Prayers for the Stolen

by Jennifer Clement

  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.

  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.