第 16 页

You must borrow a person’s telephone, Luna said. You have to call your mother or someone. Is there someone else?

No, there’s no one else.

Are you married? Luna looked at the gold band on my finger.

No.

Georgia will let you make a call. She’s the only one who might lend you her phone without making you pay.

Does everyone know that I’m here because they think I killed that girl?

Yes.

Someone is going to kill me, right?

Luna did not answer. She turned and left the cell.

I thought, If Mike’s alive, he’s dead.

In the small cell the bunk beds took up most of the room. Inside the cave-like space of Luna’s bed, she’d hammered nails into the wall. On these nails she’d hung at least ten sleeves that she’d cut off of sweaters, blouses, and long-sleeved T-shirts. They were all beige and looked like a wall covered in snakes.

After only a few minutes, Luna returned and stood beside me as I looked at the sleeves hooked on the wall.

I did not take my arm into consideration, she said. I didn’t give it a special place in my life. I am saving these sleeves because I am going to make an altar to my arm.

That’s a good idea.

Do you give your arms a special place in your life?

No. No, I have not.

Listen. Stick to me. Don’t go walking around alone.

Do you believe me, Luna?

Yes, maybe, maybe I believe you. Maybe.

There was a knock on the door. A woman was standing there dressed in navy-blue sweatpants. She had a canister on her back and was holding a long, thin metal hose in her hand.

No, no, Luna said. She stood up and held her one hand up in the air.

Do you want bedbugs and fleas? the woman asked in a whisper.

The old, dented tin fumigation canister was corroded at its seams and a dark yellow paste, like mucus, formed around the spout.

Shit, Luna said. Let’s get out of here. She’s going to fumigate. Do what you have to do, Aurora.

Aurora was as pale as one of those centipedes or worms one finds under rocks. They are pale because the creatures have never been in the sun. As a child I used to pry rocks out of the ground or kick them over in search of white or transparent insects. Aurora’s light brown hair was so thin her ears stuck out from her hair.

This is Ladydi, Luna said.

I know, Aurora said in her drafty voice. Get out or stay in. It’s up to you.

She pursed her lips tightly together so that the fumigation fumes would not get in her mouth. The tips of her ten fingers were deep yellow.

Do you have any aspirin? Aurora asked.

Luna didn’t answer and I followed her out of the room. Behind us we heard the whooshing sound of the spray as insecticide filled our cell.

The truth is who wants fleas and bedbugs? Luna said. You look pretty clean, but it’s for the best. We won’t be able to go in there for a while. That stink stays around and gives you a headache you can’t shake off for days. You must be hungry by now. Let’s get some food.

The rain had stopped but the sky was still cloudy.

I followed Luna down the labyrinth of corridors that all seemed the same. The men’s prison could be seen through the long open glassless windows in the concrete walls. The faces of men at the windows looked in our direction. Every now and then one of them cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed something or lifted up a white T-shirt and waved it madly at us. It was as if the women’s prison was a ship passing by and the men’s prison was a deserted island with hundreds of shipwrecked sailors. In one short morning, I learned that the men do this non-stop, all day long, and if a woman waves back, it’s love forever after.

And, unlike the male prison across the patio, this world overflowed with rubbish bins filled with bloodied cotton and rags. In this women’s world blood was exposed in the garbage, in the un-flushed toilet bowl, on sheets and blankets, and on the stained panties soaking in the corner of a sink. I wondered how much blood left this place in a day and coursed through the underground sewage system of Mexico City. I knew I was standing on a lake of blood.

Luna took me to a large room with long tables and benches. Prisoners sat around occupied with different activities. Some were eating, others were knitting, and some women breastfed their babies. Two boys, who were about four or five years old, played on the floor with a train set that was made of small cereal boxes attached with knitting wool. One long table was laid out with dozens of bottles of nail polish and nail polish remover. At least twenty inmates were sitting around painting their fingernails.

Painted on the back wall of the room was a mural framed by a banner that said The Mural of Hearts. The content of the work, which I later found out had been painted by the inmates over a span of several years, consisted of portraits of famous Mexican women. I looked at their faces and read the names: Sor Juana, Emma Godoy, Elena Garro, Frida Kahlo, and Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez.

