“Take a hit, girlfriend, you’ll feel better. We’re not gonna mess with you. You’re not a snitch or a crybaby.”
Luisa sniffed glue. She’d get high all day. She’d hold the neck of the bag with her left hand, inhale through her nose, and exhale through her mouth. She’d squeeze from top to bottom with her right hand, careful not to pop the bag. She’d stick her nose deep inside as if she wanted to bury her entire face, perhaps her entire humanity, into the minute universe of polyethylene and Resistol glue. She’d lose herself in ecstasy, her eyes blank, her lips, stained with adhesive, smiling. Later, she’d get high huffing a rag soaked in paint thinner, heavenly thinner, but more expensive.
A gang of boys she called “the assholes from the vacant lot” introduced her to rubber cement when she was nine years old. They were from the La Bolsa neighborhood. “That stuff will eat your brain,” the people from Casa Alianza would tell them every time they visited the gang at Buenavista and Taxqueña metro stations, at the sewers in Parque Alameda, or at the Dico commune (named for the furniture store that the abandoned building once housed).
She lived no less lost in the rooftop apartment where she grew up, among her two half brothers and the absence of her mother, who went out at night and slept during the day. Socorro would take her kids up to the roof so they wouldn’t make any noise. They ate the beans and tortillas that she’d leave for them on top of the gas stove, sometimes Jell-O and, on important days, chicken giblets, which they savored as if they were a delicacy.
Her spending habits were also unpredictable: a bunch of plastic flowers figured prominently in front of the corner altar of the Virgen de Guadalupe, a bottle of Christian Dior perfume on top of the dresser, an alligator purse. Socorro herself was unpredictable. She kept her children thin and sickly, three anxious faces, three faces staring at the door, three pale faces on which the only thing that glowed was the eyes of poverty.
Even so, they had it better than some. Their roof never caved in on them, even during the rainy season. The house smelled of gas, but they had grown accustomed to the smell. The street smelled like gas too, as did Avenida Oceanía and the entire colonia. When Socorro would bring a man home and take him to the room that she referred to as her “love nest,” the children would stay on the roof terrace.
When she was gone, the children lived outside, lying in wait of Socorro Bautista’s return. What a beautiful last name, Bautista! One time, a young lover, whose job as a door-to-door salesman required him to wear suit and tie, asked Socorro, “Are you a descendant of St. John the Baptist?”
“Yeah, and I’m a saint too.”
On occasion, she would turn on the radio to the tropical music station and, atop her ankle-tie stilettos, she would dance with Luisa, Fermín, her oldest, and Mateo, the little one. They’d laugh, happy, especially Luisa, mesmerized by her mother’s waist, her leaf-in-the-wind svelteness, her wavy jet-black shoulder-length hair. Other times, Socorro would make them jump over her knees at eight in the morning and she would sing “La Cucaracha” as they laughed hysterically. Sometimes, on a Sunday, she’d even take them to the circus.
When she was conscious, Luisa recalled everything. She would remember Socorro in a park, standing in front of children laughing at her. To defend her, Luisa had thrown rocks at them with such rage that everyone fled in fear. Socorro took her in her arms with a “thank you, sweetheart” that made Luisa feel like she was her favorite, the happiest girl in all of La Bolsa.
One night, Luisa was counting stars on the terrace. The door to her little rooftop apartment was locked. Socorro was inside and Luisa could hear voices. A man with an ugly look on his face came up the stairs.
“What are you doing here, kid?”
“I’m waiting. My mother locked the door.”
The ugly man sat down, grabbed her, and straddled her on his knees. He tugged at her clothes and raised her skirt. Luisa felt a sharp pain that hurt her deep inside, in her heart, in her belly. In a wounded voice she pleaded, “Stop, stop, let me go, let me go.”
He let her go and, like a thief, disappeared into the same darkness from which he had come. As the blood began to run, Luisa banged on the door, “Mamá, Mamá, open the door.”
Socorro didn’t open right away. When she did, her little girl, crying, told her what had happened. Certainly the man inside could hear Luisa’s voice, childlike and breaking. Socorro answered more to benefit that man than her child, “You led him on.”
