Behind The Hands That Kill

TWENTY-FIVE

The car parked on the street outside my house isn’t Victor’s this time—it belongs to the coyote who I paid to take me across the border. Usually it’s the other way around, and I had to pay a lot more to get into Mexico than an illegal immigrant wanting out. “Your situation is unique,” he had said during our negotiations, parked behind a convenience store at two a.m. yesterday morning. “Why don’t you just use your passport and catch a plane?”

“Because I have to get in this way,” I had said.

He smiled with intrigue, his dark eyes backlit with greed and expectation.

He looked me over. Young, white, American girl with a plan and a purpose. A girl, who clearly by my decision to go dangerously into Mexico by way of a coyote, knew that I not only had bigger balls than him, but also a much bigger bank account.

“Fifteen thousand,” he said, and I knew it was non-negotiable.

But money was the least of my concerns—I went into our negotiations expecting to pay no less than twenty thousand.

“Fifteen for the ride,” I agreed, handing over an envelope stuffed full of cash. “And I’ll also be needing a few other things.”

He cocked a thin brow.

I explained what else I needed, and by the time our meeting was over, he had half of his money up front (twenty-five thousand), and I had a very eager and willing coyote at my disposal.

I close the curtain and slip back into my room. There’s blood on my clothes from an earlier meeting, and I intended to change, but decide against it at the last minute. The blood will only help me to play the part—I just have to make it appear to be mine. No need to pack a bag or grab a toothbrush or anything like that, because kidnapped victims bound for sex slavery compounds don’t have such luxuries; they’re lucky to still be wearing shoes by the time they’re brought through the gates of one of the last places they’ll ever call home.

I swallow a birth control pill, and get to work on braiding a month’s worth of the little pills into the roots of my hair.

A knock echoes lightly through the house. At first, I think it came from the basement, but when I hear it again seconds later, I confirm the source to be at the front door. Maybe it’s the coyote. He told me to call him Ray, but that’s his real name as truthfully as mine is Lydia. I had chosen the name on a whim, thinking a lot about the good friend I lost escaping Mexico the first time. I guess it’s my way of honoring her, of avenging her murder.

Before I go into the living room, I peek out the window of my bedroom and look into the street. Ray’s old beat-up car is gone, and there’s no other vehicle anywhere I can see that wasn’t there before.

The knock sounds again.

I grab my gun from the bed, head down the hallway, crouched low, and take a right into the kitchen instead. Quietly I slip out through the laundry room door, and make my way around the side of the house. Always on high alert, especially while I’m still in the United States, out in the open for Artemis to find me. She is still on the run, as far as I know.

Looking around the corner of the house, I glimpse a woman standing at the front door. The porch light is not on so it’s hard to make out anything more than her being female—the long hair and petit frame easily give away that much.

Pointing the gun at her just five feet away I say, “What do you want?”

The woman’s hands come up slowly, as if she knows I have a gun, and then she turns her head toward me.

“I just want to talk,” she says. “Well, actually I want more than that, but I can assure you I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You couldn’t,” I say with confidence.

She nods, raises her hands higher. “Yeah, I’m fully aware of that.”

I move in closer, feeling the cool, smooth concrete underneath my bare feet; my finger hugs the trigger.

“Turn around,” I demand.

She does exactly as I say, keeps her hands level with her shoulders.

“Now reach out with your right hand,” I instruct, “and open the front door.”

A brief look of surprise flashes over her partially shadowed face. “You left your front door unlocked?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I admit. “I’m not going to live in fear. Someone wants me bad enough, a locked front door isn’t going to stop them. And if they get in by way of that door and catch me off-guard, then I deserve whatever happens to me. Now open the door.”

She cups the knob and turns; the door opens soundlessly; dim light from the living room lamp touches the entrance and the woman, revealing her light brown hair and kind eyes. She’s dressed in a simple pair of khaki-colored slacks, and a short-sleeved white button-up blouse tucked in; her shoes are flat-soled, white, and pointy in the toes. I don’t care about any of this stuff—I was looking for a weapon somewhere amongst it all.

“Where’s your gun?” I ask, still looking her over.

“I don’t have one.”

“A knife?”

She shakes her head.

I gesture my gun at the doorway. “Go inside. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

The woman enters my house, and I follow in closely behind her, closing the front door with my free hand.

“Sit in that chair,” I tell her, glancing at Dina’s flea market wooden chair.

She sits down.

“Put your hands on your knees.”

She puts her hands on her knees.

I sit on the coffee table, facing her, gun still pointed at her. She doesn’t look threatening; she’s smaller and much frailer than me, but I’d never underestimate her because of her size. Or even because she appears to be weaponless. It’s often the ones you least expect capable, who turn out to be the most dangerous.

“Now tell me who you are, and what you want.”

