IT IS A little before 3 p.m. and the communal house is humming with the sound of kids. In the street, Moxy speeds around on my bike, nearly crashing into a parked car after eyeing a pair of women for too long. He turns the corner and speeds toward Columbia’s territory. Moxy has been begging me for days to let him ride my bike. He put on a sweet face, and promised not to get into any trouble. I found excuse after excuse to avoid it. I said the steering was off, that it barely had gas, that, that . . . The stares I get traveling through 18’s territory are already too close for comfort. I don’t want them associating my bike with MS. That could get dangerous. Today, however, I am out of excuses and have no choice but to hand over my keys.
Moxy approaches the boundary of MS territory, demarcated by a gigantic amate tree. Any lower is hostile territory for Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha. Moxy isn’t quite that reckless, and quickly turns back, riding the bike through the air. Soon enough, he eyes the time and reluctantly parks my bike in front of the communal house. He hands me the keys and takes off running.
Inside the communal house things are better than last time. The kids are behaving better today, and we have extra help. Cristal is a neighborhood woman who offered to lend a hand. She is sixteen and knows how to work with kids. She’s a teenage Claudia Schiffer, and the Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha are crazy about her. In these communities, and at Cristal’s age, gangsters are a sort of perfect rebel. The whole world talks about them, they are well dressed, respected, like the protagonists of their own movie. El Noche peeks his head in, hungrily eyes her up and down, and walks on. Cristal turns beet red and frantically fixes her hair.
At the entrance to the youth center is Karla, Hugo’s sister. She speaks with La Seca,22 one of the women who comes each month to ask Destino for money. Half of Karla’s face is deformed by a gigantic red bruise that La Seca strokes gently.
“What happened to your face, Karla?” I ask when I see her, but it’s her friend who answers:
“Nothing, she’s fine.”
“The man fucked me up!” Karla says irreverently, and La Seca croons:
“Look, being their girl is hard, it’s a really hard life, you suffer a lot. You’re still young, enjoy it while you still got him here, because when they are jailed up . . . that’s hard. So far to go see him, getting up so damn early. And look, sometimes I go with four kids all the way to Ciudad Barrios, three hours to get there, and those long-ass lines . . .”
The four kids La Seca speaks of flutter around her, and Karla looks on in silence with the one eye she can still open.
It is a strange scene, as if La Seca were her reflection, a foreshadowing of sorts.
“It sucks dick, ’cause you can’t even work or they’ll say you’re out chasing men. Damn, I just got a job downtown with a friend but he came out with this ‘no the fuck you won’t!’ and, damn, at the end of the day you can’t do shit,” the girl says. She pauses, then looks around her, and continues: “I better go, because he said if I’m seen around these parts he’ll fuck my shit up.”
“It’s because you’re scared of him,” says la Seca. “Look, me, when dude was beating on me, I fought him right back. I wasn’t scared of him. Even when I was, I wouldn’t show it.”
Soon enough, like a bad joke, Little Down appears at the head of a group. He walks between the two women swiftly, nearly pushing them, and his group does the same. He seems to have taken the reins of this younger crew. They follow him everywhere. Among them are Moxy and Bernardo. Hugo still refuses to part with Destino, who for now is setting up an oven that a religious congregation has sent.
The two women, pale-faced, get up and leave. Karla walks down a hallway and La Seca marches down the hill, with her troupe of children in tow.
The gangsters enter the youth home and are met with kicks and insults from Hugo, who immediately gets a taste of his own medicine. Little Down gives him a swift kick to the ribs, sending him crying to Destino, who stares at Little Down with fiery eyes but says nothing. The recent arrivals are nervous, they chug their water bottles intently.
Bernardo is more animated than usual. He is no longer the timid young man he was a few months ago. He has a cell phone now, gifted to him by Little Down. He has killed his first man. It was the carpenter from a few days ago. The order came from the jail in Ciudad Barrios. The carpenter’s crime was sleeping with the girl of one of the Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha who sits in prison. He sent the order and the clica decided that Bernardo should be the one to kill him. This isn’t privileged information, nor the product of an intense investigation. Everyone here knows it, several people watched a man take several gunshots to the face, but they have chosen to keep quiet. Again, Mara Salvatrucha imposes its iron law: see, hear, and shut up . . . or you’re next.
As it begins to get dark, the first wails of the evangelicals can be heard. I say my goodbyes and take off. On the way down I can make out Cristal walking into an alley, escorted, ever more closely, under El Noche’s watchful eye.
22 In English, The Dry One.