As breakfast was no longer being served, Luna bought us each a sandwich from one of the prisoners. In jail everyone had a business and everything had a price, even toilet paper or Kotex.

Luna said she had no income but received help from a Guatemalan family in Mexico who were part of an evangelical organization that tried to convert prisoners.

They’re all trying to convert us, Luna said. Mormons, Evangelists, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics. Everyone. The missionaries come to the jail on Sunday, and sometimes they get in on other days, you’ll see. Every God is in this prison.

Luna suggested we go out and eat our sandwiches in the yard.

We can get some coffee there and watch the football and then see if we can talk to Georgia who has the telephone, she said.

To one side of the yard, twenty or so women were playing football. The other prisoners sat around on benches. When I looked up I could see a colony of faces. Dozens of women peered out from the windows. When I looked up to the opposite side, I could see the men’s jail and their faces were also looking out of windows. Looking out of windows here was an activity. It was a way to live.

Those men, Luna said, pointing in the direction of the men’s prison, they’re looking for wives. Do you have a husband?

No.

If you get married he can come and visit you. They give you a room with a bed and everything.

No. I’m not married.

None of those men over there at the jail want to marry me, Luna said. Because of my arm. I really don’t want a man, I want a baby. I want someone to love.

Even if they take the child away from you?

In jail a woman could only keep her child until the age of six.

It’s six years of love at least, Luna said. And then you can have another. Do you want a baby?

Yes.

That’s Georgia, Luna said, pointing to one of the women playing football.

Georgia was a tall, slim woman who looked thirty years old. She had blond hair and blue eyes. In the prison yard, she stood out among all the dark skin and hair. She looked like a stick of butter on a table.

She’s from England, Luna explained. A woman from the British Embassy comes and visits her and gives her money, and her family sends money too.

Why is she here? What did she do?

She was coming to Mexico for a fashion show, Luna said. She worked in fashion. She had shoes.

Shoes?

Yes, two suitcases filled with them, the platform shoes, you know, the shoes with the big platforms?

Yes.

Those platform shoes were filled with heroin.

Heroin! Heroin! You’ve got to be kidding! What idiot brings heroin into Mexico?

That’s what everyone says.

I thought of the hills and valleys around my house planted with red and white poppies. I thought of the towns on our mountain like Kilometer Thirty, or Eden. These were the towns along the old road to Acapulco and not the new highway that tore our lives in two pieces. These were the towns that you could only enter by invitation. If you accidently went there no one would ask you your name or ask you what time it was, they’d just kill you. Mike once told me that there were huge mansions in those towns and incredible laboratories that were built underground to turn the poppies into heroin. He said that a miracle occurred at Kilometer Thirty a few years ago. The Virgin Mary appeared in a piece of marble.

Passenger buses always went on this road in convoy. They were scared that they’d be stopped and robbed. This was the highway where decapitated bodies were hung from bridges. This was the highway where the bus drivers swore that at night they’d seen the ghosts. They had seen the ghost face of a clown or the vaporous image of two little girls holding hands as they walked down the side of the road.

No one on this highway stopped to buy tamarind candy or live turtles or starfish with five rays wriggling and squirming in the dry air.

There is an American girl living in the town of Eden. Now that is a backward story, Mike told me. Who comes here?

He said that one of Mexico’s most important drug lords brought her back and she’s only about fourteen years old. She’s the man’s third wife and she likes to take care of everyone’s babies. She keeps to herself, Mike said. She likes to bake cakes.

The young American girl became a legend inside of me. I imagined her walking along our roads, drinking our water, and standing under our sun.

Mike told me that at Christmas the drug lord brought in fake snow and covered the town with mountains of the white powder to make the American girl happy. He also ordered the building of a huge Christmas tree, which was made out of dozens of pine trees that were delivered from a pine-tree nursery near Mexico City. The drug trafficker placed the tall tree in the middle of the main square and had it covered with Christmas decorations.

But that was not the best thing he did, Mike said. The best thing he did was to bring reindeer to the town. He flew them in on one of his private airplanes from a ranch in Tamaulipas.

Have you seen this? I asked.

Yes. Imagine, he turns a piece of Guerrero into the North Pole.

