“Consequences?” After following his meandering line of thought for so many minutes, I’m now confused. “You mean for the users?” Is this man about to lecture me on the dangers of drug abuse?
“What I mean,” he pounds one meaty fist upon the table, “are the consequences of starting a rivalry in my business. Have you any idea the sort of bloodshed that occurs whenever there’s a power vacuum in this industry? Young Salvadoran men—my friends and family, in some cases—will have to die by the dozens if anyone presents a real challenge to me in this city.” He shouts now, both hands clasped upon the desk’s edge, flecks of his spittle dotting the top. “So tell me: Why should those two moronic gringos be spared?”
I fear that my legs might collapse beneath me. The scariest thing of all, I find, is that he’s absolutely right. “I swear to you, I didn’t know there was any rivalry. All I did was drive. It was that other gringo who made the arrangements with the men from the blue house.”
“Of course.” He shakes his head and snickers. “Only driving—turning the wheel and pushing the pedals. Only earning a little fast money.”
Pardon Me Mother and the policeman tentatively laugh along with him; neither knows why.
“I thought we were working for you,” I say.
“Oh yes! I forgot,” he says sarcastically. “You were performing a service for me. You were on my side, right? Tell me: Do you know what they called that operation in El Mozote?”
“Operation Rescue.” Why do I remember that?
“That’s correct,” he says. “Operation Rescue.” He smiles, nearly laughing at the absurdity of it.
We pass a tense few seconds in which the only sound is the music from down the hall.
“I have your money.” I take the four wads of dollars out of my pockets and drop them all upon his desk. “I need Ben released; then we’ll be no more trouble to you.”
The boss man quickly puts all the cash into one of his desk drawers, as if the sight of it is somehow unseemly.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Please.”
He lets out a big sigh, looking bored by the whole exchange. He turns to the policeman and says in Spanish, “Let those two idiots go already.” He shakes his head, still staring at the cop. “If there’s any thing that’s more trouble than one dead American, it’s two dead Americans.”
“Or three.” The cop points an index finger in my direction, like a pistol.
Everyone but me laughs.
The cop rises from his chair and lets himself out through the iron door at the side.
“Thank you,” I say to the boss man. I fight a sudden urge to prostrate myself at his feet, to kiss his ring or touch the edge of his garment—some timeless and Catholic show of respect.
He stands up from his chair and shrugs. “It’s only logical, really.” He pulls the drawer open, removes all the money I gave him, and stuffs it into a paper bag. He rolls the top down and makes a handle, like it’s a big sandwich.
“Well done,” he says to Pardon Me Mother. “She’s all yours. Nothing too rough, eh?”
“Simón.” Pardon Me smiles and nods.
“How’s that?” I stop myself before asking what he means by “She’s all yours.”
The boss goes to the iron door. Pardon Me Mother reaches out and runs the back side of his first two fingers down my cheek.
“¡Tranquila!” he hisses, as if I were a horse about to be broken. The gold tooth flashes from between his lips.
“What the hell?” I say to the boss in English.
He opens the door, turns back to me, and shrugs. “It’s how things are done. Your friends have suffered for their offense. Isn’t it fitting that you suffer a little as well?”
“You can’t just offer me to him!” I swat away Pardon Me’s hand.
“You’ll survive,” the boss man says. “In this country, we’ve been doing it for decades. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll even grow stronger.”
The iron door shuts with a clang.
Pardon Me Mother steps toward me. “Vaya.” He undoes the buckle of his belt and slips it out through the loops of his pants. “You can relax, or we can do this the hard way. Your decision.”
The sight of him physically sickens me. The door is only a few meters away, on the room’s far side. With both hands, I push him in the sternum and let out a groan. He’s more solid than I expected. My shove doesn’t move him an inch. I step high and try to run around him instead.
Then the blow. The belt is wrapped around his hand. I hear the sound before I feel anything. It’s a crack like an old tree falling—the sound of something strong giving way. The taste of sweaty leather fills the inside of my mouth, followed by the mineral warmth of blood.
