Prayers for the Stolen

by Jennifer Clement

  Run and hide in the hole. Right now. Hush.

  What? Hush. Hush.

  My mother had been outside when she saw a tan-colored SUV in the distance. More than actually seeing it, she heard it. There had been a silence in the jungle as the insects and birds grew still.

  Quick, she said, run. Run.

  I ran out the front door toward the small clearing at the side of the house and under a small palm tree.

  The hole was covered with dry palm fronds. I moved the fan-like leaves to one side and scrambled in. From inside, I reached for the fronds and pulled them back over the opening.

  The hole was too small. My father had dug it up when I was six years old. I had to lie down on my side with my knees at my chest like skeletal remains of ancient burials I’d seen on television. I could see slivers of light peer in on me through the thatch of leaves.

  I heard the sound of a motor approach.

  The ground around me trembled as the SUV drove up to our small house and stopped in the clearing, right above the hole and above me.

  My small space became dark as I lay in the shadow of the vehicle. Through the leaves I could see the SUV’s underbelly, a web of tubes and metal.

  Above me the motor was turned off. I could hear the sound of the handbrake as it was cranked into place. The car door opened on the driver’s side.

  One brown cowboy boot with a high but square and manly heel stepped out of the car.

  Those boots did not belong to this land. No one wore boots like that in this heat.

  As he stood with the car door open he looked straight at my mother. From the hole I could only see his boots and her red plastic flip-flops face each other.

  Good day, Mother, he said.

  The man’s voice did not belong to this land. The boots and his voice were from the north of Mexico.

  Is it always this hot here? he asked. How hot do you think it is?

  My mother did not answer.

  Ay, Mother, put down that gun.

  The other car door opened.

  I could not swivel in my hole to try and look around so I just listened.

  From the passenger side of the SUV another man stepped out.

  Do you want me to shoot her missing? the second man asked. He coughed and wheezed after he spoke. He had an asthmatic voice from the desert, a voice of rattlesnakes and sandstorms.

  Where’s your daughter, huh? the first man asked.

  I don’t have a daughter.

  Ay, yes you do. Don’t lie to me, Mother.

  I heard a bullet hit the SUV.

  The vehicle shook above me.

  I heard the bratata explosion of machine-gun fire along with the sound of the bullets breaking up the adobe brick walls of our home.

  Then it stopped. The jungle swelled and contracted. Insects, reptiles, and birds stilled and nothing rubbed against anything. The sky darkened.

  The machine gun had fired the wind out of the mountain.

  We were your best hope, Mother, the first man said.

  I birthmarked the place, didn’t I? I heard the second man say through a shrill wheeze that became a whistle.

  The two men got back in the car and slammed the doors shut. The driver turned the key and started the motor. When he placed his boot on the accelerator above me, my hole was filled with the vehicle’s exhaust fumes. I opened my mouth and breathed in the noxious smoke.

  The car backed up and drove off down the path.

  I breathed deeply.

  I took in the poison as if it were the smell of a flower or fruit.

  My mother made me spend the next two hours in that hole.

  You’re not coming out until I hear a bird sing, she said.

  It was almost dark when she pulled the fronds off of the hole and helped me out. Our little house was sprayed with dozens of bullets. Even the papaya tree had bullet wounds and sweet sap oozed from the holes in the soft bark.

  Just look at that, my mother said.

  I turned. She was pointing at the hole with her finger.

  I peered in and saw four albino-shell scorpions there. The deadliest kind.

  Those scorpions showed you more mercy than any human being ever will, my mother said.

  She took off one of her flip-flops and killed all four in beating blows.

  Mercy is not a two-way street, she said. Then she scooped them up in her hand and threw them to one side.

  When we lifted up the fronds in order to cover the hole again, we found a blue plastic asthma inhaler. It was on the ground where the second man had fired his weapon at my house and trees.

  What do we do with it? I asked. I was afraid to touch it.

  I bet he doesn’t come back for it, my mother said.