Surrounded by cement, far from the ocean and seabirds and my mother, I thought, How the hell did Mike know all of this?

My hand ached to slap him across the face.

I listened to his stories and never really listened. Now I knew why he had all this information and why I was in jail accused of killing a drug lord, the drug lord’s daughter, and having a package of heroin, worth a million and a half dollars, in my possession.

Where are you, Mike?

I thought, I am going to pray for you, Mike. I’m going to pray you remember me. I’m that deep line, from pinkie to thumb, in the palm of your right hand, Mike. The lifeline that gets full of dirt when you forget to wash.

In my mind I was talking to Mike, but in my eyes I was watching two dozen women playing football. One had Chicharito tattooed on her arm. Another woman had the full body image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the outside of her right thigh.

They play football every day, Luna said. Even if it’s raining they have tournaments. The three teams are Rainbow, Liberty, and Barcelona.

The women ran and called out to each other. From here I could see Violeta who played with a lit cigarette in her mouth. She ran back and forth and never stopped puffing. The smoking butt sat in her mouth as she moved. When she approached a scuffle for the ball, she would throw her head backward, in a gesture that reminded me of a bird drinking water. She did this so that she would not burn anyone with the fiery tip of her cigarette. Her extremely long fingernails that were painted yellow yesterday now were green. From where I sat, only a few feet away, her fingernails looked like long parrot feathers coming out of the tips of her fingers.

Violeta is the captain, Luna said.

As we watched the game Aurora, who had finished fumigating our room, slunk toward us. She was still carrying the canister on her back. She sat down beside us.

You can go to your room now, Aurora said.

I squirmed a little from her odor. I had noticed her yellow fingertips but, outside in the daylight, I realized her skin and the whites of her eyes were also jaundiced.

No, we’re not going in for a while, Luna said.

Do you have any aspirin? Aurora asked.

Don’t tell me you’ve finished all yours again? You’ll get a hole in your stomach!

My head hurts.

Aurora lay down. She curled up on her side on the ground on the cold and damp cement. It seemed like the coldest piece of the planet on that cloudy morning. I wanted to touch her and caress her head as if she were a stray dog in the street. But, as with a stray dog, I was afraid to touch her because she might give me a disease. As she lay beside me, I even thought I could see mange on the side of her head, under her stringy hair.

If my mother were there she would have said, She deserves to be run over by a car!

The football game ended and Luna called out to Georgia to come over. Georgia walked slowly while Violeta followed behind, still puffing on a cigarette. When they reached us Violeta squatted down on her heels in front of me so that we were eye-to-eye. She rested her hands on her knees so that her nails were stretched out before her. Close up her nails no longer made me think of feathers. Instead, they were like the talons of hawks and vultures that swarmed above my house back in the jungle. Violeta’s nails looked like they could pick up a rabbit or a mouse and carry it off. The nails could tear at flesh. They could scratch someone’s face to pieces.

So this is Ladydi? Georgia said. She looked at me. Her blue eyes and my black eyes met. I knew she was thinking, So, this is the dark and ugly creature who has my beautiful princess’s name!

I wanted to say, I’m sorry, but I had never said I’m sorry to anyone.

I thought of all the Ladydi dolls I had at home. To this day, the Lady Diana dolls my father brought me back from the United States were still in my room in their original cardboard and plastic boxes so the jungle mold would not destroy them. I had a Lady Diana doll in her wedding dress, a Lady Diana doll in the gown she wore to meet President Clinton, and a Lady Diana doll in riding clothes. My father had even given me a plastic jewelry set of Lady Diana’s pearls. These I wore until they broke. The white plastic pearls were kept in a cup in the kitchen.

I felt like counterfeit money, fake designer clothing at the Acapulco market, like a Virgin of Guadalupe made in China. I looked at Georgia and turned into cheap plastic. My mother had given me the biggest fake name she could find. How could I begin to explain to this British woman that my name was an act of revenge and not an act of admiration? How could I explain that my name was payment for my father’s infidelities?

Close up, Georgia was so pale I could see the blue veins under her skin. Her face was covered in freckles, even on her lips and eyelids. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were colorless and so her eyes were unframed and looked like two sky-blue marbles resting on her cheeks.