Cartel Wives

by Mia Flores

  I just wanted to die. I ran out of the bus station as fast as I could, took a cab to the airport, and bought a one-way ticket back to Chicago. When I got home, I drove myself crazy trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to claim the stash I’d left behind. Then, I decided to just go for it. Two days later I showed up to the Greyhound station with my ID in hand and picked up my load, no questions asked.

  I was fearless, and people started to respect me for it. Traffickers looked at me and said, “That girl knows her shit,” so they decided to trust me and give me a little promotion. When one of them asked me to travel to Mexico and drive some weed back in the gas tank of my car, I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

  Before I’d leave town, I’d lie and tell my parents I was staying at a girlfriend’s house. For all they knew I was just hanging out with my friends, drinking and partying the day away while they were taking care of Xavier. Mom was always furious.

  “When the hell are you coming back?” she’d yell.

  “In a few days.”

  There was no “I’ll miss you,” or “Thank you for taking care of my son while I’m away.” Soon, she stopped talking to me altogether, and my only communication with Xavier was through my dad. It broke his heart, and deep down, it broke mine, too.

  I told myself I was making money to take care of my son, but really, it was for me. All I cared about was having my freedom and earning a better, faster, shinier life, which came from getting rich. On the streets I’d been hanging out on, money came from one place: drugs.

  I went to Mexico a handful of times for the next year or so. Most of the time things went well, but I did run into a few problems along the way. On one trip, my friend Maria and I were interrogated for hours while border patrol put my car on a lift and tried to remove the gas tank. Maria tried to blame it on me, saying, “It’s not my car, it’s hers.” I don’t know if it was sheer determination or if I could just talk myself out of anything, but they let us go. I was so furious at Maria I made her get out on the side of the highway next to the road kill so she could hitchhike home. After about fifteen minutes, I started to feel bad, but more than that, I was worried about her snitching. Even though I turned around and picked her up, I sent her a clear message: Don’t mess with me.

  I was making real money, so I bought a black SUV with gold rims and a gold Rolex to match. I started walking around in those Versace gold coin silk shirts. All those nice things and all that power got to my head, and I began demanding more control. I wanted in. I recruited my own drivers and got my own crew. On weekdays I’d put together my trips, call up my drivers, and fly down to Mexico. I’d pay them $10,000 and keep all the profit. If I wasn’t below the border, my weekends were all about going to clubs, popping bottles, and networking. It was validation that I was big time.

  Before one trip, my driver stood me up. I could do this in my sleep, I said to myself, and I decided to do the job on my own.

  Sure enough, I got caught. I was pulled over at a roadblock—I don’t know if it was random, if I looked suspicious, or if someone had tipped them off—but it was clear I wasn’t getting off this time.

  “I don’t have anything,” I said.

  “Step to the side.” There weren’t just police officers there, there were federal agents, too, and they looked serious.

  I watched one of the federales drive my car to the side of the road, just like they had that time with Maria. He put my car on the lift and spent the next hour or so trying to pull the tank down.

  “I told you, I don’t have anything.” I was starting to get nervous, but I tried to play it cool.

  I heard some rattling and clanking around, and the federale pulled down the tank.

  Shit, this is it, I thought. Game over.

  He pulled a brick of weed out of my gas tank, held it above his head, then tossed it toward another agent. Then he peeled off his gloves, came toward me, pulled my arms behind me, and cuffed me.

  I don’t think I knew what scared was till that moment. All that pride, all that defiance against my mom, all the hours and hours I’d spent at clubs rather than home with Xavier, all the diamonds and bottles of champagne I’d bought over the last year. It had all come to this. What the fuck had I been thinking?

  The agent shoved me into the car and walked away. Looking through the window, I watched him enter a little glassed-in booth nearby, where there were a few other federales. But instead of working, these dudes had their faces planted on the table, doing lines of coke. After a few minutes, two of them left the booth. One got behind the wheel of the car I was in and another slid into the backseat next to me. As we were driving, he reached over and touched my chest.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” I said in English because my Spanish was terrible. All I could think was, Oh my God, they’re going to rape me.

