“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.