The Girl in the Glass Box

by James Grippando

  They were told not to move until Esteban gave the signal. There were coyotes with other migrants in the area, and a group to Hugo’s right suddenly made its move in the darkness. Hugo was relieved to see that his group was not the first to cross; someone else would be the border patrol guinea pigs.

  “I think we’re next,” Paco whispered.

  “Yeah,” said Hugo.

  “Look me up if you ever come to Chicago.”

  “I will.”

  “I would like to meet your beautiful woman in Miami. Juanita?”

  “Julia.”

  “Does she know you’re coming?”

  “No. I haven’t talked to her since she left San Salvador.”

  “Did she tell you she was going to Miami?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know she’s there?”

  “Because I know her husband is there.”

  Paco smiled, confused. “What are you going to do? Find her husband and say, ‘I’m here for your wife’?”

  The question set Hugo thinking about how the pendulum had swung in his life—from Barrio 18 to Ebenezer Church and then back again. Whatever religion he’d found in prison was lost in El Salvador.

  “No,” said Hugo. “I’m going to kill him.”

  Chapter 21

  “Who names a church after Scrooge?” asked Theo.

  He and Jack were in the back seat of a taxi, and Theo was reading their destination from the map, silently mispronouncing the Iglesia Ebenezer. In fairness, if Jack hadn’t googled it, he wouldn’t have known that Ebenezer was a location mentioned by the books of Samuel as the scene of battles between the Israelites and Philistines.

  “Better than the Church of Fagin, I guess,” said Jack, but the Dickens allusion was lost on his friend.

  It was day two of their trip to San Salvador, and they’d spent the night at one of the city’s safest hotels in the quiet Zona Rosa district. The neighborhood around the church was another matter. It was controlled by the notorious 18th Street gang, and the cabdriver offered repeated warnings, even trying in broken English to make sure his foolish American passengers appreciated the “daohn-jeer.” Jack understood. Julia had told him about the bakery behind the church, and he knew better than to wander around the barrio.

  The cab stopped behind the church. Even in broad daylight, the only safe place for a cabdriver to sit and wait was outside a major hotel, so Jack tipped him generously and told him to circle back in exactly one hour. Theo led the way and Jack hurried behind him across the sidewalk and into the bakery.

  The first thing Jack noticed was the wonderful smell, like any bakery. But the tattoos on the arms, necks, and faces of the bakers told the real story. Some were recognizable objects: flying cars, exotic flowers, or indigenous goddesses. Some were nonsensical—except as gang symbols. Julia had told him that, except for a few volunteers like her, everyone who worked at the church bakery was a former gang member.

  “Are you Mr. Swyteck?” a man asked in English. He was considerably older than the other workers, and he was the only one without tattoos. Jack had called ahead to set up a meeting with Julia’s old boss, and Jack recognized the voice from their phone conversation.

  “Marco?” asked Jack.

  He confirmed it with a smile and a handshake. “My beautiful Julia,” he said, smiling sadly. “How is she?”

  Jack had explained the sobering situation in their phone conversation, but Marco said that he’d prayed for a miracle before going to bed last night and was hoping that her release had come to be. Jack hated to disappoint him, but Marco got over it and invited Jack and Theo into his office to talk in private.

  “What do you think of our little bakery?” asked Marco.

  “Nice,” said Jack.

  “Makes me hungry,” said Theo.

  Marco brought them a sampling of fresh breads and cookies. Theo ate while Jack and Marco talked, starting with a point of curiosity on Jack’s part.

  “How do you get gang members to work in a bakery?” asked Jack.

  Marco smiled. “They’ve turned to God.”

  “And the gangs are okay with that?” asked Jack.

  “Normally anyone who tries to leave a gang is killed as a traitor. Religious experience is an exception for almost all the gangs—the Mara Salvatrucha, the 18 South, the 18 Revolutionaries, the Mirada Locos, the Mara Maquina, the Mao-Mao. But I would say the Revolutionaries 18 has lost the most soldiers to God.”

