by James, Leigh
Catherine started letting me out in the yard twice a day. I used my time sitting on a broken bench, facing the sun, trying to absorb as much bright sunlight as possible into my pores. It was the opposite of the dankness of my cell, and it felt wonderful. Outside the walls I could hear dogs barking and children playing, and if I closed my eyes, I could imagine that I was someplace else, someplace normal.
When my eyes were open it was harder to pretend. The yard was dirt-packed, surrounded by a concrete wall. There were machine-gun armed guards everywhere, patrolling the perimeter and watching me.
I just sat on the bench and tried to enjoy my privileges. I didn’t look at the guards and I didn’t move too much. Moving too much was painful. I was stiff and sore, and my joints hurt. I was so hungry I was in agony. I wouldn’t even look down at myself anymore — my legs looked like matchsticks and my knees protruded awkwardly. My body looked older than its years, beaten.
My kingdom for a bowl of macaroni and cheese.
Being hungry and thinking about John were pretty much my full-time jobs these days, along with just staying alive. I wondered if he would ever, could ever, forgive me. Not only for running, but for what I’d uncovered. If I ever got out of here, which wasn’t looking too promising right at the moment, I was going to bring him so much pain. What I’d wanted to do was the exact opposite; all I’d wanted was to make him whole again, to heal the hole in his heart left by Catherine’s disappearance.
Now it was her reappearance that had me worried.
If I’d never found her like this, maybe he would have been able to eventually let her go. Instead I was faced with the prospect of him seeing her the way she was now, or the possibility that he might lose the both of us for good. Me, because I was going to die down here, and her, because she had been thoroughly converted and was never going back. Please forgive me, I thought, sending my wish up into the air, hoping it would somehow get to him.
I had been sending lots of thoughts to him lately. It was the only thing keeping me from going absolutely crazy. I carry your heart in my heart, I kept telling him, my memory of him. So we can’t ever really be separated. I put my hand over my heart and felt it beating: I wanted — I needed — to believe that it was true, that he was with me.
His imaginary voice was talking to me with an increasing frequency, too. Liberty, I’m coming for you…He’d been saying this a lot. It was my hallucination’s favorite phrase these days. Once he started talking, I didn’t care what the voice really was or where it was coming from. I just let myself relax and give into it. His deep, strong voice. I could picture his beautiful face, every line in it so dear to me. John. My John, here with me, and in spite of everything, I’m not alone.
But even as I kept my hand over my heart and smiled, I worried. Maybe these hallucinations were my body’s natural response to extreme stress. Maybe his imaginary voice was the result of the release of serotonin or adrenaline, or whatever magic drug humans naturally produce when we’re afraid, to make me feel calm before I died. I’d read somewhere that your body had amazing ways of soothing you before you passed. Maybe soon I’d be seeing a long tunnel and a bright, white light. Part of me didn’t care anymore. Not as long as he was there, someday. I’d wait for him. Forever.
Liberty, his voice said suddenly and sternly. Knock it the fuck off.
I’d never heard his imaginary voice sound pissed before. I sat bolt upright, delighted. It really sounded like him!
Now that I have your attention...I imagined him smiling down at me and I felt my heart stop. You have got to ask that bitch for some more food.
Briefly, I wondered if John’s imaginary voice in my head was aware of the fact that he had just called his own daughter a bitch. But it was too complicated for my poor, dehydrated brain to try and figure out.
She won’t give me extra food — not unless I tell her about you, I thought back at him. The only thing I hadn’t told her was about her parents. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I heard him sigh and I smiled. I didn’t know who or what I was smiling at. It just felt good to hear him be exasperated. It was just so John.
She already knows what you aren’t telling her, he explained to me now, patiently. She wouldn’t have the slightest interest in you otherwise. I agreed with him. I wasn’t exactly your average threat to a Mexican drug cartel. I was American, female and completely clueless. The Los Morales soldiers had found me wandering around Matamoros, a town near the Texas border. I’d been asking anyone and everyone I met questions that no one was ever supposed to ask. I asked about them by name. The locals had looked at me, gaping at my brashness and stupidity. They’d refused to answer me. Only one woman was kind enough to tell me in English to bite my tongue and run. Fast. Otherwise I was going to see the devil himself.
I’d started out in Cabo San Lucas but hadn’t found a thing. That’s where Catherine had been vacationing with her girlfriends her senior year of high school, when she’d disappeared. It had been six years, and no one in Cabo had any idea what I was talking about. White girl, young, pretty, long brown hair, I’d said. Disappeared. A lot of the locals had laughed at me. This is Mexico, they’d said. Disappeared is sort of a popular description.
One man, a bartender, did help me. He didn’t know who Catherine was, but he knew a lot of other things. He had warm brown eyes and spoke excellent English. I could tell that he pitied me, sweaty, clueless and desperate, carefully counting out my money for my warm amber beer.
“I love my country, but there’s all sort of trouble here,” he’d said. “There are some bad things going on, and no one is stopping them. And everyone knows.”