  He placed his palm on my heart, leaned over, and looked me in the eyes.

  “Your heart isn’t even racing. You must not be scared. But you should be; I’m not going to hurt you, but someone else will. You’re going to prison for a very long time.”

  I was too ashamed to call my parents, so I reached out to my sister. She hopped on a plane immediately and made it just in time for sentencing, which happened within seventy-two hours of my arrest. When the judge sentenced me, she was right by my side.

  I got ten years in a maximum security prison.

  Mexican prison is about as bad as you’d imagine it to be, especially if you’re a scared little girl like I was. The living conditions were unimaginably filthy and disgusting, and being American in a third world prison was torture every single day. I slept on a cement bed surrounded by cement walls. There was no glass on the windows, only bars, so roaches, mice, spiders, and sometimes even cats crept in at night. I ate black beans with my hands because they wouldn’t give us spoons, and the water they made us drink from the faucets was contaminated, dirty, and brown. I vomited or had diarrhea pretty much every single day. On Thanksgiving, we got a real feast, which was five animal crackers and tea, and I thought it was the best thing in the whole fucking world.

  Three months passed slowly, and I missed Xavier so much it burned. I was given one phone call a month, and I mustered up the courage to call my parents.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so ashamed. I’m just so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, baby, we love you. You have to stay strong.”

  After my sister got back from Mexico, she felt guilty leaving me. Knowing I was suffering laid so heavy on her heart that she slept on the cold tile floor, so she could understand my pain. But all of my family’s love and support made me feel unworthy. I regretted everything I’d put them through, and I hated myself for covering my ears instead of listening to my mom.

  Every night, I got on my knees and prayed to the Virgin Mary. “Please, get me out of here,” I’d cry and plead. I made all kinds of promises to her. “I’ll change my life. I’ll be a good mother.” On the concrete floor, my knees turned raw and bled, but I just kept praying, every single night.

  Before I’d gone to prison I’d met a guy named Leo who owned a body shop. I had a nice car, with rims on it, really nice and shiny. When I took it to get painted, I met Leo, and he was into me right away. I was very independent. I had my own money. I had this nice car and was living the life. For a girl in our neighborhood, that was rare. Leo didn’t talk down to me; he was respectful and totally impressive. Pretty soon, we were dating.

  I knew he was a drug dealer because I’d gone to his condo and had seen a triple-beam scale and money counter, but I didn’t care. I liked his nice car and his nice house, and he had a business that my parents actually believed was real. He was polite and well mannered, and he dressed well, not super flashy like the gangbangers I used to hang out with when I was younger.

  A few months into my prison sentence, Leo came to visit, unannounced.

  “Oh my God, Leo, what are you doing here?” I said when I saw him. I’d thought a little bit about him, but I hadn’t used my one call a mont
h on him, much less asked him to come down. We’d just started dating. But here was this real, live person from home, not a coked up federale or a perverted prison guard. He was like a vision of the Holy Mother herself.

  Leo stayed for a month and visited me every weekend. He had the warden on payroll, so he even managed to pull off conjugal visits once a week. I was in the federal side of the prison, which was better than the state side, where all the killers and thieves were. In my section there were a bunch of older boss ladies who were in for drugs, and Leo really took to them. He’d bring us lobster and steak and matching sneakers, and we’d hang out together like a big family. It almost felt like a scene from Goodfellas. I knew he was paying off the prison guards to make every visit as long as possible, but if that’s the way things worked, that’s the way it would be. In the position I was in, Leo was in charge.

  One weekend, he made an announcement. “I paid your judge $250,000, and he’s letting you go.”

  Just like that, I was gonna get the hell out of there.

  No one had ever done anything like that for me, so I was shocked. I’d spent six months in that shithole, and I practically sprinted out of there the day they let me go. Leo had saved me, giving me that second chance to become a better person.