So Luisa went out onto the street, just like the ugly man had done. No one noticed that she had become a young woman, not even her.
Around Avenida Oceanía, the La Bolsa, Venustiano Carranza, Moctezuma, and Gertrudis Sánchez neighborhoods, the land of soap and oil factories, of screws and glass, of margarines, amid the trash heap of accessories and unlivable houses where people lived, everyone got stoned. They survived in the vacant lot squatting, running every time someone shouted, “Watch out, the cops!”
A guy named Pitt raped Luisa while she was tripping. “I made a woman out of you,” he boasted and then abandoned her, her skirt still pulled up.
The only thing that Luisa could think was how easily he had fit inside her. “This one didn’t hurt,” she thought.
The next day she began to run around with the gang, getting acquainted with the immense city, going from the Tapo bus terminal to Taxqueña, from the Dico to Cuauhtémoc police station, from the Observatory metro stop to La Merced market. Climbing on car hoods like a monkey, she even worked and made a few bucks cleaning windshields. People thought she was cute.
In spite of her frequent comings and goings, she made no effort to see her family. Both of her brothers, Fermín and Mateo, had split. They closed the door behind them one day, and that was it. How could they know where Luisa was if she didn’t know herself? In the emptiness of the city lot and of her heart, there was no one to ask about those who had left. No one has a family here, no one a past, no one investigates, that’s left to the cops. The street is home.
“I’m my own house,” Marilú would say, like Pita Amor, the poet. Marilú was a poet herself. She had taken to the air and landed in the tiny mound of ash that came out of her mouth.
One time Luisa woke up thinking her brother was shaking her, his face on top of hers. In fact, Fermín had gone to the lot to get her. He beat her. She barely recognized him. How was it possible that Fermín had grown so big without eating? In between blows she was able to make out his expression, bitter and hard, his tight lips letting out, “My mother is looking for you, you worthless bitch!”
The Farm in Cuernavaca was far from being a farm. It opened to the street. Its concrete rooms looked like barracks. Everything was made of concrete. Like a black hole, its color swallowed all light. Just in case, passersby would cross the sidewalk to the other side.
“What a terrible vibe this building has!”
Children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives who arrived for the first time were caught off guard. “We thought it had a garden,” they’d complain to Padrino Celso. “Why do they call it a farm? Where do they walk? Where do they play? Where’s the pool?”
“Right here,” Celso would answer, gesturing to the cement. “This is where they have recreation, take meals, receive therapy. They get used to it fast.” Above, the sun underscored the irony of his answers. “We’re going to leave your son just like new,” Celso would say, resting his arms on the shoulders of the newly arrived inmate.
“Can we see the bedrooms?”
“It’s cleaning time. I’ll show them to you next time.”
Fermín tricked Luisa into going to The Farm. It looked like a meeting: tables and folding chairs, elderly people and lots of young people talking.
“Go get some drinks while I look for a table,” Luisa suggested.
“Sure.” Her brother disappeared and out of nowhere two goons grabbed her by the arms.
“Let’s go, over here, Princess.”
“Hell, yeah, assholes! Fermiiiiiiin! I didn’t come alone! Just wait, you motherfuckers! The Devil himself is gonna whoop some ass! Fermiiiin!”
It didn’t surprise her that no one lifted a finger to help her. No one ever helped kids like her. If someone hassles them, they must deserve it. Immobilized by the strength of the two gorillas, she was helpless as they pushed her into a filthy dungeon. As the door closed, a slap silenced her cries.
“It’ll be better if you calm down. You’re not leaving here for a while, muffin. This is a stoner farm. We’re gonna rehabilitate you. So, it’d be better if you chilled out because if you don’t, it’s gonna go bad.”
“My bro, I came here with my bro. Call him.”
The two men burst into laughter.
“What a loser! You ain’t gonna see your brother again until you leave here. That’ll be three months, if you behave.”
“Don’t be an idiot. He brought you here. He’s filling out your card right now. It’s for your own good, honey. We’re gonna break your habit.”
“Fuck you! I ain’t got no fuckin’ habit! Let me out of here, assholes, or you’ll regret it! I belong to a badass gang and if I tell ‘em, there’s gonna be some shit!”