  But that man won’t be able to breathe.

  Just leave it there. Don’t touch it.

  The next day, up the mountain at the clearing where the cell phones sometimes worked, we found out that those men had succeeded in stealing Paula.

  Maria was sitting off alone under a tree pinching her harelip scar. Estefani’s mother, Augusta, was standing straight in the middle of the clearing with her cell phone held high above her head as she tried to get a signal. Estefani’s grandmother, Sofia, was talking frantically to someone.

  Paula’s mother, Concha, sat and stared at her phone as if her eyes could will it to ring. Call me, call me, Paula, call me, she whispered into the phone.

  My mother sat down next to Concha.

  They came to our house first, my mother said.

  Concha lifted up her face and looked at me. Did you get into your hole? she asked.

  Yes. I was in the hole.

  Paula didn’t make it. The dogs didn’t bark. We didn’t hear them coming. The dogs didn’t bark.

  Concha had the meanest, scariest dogs anyone had ever seen. They were injured animals run over by cars that she picked up off the highway. She had at least ten dogs soaking up the shade in the trees around her house. Mostly they were ugly inbreeds. My mother used to say that those dogs needed poison.

  Concha held the cell phone high above her head.

  I never heard them kill the dogs, Concha said.

  They killed the dogs?

  Paula and I were watching television, Concha said. We’d just finished bathing and we were wrapped in our towels, cooling off, sitting on the couch. I heard a noise behind me. He could have touched us. I didn’t hear him. He pointed a pistol at me. He used his other hand to curl his finger at Paula. You’re coming with me, he said but he didn’t really say it. His finger said it as it curled again and again. Paula stood, holding the towel around her body. She walked over to the man and they both walked out the door and into the SUV. She was still in her towel, only her towel.

  Concha followed them outside and watched the SUV disappear down the road. The area around the house was covered with the bleeding bodies of her dead dogs. The television was still playing loudly inside.

  Barefoot, wrapped in a towel, Concha said again and shook her head.

  Under the lemon tree, at the edge of her small plot of land, was the hole she’d dug years ago for Paula to hide in.

  I buried the dogs in there, Concha said. I just buried them one on top of the other in Paula’s hole.

  That day Mike was up on the clearing. He chewed his gum rhythmically with only his front teeth. The white lump would appear and disappear behind his lips. I had not seen him for a few weeks since he spent most of his time in Acapulco. He always stood apart from everyone else with his arm held high, telephone in the air, searching for a signal. He had at least five phones spread out around his body, in all his pockets. He sounded like a music box of ringtones, vibrations, bells, and rap and electronic music. He said he had a US telephone, Mexico City telephone, Florida telephone, and several Acapulco telephones. It was Maria who told me he was selling marijuana. This was the reason he had money. We didn’t care. Thanks to Mike it was Christmas on our mountain every month of the year. He was always buying presents for everyone.


  If Mike was home, he spent his time up at the clearing. He’d receive calls from all over the USA and Europe. He even had a Facebook page and Twitter account. It seemed that everyone in the USA knew that Mike was the guy to buy drugs from in Mexico. Maria said that Mike was famous in the United States. During US holidays, tourists, especially kids on spring break, ordered their drugs from him before arriving in Acapulco. His nickname was Mr. Wave.

  Mike was plugged into his iPod all day so it was impossible to talk to him. He listened to hip-hop and rap and was constantly skipping and moving to a beat. He even spoke with a beat to his words. If he’d had a dream, it would have been to be a hip-hop dancer in New York City. If he’d had a dream, but he didn’t. His life moved from weekend to weekend as if those seven days, from Monday to Sunday, were a season.

  On the day Paula was stolen he switched his iPod to off and burrowed it deep in the front pocket of his jeans.

  That day all anyone could hear was the silence of cell phones. That was it. It was the sound of Paula stolen. That was the song.

  The next day was the first day without Paula.