I’d looked at him and nodded. Cabo was touristy and largely safe, but the travel advisories for other parts of Mexico had been plastered everywhere in Southern California.
“Your friend is probably dead,” he said, gently. “But if she’s lucky — or not, depending on how you look at it — I doubt you’ll find her here. There are places she might have been taken. Where not even the police would care if they found her.”
I felt my lip start to tremble. I was in another country — large, complex and utterly foreign. I didn’t speak Spanish. I was a fucking idiot to think I could do this. To think I could do what John couldn’t do.
“Any recommendations?” I asked, trying to sound brave. “Where could she have been taken?”
Great Liberty, great question, my inner voice sighed. Let’s get into even more trouble. In fact, let’s get kidnapped and murdered! Because THAT would really make John’s day!
I was going to have to ask her to tone it down.
“The border states on the mainland are worst…they are failed states,” the bartender continued. “No real law enforcement, no real government. Those places the cartels have their own empires. They’re running the show. It’s not anywhere you should go near. You’re a nice girl. A good friend. Your missing friend would want you to go home and be safe. Because no one — no white girls, no Mexican girls, no men, no nobody — is getting out of there if they’re asking questions. Most people don’t get out anyway. But if you are asking questions and looking around, guaranteed, you are dead.”
I thanked him, tipping him more than I should. I only had a little money left. What I did have I’d cobbled together from a combination of Catherine’s mother (who’d thought I was absolutely crazy when I’d shown up at her door) and my sister Sasha (who was still feeling guilty as hell about not answering my emails and calls for so long).
As she should, I thought, tears springing to my eyes like they did every time I thought of her. I was not through with chewing my sister out. THAT was one thing I was really looking forward to when I got back. It was certainly a reason to not die down here. Although my tragic, untimely death would make her feel spectacularly guilty...
I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I would deal with Sasha later. The bartender left me alone to finish my beer and contemplate the choice in front of me. It had been rash of me to leave John
and come down here. I knew that. I’d been crazy to think I would have the imagination and skills necessary to find a girl, missing for six years, in a foreign country. I didn’t even know if she was still alive.
But in my heart I still felt like I made the right choice: I would do it again. I came here to find out what’d happened to her. I loved John more than anything, anyone; I had to try for him. I knew he needed to know what had happened to Catherine, one way or another. Maybe I could still find a way. Maybe I had something that might help.
Catherine was a young girl and I was a young girl. I was alone here and she’d been alone here. Trouble had a way of finding me; maybe it’d been the same for her. Maybe, if I tried just for a little longer….
At least then I could go back to John and tell him that I’d done my best. That there was nothing else that could be done. That it was finally time to move on, heal the hole in his heart. Maybe I could tell him it was like he said, everything happened for a reason. And the reason I hadn’t been able to find her was because she’d gone on to a better place.
That’s a hole that can’t ever heal, John’s voice said to me now. It jolted me from my reverie, back from that dark bar in Cabo to the blinding sun of Matamoros.
Ugh. He didn’t even know the half of it. I sat there, considering my present circumstances. I was being held prisoner by a Mexican drug cartel. I was starving. Catherine, John’s daughter, was one of my captors. She’d tortured me for sport. She was like a queen here; her boyfriend was Angel Morales of the Los Morales cartel. He was incredibly scary and appeared to run things.
And so here I was.
If everything did happen for a reason, then maybe this was the reason John and I met in the first place: I was destined to be the one to find Catherine. I was the only one I knew who was this stupid. No one else on earth would wander around a dangerous town in a foreign country, asking where the cartel leaders lived, hoping they’d kidnapped my boyfriend’s daughter six years ago.
It took a certain brand of stupidity. In my defense, it was fueled by my deepest inner wish — to heal John’s heart. I knew how Catherine’s loss tortured him. I just wanted him to know the truth. And if I couldn’t uncover the truth, at least I could show him that I would go to the ends of the earth for him. That I would do anything in my power to save him. And that if I couldn’t find Catherine in my crazy search, she probably wasn’t there to find.
I’d been walking through the downtown, near the taquerias, dentists’ offices and the outdoor market, when they’d picked me up. A gold van had pulled up next to me, quick, and I knew. I just knew: I’d been reckless, asking too many questions. One guy jumped out and had grabbed me around the torso, clamping my arms down, and threw me in the van. There were three men with machine guns in the back, just sitting there, watching me, like it was another typical day at the office. Which I suppose it was.
“Why are you asking questions, bothering the locals?” the one who’d thrown me in asked, over his shoulder, as he hopped into the passenger seat and slammed his door.
My heart was pounding in my ears. I felt like I was going to vomit. “I’m actually looking for a friend of mine,” I said, trying to calm myself and reign in my shaking voice. “I was hoping your people could help me.”
“Right,” he said. “My people.” He nodded to the men in the back and they grabbed my bag, going through it roughly. One of them threw my wallet to the man up front and then grabbed my glittery pink cell phone. I watched in horror as he took what looked like the battery out of it and crushed it with his boot. Then he threw all of it out the window.
My last link to the world. I had to choke back my tears.