“Shut your fuckin’ mouth, you little bitch!” They slapped Luisa again. “What gang? You’re alone here and you’re gonna have to learn to show some respect. Pay attention, the bosses here are los padrinos, the godparents, Padrino Celso and Madrina Concha. What they say is the law. They’re the ones who are gonna save you from your miserable life.”
Twenty dark stares fixed on Luisa as she entered the therapy room.
“Sit down,” Madrina Concha ordered in a dry voice. Luisa went to the last row.
“No, stupid, over here, in front, where I’m showing you! Did your habit make you blind or what?”
Luisa was beginning to learn the rules of the game. She obeyed and took a seat, her head bowed.
At the podium, she saw a woman who was about twenty-five, attractive, except for the ear-length black roots of her peroxide-blond hair.
“Go on, Blondie. Sorry, Erika,” Madrina Concha corrected herself.
“So that’s how it is. Like I was saying, I started to need coke more than food, more than my daughter, more than anything, even more than my boyfriend. I started with him. He got me started. He and his friends were a bunch of thugs who had a lot of cash. They knew that I’d do anything for a bump. My boyfriend didn’t realize how serious it was until right before he brought me here. He never imagined how far gone I was. I started like everybody, pot and then blow. With those dudes, I fell into stuff worse than snorting, slamming. Snorting became a drag. The wonderful thing about shooting up is you really feel the coke. It runs through your whole body. It travels through your veins. Like all other junkies, I got addicted to the needle, not the drugs. Then I started tripping hard with Nubaín. My friends got it from a dude at some pharmacy. I ended up injecting whatever I could find: alcohol, acetone, eye drops, Pine-Sol and even Mr. Clean, really.”
Luisa was shocked because the only substances she ever did were inhalants. She raised her head to look at Blondie, her face emaciated, the pathetic image of her half-dyed blonde hair. Another girl, more or less her age, a natural blonde, smiled at Luisa. At the end of the session she came up to her, “Hi, my name is Soraya, but everyone calls me Yaya.”
Luisa didn’t respond.
“You’re all zoned out. It’s normal. The best you can do is take it easy. That’s how it is at first. It’s not painless, but, well… you look like you’ve been through a lot, right?
“Dang.”
“Don’t get pissed, partner! Look at your greasy hair. When was the last time you bathed? And your mouth smells like…
“Chill, bitch.”
“At least I got you talkin’. What’s your name?”
“Luisa.”
“Nice to meet you, Güicha. Blondie really messed with your head, didn’t she? I saw your eyes rollin’, girl. That chick really hit bottom. The more dough you have, the deeper you fall. The scoop is she’s the daughter of Rubí Maya, the famous cabaret singer. She refused to accept her ‘cause it would hurt her image. Can you believe that? Her image. Her image as a whore, I mean. That must’ve really hurt her. Now look at her, dying her hair blonde to look like her mother. The other day she started to call me “dumb blonde.” I didn’t say anything. At least I don’t dye my hair. Poor girl, she really knows what it means to lose it. To top it all off, she started hanging around some really scary characters, dudes who were really bad news because all they wanted to do was take advantage of her. So her family took her to two clinics, the really expensive kind, one on the beach, as a last resort. If you ask me, she’ll fall off the wagon when she gets out of here. Look at her. She’s really dried up. And don’t think that she’s as old as she looks. I mean, they ran her motor without oil… Get it? They blew her engine, ha, ha, ha! She’s all used up, ha, ha, ha!” She cackled.
Luisa looked at Yaya out of the corner of her eye. She was talking as if she were possessed.
“You’ll find everything here, rich people, poor people, even decent people. Go figure.”
At The Farm, everyone knew everything about everyone else, even what they didn’t share. Every one went up to the podium to tell their life story, their most secret shortcomings, their pain. Celso and Concha, the padrinos, held themselves up as the moral conscience of the group and were always ready to throw the inmates’ flaws back in their faces, to remind them of what a privilege it was to have the padrinos as their saviors. They must be really important, Luisa thought. Later she would find out, through Yaya of course, that they were lovers and that they had both been alcoholics. That’s why they talked the talk. A strange religion and the thought of having been chosen by God to save souls reformed them. Their dictum to running the shelter was: “From each according to his ability to pay.” Yaya explained they made their money off the rich families, providing room and board to the asylum’s “bread and butter,” those who ended up staying and just taking up space.
