Trapped in the Mayan Tattoo

by Ronda Pauley

  “Sure,” said Maria, trying to stay focused on the woman. “Go for it! I don’t need any of this stuff.”

  “You don’t? I sure do!” the girl said.

  Although Maria believed she now had a chance to be away from this God-forsaken place, she took her eyes off the woman to look softly at the girl and promised herself that someday, if she made it out, she’d find a way to set these girls free. Not one had asked to come here. When the girl looked up at her, Maria gave her a quick smile and then turned her attention back to the woman who leisurely sipped a bottle of tea, no ice.

  OK! Maria thought. Her heart raced. She remembered to sit tight and not approach the woman inside the cantina, but it was so hard to wait, to stay calm, and just mark time. Again, her hands began shaking.

  A man entered in dirty work clothes, apparently on lunchbreak from a nearby factory. He nodded his head toward the girls and talked to the bartender Ramon.

  “Look here, Candie. This outfit is just drop dead gorgeous. Would Ramon let me get it?” the girl asked Maria as she pointed to an outfit.

  “That rag looks like trouble. So does that man who just walked in,” Maria said, and brushed the girl’s bangs out of her eyes. “Don’t get hurt.”

  When the girl gave her a quizzical look, Maria showed her fresh bruises.

  The woman’s timing was exact. After precisely twenty minutes, the woman paid Ramon and left the cantina. The man was seating himself at the bar, having a beer.

  “Ouch! Who did that?” the girl asked after she studied the bluish mark on Maria’s face.

  Maria shook her head. It made her feel dirty to remember the disgusting man who was responsible.

  “Skinny. Crooked teeth. Mean eyes. You’ve seen him,” Maria said without emotion. She got up to leave. “Stay safe.” Her lisp was worse than usual. It didn’t matter.

  Finding it hard to remain calm, she adjusted the lump in her bra and headed toward the front of the cantina. Without looking at the bartender’s eyes or at the stranger, Maria sauntered past them on toward the door and the dust-covered street. She clasped her hands around her handbag to stop them from shaking.

  The bartender quickly moved to block her way. “Whoa, girl!”

  “I need to breathe. Not going anywhere.”

  Maria walked out.

  TWO

  Abbi had a gift. Or was it a curse? She contemplated the feeling that she had and tried to piece together the fragments of scenes that kept popping into her mind, awful scenes she couldn’t shake. A gunshot. Her father. A scuffle. Her mother. Someone slumped over in pain. Then lights out. Something felt wrong, terribly wrong. And it involved her parents.

  As if those scenes weren’t enough to convince her, Shoe Clerk called.

  Abbi breathed deeply but finally resigned herself to what she had to do. She hated having to leave home. She hated trying to pretend that all was well. The phone call sfrom Shoe Clerk was proof that all was not well. She picked up her cell phone and started texting a friend.

  CAN I COME OVER?

  [Brief pause.]

  TO STAY?

  4 AWHILE. SHOE CLERK CALLED.

  OMG. GOTTA CLEAR MY BUNK.

  THX C YA. TELL MAMA P I MISSED HER COOKING.

  This text exchange happened between, Abbi Abernathy, 16, and Louise Pelletier, her 17-year-old friend. As close as they were, she couldn’t tell Louise about the scene flashes she’d been seeing or the strange way she felt. There’s no way Louise would understand. Abbi had tried before. She used to think everyone did this, to some degree, but Louise never did. Louise thought Abbi was “imaginative” and “inventive”, polite ways of saying Abbi did over-the-top drama.

  The two were very different but, in many ways, like sisters. Abbi envied the way Louise knew what she wanted to do with her life. Louise wanted to be an accountant. The very thought of doing that made Abbi sick. Abbi had no idea what her own career path might be. Something adventuresome, maybe. Or imaginative.

  Abbi’s parents spent long days at work and seemed to enjoy it. For the most part, Abbi kept to herself and her parents kept their business to themselves. That’s just the way Abbi liked it. They said they worked for Fred’s Boots Incorporated. When Abbi was little, it kept her in dance shoes. That’s all that mattered in her early years.

