by Hester Young
And everywhere I look: farmacias. They spring up like dandelions, assaulting us at every corner with advertisements for all the prescription drugs they think Americans will like. WELLBUTRIN, LIPITOR, ZYRTEC, RITALIN, HGH, but mainly VIAGRA VIAGRA VIAGRA.
“Need some Viagra?” I ask Noah.
He puts a hand to his chest, shaking his head. “Knife to a man’s heart you’d even ask.”
I’m glad he’s finally feeling good enough to joke around. The drive south was not exactly filled with levity; he sat in the passenger seat, brooding and agitated, responding to any attempts at conversation with one-word answers as he fiddled with his phone.
Maybe that was the worst of it, I think. The waiting. The anticipation.
Now we’re here, wandering the dingy streets, enveloped in a haze of exhaust fumes and fried food. My sense of dread has lifted, and purpose has taken over. If my mother could spend years trying to improve life for local women, surely I can handle one. Yulissa must be somewhere in this city.
“Marilena’s hotel is about a mile from here,” Noah says, consulting the directions he scribbled down earlier. “We can start there and see if Marilena knows anything about Lety’s family.”
I glance down at the list of strip clubs I’ve compiled. “And if she doesn’t? Should we just go through this list systematically? I think I would recognize the club she worked at if I saw it.”
Noah makes a face. “Let’s hope Marilena comes through for us. I’d just as soon skip those joints if we can.”
On that point, we are in total agreement. What I know about strip clubs in Nogales I have gleaned mainly from skin-crawling posts online, bulletin boards that American men use to “rate” sex workers around the world. Per their reports, Nogales has a handful of strip clubs near the border and a red-light district with brothels a few miles in. The women are “not as good as Bangkok, but on par with Tijuana” says one poster, and “kinda robotic, don’t look into it” according to another, who went on to chronicle his encounters in terms so explicit I became physically ill and had to shut down my computer. The “dancers” in these clubs, I’ve learned, are also invariably prostitutes.
The toll that must have taken on fifteen-year-old Lety only intensifies my desire to find Yulissa. I don’t want this girl to end up like her sister, convinced that death is better than the life she’s living.
Noah has already taken off down the street, anxious to complete our task and be out of this city. Ignoring the cries of persistent vendors—“beautiful clothes for a beautiful mama!”—I jog after him.
“Are we walking the whole way?”
“Or we could get a taxi.” He points at one of the grinning cabbies, a man with a beard and sweat-soaked shirt who waves wildly at me and yells, “I drive you! I drive you! Where you want to go, señora?” the instant I make eye contact.
Suddenly our whiteness, our American citizenship, seems ostentatious, embarrassing. We can walk among the people of Nogales, but they all know what we are. There is no hiding our privilege, no pretending that we don’t have more than the locals that we pass.
I lower my eyes. “I can walk.”
Donna wasn’t the kind of woman who took a cab to travel one measly mile. I won’t be that woman, either.
• • •
WHEN MARILENA SHARED her Sonora Hope success story, I did not imagine that her happy ending involved a place like the Hotel del Viajero. I pictured—foolishly, I see now—a quaint bed-and-breakfast, a Spanish-style courtyard with bougainvillea and perhaps a fountain. The Hotel del Viajero is a narrow three-story building wedged between a shoddy department store and a restaurant. I have the uneasy feeling that its clientele consists mainly of American males looking for a place to pass out drunk or cavort with local prostitutes. I hope I’m wrong.
Inside, a young boy of about eleven or twelve stands behind a faux-wood counter flipping through a comic book. Behind him, a doorway half obscured by a curtain divides the proprietor’s living area from the small lobby. Though there’s an air-conditioning unit mounted in the wall, it doesn’t appear to be working; any movement of air in this inferno comes from a single oscillating fan that does little more than rustle the pages of the boy’s reading material as it swivels by.