She keeps her focus all on me, but she doesn’t seem afraid—careful and smart, yes, but not afraid.

“I’m Naeva Brun,” she says. “I’m sure you know by now who I am and how I know you.”

Victor and Niklas’s sister. Interesting.

“Go on,” I tell her.

“And I’m here because I need to go with you to Mexico.”

A wave of disappointment and betrayal rushes over me. How could Victor do this after everything I told him? After I warned him? After he pretty much gave me his word that he wouldn’t interfere? I bite down on the inside of my mouth, and look at Naeva with exasperation.

“So he sent you to babysit me,” I say, and then stand.

“No,” she says, “I came on my own. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

I jerk my hand toward her to emphasize the gun’s presence, just in case she needs reminding.

“Then how did you know about Mexico?” I drill her. “How did you know when I was leaving?”

“Like you, and my brothers,” she says, “I have a set of my own skills.” She shrugs her petit shoulders. “Nothing to brag about, but I’m not completely useless.”

Hmm…to be related to Victor and Niklas, Naeva sure lacks the confidence in herself that they reek of.

“Then tell me how?” I say.

She looks up at the popcorn ceiling. “I was hiding in the building’s venting system,” she says, looking back at me. “It was easy to get into the building after everything had been moved out, and everyone with it. I snuck in a couple hours before nightfall, and I waited.”

“Waited for what?” I ask. “How’d you know there’d be a meeting?”

“Niklas has a big mouth,” she says. “You were right about him, about what you said in the meeting.” She smiles softly. “I’ve been going to that bar he sleeps at, for a while now. I’ve sat next to him a few times, wanting to tell him who I am, but I never had the courage. I don’t think he’s ready to see me.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t hit on you,” I say.

She blushes. “Actually, he did,” she says, and I cringe. “But I brushed him off, and he left me alone.”

“Good thing Niklas isn’t the determined type,” I say. Though he seems to be with me, unfortunately, I think to myself.

She nods. “Yes. It’s a good thing.”

We’re both quiet for a moment.

Feeling less threatened by her, I decide to sit down on the coffee table again. The gun remains in my hand, resting on the top of my leg; I casually take my finger away from the trigger.

“OK, so let’s say for conversation’s sake,” I begin, “that you’re telling the truth, and that Victor doesn’t know you’re here—if it’s not to babysit me, then what’s your interest in Mexico?”

Naeva’s expression becomes more serious and thoughtful; she makes a movement as if wanting to gesture her hands, but stops before her fingers lift from her knees, remembering her predicament. She sighs; her eyes stray from mine, and then she looks down at the floor. I wait, growing impatient, but I don’t let her onto just how much.

Then suddenly she raises her head, and I get the oddest feeling from the look in her eyes. Empathy? Familiarity?

She leans forward just a little, keeping her hands on her knees, and in a soft voice, she says, “Sarai, do you not remember me?”

I tilt my head to one side; I feel my eyebrows drawing inward; I blink with confusion. Remember her? From where? My mind begins to race; only snippets of full pictures flash across my memory, but Naeva isn’t in any of them.

Then something dawns on me—she called me Sarai.

I’m standing again, and I don’t recall the movement that brought me to my feet; my gun is still in my hand, but in my heart I must not feel threatened or my finger would’ve already found the trigger again by now.

Empathy. Familiarity. I feel them both more now, the longer I look at her, the deeper I peer into her eyes, the harder I study her delicate features.

Yes—she is familiar to me, but I can’t recall…

“May I stand?” she asks.

I nod.

Slowly Naeva stands from Dina’s chair. With both hands, she begins to break apart the pearl-white buttons of her blouse, untucking the hem from her slacks as she makes her way down to the final button. She slips her arms from the blouse, and then lays it carefully on the seat of the chair. Then she turns around, and as the lamp light touches her bare back, it reveals the horrors of her past. And of my past. Scars crisscross her skin, from one side of her back to the other, remnants of a brutal beating. Or two. Or four. Or ten. I feel my breath catch, air filling up my lungs, drowning me; the salt in my eyes; the ache in my heart; the searing in my memory.

I swallow.

I set the gun on the coffee table.

Naeva turns around again, and steps more into the light; her face becoming clearer. And I can’t take my eyes off her. Because I remember her.

I remember her now…

I had been sitting alone, huddled in a dark corner when they brought the girl into the room. It was night, and I couldn’t tell how long I’d been awake already, but I knew it must’ve been more than twenty-four hours. I was nearly fifteen-years-old, but as with the time of day or night, I couldn’t be sure. I wondered if the girl knew how old she was, or if she even cared anymore. I wondered if any of the girls cared.