  Now, at the age of sixteen, Abbi’s discussions with her parents still revolved around shoes. If Abbi rolled her eyes or jokingly protested, they ignored it. Comments such as “This next job is a shoe-in!” and “Wouldn’t want to be in his shoes!” punctuated their conversations. Abbi found it annoying, but she played along to amuse them.

  Abbi’s parents would occasionally leave, a few days at a time. They would say it was for their work, Fred’s Boots Incorporated. Sometimes, when she was younger, Abbi’s nanny would come and stay with her while her parents were gone. More recently, they had arranged for Abbi to stay with family friends, the Pelletiers, if they would be gone more than 24 hours.

  This time they had been gone for several days. It wasn’t the plan. The end of the school year came and went without her parents around. Abbi kept up the pretense that all was well, but meanwhile glimpses of scenes she couldn’t understand would flash in her mind. Even very young children are able to pick up cues when something is not right, whether they can comprehend it or not.

  Abbi knew at an early age that this business of boots and shoes only served as a deception. By now, Abbi deduced that her parents worked for some government agency, analyzing data from close range, not your standard federal issue agents. She thought some would call them spies. Since her parents never confessed this to her, she didn’t divulge her suspicions to others.

  They did, however, warn her that if she ever received a call from Shoe Clerk, she was to follow the directions explicitly. And so, for years, the Abernathy family danced around the truth. For years, Abbi knew that Shoe Clerk might someday call. Today was that day.

  “Abbi, this is Shoe Clerk. Go to your safe place immediately and lay low. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, draw attention to yourself. Expect another call soon.”

  Abbi’s pulse started racing.

  “Where are they? Are they OK?” Abbi shouted into the phone.

  Click.

  After Abbi texted her friend, she took off the dancing shoes and packed a few necessities. Before Abbi left home, she ran to the backyard and opened up a bag of chick starter from the shed. She scattered a couple of handfuls into the chicken pen where there were about six little hens, not yet laying.

  “This is gonna have to do you until I get back,” Abbi said.

  She checked the automatic watering tank to make sure water flowed in when it was needed. A guinea hen flew off the shed roof and landed in the pen, adding its constant squawking to the conversation of peeping chicks.

  “Take care of them, Cackles!” Abbi said as she ran into the house. She didn’t see that she was being watched at the chicken pen, but she felt it. Fully aware of her senses, she felt the shiver of being watched. Abbi hurried back to the house. Out of habit, she locked the back door and double bolted it.

  Grabbing her backpack, still heavy with gear from a recent rappelling she did with her dad, Abbi ran upstairs to gather the few items of clothing she thought she’d need, still expecting her parents to return in three or four more days. Abbi was almost ready to go.

  Suddenly, when she walked past her mother’s office, something caught her eye, something she’d seen before but now with new eyes. Some odd drawings her mother had left on the desk had haunted Abbi since her parents left. Now she saw them as significant, unlike anything Abbi had seen anywhere, and quite possibly a hidden message from her mother.

  Abbi sat down to study the drawings, maybe twenty in all, picking up one after another. Most were bold symmetrical designs, maybe Celtic or Mayan in nature. Some depicted animals.

  A box of empty folders on the bookshelf behind the desk offered itself for her use. Abbi grabbed a folder, put the drawings inside, and threw them into her backpa
ck. Although her mother wasn’t always tidy, Abbi wondered why her mother left these unusual drawings out on the desk. It had to be intentional—to pull Abbi into them. Abbi planned to get online at Louise’s to learn more about them and to find any hidden meanings. She picked up the pack, heavier now with her laptop and these drawings in it, and threw it over her left shoulder.

  Satisfied that something would come of this, Abbi set the burglar alarm, left the house and hopped on her bike.

  THREE

  It wasn’t far from Abbi Abernathy’s house to “Safe Haven” as her family liked to call Fairview, a quiet community with gently rolling gardens and manicured lawns allowing easy access to Washington, D.C., where many of the residents worked. Fairview had become a secluded little village where people’s lives fell into a gentle revolving cycle. Quiet. A place where nothing happened.