The boy looks bored, half asleep when we enter, but he snaps to attention at our arrival and adopts a welcoming smile. “Hello. You want a room?” He’s sunny and polite. Well trained.
“Hey,” Noah says. “Are you Marilena’s son? We’re tryin’ to track somebody down, a young lady.”
The child stares at him, uncomprehending, and so Noah slips into Spanish, tries again. Although I can’t make out what he’s saying, I hear the names “Marilena,” “Yulissa,” and “Lety.” From the boy’s perplexed face and vigorous head shaking, I gather that Marilena is not available and he doesn’t know any Yulissas. On the subject of Lety, however, he is quite chatty. He and Noah launch into a spirited discussion that leaves Noah looking dumbfounded and asking, “Aquí? De véras? Aquí?” several times while the boy nods solemnly. “Aquí, señor. Aquí,” he says.
I wait for Noah to translate, but when he finally does turn to me, it’s with a question. “The club you saw,” he says, “where Lety worked. Do you know what it looked like?”
“There was a mermaid,” I say. “It had an ocean theme.”
Noah turns to the boy, his Spanish stumbling now, but evidently still good enough to convey the basics. Light dawns on the child’s face.
“Ah!” he says. “Treasure Island!”
I try not to wonder why a kid that age can distinguish one strip club from another.
The boy, meanwhile, gestures outside, giving directions that Noah asks him to repeat twice. At last, reasonably sure he’s got a handle on it, or just too well mannered to ask a third time, Noah thanks him and propels me quickly out the door.
“Well?” I whirl on him, impatient for an update. It didn’t occur to me before, but my mother must’ve spoken pretty decent Spanish. I have no idea where or when she learned. “What did the kid tell you?”
“He thinks Lety worked at a club called Treasure Island. It’s a few blocks away.”
“That’s it?” I wait for him to provide further details, but he’s gazing down the street, trying to orient himself. “You guys talked awhile. That’s really all you got?” I can’t shake off the nagging feeling that he’s keeping something from me.
Noah glares in my direction and flips down his sunglasses. “I’m gettin’ you to this club, aren’t I? How ’bout a thank-you? You wanted to find it, and I did.”
I refrain from grouching back at him. These temperatures could make anyone irritable, and he’s not exactly thrilled to be here. “Maybe we should wait at the hotel until Marilena gets back,” I suggest. “She might know where Yulissa is.”
“I’m not hangin’ around here,” Noah says flatly. “That place gives me the willies.”
I glance back at the Hotel del Viajero, watch a broad-shouldered man in a loud pineapple-print Hawaiian shirt approach the premises. He glances over at us for a moment, and his large sunglasses are like mirrors, reflecting back everything around him yet betraying nothing of the man beneath. He looks far too well-off to frequent Marilena’s hotel, and I shudder to think what activities Pineapple Guy has planned there. I remember, on our drive from Texas, Noah telling me how much he hates border towns. They’ll hurt your soul, he said, and I know what he means now.
I’m not sure what Marilena’s son told him today, but I don’t press for details. One thing I learned from the Internet last night: there are things in life I’d rather not know.
• • •
TREASURE ISLAND IS NOT a discreet establishment. Even from a distance, you know exactly what you’re getting. A neon sign, currently unlit, announces the merchandise in plain terms: GIRLS. The building’s red concrete exterior features the painted silhouettes of curv
aceous women and, across one of the women’s crotches, the image of a treasure chest. TREASURE INSIDE, the wall boasts. From the bilingual signage, I gather that the establishment gets its share of Americans. Located on a dubious, graffiti-filled side street, Treasure Island would be substantially seedier in its peak night hours. Now, when it’s still early on a weekday, few folks seem to be craving nude entertainment. I cling to this as evidence of human decency, however flimsy.
Noah and I amble slowly down the street, neither one of us excited to reach our destination. We pass a liquor store, an ATM, a couple of sleepy-looking bars just starting to show signs of life, and a pair of little boys sharing a Coke under an awning. In the shade of a doorway, a scrawny dog naps, his tongue lolling. He gazes over at us with one eye, determines that we have neither food nor water, and resumes his rest.
