The Age of Embers Read online

  When she ran out of money again, she began offloading Velvet’s evening gowns until she had enough money to buy a black market gun. That’s how long it took for her to work on her appearance. If there was anyone who’d talk to her about Carolina, it wouldn’t be done if she was pretty or smart. No one took a girl like that seriously.

  Within days of Roberto’s death she stopped bathing, refused to comb her hair and wore baggy clothes and an old sage green bush hat. She wore her bras extra tight and kept her black tank top untucked. Just as her father had warned, her good looks were indeed a curse, as were her hips and body. By month one, she did not even look like the same person. By the second month, she was nearly unrecognizable as a woman and finally able to buy a black market .22 pistol. With the influence of her pistol and information she extracted using pain compliance, she was directed to two men in Valenzuela’s employ who promised a way inside the drug lord’s heavily fortified residence.

  For the promise of sex with her—the man thought she was a boy and she didn’t set him straight—one of the two men told her when the last four shipments of kids had gone out. For this information, she did not make good on her promise. She did, however, provide her informant with a merciful death.

  For the promise of his life with the barrel of her .22 jammed in his eye, the second man offered her rudimentary sketches of their transport lines, including stops in Juarez, El Paso, Kansas City and eventually Chicago. When he asked if Eliana was going to let him live, the crashing sound of a bullet exploding through his head was her only answer.

  Her father would be proud.

  Within a week, she was in a caravan with enough money to travel and the small .22 hidden inside her possessions. So far she’d managed to avoid much scrutiny. Her look and stench helped. At this point, she smelled so bad and looked so haggard, there was not one scintilla of her former self left to draw attention. She looked like a weathered old woman, but she stunk like something out of an old garbage bin. People actually moved to avoid her on the migrant bus. Eliana didn’t mind.

  She was filthy, but that was the plan.

  At the Guatemalan/Mexican border, guards were paid off and drugs were moved into the bus. Héctor, the coyote transporting the group of twenty-one people up to Juarez and eventually over the border into El Paso, told them that they were responsible for getting just one package to the border to gain entry.

  “You are responsible for this package with your life,” Héctor said. “If the package is damaged, you will be killed. If you lose the package, you will be killed. If you are caught with this package, you will be arrested and then we will find you and kill you.”

  Everyone understood.

  Small bricks of what looked like drugs were then handed out to everyone. Eliana was the last to get one. Héctor handed her hers, but when she reached for it, he pulled back, sniffed the air around her, then hit her across the face open palmed.

  “If you stink up your package, I will personally kill you,” he said to the surprise of Eliana and the remaining passengers.

  Héctor turned and walked to the head of the bus, continuing his speech.

  “Once we are inside Mexico, we will board La Bestia (the beast), which is a massive cargo train that will get us up into Mexico. I will escort you to the train and I will join you. You will not ride inside this train, or even stand inside like cattle. We will be sitting on top of the trains. It’s very dangerous. If you fall, you will die. If you lose your package, I will push you over the edge and you will die. Any questions?”

  No one had any.

  “Good,” he said. “Time to go.”

  At La Bestia, as they were preparing to climb onto the train, Héctor made a cash payment to a Federale which allowed the group to proceed.

  “Not yet,” Héctor said, holding up his hand in front of a man, his wife and a small girl. He had seven syringes for each of the seven females in the group. “I cannot promise what this journey will bring, but with this shot, I can promise your wife and daughter will not get pregnant.”

  Everyone but Eliana seemed prepared for this.

  This alone was shocking.

  When it was her turn for a birth control shot, not knowing what was even in the syringe, she held up her hand and shook her head.

  “It’s not like anyone would want you anyway,” he said, holding his nose and saving the syringe for some other time. “You’re a girl, right?”

  Eliana didn’t answer.

  In a somewhat orderly fashion, they gathered onto the gigantic train together; seven women (Eliana included), fourteen men and Héctor—the pendejo with the super sensitive sniffer.

  There were predominantly males on the flatcars, the hoppers and the boxcars. They were told to climb on top of the boxcars. It was very dangerous, the tracks rough in spite of what Eliana assumed was constant use. Sitting on the roof of the painted white boxcar, many of the men were loud, more than a few of them displaying general alpha male tendencies. But without the need to establish dominance just yet, only the coyotes seemed to truly flex their might.

  Before they hit the first check point, there had been three fights, all three of them ending with one or both fighters going over the edge of the train. As the train raced by the bodies down in the dirt, Eliana saw some of the men beaten and injured while others were haphazardly scrambling to get back on the train. One man just laid there, his neck broken and turned the wrong way. Sadly, no one cared.

  Sitting on the edge of the worn white train, the wind whipping at her face, she felt him—the guy sitting next to her. From low under the brim of her hat, and out of the corner of her eye, she caught him staring.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said, turning her head enough to acknowledge that she was talking to him.

  She tightened her grip on the backpack she bought back in Guatemala City. She thought about the gun inside there. She didn’t go for it just yet. That would be premature. And she didn’t want to grab it in front of everyone where she might draw attention to herself, or at the very least, cause a panic.