  The short bike ride to the Pelletiers was made even shorter when Abbi realized it wasn’t just a feeling. She really was being watched. To throw off her follower, she decided not to let pavement limit her possibilities. Cutting through yards and alley ways, she made the trip to the Pelletiers in 15 minutes, record time. Abbi threw her bike down in the driveway and ran. Before she could start pounding on the door, Louise opened it.

  “Hey, what took you so long?” Louise asked as a joke.

  Abbi brushed past her and said, “Close it. Quick. Someone’s out there.”

  Louise couldn’t resist peeking out the door.

  “I don’t see anyone!” she said. Then she carefully locked the door while giving Abbi a look of sarcasm, and, in case Abbi wasn’t sure, Louise’s voice carried it off.

  “Is it your imagination again, Abbi? Lowell’s coming home from college today. He’ll protect us,” Louise said.

  Abbi laughed and let it go. Lowell, as pizza-faced and pudgy as his sister, probably wouldn’t be a lot of help. But something told Abbi that the time would come when her friends would prove to be very helpful.

  “Louise, I found some things on Mom’s desk. I think these are significant.”

  Abbi heaved the backpack off her shoulder and took out the folder.

  “Take a look here.”

  She opened the folder and spread the pictures out on the hall table. Then she flicked on the lamp to show Louise what she’d found.

  “Nice drawings, but I don’t see the point,” Louise said.

  “There’s a message here. I feel like Mom’s trying to tell me something.”

  Louise again looked at Abbi, but this time with concern.

  “Are you eating OK? Sleeping well?”

  “Louise, I’m fine,” Abbi said, touching the drawings with her fingertips as if to feel her mother’s intention. “Never mind. I’ll look them up online. These mean something. You’ll see.”

  “Let’s get you settled in. Then you can do all the online stuff you want. I cleared the top bunk for you, and I made a little room in the closet.”

  “Thanks! I shouldn’t need much room. I won’t be here long.”

  “OK. Just the same, it’s there for you.”

  Abbi hugged Louise and smiled. Louise released herself from the hug and held Abbi by the shoulders.

  “You need to relax, Abbi. Not everyone’s out to get you!”

  The Pelletiers once again opened their home to Abbi. She planned to help with household chores and then dance as much as possible for release, staying inside, out of sight. Most of all she wanted to unlock whatever riddle the drawings held.

  Abbi went upstairs to the room she would share with Louise. She hung her bookbag on the bed post and pulled out her laptop. The first place she decided to look was images on the Mayan calendar.

  Why Mayan, she didn’t know, but the drawings reminded her of something she had studied in fifth grade about the mysterious culture of the ancient Mayans—the hidden meanings in their artwork.

  FOUR

  Maria stepped outside the cantina, stood on the front step, breathed deeply once and let it out slowly. Then twice. She scanned the desolate street and its few parked cars. She looked for a blue sedan with freedom waiting inside. There!

  Suddenly running, she reached the car in just seconds.

  “I’m Miss Shoe. Hurry! Get in!”

  The driver wasted no time taking off, spinning some gravel onto the cracked sidewalk. Maria tried not to look back but saw Ramon rushing through the cantina door.

  “Already a rough day?”

  Maria studied her, wondering how much this woman could know of the workings that went on inside that cantina. She tried to figure out the trust factor.

  “Yesterday would have been better. You have a badge?”

  Miss Shoe flashed the inside of her lapel. Maria seemed satisfied.

  “I also have these,” she said as she reached into her pocket. “That’s what took so long. They weren’t ready yesterday.”

  Maria took the two items: a driver’s license and a passport.

  “These aren’t me!” she said. “Just my face. My name is Maria.”

  “They are now. Get used to it. You’ll have a new identity.”

  “Christina? You’re naming me Christina? I hate that name!”

  “Call yourself Tina. You want away from here? You want to never come back? How much cash do you have?”