Outside Treasure Island, a jittery young man in shorts and a collared shirt moves up and down the sidewalk, having been tasked with coaxing passersby inside. I’m trailing several feet behind Noah, the only male on the street, so it doesn’t surprise me when the hawker zeroes in on him. “Señor! Come see the most beautiful girls in Nogales! Private dance for a good price! Lunch special today! Two girls for the cost of one!”
Noah looks like he might throw up. He hangs back a minute, allowing me to catch up, and takes my hand. For once, the gesture is not protective but defensive. I’m his shield.
When the hawker sees me, flushed and swollen and baby-heavy, he steps out of our path and nods deferentially. The moment we approach the entrance of Treasure Island, however, he breaks into a grin. Scurries ahead and opens the door for us. “You tell them Bernardo sent you, yes?” I feel his gaze slide over my belly as he wonders what kind of kinky pair we are, and I want to ask him why he works here, to pointedly inquire if he has a daughter.
It’s a stupid urge, I realize. Having a daughter—or any children—would be reason enough to do his job. They have to eat, after all.
Inside, Treasure Island is dark and cool. There are no windows, just black walls and black fabric sealing out all natural light. In the seconds before my eyes adjust, I feel the panic of sudden blindness. Then I become aware of shapes. A bar lined with stools, glass bottles gleaming. Tables, mostly empty. A few men seated, alone or with friends, heads all tilted toward the dancer. Moving on a raised platform to some thumping Spanish pop song, she’s hard to see—boots and hot pants, hair that whips around her face, brief flashes of flesh bathed in dim, purply-blue light. I can’t tell if she’s old or young, pretty or plain, and I suppose that’s the idea of all this darkness. To conceal. To let fantasy rule.
I head for the bar, mainly because it’s the farthest point from the stage and I don’t want to sit amongst all the gawking men. The whole room possesses a trippy, underwater quality that makes me feel off balance, a little dizzy even, but as I scan the room, I begin to discern certain distinctive features: the disco ball, the blow-up mermaid, the shells and netting dangling from the ceiling and walls.
We’re in the right place. Lety’s place.
On the rear wall, I notice a detail not in my dream: a row of small booths with curtains drawn. In the gap between curtain and floor, I see a pair of tennis shoes and the high heels of a woman on her knees. All the reviews I read online come flooding back, the “services” performed for very little money by women expected to fake enthusiasm for their work. How did my mother remain hopeful she could make a difference? She must have seen and heard such depressing things.
I take a seat at the bar and let Noah order us bottled water. He tips the bartender absurdly well—no need to piss anyone off with our presence—and we wait.
A pair of women in halter tops and skimpy bottoms approach us almost immediately. The older one is thin, with sharp features that she tries to soften with big, fluffed-out hair. When she smiles, I see she’s invested a lot in good dentistry. Her companion is shorter and plumper, a curvy body and girlish face. She sidles up to Noah, and her breasts graze his arm.
“You buy your man private dance,” the sharp-faced woman tells me with a smirk, “then you the woman of his dreams.”
I remove a few twenties from my pocket. “No dance. We just want to talk.” In that moment I wish, rather absurdly, that Noah and I were wearing wedding rings.
The sharp-faced woman takes my bills. “Talk?” she says, one eyebrow lifting.
“There was a girl who worked here.” Noah discreetly removes his arm from the vicinity of Curvy Girl’s breasts. “Leticia. Lety. Did you know her?”
The women glance at each other. The sharp-faced dancer, clearly possessed of superior English skills, answers. “Lety no work here no more,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “She’s dead.”
This is no surprise to either woman. The sharp-faced dancer puts her hands on her hips, suspicious. “What you want with Lety?”
“I’m looking for her sister, Yulissa,” I say. “Do you know her? Did Lety ever mention her?”