“No friggin’ way, sis, the worst thing that could happen to me would be to leave me here like a chump forever,” Luisa said. However, she ended up tolerating each of the stages that would lead to her freedom.
Fermín, her brother, came back only once to see her.
“What the hell, man! Get me out of here, don’t be an asshole.”
“No, sis, it’s for your own good. You’re better off in here than out there. You know what I’m saying? In fact, I think it’s better if you don’t even see us. I’m gonna cross the border with some guys from Mexicali to earn some dough. I’ll send some big ones to the padrinos from there.”
“And the old lady?”
“She won’t come either. She says it upsets her to see you in here. You gotta understand.”
“Sure, okay.”
She never found out if Fermín was sending money. The padrinos didn’t talk about money with the inmates, but you could tell miles away who had money and who didn’t.
Nothing from Cuernavaca entered this corrugated prison, not a blade of grass, nothing, not even the sun, as much as it beat down on the roof. Even the night breeze stayed away and you never heard the sound of air through the palm trees like the padrinos liked to say. Only the vibration of the airplanes rattled the sheet metal in the hallways, stairs, and handrails that faced the street. One big hardware store, that’s what the infamous “Farm” was. They called it The Farm because the men and women they kept there were its seeds. A metal staircase led to the second floor. It was hard to believe that in a dorm designed for fifteen, between cots and bunk beds, you could count fifty inmates.
The place where they did morning calisthenics was repulsive; each movement bounced dryly in the concrete walls and floor. The patio designated for instruction was even more inhospitable. Barbs were the only things missing from the prison’s high wire fence. “Treatment” was nothing more than ten-hour days of brainwashing, giving and listening to predictable, grotesque, orphan, and barren testimonies, a never-ending repetition imposed by the padrinos.
Once, facing them, his legs spread, Padrino Celso pronounced, “I, the Lord’s humble servant, am here to tell you that He has given you a new opportunity to redeem yourselves before His Greatness. Those who wish to study art can now paint on this wall. The whole wall is yours, as are all things in this most benevolent place created for your salvation. I suggest you paint His Divine Face. Let’s go, you three big ones, you fucking sons-a-bitches.”
Despite being adjacent to a ravine with dense vegetation and because all color died at The Farm, the face of a resentful Christ was born. Its ugliness was offensive. The other disproportionate figures in the mural swayed loudly because some overnight painters (the Skunk, Green Snot, Lech, the Barker), unleashed their rage in their brushstrokes.
Nonetheless, the only colors that the inmates saw were those in the mural. Luisa walked by it for months. She floated, moved by mist instead of the wind, which is denied entry here even though the drug and alcohol rehabilitation center puts its inmates on display at the front door. Some of them even invite the passersby to visit. “Come in, come in.”
Most switched sidewalks.
Sporadically, the arrival of extravagant beings (punk hairdos that ended up shaved or some new figure, who seemed to be there just to be mocked) broke the routine. That was the case of an older lady whose presence seemed strange among so many young people. “What’s up, Grandma? What are you in for?”
The people and the language at The Farm, where according to her, she didn’t belong, shocked her. “My children are awful. They say I’m an alcoholic just because I drink a little pulque.”
So they gave her the nickname “Doña Pulques.”
“I’m going to wither away here.”
“Oh, shit! More? How much more can you wither? Aren’t you in your fifties already?”
On another occasion, there was a huge scandal when it was discovered that Miss Melons was three months pregnant when she arrived.
“Yeah, you got that right, Big Tits. Your son’s gonna have a future. He’s gonna be born in a good place with a shitload of godmothers, a real classy person.”