  “One hundred fourteen American dollars and a few pesos.”

  “That may not get you to your dad. I’ll spot you some.”

  Miss Shoe handed over a clip of bills. “Here, Tina. Take this.”

  “Don’t call me that,” the girl said as she reached for the money.

  “After you get there, you and your dad will be leaving Texas. Go with him, wherever he takes you. Several agencies, the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and even diplomats with the Mexican Government and the U.S. Passport office, are working together to help you out of this nasty trap. You’re making a clean break. Don’t call your friends. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. This wasn’t easy to arrange.”

  Miss Shoe jerked the steering wheel as she attempted to avoid some potholes. On this dilapidated street, and at her high rate of speed, there were too many to miss.

  “Can’t we go a little slower?” the girl asked.

  “Not really. If they catch you, you’re dead.”

  “Come again?” Maria held the money tight to her chest, wanting to know how much was there but stunned by what she just heard.

  She knew the back of Ramon’s hand. In fact, she knew more about him than she ever wanted to admit, but would he kill her? And who was “they”?

  “Really. That’s the way they operate. One more thing, Tina...”

  The girl interrupted.

  “I told you not to call me that!” the girl said loudly and turned on the radio.

  The woman immediately turned off the radio. “I care about a lot of things. Whether or not you like the name is not one of them.”

  “Bitch!” the girl said with a low growl.

  “Would you rather be called Carmelicious Candie? I can turn this car around.”

  The girl stared at her and stuffed the money into her handbag.

  “Tina, and you’d best just get used to that, we are pulling out all the stops to make sure you’re safe. In return, you’re going to talk to us. Don’t hold anything back. For starters, how old are you?”

  Miss Shoe turned on her phone’s voice recorder.

  The girl hesitated.

  “What about my boyfriend?”

  “Are you insane?!”

  “I want to know about my boyfriend.”

  “He’s not your boyfriend. He set you up.”

  “No, he didn’t!”

  “He sold you! That’s what he does.”

  The girl winced. That hurt.

  “Didn’t you know that?” Miss Shoe asked, suddenly looking at Tina’s face.

  Tina sat silent, trying to remember. How much did this woman know?

  They were quickly getting closer to Brownsville, approaching the Gateway border crossing. Before h
er boyfriend disappeared, he made a video for Ramon, a nasty, abusive video. She had hated him for that, but he said he was just doing what he was told and that it would mean a lot of money for her. He said Ramon wanted it for the clients so they could see the merchandise. Violence excited them, he had said, and they would pay more. She didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  As to the violence, Ramon was worse, acting both from greed and his sick pleasure. She bit her lip as she remembered with pain the belt that struck her when the money she brought in was under quota. But sold? The girl didn’t know she had been sold to Ramon. That meant he owned her.

  She was ready for a new identity. She didn’t want to see them ever again, not Ramon, not her boyfriend. Miss Shoe offered the only chance Tina would get.

  “Your age? We already know you’re under age. Just answer the question. I need it recorded.”

  “Fourteen.”

  For forty minutes they talked as the car continued on toward customs. The agent recorded every word, every sob, every Hail Mary.

  “At customs, they’ll try to trip you up on a couple of things. One is your birth year. Check your documents now and memorize your birth date. Some of the agents should be there to help you across, especially the man you met last night.”

  Tina did as she was told.

  “I guess I look old enough,” she said. “Can you see this bruise?”

  “Cover it with your hair. Also cover that tattoo if you can, the one on your neck. No, wear this scarf.”

  “Huh-uh. It doesn’t look like me.”

  Miss Shoe kept checking the rearview mirror. She was already speeding.

  “Your tattoo is a red flag. I’m guessing the tattoo artist was a butcher in his day job. Cover it! Otherwise, you’ll have a ton of questions to answer. Now wipe your eyes. You look lovely. Listen. Get this straight. You were here on vacation with your parents but have to get to your college for summer session. Tell them your parents are staying to celebrate their anniversary in Veracruz.”