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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Prayers for the Stolen was written thanks to a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship in Fiction and the support of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (FONCA)
Prayers for the Stolen Page 17