Finally, there’s the pain. It’s like a foreign thing along my lips and teeth, under my gums, my skin. My vision goes grainy, then fades to black. In my former life, this would be the part where they’d blow the whistle, when everybody would take a step back and the grown-ups would come onto the court. But that life is thousands of miles from here. My limp body bends and twists through the blackness as through a big wave after a wipeout.
With my tongue, I try to count my own teeth but can’t keep the numbers straight. When I open my eyes again, my face is down against the plastic top of the desk. My arms are bound behind me somehow—both bent so far, they feel broken. I move my hands a little and brush the low-grade leather of that same EL SALVADOR belt.
There’s an audible grunt, then a sudden gust of air against my hips. With one violent motion, my jeans are pulled down to my ankles. Pardon Me Mother steps back into my field of vision. The tattoo on his forehead still asks forgiveness, but his eyes offer no penance.
“You see.” He reaches one hand up to the tight bundle of my arms. “This would all be so much easier if you would just relax!”
He torques an end of the belt. One arm feels as if it’s about to come away at the shoulder; the other is numb from fingers to elbow. I try to resist, but that grinds my aching mouth farther into the desk. Pardon Me Mother slaps my ass with his open hand, and that feels like the only part of me that’s not about to shatter.
He lets go of my arms. I shut my eyes and open them. Now Pardon Me has his own dick in his hand. It’s crooked and uncircumcised, like a length of knotty wood or one of those blind subterranean moles. He spits into his palm twice and then rubs the saliva into the skin of his cock. I squirm with every remaining muscle but get nowhere. Even my feet are bound by the wad of denim around my ankles.
Now I can’t see him, but I feel him pull at my arms from behind.
“Get away!” I scream through a broken mouth. “Help!” I can’t tell if it’s English or Spanish or just some soup of syllables.
Pardon Me’s whole body presses me against the desk. His kneecap pushes my legs apart. I feel that crooked dick against the inside of my thigh. He puts one of his hands over my mouth. He hardly has to cover it, only to pinch and prod at the wound enough to shut me up.
Then that same hand—now wet with my own blood and spittle—is below my navel and moving lower. The tears come hard, wetting my cheek and pooling up on the plastic top of the desk. They make a puddle right in the spot where I laid that money down—which I believed would be the last sacrifice I’d have to make in this room.
“Stop! Stop!” I squirm and kick, but he has my lower body pinned against his. His palm presses into my pubic hair. Two moist fingers pry me open and make way for the ragged fingernail of a third.
“Relax,” he hisses into my ear again.
Finally, I wonder if he’s right. I cannot stop him, no matter how hard I try. Is this my punishment after all? I’ve been trying to undo fate for weeks now. I couldn’t simply accept the earthquake or the loss of my project. Even the stolen passport wouldn’t convince me to give up on the trip. Will it take being raped by a gangster to teach me that this nation and this world are indifferent to my plans? The fight drains from my limbs. I blow a hot breath out through my bloody lips. Relax. Stop fighting. Surrender.
> In that very instant, the pressure on both sides of my pelvis abates.
“That’s enough, Cheecho. ¡Basta!” A different voice is in the room with us, speaking a gravelly Spanish. “Take a step back.”
Those two heavy hands come away from me. No sweaty, stinking male flesh touches mine. The sensation is so liberating, it’s as if I’ve learned to fly.
“Remove the belt,” says the same small voice.
I close my eyes as my arms roughly come unbound. To my surprise, they’re both still attached to my shoulders. Pins and needles fill the numb one.
“Pull your pants up, Chinita. I’m very bashful.”
I’m finally able to turn and see who’s come to help me. Though he hardly reaches Pardon Me’s chest, he has a death grip on his ponytail, and a small silver blade—it looks like a butter knife that’s been sharpened on both sides—held tip-first against my attacker’s windpipe. It’s Peseta.
I pull up my pants and fasten them. Pardon Me twitches and snorts, but Peseta keeps a steely grip on the hair and the knife.