  I married him after he whisked me away from Mexican prison, not because I loved him, but because I loved what he’d done for me. I felt obligated. What had I done to deserve this? What hadn’t I done, really? Maybe I’d spent my life reacting to a mom who I thought was too strict, or maybe there was too much of her brashness in me. But all I know is that it all came down to wanting a bigger, better life, one that was far away from a single family home off the Blue Line in Pilsen. I wanted to open a hair salon one day, but that didn’t guarantee me a life outside the ghetto. Like way too many people I knew, I’d turned to drugs. They were just how people got money in our neighborhood. You had to stick bricks of weed in your gas tank, deal it on the street, or hook up with a guy like Leo to be able to afford more than what a paycheck from Dunkin’ Donuts got you.

  We had a big, beautiful wedding and went to Hawaii for our honeymoon. I’d wanted to protect my parents from the truth about why I’d gotten out of prison early, so I’d told them that Leo had hired an attorney in Mexico, who’d successfully appealed my case. In reality, it was Leo’s money that actually got me out. My parents thought he was the best thing to ever happen to me. They thought Leo was legitimate. But his body shop? It was just a front.

  Our problems started almost immediately. Leo became so controlling, refusing to let me go out with my cousins or girlfriends. He put a recording device under the driver’s seat of my brand new Lexus and installed a tracking device in it. One night he followed me to a salsa club with my girlfriends and threw a drink at me when I refused to leave with him. My face, my hair, my white dress and jewelry were all soaked, and I told myself I wouldn’t go home with him, but I did. After all, I had everything I thought I’d always wanted. Leo was going to help me get ahead in the world. With him, I could go back to school and open my salon. With him, I was wearing Versace and Chanel, and going to Bulls championship games, with courtside seats. I’d seen Michael Jordan get his fifth and sixth rings! For a girl from Pilsen who had a kid at fifteen, that’s a dream come true.

  Yet my husband was turning into a monster right before my eyes.

  Then there was Xavier. He’d just enrolled at a great school, and I was finally acting like the mom I should have been all along. Yet he had to see me with some asshole.

  My parents had just celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. Twenty-five years, and they still had an incredible relationship that they worked at every day. I believed marriage was supposed to last forever, and I wanted to make it work. But the more I tried, the more controlling Leo became. We kept up appearances, hired an architect, and started to build this big, beautiful house in the suburbs. It was my dream. I thought, If I can have that, I can deal with his bullshit, right? Sure. We moved into my parents’ lower level while it was under construction, and one morning, while Leo was walking out the door to take Xavier to school, the feds appeared. They were there for him. Right in front of my poor son, they cuffed Leo and dragged him to the squad car. Xavier started to scream, which made my mom run downstairs.

  “Oh my God, they’re taking Leo!” I heard her say. She was frantic. “What are you doing in my house? Why are you taking my son-in-law?” Of course, she had no idea he was a dealer.

  I was still downstairs, and I was like, Oh, shit. I spent the next ten minutes running around the basement like a chicken with its head cut off, ripping up every scrap of paper and receipt I could find. I didn’t want the feds to find out anything more than they knew already.

  Of course, it wasn’t enough because they had everything they needed. Leo was charged with conspiracy to distribute drugs and money laundering, and the feds seized our house, a million dollars in jewelry, our Navigator and Lexus, and a bunch of our assets. The case against Leo was rock solid. He was going to go away for a long time.

  I tried to be supportive, to be a good wife, and I visited him in prison every chance I got. He could call as much as he wanted, too—there was no three-hundred-minute limit at that time. He rang me nonstop and was just as controlling as he’d been when he wasn’t locked away.

  I wasn’t just embarrassed; I was crushed. I’d never wanted to hurt my parents, yet I’d broken their hearts again. My dad had trusted me, and I’d disrespected and betrayed him by letting a drug dealer come into his home, his sanctuary. For the first time in her life, my mom was at a loss for words, but her silence said enough.