The woman turns to her young coworker, says something in Spanish. They converse quickly. “We don’t know Yulissa,” she announces, but I can’t tell if she’s telling the truth.
“But you knew Lety,” Noah persists. “Do you know where she was from? Where her family might live?”
“She work here, she don’t talk of her family.” The woman shrugs. “She leave in April, and we don’t talk.”
The thumping Spanish pop song ends. On the stage behind us, the dancer receives a lukewarm response from her sparse audience.
“Why did Lety leave?” I ask the sharp-faced woman.
“Lety . . . cómo se dice . . .” She searches for the words in English and can’t find them. “Fue despedida.”
“She was fired.” Noah translates for me with a frown.
The younger, curvier woman picks up the thread of our conversation and gestures to her stomach in explanation. “Too big.”
It’s unexpected, given that this girl isn’t exactly a waifish gazelle herself. “They fired her because she got too fat?”
“No,” the girl tells me. “Estaba embarazada. Like you. Baby.” She points to her stomach again.
The news sits in my throat, making it hard to breathe. Fifteen-year-old Lety was pregnant. Pregnant enough to be showing in April, to be fired. Four months along, I’d guess, maybe five if she carried it well. And she died just a couple months later. Why didn’t someone tell me?
I know the answer will not be good, but I ask anyway. “What happened to the baby?”
The curvy girl folds her arms. “Is dead. The baby and Lety is dead.”
“Are you saying she killed her own baby? She killed her baby and herself?” That would explain why Albert and Teresa neglected to mention Lety’s pregnancy. You don’t tell a very pregnant woman about another very pregnant woman doing away with herself and her unborn child. No wonder Albert was reluctant to have me write that article.
Neither of the two dancers will confirm Lety’s role in her baby’s death, however. They exchange a glance, and the curvy girl eyes us suspiciously.
Finally, the sharp-faced woman moves in closer to us. “You are a friend of Lety?” she asks.
“Kind of,” I say.
“I tell you what is true.” She’s so close now I can see where her over-plucked eyebrows are starting to grow in. “Nobody care for us. Nobody care for Lety and her baby. We are like the garbage to them.”
I don’t know who she means by “them.” Her clients? The club owners?
“Lety die, and nobody care. They say, eh, she is una puta. She must do the drugs, she must love a bad man.”
“I don’t think I understand . . .”
The curvy girl puts a hand on her friend’s shoulder, trying to silence her, but the sharp-faced woman has had enough. Gone is the sexy prowl. Her face is cold and hard.
“I hear what happen to Lety. The whole barrio kno
w. One shot here”—she forms a gun with her thumb and index finger and points it to her gut—“and two shots here.” She touches her chest. “They can tell me Lety is dead, okay? They can tell me she was no good. But they cannot tell me she kill herself.”
My hands go cold. An unpleasant shiver moves down my spine. The dancer’s reenactment of Lety’s death has struck a chord in me, jogged loose a memory, and I can’t breathe.
Gun. Stomach. Chest.
“But who?” Noah’s saying. “Who would want her dead?”
The woman shakes her head, unable to answer, or else unable to understand. But I understand. I understand perfectly. I remember what Pam told me at the funeral, the very first time I heard about Lety. Five, six weeks ago some girl killed herself, and Donna about went off the deep end.
That means Lety died in late June. Right around the time that I began having my nightmare.
Gun. Stomach. Chest.
My hand closes around Noah’s wrist, tugs him toward the club’s exit.
“What are you doing? We still haven’t found out about Yulissa. Don’t you think we should—”
“No.” I nudge him toward the door, now desperate to get out of there.
“You feelin’ okay, darlin’? Or . . .” He trails off when the sunlight hits us, dazzling, burning hot. Yet even outside, awash in heat, I find myself shivering.
Is it real? I asked her in my dream. That scene in the shower, is it real?
Your dreams are always real, Lety told me, and she was right. They’re always real, but never mine.