“What’s your friend’s name? The one you’re looking for?” the guard asked casually, while he dug through my wallet and pocketed what was left of my cash.
“Catherine,” I said. “Catherine Quinn. She’s American. She’s in her early twenties…brown hair…she’s white…” It sounded so ridiculous. A brown-haired needle in a haystack.
“She disappeared down here a couple of years ago. Some people I’ve met said that this was where I might find her. I was hoping that if you didn’t know her, your boss might know someone who did,” I said, lamely. But that was it: that was my not-so brilliant plan. I was looking where the bartender had told me the bad guys were, praying that I was going to stumble upon someone who knew something, anything, about her. I was starting with Matamoros and then I was going to work my way across the Mexican side of the border, looking for criminals and cartels, hoping to find any scrap of information I could, and then make it back home in one uninjured piece.
“You just happened to think your friend was here? Why?”
He was staring at me, taking me in, weighing something in his mind. I was frightened by his look. He understood far more about the ramifications of what I was asking then I did: his choice, whatever it was going to be, was going to be an informed one. No such luck for me. I was at his mercy, and I’d willingly thrown myself there. I exhaled and felt myself shaking, adrenaline caused by fear coursing through me.
I might be the stupidest person I ever met. My inner voice just nodded. She wouldn’t even bother to speak to me right now. Because we are so dead, she added. What’s the point of talking it through?
“Catherine, huh? That’s your friend’s name, American?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I whispered, trying not to look at the guys behind me with their machine guns. “Catherine Quinn. If she’s alive, she’d be twenty-four.”
“And what’s your name?” he asked.
“Liberty,” I whispered again.
“Liberty?” he asked, incredulous. He looked at my driver’s license again to confirm it and then turned around to look at me. “That’s one I haven’t heard before.”
“American women are crazy,” offered the driver, an older guy who’d been silent up to that point.
The men all nodded. Si, si, they agreed.
“Your crazy American mother name you that?” the guard asked me, giving me a vicious smile.
“Yes,” I said, lowly, feeling my hackles rise. He shouldn’t be talking about my crazy mother; that was none of his business. But I couldn’t get riled up about my mother or his disrespect right now. I had to find a way to play ball here, or the inning — and everything else — was all over.
“American women are crazy,” I said, speaking as kindly as I could make myself, nodding at them. I was Exhibit A on that point.
“But crazy in a good way,” I continued, keeping my voice even and light. “We stick together. That’s the only reason I’m here. Do you think you can you help me? Can anyone you know help me? I don’t mean any harm. I’m not trouble. I don’t care about anything except my friend. I’m just looking for any information, and then I’ll go away and never, ever come back. I’ll never say a word to anyone. I swear.”
The guard laughed at me and my stomach dropped further. “Oh, I believe you,” he said.
“And I also believe American women are crazy. But some of them? Between you and me?” he asked, leaning back towards me conspiratorially. “Maybe they’re not crazy in a good way. Not like you said.”
I just stared at him, not comprehending.
“We’ll let you judge for yourself,” he said, turning around and briefly nodding to the driver. I watched as we sped through downtown, the bright dresses and straw hats of the market disappearing from sight. I suddenly felt sure that I wasn’t even remotely prepared for what was coming.
For once, it turned out I was right.
They blindfolded me before we got out of the van. It sounded like we were in a regular neighborhood: I could hear children, dogs barking, people talking.
Then the guards who’d me brought me were speaking rapidly in Spanish to other men. It sounded like they were arguing, explaining, answering questions. Of course I couldn’t understand a word — except for a quick “American” and I swore they said “Catherine” — but my heart was beating so hard and I was breat
hing so fast I thought maybe I’d imagined it. Then they brought me down some stairs and I couldn’t feel the light on my face anymore. After walking a little further, I heard a door clang shut and a bolt being pulled across it. I was being locked in somewhere.
The guard from the passenger seat took off my blindfold.
“You’re staying here,” he said, and he had a greedy look in his eyes that made me even more afraid. I crossed my hands across my chest.
“Oh, I’m the least of your worries,” he said, looking at my posture. He laughed a little and the other guys around him did the same.
“The very least.”
I quickly lost track of time after that. There was a guard outside my door, but no one came in to see me. I could still hear the children and the dogs through my window. There were always people in the hall outside my cell. But I had no idea where I was, or if anyone even knew I was still in here, except for the always present guard. Twice a day he put a cloudy glass of water across the threshold of my cell. There was no food. I slept a lot. My mind shut down, willing me to lose consciousness, to stay as far away from reality as possible. I would wake up and it would be pitch black, quiet. Then I would wake up again and it would be sunny, the glass of cloudy water inside the door, the children back to their games.
The upside was that no one had hurt me. I was a prisoner, and I was starving, but I was also young, female, and completely at their mercy. I kept counting my blessings, over and over, hoping I wasn’t jinxing myself.
Then one day, she came into my cell. She was followed closely by her armed, silent guard.
“Well, hello,” she’d said, perching on the end of the chair, inspecting me. “I heard we’re old friends. Funny, you don’t look familiar. But then it’s been a long time. Forever, actually.”