  The new teacher had a completely different approach to his job. Mr. Rosa had been diligent and had followed the Secretariat of Public Education’s curriculum. Our new teacher, Rafael de la Cruz, didn’t care. All he wanted to do was to get his year of social service over and done with and go back to Guadalajara, his hometown, where his fiancée lived. Instead of having lessons, we’d sit in class and listen to music. He brought a CD player and two portable speakers to our classroom. We had never listened to classical music before.

  Every morning we’d get to school and sit down in our chairs and wait for Mr. de la Cruz to arrive. He was always late. When he’d finally arrive, sometimes up to two hours late, he’d walk into the room, take the CD player and the speakers out of a small suitcase, and say, So you’re all still here. I was never sure what that was supposed to mean. Where would we be?

  He only played Tchaikovsky. Swan Lake floated out of our schoolroom, across our jungle, over our homes, hills covered in poppies and marijuana plants, down the black oily highway, and across the Sierra Madre, until the sound of swans dancing covered the whole country.

  He must be a homosexual! my mother said.

  The new teacher had no interest in us. I liked him. He came to the school, played music, and went back to his little one-room house and never came out of that room until the next day. But, in that schoolroom, for four or five hours, he made us cross our arms on our white plastic desks and lay our heads down, close our eyes, and listen.

  During these concerts, Estefani would fall asleep and later complain that the music actually made her feel cold. After she figured out this was all we were going to do for the year, she brought a blanket to school and covered her back and shoulders. As Estefani’s mother, Augusta, became sicker from AIDS, Estefani became colder. The mother was sucking the heat out of the daughter.

  Maria, who was the best cumbia and salsa dancer around, didn’t mind listening to this music. As long as she didn’t have to do mathematics, she was happy.

  On those mornings I laid my head on my arms and closed my eyes. Within Tchaikovsky’s music, I heard the earth quake below the ground. I heard tree roots spread under the land. I heard poppies open their petals.

  I listened for Paula’s voice, but I heard nothing.

  I was sure she was dead. We were all sure she was dead. So, when she came back, my mother said, Oh my, the coffin has been opened and she walked out of it.

  That was the last year that we went to school. A Primary School diploma was a door out of childhood. The truth is some of us were twelve, thirteen, or even fourteen when this happened because it took forever to graduate. There were years when teachers simply gave up and left halfway through or years no teacher ever even showed up.

  The only reason we graduated was that Mr. de la Cruz didn’t care if we knew anything or not. He announced that there would be no final exams and he signed the diplomas and got out of there as fast as he could. I was sure he thought it was a great success to have left our part of the world without a bullet hole in his body.

  Now that school was over we had to think about what we were going to do. Estefani knew she had no choice. She was going to spend these next years watching her mother die. Maria was going to wait and see. Mike was bringing more money home and was pushing for Maria and his mother to leave this mountain and move to Acapulco. He said he was going to buy them a house. Nobody even asked what Paula would do as she now lived like a baby and was locked up in her house all day.

  My mother said to me, You’re not going to sell iguanas on the side of the road. You’re not going to go to the beauty parlor school in Acapulco. You’re not going to be a maid in Mexico City. You’re not going to work in a factory on the border. You’re not going to stay here doing nothing and you better not get pregnant or I’ll kill you.

  One day my mother and I were up on the clearing when Mike came over and stood next to us. He literally seemed to hop to the music of the cell phones in all his pockets that rang and chimed and jangled and buzzed. He fidgeted and wriggled inside of himself as if his bones were strutting inside the clothing of skin. As a young boy he used to walk around with a pet iguana tied to a string. He was heartbroken when his mother stewed that iguana in a pot with carrots and potatoes.

  From one of his pockets Mike pulled out a gold chain and gave it to my mother. I’ve always wanted to give you something pretty, Rita, he said. You’ve got enough ugly in your house.

  Mike said he knew of a family in Acapulco who needed help with their small child and was looking for a nanny.

  That’s perfect, my mother said. That’s perfect for you, Ladydi.

