Ink

by Sabrina Vourvoulias

  I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier. Mostly at the way she extolled Toño’s gang and rationalized their actions as protective. But probably there was some of it that came from feeling that her turn to Toño was a turn away from me and the life I wanted for her.

  I remember being thankful she was too new to be packing heat, and spent most of my words on trying to describe what would happen to her soul the first time she let a bullet tear through human flesh.

  Then, when we were jumped, I wanted to take it all back. Even though she fought like a polecat, and I felt a roaring leap of fury fueling my movements, we went down fast. A gun would have given us a chance.

  Something grazes my shoulder, the one closest to Nely. When I turn to the touch, I realize the contact is not hers.

  Three small shadows, darker than the dark surrounding us, have moved between me and my friend. For a moment I wonder if these are the malignant dwarves that attended the bloodshed in my mother’s story. In my story.

  I push myself to sitting with the arm that still works. “Nely,” I whisper again.

  Why do we call to the familiar even when we know it cannot answer?

  “She’s asleep,” says one of the shadows. In Spanish. A child’s voice.

  “Not asleep,” I say. My throat feels scraped down to its last layer; a tissue set to tear. “Hurt.”

  “They hurt all of us.”

  “The men?” I ask, but it’s not really a question. Of course the men.

  “We’re bleeding.” That one’s a boy, and not much older than a toddler from the sound of his voice.

  “Here.” He grabs my hand and guides it to the back of his neck.

  It’s my injured arm and the movement plunges keen blades into my flesh from elbow to shoulder. When I catch my breath, I feel a wet, fleshy divot the size of a quarter under my fingers. The men must have cut a GPS chip out of the boy’s neck. I know if I lifted his wrist to a light I’d see a black tattoo – in this case an i.d. to identify not the child but the temporary worker under whose guardianship he’s here.

  “Does it hurt bad?” I ask him.

  My eyes have finally adjusted to my waking and I can see more detail. The boy’s small shoulders move up and back in a shrug. It makes me want to hug him.

  “Are the rest of you cut too?” I ask instead.

  “Yes.” It’s the girl – about the size of an 8-year-old with messy, long hair and arms wrapped around a smaller, silent girl – who answers. “But it’s scabbing up already.”

  The space we’re in jerks into motion, and with the movement the shadowy details make sense. We’re in the back of a delivery van. An old one by the ride of the shocks.

  After my ears adjust to the road noise I ask the children their names and where they were snatched. Predictably, they don’t know street names, and describe landmarks that would fit any number of Hastings’ neighborhoods. Nely and I were already heaped unconscious in the van when the men cut the children’s trackers out and tossed them inside.

  I go quiet, wishing uselessly that I had roused earlier to raise a commotion and give the kids a chance to get away.

  “Are we going to be okay?” the tiniest, Lalo, asks.

  “I’m going to think of some way to get us out of here,” I say, though my mind is blank and I can’t seem to make it work the way it normally does.

  “You’re little.” Julieta, the eldest, says after I fall silent again. “Can you beat them up?”

  Julieta’s Spanish is different than Lalo’s. Despite the way it sings, there is something hard and sharp in it. A Mexican accent like Nely’s. Lalo swallows the ends of his words, which locates his heritage somewhere more Caribbean. They are bonded by circumstantial, not familial, blood.

  “I can’t do that, but I can reason with them. Or try to trick them so you can get away,” I say. “How about you help me think of some ways to do that?”

  They make a couple of half-hearted attempts, but it becomes clear to me that thinking about the men just makes them panicky.

  “You should try to nap a bit while I figure this out,” I say, aiming for calm. And time. I need time.

  “If you want us to sleep, you have to tell us a fairy tale,” Julieta says.

  “I don’t know any,” I answer.

  I’ve often said I am formed by tales; that if you cut me, that’s what seeps out instead of blood. Except now I know it is not so. The stories? I can’t think of one.

