and gave it to her. She looked at it without saying a word. She placed it on her finger.

You have made me love my hand, she said.

It’s beautiful, Maria said.

Someone cast a net across this country and we fell in it, my mother said.

As we drove through the city’s streets, through the traffic and diesel fumes of the large trucks, I watched my mother stare at the ring and pet the large diamond with her finger.

Along the avenue the street sweepers, with their mouths covered by handkerchiefs, were cleaning up the ash. They brushed it into large black plastic garbage bags. These bags were piled up like large boulders at every corner.

There’s something I need to tell you, I said. There are five people in this taxi.

I pointed to my belly.

There’s a baby in here, I said.

My mother didn’t blink or breathe or move and then she kissed my cheek. Maria kissed my other cheek.

They kissed me, but they did not kiss me.

They were already kissing my child.

My mother said, Just pray it’s a boy.

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