  “But the men who work here still have gang tattoos,” said Jack.

  “Yes. That is because desecration of any gang symbol, including removal of a tattoo, is punishable by death. But it doesn’t matter what worldly symbol is on their skin. As long as they dedicate themselves to God, they are welcome here. And the gangs leave them alone.”

  “I don’t mean to insult your efforts,” said Jack, “but what if somebody fakes it just to get out of the gang?”

  “They are still welcome here. But if they don’t lead a pious life, they will answer to the gangs.”

  The colored dots on Israel’s map of clandestine graves suddenly popped into Jack’s mind.

  “Let’s talk about Julia,” said Jack.

  “Wonderful person,” said Marco. “She was a tremendous help to me here for many years. Literally worked for food so she and her daughter could eat.”

  “What can you tell me about her husband?”

  Marco’s expression soured. “What do you want to know?”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “Yes.”

  “When is the last time you saw him?”

  “Seven or eight months ago. He came asking for Julia.”

  “Does she know this?”

  Marco shook his head. “No. I told him never to come back here again and to leave Julia alone.”

  “Julia told me that she hasn’t seen him in two years. He left her.”

  “That’s true. He left her because I told him he must go.”

  “And he listened to you?”

  “Mr. Swyteck, I live and work in a war zone. I’ve picked up bodies from the street right outside this church. I’ve kept dozens, maybe hundreds of men from becoming another body on the street. On occasion, I have been known to call in favors. When I tell Julia’s husband he must go, he knows he must go.”

  “I like this guy,” said Theo.

  It was a welcome moment of levity, but the mood soon turned serious. “I think I know the answer to this question,” said Jack, “but I have to ask. Why did you tell him to go?”

  “I could tell you stories. But I won’t.”

  “I would like to hear the truth,” said Jack.

  “You will. Wait right here.”

  Marco rose and stepped out of the room. A minute later he returned. Three young women were in his company. Jack and Theo rose as Marco introduced each woman by her first name only.

  “These women volunteer here, like Julia did,” said Marco. “This bakery would shut down without their help.”

  The women said nothing, and their solemn expressions told Jack that they were not in the room to be congratulated.

  Marco spoke to them in Spanish, thanking them for their honesty in advance, and telling them how important this was to Julia. Then he continued, still in Spanish.

  “Please raise your hand like this,” he said, demonstrating, as if swearing an oath, “if you have ever been sexually assaulted.”

  The woman in the middle was the first to raise her hand. The other two joined.

  Marco looked at Jack and asked, “Did you understand my question?”

  Jack had been taken aback, but he’d gotten it. “Yes.”

  Marco addressed the women. “Keep your hand in the air if you were assaulted by Señor Jorge.”

  No one lowered her hand.

  “Keep your hand up if you were sexually assaulted by Señor Jorge more than once.”

  Their hands didn’t move.

  Marco thanked them on behalf of himself and Julia, adding that there is n
o shame in being a survivor of sexual assault. Then he dismissed them, and it was just the men in the room.

  “Is there anything else you need to know about Julia’s husband, Mr. Swyteck?”

  Jack wondered how many other victims there might be. “No,” he said. “I think I got it.”

  Chapter 22

  “Beatriz?”

  She heard a woman calling her name, but Beatriz couldn’t respond. She couldn’t even open her eyes.

  “Beatriz, wake up.”

  Beatriz forced her eyes open but couldn’t lift her head from the pillow. Such a hard pillow. The hardest, flattest pillow she’d ever felt. She turned her head, and as her face rolled to one side she sensed the cool veneer of something that didn’t feel like her pillow at all.

  Someone shoved her shoulder, which made her start.

  “That’s it. Wake up, girl.”

  The voice belonged to her math teacher, but Beatriz had no idea what Ms. Alvarez was doing in her bedroom.

  “Open your eyes now.”