  Julieta moves to my side, between my good arm and the wall of the van. “Please,” she says. Her voice is wobbly and small, closer to Lalo’s than what I’ve heard from her up to now. As if my refusal to tell her a story is the final breach in her defenses.

  My good hand finds her hair, smoothes it in short pats. “Shhh.”

  As she settles against me her breathing sounds more like whimpering to my ears. I hook my good arm under Nely’s armpit and pull her closer. Something rises in me, fiercely protective and strong, but mute. I fight my way to the words that usually come as easy as breath.

  “A lot of the fairy tales I remember have scary parts,” I warn after a while.

  “But they all end happy, right?” Alicia finally breaks her silence.

  “Yes,” I lie.

  The children snuggle close; my best friend doesn’t budge.

  “Érase una vez.” Once upon a time.

  Every story should start with the promise and disclaimer of those words.

  2.

  The vehicle stops short, slamming the children against me, and me to the floor. I suck air to quell the nauseating wave of pain that follows. Then the cargo doors open and the sunlight flooding in precipitates a different sort of nausea.

  “Would you look at this,” says a voice I last heard in a Hastings alley, punctuated by the thuds of a tire iron on my body and my best friend’s. “If it isn’t the fucking Pieta.”

  “Shut your mouth,” I say. “Don’t you dare compare this to anything meaningful or good.”

  I hear another laugh.

  The younger one, the one who had actually swung the weapon, reaches in and pulls me out. He’s got a beaky nose, pallid skin and a watchman’s cap pulled down over longish blond hair.

  The older one is bald, all his hair’s migrated to a full, dark beard that reaches his collarbone. His teeth are stark against the hair when he smiles. “Way you talk, you’d almost think you weren’t an ink,” he says to me.

  I think he believes he’s paying me a compliment.

  “Way you talk, you’d almost think I wasn’t a citizen,” I spit out. I glance over his shoulder, quick so he doesn’t notice. We’re behind an interstate rest stop, hidden from any patrons.

  “Tattoos can be faked,” the man says as he leans over the van’s sill to prod Nely. She doesn’t move.

  “Not even the best forgers can produce credible blue ones. My dad was born in Ohio. I moved to the States when I was a few months old. I’m as American as you.”

  He shrugs as he straightens back up. “You don’t see me having to wear a tattoo, do you? So not quite as American.” His smile grows wider. “Now, go take a piss so we can get moving again. And make sure the ankle biters do their business while we’re stopped. If any of them makes my van smell like a latrine it won’t go well for you.”

  He turns to the younger guy before he walks away, “Keep an eye on them.”

  “C’mon,” the young guy motions to a stretch of trimmed grass.

  I head for the spot he’s indicated, the kids trailing behind me. We stop about fifteen feet into the grass. I can tell the guy’s embarrassed by having to watch us because he’s half turned away.

  “What’s your name?” I ask while the kids relieve themselves.

  “Steve.”

  “Don’t you want to know mine?”

  “Nope.”

  “Might make me human, huh?”

  “You done yet?”

  “Kids are. I can’t pull my pants down with just one hand. I think you broke my shoulder.”

&nbs
p; I see him flush all the way to the roots of his hair.

  He trudges over. The pants I’m wearing are snug enough around my hips that he has to grip the waistband with both hands and lean in to pull them down for me. I don’t wait long – just until I’m sure I’ll clear his skull – to drive the elbow of my good arm into the back of his neck. At the same time my knee rises to slam his chin.

  I yell at the children, motion for them to run.

  But they don’t. They stand and gape.

  I’ve taken a step away from Steve toward them – I know I have – but then my cheek is flat to the grass and dog poop, and my ears are ringing. A new pain chimes in with the chorus of the old.

  The toe of a heavy boot plows into my side, flips me over as easy as if it were a spatula and I a pancake. It’s not Steve – he’s still down – nor the unpleasant older man I’ve seen before but a woman not much older than me.

  There isn’t a shred of mercy in the brown eyes trained on me. She lifts her foot, poises the chunky tread of her boot a centimeter or so from my nose. “Give me a reason to make you scream.”