“Thank you,” I manage to say.
“There’s the door, Chinita,” Peseta says. “I’d go if I were you.”
“You’re a fucking dead man, Peseta!” Pardon Me shouts. “You hear me? That’s a promise.”
I can’t help but stare at Peseta. “What will you do?” My eyes scan the room for something heavy, an object big and blunt enough to bash Pardon Me’s face in.
“Don’t worry, Chinita.” Peseta grins from behind the bigger man. “I’m just going to have a little talk with my old friend here. We have history, him and me. You run along.”
“But what … what will they do to you?”
“We’ll fucking kill him, that’s what!” Pardon Me shouts.
Peseta tightens his grip. A red dot of blood appears on Pardon Me’s neck. “These assholes have been trying to kill me with their crack rocks for ten years. Maybe they’ll have more luck with their guns and knives.”
Someone bangs on the wooden interior door to the room. Peseta has locked it from this side. “Don’t speak!” he hisses at Pardon Me.
My feet feel planted to the ground.
“Go on, Chinita!” Peseta scolds now. “There’s the door. Do this one favor for me.” He pulls hard on the other man’s ponytail. “Go!”
I nod. He’s put himself in grave danger to save me. The least I can do is allow myself to be saved.
“Thank you,” I say again, then open the iron door.
For the second night in a row, I make a desperate late-night run through the streets of La Libertad. This time, it’s much shorter, and I know exactly where I’m going.
* * *
The gate is open at La Posada. I’m shocked to see the Jeep parked inside again, in front of Pelo’s stupid stack of cement. In all the commotion of the last twenty-four hours, I’d forgotten that we owned the thing.
“Ben!” I scream. He comes running from over by the room. We meet halfway through the courtyard and he wraps me up inside his arms. I sob against his chest, staining his T-shirt with tears and the blood from my mouth.
“What happened to you?” he asks.
“I was at the crack house,” I say. “I got them to let you out.”
“Are you all right?”
“Barely. It got ugly.”
Ben’s face goes pale, like he’s unsure whether or not he wants to know more. His ear is swollen and still crusty with dried blood. “Let me see your mouth,” Ben says. He tugs open my mouth and grimaces. “Your lip’s split. And your gums are swollen up, but the teeth look okay.”
I’m shocked that none are missing.
Pelo walks over to join us, eating pork rinds from a bag. For a moment, the three of us stand there in relative silence, broken only by Pelo’s crunching. Our three wounds have us looking like the “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys. Or some stupider version of them that never quite learned their lessons.
“Hey, Chinita!” His mouth full, Pelo overenunciates the words, as if speaking to the locals in his poor Spanish. “What about the money?” He rubs a thumb and forefinger together. “You still have it?”
“The money?” I take a step toward him, fresh anger coursing through my veins. “The money?” I take another step, but this time I slap him across the face.
“Oww! What the fuck?” He touches his own cheek. Reddish pork-rind dust dots his chin. “It was only a question.”
“All you care about is your fucking money.” I pound my balled-up fists against his chest, my vision all blurred by rage and tears. “Do you have any clue what happened to me tonight? I nearly died because of you.” And Peseta may still die, I think, but I can’t quite bring myself to say it. “All because of you and your dumb-ass plan.”
I land one square blow to his rib cage before Ben grabs me from behind and pins my arms to my sides. Pelo shakes his head and slinks off toward Kristy’s room.
“I fucking hate you!” I follow the words with a hasty wad of spit, but it falls short of him and lands on the dirt of the courtyard.
Ben pulls me several paces away. “Easy, Malia. Easy,” he whispers into my ear. “You’re okay now. We’re all right.”
“I want to leave. I need to get out of here. Now. I don’t give a shit about our trip anymore. I just want to go.”
Ben’s restraining hold morphs into something more like a hug.
“And I want to talk to my dad. I need to see him. I want to go home.”