In the beginning, the testimonies, the slow and never-ending flow of “I ruined my life,” “I didn’t have any consideration for my family,” “No one understands me; no one believes in me,” “I gave my wife a beating,” went over Luisa’s head. But after hearing them so many times she became curious. One morning she realized that, like a virus, she was actually expecting them. Those primitive, brutal words, those pathetic confessions, coincided with Padrino Celso’s orders and altered her way of thinking. They got inside her head, hung onto her neurons and wouldn’t let go. No opposing idea could remove them. They demanded her complete attention. She became absorbed in them until the bell rang. Suddenly, waking up, which previously would cause her to cry in despair, was now a blessing. Mornings weren’t bad anymore. Many times before, during the morning exercise routine, Luisa had thought about getting out of line, leaving the floor, shouting in disobedience. One time she even exploded, “I’m tired of this shit!”
“You really are stupid, fuckin’ Güicha. You only had fifteen days left and you had to raise your voice to the Padrino,” Yaya admonished her.
Now, she repeated the movements with reverence, possessed by the commanding voice. What El Padrino said was what she was going to do, because inside the vulgarity of his motives, every once in a while Celso said something that touched her heart. If she didn’t breathe deep, arms open, head high, she’d lose her body just as she had lost her brain. The Padrino had told her as much. Her muscles would atrophy. They would not respond to the orders that her brain was still able to send them. This disgusting dump now seemed hospitable to her.
It’s true that ideas change your life. The instructor was changing hers. Luisa, who as a child never received an idea because her mother wasn’t exactly a purveyor of life lessons, thought that she had entered that “religion” of calisthenics, hose baths, indoctrination hour after hour, voices who recited to excess their histories until they rang in her ears like a chorus of stench and stupidity, for a reason. That’s why the instructor, with his precise orders, “Right flank. Turn right. Now!” excited her. Indeed, he could direct her through the rehabilitation programs and perhaps later (as he had suggested), she could also become a spiritual guide, a madrina.
Even so, she felt a secret revulsion for the padrinos. No matter how often she answered, “Yes, Padrino,” “No, Madrina,” “Whatever you say, Padrino.”
Madrina Concha was especially unmerciful. “Let’s see, you, Güicha, take Miss Piggy here to do her business,” she’d order and immediately grow impatient. “Hey! Hey! Take her now, she’s about to shit herself. Can’t you see what a fuckin’ mess she is?”
Stumbling drunk, the new girl followed her. Luisa wondered what sense it made to force her to the so-called therapy sessions in a near-vegetative state.
“That’s how you were when you got here, little Güicha, the very same. Don’t act haughty. You were just like that, maybe worse.”
The world was reduced to the four walls of The Farm, to the high metal sheets that sheltered the tortured inhabitants. Luisa grew accustomed. The smallest piece of gossip became a transcendent fact and the deserters imposed true watershed moments to the home’s history. “They put that wall up after “the four” escaped.” “I was here eighteen days when Choco Roll fled.”
Luisa counted one by one the days of her internment. “Today makes eighty-eight days. Day after tomorrow, I’m flying with the seagulls.”
“This chick is really outrageous,” Luisa would tell herself as she got to know Yaya. Her compulsion to fix people’s hair caused Yaya all kinds of problems. The inmates couldn’t take her anymore. They slept with their hair wrapped up and even then, sometimes they woke up sensing someone was braiding it.
“Damn, fucking Yaya, you’re really overstepping your boundaries. What’s up with ya?
“I got a bad feeling about her. I bet you she’s a dyke,” Miss Melons insisted. But her psychoanalytical diagnosis held no weight in the community. Everyone simply branded Yaya as crazy.
Luisa was the exception. She liked the caresses that the comb offered. Even more, she enjoyed imagining herself pretty in a place with no mirrors. “I bet I look like my mother with my hair done.” She waited for nighttime when, sitting on a blanket on the floor where they slept and thanks to Yaya’s talented hands, she could feel like the most beautiful girl.
“When I get out of here, I’m gonna open a beauty salon,” Yaya would say. “I even have the name, Renaissance Spa. I’m gonna make it. Just look at yourself. You were a mess, with your hair hanging down in your face all the time, and now I’ve made you irresistible. It’s like I’ve got the ability and a lot of practice, too, right? If you could see my Barbies. They’re not the real thing but they look like it because of the way I fix them up. No one would ever know that I got them at the flea market in Tepito … I mean, I could even make it as a designer. What do you think, Güicha?”