  You’ll have to live in Acapulco most of the week, Mike explained. You’ll make pretty money. These people are rich, rich, rich. Mike punctuated the word rich by snapping his fingers three times: snap, snap, snap.

  My mother stood up straight when she heard the family was rich. I knew she was thinking of all the things I could steal and bring home. In the mirror of her eyes, I was filling up my bag with a lipstick and a bottle of shampoo.

  I knew what it would mean to leave. I knew my mother would fall asleep with her jaw dropped and her mouth agape. The television would be tuned to the History Channel and words about castles in France or the history of chess would fill the room. She would be surrounded by empty beer bottles. Long black ants would crawl in and out of her mouth and there would not be a daughter around to flick them away.

  Yes, I said to Mike. Yes.

  As my mother and I left the clearing and walked back home together we moved past the tree where we’d buried the corpse years ago before Paula was stolen. We never found out whom that young man belonged to. No one ever came around asking. The jungle has ears all over, my mother said. There are no secrets here.

  That afternoon I found out what had happened to Paula.

  I was walking down the path that led to the schoolroom, when I ran into Paula sitting under a tree. She was sitting on the ground, which we never did. On our mountain we always placed something between our skin and the earth.

  She was wearing a long dress that covered her like a tent. I knew that insects were crawling up her bare legs under the cloth.

  I felt the warm, black earth under my feet.

  The ground had brought us together.

  I wanted to hold her hand. Her face was bent over as she looked at something in her lap.

  I walked slowly toward her, the way I had learned to walk when I wanted to catch a small garter snake or a baby iguana. As I approached, my body came between her body and the sun and I covered her with the eclipse of my shadow.

  She looked up and I sat next to her on the ground. I knew I’d be brushing black and red ants off my skin within a minute. Paula’s dress was covered with black ants swarming all over. A few had already migrated up her clothes; crawled around her neck and behind her ears. She did not flick them off.

  D
on’t you feel so sorry for Britney Spears? Paula said.

  The long sleeves of Paula’s dress were folded over and pushed up. On her left arm, the inside where the skin is pale and thin like guava skin, I could see a row of cigarette burns, circles, polka dots, pink circles.

  You know, Paula continued, Britney has many tattoos.

  Yes? No, I didn’t know.

  Oh yes. She has a fairy and small daisy circling her toe.

  No, I didn’t know.

  And she has a butterfly and another flower and a small star on her right hand.

  Oh. Really?

  Yes. Her body is like a garden.

  Do you know who I am? I asked.

  Oh, yes, of course. You’re Ladydi.

  I brushed a few ants off her legs and arms. Get up, I said. The ants are going to eat you alive if you sit here any longer.

  The ants?

  Does your mother know where you are?

  I took hold of her wrists and helped lift her up. I will take you home, I said.

  Let me be with you for a little longer. I like you, Paula said. You’re nice to me.

  I held her hand and walked with her toward a log a few steps away.

  We can’t sit on the ground, I said.

  We sat down, side by side, looking forward as if we were on a bus heading down a highway. I took her hand in mine and looked at the pattern of cigarette burns on the inside belly-skin of her arm.

  I’ve seen tigers and lions, she said. Real ones. It wasn’t a zoo.

  Tell me.

  At that place there was a garage for the cars and a garage for the animals.

  You can tell me.

  Paula described the ranch. It was in the north of Mexico, in the state of Tamaulipas, right on the US border. An important drug trafficker, who was known by the nickname McClane after Bruce Willis’s character in the movie Die Hard, lived with his wife and four children. McClane had been a policeman.

  I was his slave-mistress, Paula said.

  Slave-mistress?

  Yes. We call ourselves that. All of us do.

  At one end of the ranch there was a garage that housed McClane’s cars, which included four BMWs, two Jaguars, and several pickup trucks and SUVs. Next to the garage there were cement rooms that contained a lion and three tigers. Paula learned from the caretakers that the animals had been bought from zoos in the United States. The property also contained its own small cemetery with four large mausoleums that were the size of little houses. Each mausoleum even had a bathroom.