  Leo sat in prison with no house and a wife he couldn’t really control from behind bars, and he felt like he had nothing else to lose. He realized that if he didn’t work with the authorities he might spend even more time in jail, so he decided to cooperate with them.

  I screamed at him when I found out. “You what? How dare you!” In my world, being a snitch was the worst possible thing you could be. It was the ultimate betrayal of everything you stood for and made you less than a person.

  “I had to,” he said. “Things are only going to get worse for me if I don’t.”

  “You fucking rat,” I said. “I just cannot be with you. I don’t respect you. You knew exactly what you were involved in. You’re not a man. I have more balls than you.”

  I left him that day and never went back. I wanted nothing more to do with him, and I decided to file for divorce. Stalking me had been bad, and tossing a drink on me had been worse. But being a snitch was just too much. Was it an excuse for me to leave him? Probably. But it was just the last fucking straw for me.

  And apparently, it was soon going to be the last straw for him, too.

  Luckily, at that point, I’d already moved on.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mia

  My mom was born in Brazil, while my dad’s family came from Mexico. My parents got married when my mom was just a teenager, and I was born not long after that, in 1980.

  When I was a baby, my biological father was a drummer in a popular band. He wasn’t the best provider, so my mom had to take on a lot of responsibility when he went on tour, which was a lot. She’d have two or three jobs at once, and she’d leave me with her mother or sister when she was at work. Things weren’t great with my grandmother and aunt, though, and I just cried for my mom all day. Then my mom and my grandmother started fighting all the time. Pretty soon Mom couldn’t take it anymore, and she became estranged from her parents.

  I can’t imagine how lonely she felt, all of twenty years old with a baby, a husband who was never there, and only herself to depend on. Then she split up with my biological father when I was one, and she was really alone. Thank God she met my dad when she did. I don’t remember it—I was just a toddler—but my dad helped give us stability, even though times were hard and our life wasn’t great.

  We were living in the slums on 26th Street in Little Village. Little Village is just a few blo
cks southwest of Pilsen, where Olivia is from, and it’s known as the “Mexico of the Midwest” because it’s almost entirely Mexican American. When you drive down 26th Street, the neighborhood’s main drag, you see taquerías, auto body shops, supermercados, and a big sign that says “Welcome to Little Village” in Spanish. Every September thousands of people flock there for the Mexican Independence Day parade, which is even bigger than Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. In fact, next to LA, Chicago has the largest Mexican American population in the United States, so there are always tons of people there.

  But even with all that business and all that pride, 26th Street was a real dump when I was a kid. The life we had wasn’t great.

  My dad is four years younger than my mom, so he was away at college and earning his degree while she was at home and working. With only one paycheck, we couldn’t even afford the rent. Our landlord would knock on the door, demanding a check, and my poor mom would hide from him with me. Of course, the landlord would come back the next day, but she’d just hide again.

  My dad was great at baseball, and he was going to try to become a professional. His coach said, “Just do it! You’re going to make it. Get into the minors, stay on, and I promise you you’ll make it all the way to the majors.”

  But he gave that all up for me. He said to his coach, “I have a family to raise,” and that was that. He married my mom, got his associate’s degree, and adopted me when I was in the third grade.

  I’d see my biological dad every now and then, but he was just this guy that I would hang out with once in a while. There was no heaviness to it, like, “Oh my God, now I have to see my father.” I didn’t feel like I was missing anything because his mom and dad had become second parents to me, and I had my mom and dad at home. I never had to worry if I was loved.

  When my parents got married, we moved into my dad’s parents’ three-bedroom bungalow. It was close by, still in Little Village but a little south, in the 40s. When you moved up in numbers things got nicer, so the 40s were a step up from the 20s, but not by much. The house was maybe one thousand square feet, and it was so cramped. We had ten people living there once, and there was only one bathroom. One bathroom for ten people! God bless my grandmother, though. She tried to make things as neat as possible, and that house was spotless. It always smelled like Pine Sol and her perfume, and in the corner of each room she had a little cabinet that held her beloved knickknacks and every photo anyone had ever given her.