  Beatriz wiped away a little pool of spittle that had gathered on the desktop beside her mouth. She wasn’t in her bedroom. Her lashes fluttered, and she was beginning to orient herself.

  “You slept through the entire class,” her teacher said.

  Beatriz slowly raised her head from the desktop. Her gaze swept the room and finally came to rest on the algebraic equations written across the whiteboard. It was definitely her math class, but she and her teacher were the only people in the room.

  “I missed class?” she asked with concern.

  Ms. Alvarez took a seat in the student desk beside her. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Why did you let me sleep through class?”

  “You were out cold.”

  “I can’t miss class!”

  “Honey, relax. We all know what you’re going through at home. Are you not sleeping at night?”

  “No,” Beatriz said quietly.

  “You’re looking skinny to me, too,” Ms. Alvarez said, cupping her hand around Beatriz’s bony wrist. “Are you eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”

  “Not really hungry.”

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  Beatriz shook her head.

  “You sure?” Ms. Alvarez asked. “I’m a good listener.”

  Beatriz had told no one about the man on the bus. Ms. Alvarez was her favorite teacher. She wished she could tell her, but what would that accomplish? A phone call to ICE on that man’s “speed dial”? Even if he’d dragged her off the bus and raped her, she couldn’t have called the police.

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Okay. But at some point we will have to talk about your grades. Two weeks ago you had a ninety-eight. Zeroes on homework are killing you. You have to turn something in. Even if it’s incomplete it’s better than a zero.”

  Beatriz nodded.

  “Come see me after school today. We can work through it together.”

  “Okay.”

  “Great. It’s a date,” Ms. Alvarez said, and then continued talking, but Beatriz was hearing none of it. She was looking past her teacher, staring out the window behind her, and her gaze was fixed on a man wearing a uniform.

  Beatriz let out a shriek that startled her teacher, and she shot from her desk like a launched missile.

  “Beatriz!”

  Ms. Alvarez chased after her, but Beatriz kept running across the classroom, out the door, and down the hall. Her teacher called her name, but in heels Ms. Alvarez was no match for Beatriz’s quick feet. Beatriz tried the first door she came to and flung it open, looking for someplace to hide. A class was in session, and a roomful of heads swiveled in her direction in a collective display of confusion. Beatriz continued to the next door, and then to the next until she found an empty classroom. She pushed a desk against the door to barricade it closed, switched off the fluorescent lights, and ran to the window.

  The man in the uniform was still in the parking lot.

  She went from window to window, lowering the blinds as quickly as possible. Behind her, the desk at the door began to move. The door pushed open. Ms. Alvarez entered the empty classroom.

  “Don’t tell him I’m here!” Beatriz shouted.

  Ms. Alvarez watched as Beatriz struggled with the dangling cords to the blinds and shut herself off from what was outside the windows.

  “Don’t tell who you’re here?”

  Beatriz stopped. She was out of breath from the run, the excitement, the fear. “ICE!”

  Ms. Alvarez crossed the room to the window and peered between slats in the closed blinds. Then she went to Beatriz and held her tightly, speaking in a soothing voice.

  “Honey, it’s the security guard.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s okay. That’s Mr. Thompson. It’s not ICE.”

  Beatriz gasped, frightened by the memory of the ICE agents who’d taken her mother, even more frightened by her own paranoia. But she trusted Ms. Alvarez and knew she would never lie to her.

  “I thought—”

  “I know what you thought, honey.”

  Beatriz could no longer stand on her own two feet. She felt comfort in Ms. Alvarez’s arms and didn’t want to separate from their embrace. Together, they lowered themselves to a seat on the tile floor. Then the tears began to flow, and Beatriz pressed herself against her teacher like a child even younger than she was.

  “I want my mom,” she said, sobbing.

  Ms. Alvarez stroked her head. “I know, honey. I know.”

