33

LEILA FINISHED HER simple breakfast, savoring the last of the strong Colombian coffee.

“Muchas gracias, Padre. You’ve helped so much.”

“I wish there was more we could do. But the church is poor in Colombia.”

“Lo sé.”

She glanced around and listened in amazement. There was a shocking familiarity to the morning sounds of the city outside the stone walls of the rectory. She was really here in Cartagena. Even after this long and horrible ordeal, culminating in yesterday’s terrifying plane trip, she still half-expected to wake up at home next to Ashford.

The room was sparse but inviting. Either the priest or perhaps a nun kept the whitewashed walls and blue tile counters of the kitchen clean. The wood table, where they ate off tin plates, looked like it could have been made of the same boards as the floor. An ancient tin kettle, now quiet on the stove, still filled the room with the smell of coffee. On the wall hung two icons, one of St. Louis Bertrand, the other of the Blessed Mother cradling her child. Looking at them almost made Leila cry.

She tried to count the days since she had seen her daughter—a couple of weeks, maybe more. It already seemed like an eternity. The separation might drive her insane. Sorrow tore at her heart, but she knew she had to stay sharp.

She had slept last night on a cot in the chapel, together with two other women who had been on her flight. Relatives had picked up one of them early that morning. The other sat with Leila now in the rectory kitchen. This wasn’t the first time Leila had slept in a church. As a young girl, she sometimes snuck into one or another of the many small churches of Cartagena to pass a night, usually during rainy season. The churches weren’t comfortable, but they were safe. Last night in this church stirred many unexpected memories.

“Do you know anyone in the country?” the priest asked her. “Any family or friends from your childhood?”

“No. There’s no one.”

“Do you want to try calling again? Surely, someone in the US could send you a little money.”

“No, there’s no use calling again.”

She would have loved nothing more than to call Ashford or Manny and Carmen. The irony was that she didn’t remember any of their phone numbers due to the convenience of cell phones. She was embarrassed to admit it to the priest. The one number she would have remembered, Manny and Carmen’s home phone, had recently been disconnected as they both transitioned to cell phones.

Last night, she did the only thing she could think of and tried calling her own phone in hopes that Ashford had picked it up at the testing center. But the call went straight to voicemail. For all she knew, it was still in that locker.

“I could email them. Do you have a computer here?”

The priest smiled. “You’ve been in the United States too long. We are a simple parish. I do know that there’s an internet café about a mile east on the transversal.”

“Thank you. I’ll try that this morning.” She was desperate to get in touch with Ashford and Manny. She needed to hear their voices, but email would be a start. She still found it hard to believe that she had not been allowed a realistic chance to contact them while at the immigration detention center. When you no longer had a name, neither did you have any rights, apparently.

She saw the priest look away with a strange expression.

“What is it?”

“You don’t seem like someone who is here with anything to hide, but you are beautiful, and that is reason enough to be careful. You should know that the internet café in this neighborhood is often watched.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a common first destination for deportees. Some people are interested in knowing who comes back. A beautiful woman with no family—no one to miss her if she disappeared—would be particularly interesting. Be aware of your surroundings.”

The only thing Leila could be aware of was that she was here and her daughter wasn’t. Now that she was free, she had to find a way back to Cristina. Her heart yearned for her. Her hands ached to hold her. Her breasts still swelled with milk for the baby who was gone. She could have only so many regrets for herself. She had done the best she knew how with the hand she was dealt. But for Cristina, she deserved more from a mother than this.

Despite the hopelessness of it all, Leila felt better after her first night out of a prison cell. The rest, the shower, the food, and the coffee had helped so much.

But the biggest help of all was the humanity shown to her and the other women by this priest who had sought them out and brought them here. It meant so much to be treated with compassion. It helped her feel strong again. For the first time in weeks, she was looked at as a human being, after being an anonymous case file in the immigration detention center and a mystery at airport reception—a girl who was supposed to be dead.

“I’ll pray for you,” said the priest as she prepared to leave.

“Pray for my daughter, not me. Pray for the little baby who’s without her mother.”

Leila hesitated for a moment on the street outside the white stucco church. The day had already grown hot. She carried her leather jacket; it was too warm to wear it.

She had no money, no identification, no phone. After spending half her life away from here, she was back on the streets of Cartagena, completely alone.

There were some services available to help people in her situation, but not many. Colombia had too many of its own poor to worry much about the poor the United States deposited here.

She had to find a way back, a way to reverse this nightmare. But she also had to survive. That was her first duty to Cristina. Her instincts brought her back to childhood as she calculated how long her breakfast might need to sustain her. That thought used to temper the enjoyment of every meal.

The gift of a new life, which Manny gave her so long ago, had been snatched away. But not all of his gifts were lost. She returned today as a much different person than the girl who used to roam these same streets. Thanks to Manny, she was educated and skilled. Surely, that would help her find work.

First, she would email Ashford, then find a job.

She had never been to an internet café before—they didn’t exist when she was a child, and she had no need for them in the US. But she instinctively knew her strategy for using one without money. It wasn’t too different from other hustles she’d learned as a girl. All she had to do was find someone leaving before their time was up, forgetting to sign off. It might be tricky, but she was good at that kind of thing.

