Chapter 1
Somewhere outside Los Angeles, 2000
Last night I jolted up in bed again. Sudden, you know? Like I couldn’t breathe. Fell right out of the bed and hit my head on the corner of the side table before I realized where I was. But, I swear, Maria’s dead body rose up, man, like she was still alive. Blood was dripping down her face. She hugged me and hugged me and told me it wasn’t my fault and to go out there and do something better than what we went through in this life. I mean, it was like, she was reborn or some shit, standing right there in the room. Not a dream at all. If she hadn’t died the way she did, I’d never be here now. I know why I get these nightmares, but there’s nothing I can do about them. Maria was the girl who changed my life forever.
But if it hadn’t been for her death, or rather her execution, I also wouldn’t have found out about Carlos Morales. I would have kept my love for him alive. Being his slave.
While I’m holed up in this hotel room, waiting for transportation to my new, permanent digs, some witness protection place, all I can think about is Carlos. Like, I can’t turn my mind off. I think about him constantly. I smell bacon grease coming up from the kitchen through the floor heating grill. Probly can see me from there, too. Probly have cameras everywhere. I steady myself and look at the ceiling. I turn on the lamp. It’s still about five o’clock in the morning, but I don’t see nothing.
I flop back down on the hard as nails bed.
“Esplendida Dona,” that’s what Carlos called me after we’d make love. I can feel his lips on mine, soft and easy, then he’d kiss my cheeks and end up pecking little kisses on my eye lids. Then he’d give me once last kiss on my forehead, like that was all for right now, and gently push me back onto the bed, giving me this intense look, like he just saw me for the first time.
I sit up. I’m getting excited just thinking about his deep black eyes and that fine mouth. He loved me to gaze at him like he was Superman when we finished making love. He saw himself mirrored in my gaze, ‘cause I’ll tell you right now, and I crack up when I tell you this, his body was always slathered in baby oil so it’d show off all them muscles.
I start laughing just thinkin’ about it. But then I remember that morning when I jammed outta there, outta his hacienda and tried to find my own life. That memory’s clearer than anything else right now. I can feel my underarms are wet with perspiration. That always happens when I think about us, and when the sweat joins with the cold air outside, it feels like I just took a sauna.
I can see his face, his mouth calling my name, like he’d made it up. Xoooochee, he’d say and I’d get embarrassed---and wet, at the same time. I kept correcting him about how to say my name and he liked that, too. “Carlos, it’s pronounced “So-chee.”
“You Indians got to mush everything up,” he’d say and push a pillow in my face. “I’m half Aztec,” I’d protest. “And Xochitl had a special meaning. Goddess of the Flowers.”
“You’re my goddess,” he’d answer and rush to the shower.
I’d lie back. My ma, Guadalupe Hernandez Rojas Gonzalez used to tell me Aztec customs weren’t that different from customs in Europe. Serfs could be sold to a new master along with the land and in my culture, slaves who married their owners and had kids with them were free. And if a slave ran away and entered the palace of the king, he or she was freed, too. So, when Carlos grabbed me and my ma away from that slime joint that was a restaurant, that’s how I felt, like a freed slave. But I wasn’t.
Jam, crack! Some asshole guard outside my door just busted my thoughts by slipping the comics under it. Comics. He probly thinks I’m an idiot. I can’t read. Is he fucking kidding? I pick up the paper and lay it on the bed. I’m not allowed to leave until the government places me in my new home. In fact, nobody’s supposed to even know I’m here.
“Hey, I’m not an idiot, asshole,” I yell through the door. But I don’t hear nobody answering me back. Probly on a break. I could outsmart anyone of those gringos out there.
I shove the comics in the tiny metal trash can under the writing desk. It don’t matter. The only interest I got in a newspaper or the TV is my search. I mean I’m really lookin’ and lookin’ for any sign of the Cartel. No mention of the murder, no mention of me. I click on the TV. A stupid football game’s on. No breaking news about yesterday’s sweep. I click it off. The musty smell in here is making me sick. Little dusty bunnies jump off the bed as I jump on it. The mattress is worn-out and dips in the middle. I’ve had a back ache the whole week I been sleeping on it, every time I wake up I can barely get out of bed.
I let out a breath and lie back. Early morning light flashes across the cottage cheese ceiling, like the way lighting is in movies, and that reminds me of what Carlos said. “You belong on the screen, my beauty.” Yeah, right. Now I’m out and out laughing.