  Chapter 23

  The cabdriver picked up Jack and Theo outside the Ebenezer bakery precisely one hour after dropping them there, as promised. But they weren’t going straight back to the hotel. Jack gave him the address.

  “You’re going to Soyapango?” the driver asked, not hiding his surprise.

  The criminologist at the public prosecutor’s office had been unable to arrange a meeting with the prosecutor in Julia’s case, but he’d come through in another way. He found the defense lawyer who’d negotiated Julia’s plea with the prosecutor. Gabriel Santos was in private practice in Soyapango, on the east side of San Salvador.

  “Is it not safe?” asked Jack.

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Do you feel lucky?”

  Jack glanced at Theo, who said, “I won’t tell Lieutenant Henning if you don’t tell Lieutenant Henning.”

  “Vamos,” said Jack.

  The driver pulled away from the curb, leaving the comforting smell of the bakery behind them. He cruised steadily above the speed limit, choosing not to stop at a couple of red lights that Jack, too, would have punched through. Then they stopped for no apparent reason. The driver pointed, and Jack spotted the police tape. An entire block was cordoned off, the street and sidewalks empty except for a smattering of police officers and a bus with the windshield shot out and the driver’s side riddled with bullets. Jack could tell that it was an old American school bus, once yellow, now painted in bright reds, greens, and blues for its second life as a public bus in Central America. Its driver, however, would have no second life, no second chance. Death was dealt evenhandedly to any driver who let it be known that he was fed up with the “protection” payments that bankrolled the gangs and their drugs, jewelry, and motorcycles.

  “Otro muerto,” said the cabdriver.

  “Another one dead,” Jack said for Theo’s benefit.

  “I think I could have figured that one out,” said Theo.

  The cabdriver followed the detour, doing a nice job of maneuvering around stopped and slow-moving vehicles, shaking his head as they passed petrified drivers who had no business being anywhere near the east side, much less lost in Soyapango. Jack’s meeting was scheduled for two p.m., and the driver dropped them in front of the lawyer’s office with five minutes to spare.

  “Be back in—”

  One hour, was what Jack was going to say, but the driver pulled away, tires squealing, be
fore he could finish.

  “I don’t think he’s coming back,” said Theo.

  “You don’t say?” said Jack.

  Jack turned and faced the building. On the front door, behind iron bars, was a sign that read abogado. They were in the right place. Jack phoned the office on his cell, and Santos unlocked the door and the bars to let him and Theo inside.

  Santos was extremely personable and, typical of Salvadorans, a gracious host, offering coffee, pastries, and possibly even his right arm, had Jack asked for it. He led them to his private office in the back of the suite and immediately apologized for the revolver lying on his desktop, which he’d kept handy ever since the bodies of two men and a woman were left on the steps of the public prosecutor’s office in Soyapango. They appeared to have been tortured.

  “Can’t be too careful,” he said, as he tucked the gun into the top drawer.

  Jack agreed, and after a few more pleasantries the conversation turned to Julia. Santos didn’t keep files on cases dating back six years, so he spoke from memory.

  “Rodriguez,” he said, straining his recall. “Yeah, nice lady. No money for a lawyer, but nice.”

  “How did she get you to represent her?”

  “It’s a criminal charge,” he said. “In El Salvador, the accused has the right to legal assistance, and if she can’t afford it, the state has to provide her with court-appointed counsel.”

  It struck Jack as ironic that, even though Julia was effectively facing the same charge in a civil deportation proceeding, she had no right to court-appointed counsel under U.S. law.

  “You got a good result for her,” said Jack.

  “Yes. No jail time.”

  “How did you manage that?” asked Jack.

  “It wasn’t easy in Julia’s case. If the woman denies she had the procedure, the prosecutor has a tough case. But in cases like Julia’s, where something goes wrong and the woman ends up in the hospital, they panic. They’re scared of dying—bleeding to death. So they tell the doctor or the nurse what happened. Then they get reported. Prosecutors like to take those cases to trial.”