“Okay,” Ben says. “We can do all that. Fuck South America. We’ll go to Hawai‘i. Together. I don’t care where it is, as long as we go together.”
The moment he says that, I hug him back—as hard as I ever have. Kristy closes and locks the gate to the courtyard. Back inside the hotel, back inside Ben’s arms, I finally feel like we might indeed be all right.
“But Malia, we have to wait until morning. It’s not safe right now. You get that, don’t you?”
The idea of not running from this place, of settling in—even for just one night—is like a strong medicine that takes a second to swallow. “Yes,” I admit. “You’re right.”
“Let’s go to bed,” Ben says. “We can bail first thing.”
I nod. We start toward the bedroom.
“How’d you get the car back?” I point to the Jeep.
Ben shrugs. “The cop handed me the keys when they let us out. It was behind the station the whole time.”
Ben stops right in front of our room, takes me by each hand. “Malia, what happened to you tonight?”
I shake my head. “Could we talk about it later?”
He nods, then gives me another hug.
Before we climb into bed, I double-check the door lock and find the jar of Valium that Peseta brought to me yesterday. I place two of them on my tongue, like I’m receiving Communion and the little yellow pills might become the flesh of my ragged Savior.
27
Toward the end of our Peace Corps training, Jim, the country director, interviewed each of us one by one. Our impression was that he’d use this information to decide where to send us. There was a rumor that the Peace Corps always gave you the opposite of what you asked for—say the beach and you get the mountains. That idea seems silly to me now, as if our bosses had nothing better to do than play games with us and build character.
Alex, Courtney, and I waited our turns. We wondered aloud whether we might end up close together.
I was the first to be called in. Jim had a pad of paper and a stack of files. We introduced ourselves and exchanged a firm handshake.
“I’ve looked over your materials,” Jim said. “Very impressive.”
“Thanks.” I wasn’t sure what about those documents might have impressed him, but I didn’t bother to ask.
“So, Malia.” He closed a manila folder that lay on the table between us. “Why do you want to be a Peace Corps volunteer?”
His question caught me by surprise. I’d been anticipating something about urban versus rur
al, inland versus coastal. In the end, I settled on the honest answer, mostly because I couldn’t come up with anything more compelling. “I want to see the world.”
Jim nodded, as if that were an explanation he’d heard before.
“I come from a small island,” I said. “A lot of the people there never leave. I got my degree and my student loans, and realized I was about to find a job and work away the rest of my life. I thought I should see some other places first. But I didn’t know where to start.”
Jim scribbled on his legal pad; it couldn’t have been more than a word or two. “Was this a hard decision for you?”
“It wasn’t hard for me.” I stared down at the yellow paper, unable to make out his writing. “I’ve never looked back. But it was hard to break the news. My father would rather I’d gone straight to a career or graduate school. I’m not sure he fully understands what the Peace Corps is. He sees it as an indulgence.”
“I have to be completely honest,” Jim said. “In a case like yours—a trainee with your level of technical skills—the assignment is usually a no-brainer. It’s likely to choose you, so to speak. But I suppose I should ask, to be fair: Do you have a preference as to where you live?” He smiled.
“No,” I said. “I joined up willing to go anywhere in the world. I still feel that way.”
He nodded and wrote another illegible note.
* * *
That night, Alex and I sneaked a liter of cheap vodka into Courtney’s host family’s house. The three of us sat out on the open porch attached to her bedroom. We mixed the vodka with a pink and clumpy powered drink mix inside a plastic bottle. Alex passed out cigarettes. The sun set behind one shoulder of the volcano.
“What did you guys say when Jim asked why you’d joined the Peace Corps?” I was surprised we’d not discussed it already.
“Pshh.” Courtney rolled her eyes and blew out a lungful of smoke. “I came up with some crap about wanting to save the world and tried to keep a straight face.” She took a slug of the makeshift cocktail, then passed it to me.
Alex was in one of his distant moods, staring out at the San Vicente volcano. We heard Spanish arguments and a crying baby from inside the house.
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