Beams of moonlight penetrated the holes in the tin-roof ceiling like little rods of hope that constantly reminded me there was life and freedom on the other side of these walls. The light stirred the dusty floor, particles rising up into the beams; tiny dancing fairies, I made myself believe they were. They were going to save me one day soon. They were going to save us all. But I had only been in this part of the compound for forty-eight hours, and little did I know that no one was ever going to save me, and that I was going to spend the next nine years in this place.

I could smell her blood; the lashes on her back were brutal, nearly biblical. I tried not to look when she was dragged in by two men and dropped on the soiled cot. I had backed myself into that corner, hoping not to draw attention to myself, and I covered my ears with my fists as I tried desperately to shut out her cries. They were terrible cries, like a dog that had been struck by a car: unadulterated suffering, the final whimpers before death. I thought she was going to lay there and die, and I didn’t want hear the moment when it happened. I was afraid. I was very much afraid.

“Vamos!” I heard one girl whisper in Spanish when I finally took my fists from my ears. “Toma la botella.” I didn’t know much Spanish then, but I knew enough to get me by.

I raised my head from the wall, and watched quietly from the shadowed corner; the eight girls I’d shared this room with the past two days all clustered around the girl on the cot. One of them—Marisol—crawled away on her hands and knees to a spot near the shuttered window. I could vaguely make out her hands moving in a hurried motion against the floor; the sound of wood creaking, and then one board scraping against another one. Seconds later, her right arm disappeared into the floor all the way up to her shoulder; her cheek lay pressed against the wood, and I could see her face in the dim light of the moon as she struggled to grasp something. When she raised up again, a bottle of whiskey came out in her hand. She rushed back across the room, still on her hands and knees, and joined the other girls in caring for the one on the cot.

The girl screamed when the liquor was poured into her open wounds, and my hands instantly went over my ears again. Tears streamed down my face. I thought I was going to throw up.

An hour went by, and a few of the girls had fallen asleep next to the one on the cot, curled up around her. Marisol stayed awake, sitting up with the wounded girl’s head on her lap. Constantly she combed her fingers through her hair.

“Is she going to be OK?” I asked. They were the first words I’d spoken since I was brought to this room.

Marisol looked up from the girl on her lap; her fingers never stopped moving through her hair. Then she glanced at another girl—Carmen—sitting against the wall underneath the window. It became evident to me that Marisol didn’t speak English, and she relied on Carmen to translate. Or at least to do the talking.

Carmen leaned away from the wall, pushing her face out of the shadow and into view.

“No we ever be OK here,” Carmen said in broken English. “You see this, no?” she added, scornfully.

I began to shrink away from her, back into my corner, but she stopped me.

“Lo siento,” she apologized. “I’m just worried about Huevito.” She glanced around the room at the other girls. “We all are.”

She pushed farther away from the wall and very slowly came toward me on her hands and knees; I wondered why none of them ever stood fully upright and walked through the room, but I didn’t ask.

Marisol watched from her spot on the floor, steadily combing her fingers through the wounded girl’s hair. The other girls who were still awake also watched, but only Carmen ever spoke. I know some of the others spoke perfect English—some were American—because I’d heard them on occasion, so I figured they were all just too afraid. And I didn’t blame them. I was afraid, too.

Carmen sat down next to me. She smelled bad, like sweat and body odor and menstruation. But all of us stank; even I was beginning to smell less like the privileged girl I was when I first came to Mexico, and more like the girls who were now my only company.

“Me saw you before,” she said quietly. “Me saw you with Javier. And another white woman. She is palillo; looks like she no eat.”

I swallowed, trying to push down the memory of my mother, but this time I couldn’t. It had only been two days ago that I…well, since I—

“The woman was my mom,” I told Carmen, but I couldn’t look her in the eyes. “She was Javier’s girlfriend, I guess.”

Carmen smiled, but there was no harm in it. “Javier no have girlfriends,” she kindly corrected me. “He has sheep.”

“He doesn’t seem like the shepherding type,” I said.

Carmen shook her head. “No, he’s the wolf that mutilates the shepherd, and then eats the sheep.”

I thought about it for only a second before nodding in agreement. She was right about Javier, and I had known that since the day my mother brought him into our trailer in Arizona and he first laid eyes on me. They were not kind eyes. Javier had the eyes of a predator.

“And if that woman was your mom,” Carmen said, and then she pointed at me, “that mean you are sheep he after all along.” She gestured at the other girls in the room, and added, “Welcome to the flock.”

My stomach sank.

To my left, I heard another girl whisper harshly in Spanish, “Callate Carmen! Por que te pueden escuchar!”

Carmen ignored her.

“So you said was.” She waited for a response, studying my face, and at first I didn’t understand what she was talking about. But then she added, “Javier kill your mama?” and then I understood perfectly.

I lowered my eyes, shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. My mother was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

Then I looked up, making the wounded girl with her head on Marisol’s lap, my only interest.