She walked out into the familiar city. Only a few blocks away from the church, she knew where she was and followed the major street toward the center of town. Every sound stirred her nostalgia. This city bustled in its own unique way. White and brown apartment buildings with cluttered balconies lined the street on each side of her. Lush, tropical trees grew up from breaks in the pavement.

Down the narrow side streets, with the apartment buildings closer together, a web of electrical and phone wires, sometimes tangled with clothing lines, crisscrossed above the broken-up stone streets. Some of the smaller alleys were only made of packed dirt. Others doubled as storm drains for the flashfloods of the rainy season. Beat-up cars and motorcycles jostled through the street, with only a passing attempt at the concept of lanes. Loose bricks clattered from beneath the speeding tires. Up on the hills to the south, dilapidated but brightly colored houses were packed together in the dark-green rim of the jungle—blue, yellow, green, and tan were the colors that painted the houses beneath wide leaves of palm and banana trees.

Cartagena hadn’t changed much. Oh, it was beautiful! Nostalgia might have comforted Leila, if not for the gaping hole of loneliness in her heart.

She forced focus upon her mind. She had been a survivor and a fighter since her earliest memories. If she could take care of herself on the streets as a child, she could do it again as an adult, for however long it took. She didn’t want to take care of herself, though. She wanted to care for the people she loved.

The tears she had forced back so many times crept up again, and again she choked them away. The situation was hopeless. Deep down she knew that. How could she ever be allowed to return to the United States? But hopeless as it was, she had to hope, because without hope, she would lose the will to survive.

As she walked, Leila grew more aware of her surroundings. Long dormant sensory memories returned. The familiar sights, smells, and sounds sparked strange emotions. Strangest of all, she realized that she felt afraid. It was an acute fear for her safety, not the general fear of life that came from her arrest and deportation. This fear was more immediate. The sense was tied to these very streets. It was something she hadn’t felt for many years.

Almost as soon as she recognized her fear, she spotted the internet café on the next corner.

She stopped, remembering the priest’s warning. She had told him she knew no one in Cartagena, but that wasn’t entirely true. The only people she knew were not people she wanted to meet. Could he have already found out she was back in Colombia? Would he really care after all these years?

There was no way. She was being paranoid. She wasn’t thinking straight. It was the priest’s words that made her wary and her hormones that whipped her into a ridiculous paranoia. She suppressed her fear and walked on toward the internet café. She had to try this. Even if her fear was based in something real, she would risk her life to connect with her family.

She looked through the window. It didn’t take long to find someone leaving carelessly. She slipped in and got on the computer. A teenage boy was working the café counter, but he had his head buried in a magazine and she doubted he saw her slip in.

She got online, opened her email account, and took a deep breath.

There were a dozen emails from Ashford and several from Manny. She read them quickly. They were both confused and frightened. None of the other emails would matter now. But one more name caught her eye. She had an email from Samantha. She didn’t open it. She didn’t want to know anything Samantha might have to say.

She emailed Ashford and Manny separately. There wasn’t much she could say, except that she loved them and missed them. She promised to email them again tomorrow. Hopefully by then she would have a job and a place to stay. Then she could tell them where to call her.

She decided to log into her online banking and see if perhaps she still had access to her savings and credit accounts. A message popped up as soon as she entered her password.

***THIS ACCOUNT HAS BEEN FROZEN DUE TO AN OFAC ALERT. PLEASE CALL THE NUMBER BELOW

FOR MORE INFORMATION***

Of course. She knew enough about banking laws that she should have guessed that would happen.

She was about to close the browser, but her eyes fell back on Samantha’s name in her inbox. She couldn’t help it. She opened the email.

“Leila, I promise to make sure your daughter always has everything she needs. But only if you never try to get Ashford to follow you to wherever they sent you. Ashford understands this too. You’re a tough girl. You’ll be fine.”

Leila closed the browser and stood up. Bitch! She still can’t leave me alone.

She walked toward the door. The teenager at the desk looked up at her. A flip cell phone whipped up in his hand and he snapped a picture of her.

Panic rose in her chest.

She rushed out and hurried down the street.

She became dizzy and nauseous. Samantha, then another kid with a cell phone camera, just like at the airport. What was happening? This was beginning to feel like some weird nightmare. It couldn’t be real. Her mind wasn’t right after everything she had gone through.

As she walked, the fear stayed. She sensed she was being followed. She tried to figure out exactly where she was. She paused at an intersection, then turned left. If her memory served her right, there was a shopping mall a few blocks this way. She had to get off the street for a moment to steady herself.

There it was—a clothing store entrance at the edge of the mall, with a short white lattice fence in front of a bright-pink door.

She slipped inside, pausing to catch her breath. There weren’t many shoppers inside this early. A quick look around confirmed that no one had followed her into the store. The cheap clothes on the racks reminded her how badly she would love a change of clothes. She had been in these same jeans and gray T-shirt for too long. But she had no money even for fresh underwear. She lingered between the racks, taking several deep breaths, then made her way across to an exit at the other side.