Luisa was the only person who listened to Yaya’s long soliloquies. There was something about the girl, maybe her air of innocence, or a certain refinement that reminded her of Marilú, the poet from La Bolsa. With time, Yaya would also become her manicurist. As healthy as they looked now, anxiety had led Luisa to chew her fingernails in a ruthless way. She wouldn’t stop until she felt the pain of raw flesh in her long fingers. Yaya lived at the disposal of her friend’s fingernails. “You want me do your nails now? Wow, just look at how pretty your hands are.” After three consecutive treatments, Luisa no longer put her hands up to her mouth with the same obsession as before, nor did she say to Yaya, “If I don’t chew it exactly the right way, if there’s a tiny bit left, the fuckin’ nail ruins my day.”
Luisa was loitering on the patio looking at her nails when a new arrival caught her eye. Everyone else surrounded him and Luisa saw his noble face, his deep blue eyes, his white skin and black hair. He had been tricked into the place, just like her.
When, pale, he said with a laugh that sounded more like a cry, “I won’t stay here,” his mother, a well-dressed woman accompanied by a chauffeur and a maid in uniform, stepped back.
Señor Celso stopped the young man, grabbing him firmly by the arm. “Come see the garden.”
“Yes, of course, I’ll take you to the garden,” murmured Luisa while contemplating giddily the angel who had fallen into this hell. “Oh, papi, the only thing you’re missing are a set of wings,” she whispered.
While the boy disappeared behind the door, Luisa saw the maid hide her face in her apron. “Oh, ma’am, our niño, our niño Patricio!”
Padrino Celso, whose gray hair was as long as the young man’s, returned and spoke to the woman, “Please sign, sign now, so he’ll stay.”
The mother hesitated. “Without warning him? He doesn’t want to stay.”
“Just sign and leave. Don’t worry. He’ll be okay. We’ll talk tomorrow. After three months, you won’t believe the change. If he behaves, you can come visit him next month. You’ll be surprised when you see him. I guarantee it, madam.”
“Okay, tomorrow I’ll send some shorts, t-shirts, and his favorite cologne with the chauffeur.”
“No, no, only his clothes, please. He has to learn to be humble here. The golden rule is that everyone is equal here. What you may do is leave two hundred dollars for his board.”
“Our boy Patricio,” the maid cried.
Patricio’s mother signed the letter and the check, then turned on her high heels. Her servants, like bodyguards, walked behind her.
You could tell a mile away that this boy was different. His elegance stood out amid the gang of thugs. Luisa didn’t tire of looking at him from one day to the next. She devoured his slender figure with her eyes, from one wing of the dining hall to the other. He ate pretty, moved pretty, spoke pretty. He asked for permission to read, they refused; to be allowed to write in a book, they refused; to talk on the phone, even less.
“Who do you think we are, a bunch of fools?” Celso’s voice roared.
In fact, Patricio did. So he spent the day facing the phone. When it rang it was almost always for him. Luisa heard him say in a hushed voice, desperate, covering his mouth, frightened that they would catch him, “Get me out of here, this is an unbearable nightmare. Please get me out of here. I won’t relapse. I swear.”
Yaya, who knew everything, told her friends that Patricio was a heroin addict.
Luisa’s fixation with the boy grew with each passing day. She took advantage of the slightest excuse to try to get close to him. Only once was she able to do it, and then at the risk of being punished, she whispered to him, “Don’t be bumming, dude. You’ve got a sister in me.”
He looked at her, thankful, and responded with a smile, “Thanks. You’re very pretty.”
Luisa felt like everything was turning upside down. Her forehead beaded up with sweat. Pretty? Her? Pretty? Patricio’s brief words held the power of revelation. His angelic mouth had given her a truth to which she could cling.
From that day forward, Luisa sought his elegance like flowers seek the sun. To sit facing him, even at a distance, was to become something else, to go far away from The Farm, to see green grow, but no longer amid the terror of her hallucinations. She could think of nothing except Patricio. She dreamed of a kiss from his mouth and she bloodied her lips biting them so much in anticipation of it.
“First your nails, now your lips,” Yaya reprimanded her jealously.