A storm’s brewing because when I turn my head, I can see rain drops pelt down real fast and real hard on that window pane. It’s fogging it up, too, which makes me more aware of the sounds outside my room again. I cringe at every sound; the elevator pinging open, or some clanking food cart bouncing down the hall. Every noise makes me jump.
Even now, when the agents from Homeland insist I’m safe, my heart pounds out of my chest at noises. And there’s plenty of noise. It’s Christmas time and some dumb singers are belting out carols down in the street. That word right there, belting, that’s from Carlos. He insisted us girls get educated and sent us to the American School down there in Juarez. Hey, so I probly sound like a Mexican Chola, but I’m not. It’s just he pulled me out after a year, so my English is okay, about as good as my Spanish. He thought if his new girls were educated and beautiful, we’d sell better to some propietario, a slave owner. The guy who buys us.
. See, Carlos was angling for the richer crowd, the people who could afford hundreds of thousands of dollars for a slave that would do anything they wanted in a new country.
Ahhhh. I shove my hands over my ears. I wish I had somethin’ to throw out the window at them—to make them shut up. A bucket of water. That’d be really funny. But the window’s locked shut. I jump back up on the moth-eaten spread and cover my ears with a pillow.
My mind starts racing. Carlos would laugh out loud if he saw me now, holed up in this dump waiting to get into Wit Sec. For the first time I see gray paint peeling off the walls. Carlos promised me that if I came to work for him, I’d never be poor again. Neither me or my ma. But I gotta tell ya, this room---reminds me of where I came from, what with the warm stench of urine in here and the dust and fumes of food comin’ up through that grate in the floor. It all stinks.
I figure I’m somewhere in East L.A. The ride comin’ over here from Murrieta was all bumpy and uncomfortable like we took back roads, and now my nostrils are fillin’ up with grease smoke and I close my eyes.
The bare bones of this place, the scratched dresser, the droopy mattress, the dented side table with a cracked ceramic lamp on it that only turns on sometimes---they all tell the stories of people like me who have become invisible. But once I get outta here….
I throw the pillow off me and cover my face with my wet, sweaty hands. I feel everything too much---horror, joy, rage, fear. They all hit me at different times. I still don’t know where the hell I’m going. But you know what? I’m free and that’s what I wanted, and my baby’s free, too. Sean. He’ll be by soon. That’s what the Federal agent told me.
I grab the TV clicker and turn on the TV again. But it’s still blasting the damn football game. Some fool’s made a touchdown. I huddle up in a fetal position with the remote control next to my breast like I’m feeding my baby.
I think I’m getting a fever. My face is all flushed and sweaty and hot. I’m burning up. If Carlos hadn’t come to the courtyard restaurant that day where me and my ma were working, I never would have become his “queen” or gotten involved with the horrible female trafficking gang that ultimately made me face my destiny. I don’t blame my ma, but I did wonder then, as I do now, why? Why she would put us in that kind of danger, with that kind of a man.
My ma was beautiful. Just as beautiful as me, although men were always fallin’ all over me about my looks. My ma went with some gringo from El Paso, Texas and got pregnant with me, but she never talked about him and I never knew who he was.
She said never underestimate the beauty of a woman. She always wore her glossy, black hair pulled back in a low “chignon” she called it, and her makeup was minimum. She was always happy, unpredictable, and what I loved most about her, she loved me unconditionally. That’s another word I learned in the American school. She watched me with steely eyes and moved quickly if she thought I was in danger. But she musta missed it that day. I shake my head. How she could get me involved with a man like Carlos. Then I remember. Before we met him, we’d go to bed hungry, dumpster dived, and ate rotten food left in the restaurant garbage can. Until Sebastian, the guy who owned the restaurant, caught us and hired us as dishwashers.
I roll my hand over the knobby, white chenille bed spread and my finger punctures a cigarette hole burned into the cloth. I grunt. This hotel sure ain’t first class. But someday I’ll get there. Carlos and his Cartel ain’t the only way to the gold. I know that now. But geez, what it’s cost to find it out.
Carlos. Liar! Fucking liar! I hide my face in the cover. What did I learn from all this? I learned hatred—and it sure as shit don’t accomplish nothing. It’s like a balloon hanging above me that burst, dumping anger all over my body, making me feel dirty, used. I got out because I wanted freedom. Freedom from Carlos, freedom from the Cartels.