  I’d like to say it is a snarl that comes out of her mouth, but it is not. The words are calm and not born of any great passion. Ordinary. Worse.

  She must see fear in my face because she moves her foot back to the ground. “Get those kids in the truck or I’ll carve them up in front of you.”

  It isn’t until then that I notice the hunting knife in her hands. I’m guessing I’m on the ground because she clocked me on the head with its knobby handle.

  “Believe me. The only soft one among us was Steve, and I think you’ve taken care of that,” she says when she notices where my eyes have landed.

  Shortly after the van starts up, Nely rouses.

  I don’t notice at first, because I’ve scooted back to the van’s wall and I’m staring at a black-painted window webbed with cracks, the provenance of light in this benighted place. While I stare I pretend I’m at home, held safely in Finn’s arms and saying what I’ve kept from him for who knows what reason.

  Nely tries to speak. But it comes out hisses and unstrung consonants. When I drop a kiss on her brow, the light catches on the water in her eyes. She curls into a ball beside me, eyes open but unfocused. Julieta, on my left side and echoing my posture against the van wall, pats Nely’s foot. “Would you like to hear a fairy tale?” she asks.

  The old Nely, the uninjured one, would have laughed and said the only tales worth hearing can’t be told in the company of children. But this Nely twitches in what Julieta assures me is yes.

  The children turn their eyes on me. Julieta keeps patting Nely’s foot as if she were a restive pet, and I … well, I’ve got to figure how to swallow my heart before I can go on.

  3.

  When we stop again the older man hauls us out of the van.

  It’s twilight, and we’re nowhere near an interstate rest stop now. We’re on a narrow packed dirt road that cuts through towering conifers.

  “Are we in Canada?” I know that’s where we’re headed.

  “Not yet,” the man answers.

  “What’s your name?”

  He glares at me but eventually answers. “Ted.”

  “That’s my dad’s name.” A lie.

  “He was from Toledo.” It’s good to pepper the lies with some truth. “Have you ever been there?”

  Ted shifts his weight from one foot to the other, scratches his head. “No. You got to piss?” he asks, “because if not, I’ve got to get you to the campsite.”

  I nod.

  He motions for me to squat beside the van.

  I walk a few feet away from him, turn my back and try to undo my pants. I’ve regained a little mobility in my shoulder, but not much, and the process is painful. I keep talking.

  “Listen, you seem like a decent guy.” Lie.

  “I guess I can understand why you want to dump Nely and me across the border.” Lie.

  I glance at Nely who’s swaying a little as she stands by the door of the van. Her eyes are on the pine needle carpet underfoot. Julieta’s hanging on to her, and the others hang on to Julieta. All of them are so hunched into themselves and miserable I feel a pang in my gut. Again I picture Finn, and try to imagine his gigantic, protective presence next to them. But then I realize what his being here would mean. And if my heart feels splintered now I can’t imagine what it’d be if I had to see him cowed and beaten, or worse.

  I meet Ted’s eyes for a second, then turn back to the business of peeing on command. “The children are innocents, and they’re scared out of their minds.” Truth. “It wouldn’t be any big deal, even now, to drop them off somewhere that an adult would find them quickly. Like a mall, maybe. ”

  “No malls around here,” he says.

  When I’m done, he ducks into the front of the van and emerges with a rifle. He herds us together for the trek to the campsite.

  “You,” he pokes me with the muzzle while we walk.

  “Mariana,” I say. “Mari.” The movies I’ve seen suggest that hostages are safer when their kidnappers know their names.

  “Maryanna,” he says. “I wouldn’t yak so much when we get around Carl. It gives him an excuse to be mean.”

  “Meaner than the rest of you?”

  “Major league, girl. You understand?”

  Red and blue dome tents are pitched near a chinked log lean-to full of cut firewood. A section in front of the tents is open – it looks like the pine and spruce needles have been swept clear – and a fire crackles in a fire pit dug in the center.