Luisa got too skinny. But he smiled at her from afar, appreciative, and that made her dream, all the way to her bones, that maybe, just maybe, in this palace of rehabilitation, she would find happiness. Even if it meant to throw herself in love at Patricio’s feet, like a dog. Love forced her to find herself amid a group of strangers because as new inmates arrived, old friends would leave. Carmela’s parents came for her and so did Tickles’ for their daughter; and for Pichi and Miss Melons, with her pregnancy and all, the same thing. Only Luisa, Yaya, Yolanda, the newest one, Jacqueline, Aurora, Jessica, Sandra, Rubí, and the girl they called Stardust were still there. But what Luisa was feeling now, no one else could feel. Her love for Patricio made her unique. The only true misfortune had become the time when she didn’t see him. Then she thought she was going mad, possessed by fits, dizziness, anxiety, fire. Until Yaya told her, “What are you doing hanging out with that fag? What, you mean you didn’t know?
One day, Patricio disappeared with Tufic, an Arab with a really hot body, a small waist, a hot and perky ass. The padrinos knew that those who succeeded in escaping did it through the ravine. So they sent the goons to look for them.
“Who knows where they ran off to!” Yaya speculated in the dormitory. “What are the padrinos thinking? With those long legs, who knows when they’ll catch the runaways?”
Luisa listened to her, her face hidden in the blanket. She cried all night and, although she didn’t know how to pray, she asked God to take care of Patricio.
Many things had changed in Luisa. She could walk by her former “homies” and they wouldn’t recognize her. Her own family hadn’t ever seen her so put together and self-possessed, so committed to starting a new life. She would repeat very seriously, “I’m going to remember the hard lessons that took me out of the hole.”
Her body language was different. She was no longer wild and crazy like her mother. She had adopted a calmer, sometimes even feline attitude. The messy movements caused by the brutal calcium deficiency due to the drugs were gone. She walked straight, with long, harmonious steps. If everything before had been an excuse to laugh, it bothered her now when someone laughed for no reason. She worked hard to be recognized as one of the most successful inmates. She guided the new girls. She couldn’t even imagine succumbing to a new outbreak of hysteria; like the one from her early days when, for no reason, she grabbed a tuna fish can that they used as an ashtray and threw it in the face of the speaker at the podium. Her dream of being let out evaporated upon receiving an infinitely worse punishment: sitting through the pitiful speeches of the men’s section. The second part of the sentence, three days of bread and water, didn’t bother her. There was little difference between that and her usual diet of rice and beans. Back then, she never imagined that one day the padrinos would praise her accomplishments or show astonishment at how much she had changed, “You’re almost there, child. You’re almost there.”
It’s Luisa’s big day. Three periods of treatment in the shelter had ended, nine months of rehabilitation. Finally a white plastic chair awaits her in the farewell ceremony, a kind of graduation act or a quinceañera mass, neither of which Luisa had back home. She only finished third grade and she celebrated her fifteenth birthday in the lot.
“Güicha, they’re coming for you today.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna take a bath.”
“It’s about time, right, girl?”
Luisa smiles.
“Have you packed already?”
“All I have is a plastic bag… After I take a bath, can I ask Yaya to put curlers in my hair?”
“Hell yeah. Today is your day.”
Luisa begins to laugh. She jokes about her pedicure, her facial mask, her massage, her makeup, “I’m gonna ask Yaya for her lipstick. I’m gonna tell Yaya to clean me up real good so I look really nice for when my old lady, Fermín, and Mateo get here. They ain’t gonna recognize me. They’re gonna look for me in the crowd and when they finally realize it’s me, they won’t know what to say. ‘Wow, that’s great!’ they’ll say. I can already hear them. Mad hot!”
“So, they’re coming for you, fuckin’ Güicha?”
Luisa responds with a smile.
“Congratulations, lil’ sis.”
“Coolness, girlfriend, that’s so awesome.”
“When’s your old lady getting here? Between five and six? That’s not far off. It’s almost time. What we wouldn’t give to be in your place, Bitch.”