“Why did they beat her?” I asked.

Carmen glanced back at the girl.

“No they,” she said, and looked right at me again, “Izel. Javier’s sister. Puta gets off on it.”

“Carmen!” the same girl from before hissed. “Por favor! Por favor! Solo cierra la boca!” Her eyes darted back and forth from Carmen and the wooden door. Admittedly, I was as worried as she was about those men coming in here again.

This time, Carmen lowered her voice so that no one could hear her but me. She peered in closer. “And Huevito beaten because she tried escape. Como te llamas?”

“Sarai,” I answered, understanding her probably accidental Spanish there at the end. She had introduced herself, and the rest of the girls, when I was brought to the room yesterday, but I had been too traumatized to talk before now. Traumatized by what was happening to me. And by what I did to my mother.

Carmen reached out and touched my wrist; the look she regarded me with could only be described as motherly, even though she was as young me. “No ever try escape, Sarai,” she warned, and then crawled on her hands and knees back to her spot underneath the window.

Suddenly, I felt in danger just thinking about it—escaping—as if Izel, who I was already quite familiar with having had several unpleasant run-ins with her before, could hear my thoughts. But this—I looked across at the wounded girl again; the deeply-cut gashes on her back glistened in the eerie moonlight and were the most colorful thing in the room—this was so very different from a few unpleasant run-ins.

Just then the wounded girl they called Huevito, began to stir.

Marisol tried to help her adjust her position on her lap, but we all knew there was nothing any of us could do to ease her pain. I felt terrible for her. And I became angry. At the woman who did this. At Javier for allowing it to happen. At my mother for bringing me here.

I stood up, to the gasps and Spanish whispers of the other girls, and I walked quietly across the room, and crouched in front of Huevito. Her eyes were open, though just barely. Marisol stared at me, a terrified look spread all over her pretty features—had it been because I stood up? It’s what I assumed.

“I’ll talk to Javier,” I whispered to Huevito, and then I reached out and touched her sweat-drenched forehead with the back of my fingers. “He’s kind to me; I’ll tell him what happened to you, and I’m sure he’ll do something about it.” Everything I said, I knew in my heart was a lie. Javier may have been ‘kind’ to me, but I wasn’t stupid—it was just a show; he wanted me to like him, to trust him, probably the same way he did all of the other girls here at one time. But I had to say something; I had to at least try to give the poor girl some hope.

Marisol, finally snapping out of her shock that I had stood up in the room, reached out and slapped my hand away from Huevito’s forehead.

“Alejate de nosotras!” she said in Spanish, and I didn’t understand the words, but her body language set me in the right direction. “Vete! Tu vas hacer que nos lastimen a todas!” She clenched her white teeth amid her caramel-colored skin; her long, black hair sat ragged around her square-shaped face.

I looked over at Carmen, hoping she’d translate, but then I heard the voice of Huevito, weak and hoarse, and no one cared about me or Marisol or Carmen anymore.

“Promise…me,” Huevito said, with great difficulty.

I leaned in closer, took her hand into mine.

“Promise me…if they kill him…” she had to stop to catch her breath, and with every word, every movement the muscles in her face aggravated, the pain in her body became that much more evident in her expression.

“It’s OK,” I told her, and softly patted her hand. “Take your time. Catch your breath.”

Her eyes opened and closed from pain and exhaustion; her hand was weak and clammy in my own. I could feel everyone’s eyes on us, all around me, and the warmth of their breath as they all leaned in to hear what Huevito struggled to say; it didn’t matter that it was in English.

Huevito’s eyes opened a little wider, and she looked right at me. But I got the feeling she didn’t even know where she was, that she’d been beaten so severely that she was hallucinating. And when she continued to speak, I became more convinced of that assumption.

“I won’t let them kill you,” she said. “Te amo mucho, Leo. I won’t live without you.” She started to cry, tears tracked through the dirt on her cheeks; her breathing began to labor.

I held her hand more firmly, and I started to cry too. Who was she talking about? I didn’t know, but whoever Leo was, even my heart ached tremendously for him—for both of them.

Huevito closed her eyes, caught her breath once more, and then opened them again. Her lips were so dry and cracked that the skin began to break apart right in front of me; slivers of blood appeared in the tiny slits.

“If they kill him,” she repeated, “promise me you’ll let me die—promise me!” I couldn’t tell then whether or not she was coherent.

Then the door burst open, and Izel stood in the doorway like Death in a short skirt, tall and dark and lethal. And I learned before she dragged me out, kicking and screaming, why no one ever stood up in that room at night—Izel was always watching from her room in the house next door, for walking shadows to move along the walls.

But that night, as Izel tormented me about my mother’s death, and how I belonged to her then, all I could think about was Huevito. And I never saw her again.