Leila stepped out the other side of the store, back to the open street. She gasped. Two policemen stood waiting for her.

“Señorita, please come with us.”

“¿Por qué? No he hecho nada.”

“El jefe te ha pedido.”

“¿El jefe?”

One of them grabbed her arm, not maliciously, but firmly enough that his point was clear. Before she had a chance to think if she should try to escape, she was shoved into the back of a police car.

Had they been watching her since the airport? Were they waiting at the church this morning? The priest had alluded to that, and she should have been more careful. She’d be a profitable piece of ass in the wrong hands. The teenagers taking pictures at the airport, and again the one at the café, could be working for traffickers. These cops might be working for them too.

They didn’t drive far. She recognized the precinct police headquarters that she and her friends had always avoided as children. She was ushered up three concrete steps between the two policemen, then seated alone in an office.

The room was a mess, with three piled desks and chairs strewn at random. Pictures and certificates hung on almost every inch of the walls. A fan whirred in the corner, kicking up corners of paper. There was something stuck in the fan; it clattered at every rotation. The room smelled of stale coffee, flat Coke, and cigarettes. It was a workroom for men who lacked the civil budget to hire regular cleaners.

Being brought here rather than to some remote place should have been a good sign. But something was wrong.

She started to look around the clutter of the room, wondering if there was anything that could be useful—some money perhaps or a weapon. Before she could get her bearings, she heard a click and her eyes darted back to the door. The knob was turning. She cowered in her seat.

The door opened. She muffled the cry that nearly burst out of her mouth. There he was—Paulo Varga—dressed in the uniform of the precinct chief.

“Bueno, La Alta. Volviste. I knew this day would come. You’ve changed a great deal. ¡Que linda!”

He closed the door, leaned against the wall, and licked his lips. She remembered when he licked the dripping blood she’d drawn off of those lips years ago. All the terror from that night returned tenfold.

“What do you want?” Her own voice sounded weak to her, full of dismay and defeat. “I’ve suffered enough. Why won’t you just let me be?”

“I want to help you. Manny tried, but he was always a coward. Now, you see how badly he failed. You need a real man.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“You have no cause to fear me. I’ve never done you any harm.”

“You tried to rape me when I was a little girl. Are you going to rape me now?”

“That’s an ugly word. I don’t want to hurt you, but you do owe me.”

Leila’s heart raced. What could she do? This was no longer a mere street thug. He was the chief of police.

He took a few steps closer to her and grinned. “You have a debt to pay. You and Manny both. You took his name, after all. Now, his sins are yours.”

“If revenge is what you’re after, then stop being polite. I can’t stand it.”

“Why so hostile?”

“Because you fucking arrested me. Are you going to sell me off as a whore or just keep me locked here for yourself?”

“You’re better than that.”

Leila tried to judge what her chances of escaping him would be. He was a lot older, but he looked stronger and more imposing than she remembered.

“I want to paint a picture of you,” he said. Considering everything that had happened, it sounded too bizarre. “I’ve wanted to paint you for years. Ever since you came to my house that night. I tried several times, but it’s hard to paint someone from memory.”

She remembered how his paintings had looked. In retrospect, it surprised her that they had been so sexless, his models so lacking in femininity. But worst of all, they lacked life. The women had looked like painted corpses. She remembered the dream she used to have, with her face dead in one of those pictures. Now, here Paulo was wanting to paint her. The thought of him doing that horrified her almost as much as the thought of him raping her.

“I want to help you and care for you. It would be stupid of you to refuse. The girl I met on the streets long ago took her chances when they were offered.”

Leila tried to think quick. She wanted to fight, preferring even death to the degradation of submitting to such a man. But through everything, Cristina never left her mind. Her goal was to find a way back to her daughter. Dying here would do Cristina no good; neither would rotting in a Colombian prison or being forced into captive prostitution. Was there a way to play this to get Paulo to help move her closer toward her goal without doing something that would make her want to die instead of live?

“Así que, Paulo, can you help me get back to the people I love?”

His expression changed. Even a man as conniving as Paulo was not immune to the plea of a beautiful woman. His lust, she knew, could blind him in other ways. If nothing else, she could buy herself a few more moments before he raped her out of spite.

He was clearly thinking about it. She could see his erection in his tight police pants. She wanted to vomit.

“I’d love nothing more than a glass of water right now. I’m parched. I don’t even know how many days I was in prison before they flew me here yesterday.”

“Relax here. I’ll send my secretary in with some water and lemon.” He didn’t move. “You people the United States deports need someone to help you get started. Luckily for you, you have me. Tonight, I’ll take you out and show you that life in Cartagena will not be so bad. Then you can sit for me while I paint. I’ll find a pretty dress for you.”

His eyes scanned up and down her body, which made her skin crawl.

“Yes, I think I know what will fit that beautiful body you’ve grown into. So sexy.” He licked his lips again. “I’m not as bad a man as you think. You’ll soon learn to enjoy spending time with me.”

He left the room, not forgetting to lock the door behind him.