I keep thinkin’ about if I could demolish the entire human traffic trade, I could get even with Carlos, and get revenge for Maria. I sniffle, grab a Kleenex and wipe my face as tears roll down my cheeks. I sit on the edge of the bed. It’s a little late for all this emotion. What’s done is done and I can’t change nothing. The cracked plastic clock sitting on the bed table looks like it stopped at five o’clock. Where the fuck’s my kid? Where are these assholes? I want Sean with me. I want him to be an American citizen and have a great life.
A cell rings in the hallway and I jump. I put my ear to the door, trying my best to figure out what’s going on. The voices are real low, like in juvie where prison guards talk so’s inmates can’t hear ‘em.
What’s the holdup? Did somebody change their mind? I’m supposed to be outta here and on my way to a place that’s probly not even on a map, with neighbors who don’t ask questions and a Walmart nearby.
I suddenly can’t breathe again. There’s pain in my chest. Diesel smoke is fillin’ the room. Phew!! I rush over to the window. A truck’s going down the garage ramp. The carolers have stopped singing in the entry, probly choking from them fumes. I start coughing real loud.
A guard with a high-pitched voice calls in to me from the hallway: “Hey, sister, are you okay in there?”
Sister? The last thing I am to that pendajo is his sister. Believe me, he don’t want me to be his sister.
“I’m good,” I yell back, then turn to the window where I can barely see my reflection in the filthy glass. Thank the Saints the carolers are gone, but I see some old broad in a wool coat pushing a baby carriage through the back entrance. Sean. My heart leaps. Finally.
I watch as they disappear into the hotel lobby.
The two agents that brought me here told me to dress in something warm. Ha! Were they kidding? I brought the only two outfits I had with me. One is on me. It’s this thick, red wool jacket I stole from Carlos when I snuck out of the hacienda that night. I got a gray sweater underneath and my jeans, and the other is the faded yellow pajama top I swiped from juvie. I don’t have nothing for the baby.
The bell pings as the elevator door opens and my heart pounds out of my chest, but I don’t hear my kid. Instead, it’s some damn food tray’s fallen over---I thump my head against the door and pull Carlos’ jacket tighter around me.
Loud voices are saying things I can’t understand. My hands are shaking again. I run them through my hair or what’s left of my hair. It’s so short there’s nothing to run through. Yesterday one of the female guards cut my long, thick, black hair about a inch all over my head and told me to dye it a dirty blonde when I get to where I’m going. I loved my long hair. Carlos did, too. I used to whip it up into a pony tail. Now I look like a little boy.
My door squeaks open and I look up. It’s only a bell boy dressed in a red coat with white piping and black pants, standing in the frame. He looks ridiculous in that getup.
“Where’s my kid?” I demand as I bound to him and grab his collar.
“Hey, take it easy, ma’am. They’re all down in the lobby,” he says, as he pulls my hands off him. “You got to wait til I get clearance.”
I bump back into the open dresser drawer as he walks past me to pick up my suitcase. I turn quick and see a pad of white paper and a ball-point pen in there. I take them out.
“Hey, I’ll get you a twenny if you leave me alone for about five minutes?”
He frowns, puts my suitcase down, nods and closes the door behind him.
I quick turn to my suitcase and open it and fish around until I find the ledger in the side silk pocket. I tear out a page with the most names on it and fold it into a little square, then I go to the bedside table, click on the pen and write a short note. I fold the square of information inside it and shove the note into the envelope and lick the flap to make sure it’s secure. When I lick it I see the hotel’s gold embossed logo and I gotta wonder, man do they really want to advertise a joint like this? I scribble the address on the front but no return address and quick open the door.
A new kid is standing there, lookin’ all shy and skinny and tall. He’s about eighteen, dressed in a black chauffeur’s uniform, with a metal name plate that says, ‘Pat.’ He comes in, with his head bowed, smilin’ to himself like he’s just thought of a dirty joke. He don’t make eye contact as he picks up my suitcase, which cracks me up. I know he’s scared of me, but I’m not scared. I tug at his sleeve real slow, until he finally looks directly at me. I hand him the envelope.
“Will you mail this for me? Don’t tell nobody?” He stares at it for a second, then nods and takes it.
He gawks at me like a fool, “You’re gorgeous,” he says.
I smile. I’ve heard it all before. What he doesn’t know is: I’m a killer.