  Steve hauls a large piece of firewood from the lean-to to the fire. He sits on it, then shifts, repositions it closer to the warmth. The woman who knocked me down rummages in a cooler. A man seated near her glances up from cleaning the rifle held upright between his knees. Carl, I guess.

  “Took you long enough,” he says to Ted. “What did you do, take one of them out into the bushes? I hear you aren’t too picky about what kind of pussy you get these days.”

  “Shut up,” Ted says amiably. He pushes the children closer to fire. “Sit.”

  Nely, still unstable, flops right where she stands. But it’s getting colder and we’re too far from the fire so I coax her to crawl to the edge of the ring of warmth. She leans against me when I sit. The kids come swarming back to huddle around us.

  “The new meaning of black and blue,” Carl says. The woman laughs.

  “Are you a Cleanse America group?” I ask.

  Carl turns to the woman. “That one’s so sharp she could cut herself.” Again the woman laughs. A simpery sort of giggle. It sets my teeth on edge.

  “If you get caught dumping us across the border you’ll be prosecuted. And pay a fine,” I say.

  “Assuming your tat is legit,” Carl concedes. “But, we’ll get around to verifying that unlikely scenario tomorrow. The Staties and Feds don’t bother their heads about dumping anyway.”

  “City population control offices do,” I say. “At least the one I work for does.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “An ink in pop control. A bit like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, wouldn’t you say?”

  “A citizen in pop control. And so long as I can keep people like you from having any real power ….”

  He laughs this time. “I’ve got plenty of power, spink.”

  I hate the ethno-specific variants – spink, vink, mink, hink – even more than the generic. But I don’t twitch when he says it and my expression doesn’t change.

  I study him as he studies me. He’s handsome: well built, perfectly cut dark brown hair, eyes a blue color you only see in Pacific northwestern skies. His smile might be described as charming if it weren’t for the context.

  “You’re a pretty little thing,” he says after a moment. Silky. Soft. Some horrible parody of seductive. “Tits just the right size for my hand.”

  He stands up, stretches his back. “But I don’t fuck ink.”

  He glances at the woman by the cooler. A
t his look her fair skin pinks up, and I can’t figure whether she’s upset or gratified by his attention.

  “I’m off to bed,” he says after a long moment. “You coming?”

  The woman nods, scrambles to her feet.

  Then Carl turns back to me. “You all sleep out here.” He motions with the arm that holds the rifle. “We’re miles from any town. You might be tempted to make a run for it, but you know none of the others would make it. And you’re not going to leave them here alone with me, are you? ”

  As he ducks into the tent he calls out, “Ted, watch. Wake me or Jan when you’re tired.”

  A half-hour later, after we’ve all fidgeted through the sounds coming from the blue tent, Steve gets up and shambles over to the other one. The children and Nely manage to fall asleep, but I can’t. I watch Ted watching us across the firelight.

  “Thing is,” he says after what seems hours of silence, “I don’t think it’s fair.”

  “What?”

  “There are just so many of you. My kid can’t even fall in love without making certain first whether the girl’s got ink under her skin. No grandfather wants to see one of his own grow up with a tat.”

  “That almost sounds like you feel some compassion for us, Ted.”

  He makes a rude noise. “The blues are uppity, greens ungrateful, and the black tats are every other country’s waste. I’ve got no compassion for you, just questions about why you can’t go away and leave us be.”

  I blow a loud breath. “I’m one of you, Ted. There’s no place for me to go away to.” Then, without intending to, I swear. It comes out in Spanish.

  He gives me a strange look. “That’s why we decided to follow you two, you know. You aren’t supposed to be speaking anything but English.”

  “I’ve got an exemption.”

  “Does your friend?”

  He’s right about the language ban. Whenever Nely could get away with speaking Spanish she would. And I never stopped her.

  “Look at me, Ted,” I say and lay my hand softly on Nely while waiting for him to meet my eyes. “This is my best friend. She’s smart and funny and has won nursing association awards two years in a row. If your mother or father needed geriatric care and she were their nurse, it’d be like having a doctor looking out for them 24/7. She’s that good.”