For weeks Luisa had imagined herself in a blue dress, sitting in one of the white chairs, next to her mother Socorro. Accompanied by their families, all those who left went up to the podium to give thanks and pledge not to relapse. They were applauded and they sang the shelter’s hymn:
For our recovery,
For our salvation,
We will fight, we will win,
Just today,
Just today,
The Lord is my shepherd,
Jesus Christ died for me,
I confess my sins to him,
And cleanse my heart,
Only him, only him, only him,
Only him, my redeemer.
The padrinos then praised their success and cautioned them to lead a healthy life. One inmate always stood out from the rest and Luisa was sure that this time, it would be her. It was her turn. She had earned more than enough merits.
“What’s up, Güicha? It’s six thirty and your old lady’s nowhere around.”
“She probably can’t come because this is when things start to get busy for her. I’m sure my brothers will be here, even though they’re real assholes and usually show up late to everything. Soon…”
During the ceremony, the chair next to Luisa remained empty. Nonetheless, her recovery was in fact the most mentioned in the padrinos’ speeches.
“See, ladies and gentlemen, what we do here. This girl was nothing more than human garbage when she arrived. No one would have given a cent for her and look at her now, rehabilitated, pretty, clean, her head on straight, a mother’s pride, who could not be here today but who tomorrow will certainly come to pick her up…”
Luisa feigned a smile. When it was her turn, she thanked them for their kind words and for her rehabilitation. She didn’t mention her family’s absence. Later, during dinner, when someone asked, she answered, “They had already told me that most likely they wouldn’t be able to come.”
Even if she no longer belonged there, with the same composed expression that she showed during the ceremony, Luisa stayed another night at The Farm.
Yaya followed her with a sense of guilt. “Poor little buddy, honestly, her folks really fucked her over.” When Luisa began to speak, she felt even worse.
“I close my eyes. I see the grass grow. It’s growing fast. I hear it. Whoosh, it’s growing, whoosh, whoosh. It’s taller than me. It keeps going up. It’s going to cover us all.”
“What the fuck, Güicha. Open your eyes! Open ‘em! There ain’t even a blade of grass here.”
“I open, I close, I open my eyes. I still see it. It’s green, pretty. It’s there. It’s a really soft mountain, out of the green it starts…”
“You’re out of your mind, Güicha, totally out of your mind. There ain’t nothing like that here.”
“The Tabachin tree is coming toward me too. It stretches out its branches and takes me in its arms. It wants me to see the nest.”
“What nest, fuckin’ Güicha?”
“The one on its head. All Tabachin trees have a nest.” Luisa continued to ramble until the others started to protest.
“What the fuck, Bitch! We’re trying to sleep.”
The next night, Luisa didn’t take her place in the dormitory. She laid out her blanket in Blondie’s corner, who had left. Seated, she experienced something akin to having her mind erased. She felt the return of that indescribable feeling gone for nine months. Her pulse accelerated. Her hands shook and she began to sweat heavily. “What a high!” she said, and at the same time she stopped listening to the deafening snores of her companions. Everyone had told her about the “bounce” but she’d never experienced it until today! The trip arrived at just the right time, knocking on the door just as she was opening it. She came down from the dormitory early in the morning, rings under her eyes, pale. Something horrible must have happened to her because Padrino Celso exempted her from calisthenics. When he went up to her and looked into her eyes he was frightened to see that Luisa was not in there. He took her to the infirmary immediately. “What did they give her? What did she take?” He asked the person in charge.
“Don’t get mad at me, I don’t know. I haven’t even seen her. She hasn’t even been outside The Farm.”
“You can’t trust anyone anymore.”
At lunch, Luisa walked, emaciated, toward the table. She didn’t even see the plate no matter how much Yaya pleaded tearfully, spoon in hand, “I’ll help you, buddy, go on, eat.”
Luisa spent the afternoon in a complete stupor. She was the same when she went to bed. She didn’t even react to the bells.
That night, Yaya, her head on her pillow, concluded that the trip had arrived for Luisa just in time, and that when, in a not distant future, the day arrived for her to leave, she wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving Güicha behind. She would simply forget.
The next day, amid trills, Yaya heard the news that had put Luisa into orbit, “Yaya, they’re coming for you today.”