  Before she knew it, a hand reached out, pulled her hat back. The eyes of a middle aged man bored down into her own eyes before she could stop him.

  She shoved his arm away.

  “You are pretty behind all that…filth,” he told her.

  She grabbed her hat, put it back on and pulled the front down low. He reached out for her again, but she smacked his arm away and spit in his face. He blinked hard, wiped the spit away, then socked her in the mouth.

  The sheer swiftness and ferocity of her reaction startled her attacker. Before he’d even taken his next breath, Eliana jammed a thumb in his eye. Squinting the affected eye, reeling backwards, it seemed he was going to tumble off the edge of the car. While he was wind-milling his arms and looking like he might just go over, Eliana thought about giving him a helping hand. She kicked him over the edge of the train instead.

  The gun barrel pressed hard to the back of her head surprised her; the fact that Héctor was the one holding it didn’t surprise her in the least.

  “I already got your payment, puta,” he said. “So if you go over, I save myself the headache of looking at you.”

  “I don’t like being touched,” she said. The gun remained long enough for her to understand he meant business, that he had no problem making an example of her.

  “One day you’ll learn,” he growled, the gun coming away.

  He gave her a solid kick in the back, a shot meant more for effect than anything. She feigned a spasm of pain, which surely brought him a measure of gratification, perhaps even the respect of his peers. With her ears wide open and her eyes turned down, low enough to hide them, Eliana could not see him, but she listened intently. If he meant to take her things, she’d grab him and throw him over like the last guy.

  Héctor sat back down, her belongings unmolested.

  Returning to her spot, surely more than a handful of eyes upon her, she grabbed the backpack strap and pulled it near her.

&nb
sp; “These trains used to go slower,” Héctor announced. “Back then you could survive the fall with maybe a few broken bones! Now if you land wrong, you’re dead. If you don’t, you’re still dead. I expect everyone to shut up and stay still until the next checkpoint. Getting passage isn’t as easy as it used to be.”

  “Will we need to get off the train?” a man with a wife and small boy asked.

  Héctor scooted near him and said, “Not if you’re lucky.”

  Eliana kept her chin tucked to her chest and said nothing. She didn’t even look up at Héctor when he spoke except to turn an ear in his direction. She never showed him her eyes, only her dirty cheekbones and chin.

  A few hours later, they arrived at the first checkpoint. The train slowed, then came to a stop. She turned her head just enough to see three armed Federales ahead, walking the line, looking up at the caravan.

  One of the Federales made his way down the rails to Eliana’s group; he pointed to one of the boys traveling under Héctor’s protection. The Federale told Héctor the boy needed to be checked for diseases.

  “And just to be clear, is that a boy or a girl?” Eliana heard the man ask. To Eliana, it sounded like he was talking about her.

  She dared not look up.

  Suddenly and violently, her hat was torn off her head and Héctor said, “Girl I think.” A grabby hand came over her shoulder, cupped her breast and said, “Yeah, it’s a girl.”

  She quietly vowed to kill Héctor the same way she’d vowed to kill Velvet all those years ago, but instead of moving on him, she ground her teeth together and prayed.

  “She comes with us,” the Federale said. “Is she diseased?”

  “Let me know when you’re done with her,” Héctor said with a soft chuckle.

  Héctor told the father of the boy to give the Federale their child, but the wife clutched him tight and started to fuss. She wouldn’t let him go. The boy’s father told his wife it would be okay, that they were just making sure he was healthy. The wife was crying about what she knew was going to happen. Finally the Federale moved back two steps then pulled his pistol and shot the husband. The murderous man then turned his gun on the wife.

  “Give him the boy!” everyone began to shout, but she wasn’t listening. She was now howling, frantic, her eyes dancing from her boy to her dead husband to the man with the gun trained on her.

  The crack of another gunshot split the air. The mother’s head bucked backwards, her arms falling slack, her body slumping over sideways. Héctor grabbed the young boy, who was in shock, and handed him over the edge of the boxcar to the ugly, somewhat rotund Federale.

  “Are you going to be a problem?” he asked Eliana, the coyote’s gun now aimed directly at her.

  “No,” she said, grabbing her backpack and heading for the edge. If there was one comfort, it was in knowing that at least she was armed. Then she was suddenly jolted backwards. She whipped her head around to see what she’d hooked the backpack on.

  “You won’t need this,” Héctor said with a firm grip on her belongings.

  “These are my things,” she said, jerking them back.

  He held on.

  “I’ll hold them for you,” he replied, yanking on them harder. When she stopped fighting him, but refused to let go, Héctor withdrew his pistol, aimed it at her and said, “You won’t have to wait for the Federales to shoot you. If you don’t let go right now, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  Reluctantly, she let go.

  Turning around, she saw the Federale with a grip on the orphaned boy’s bicep. He had his gun trained on her, and a frown that could be described as nothing short of menacing. Raising her hands, she nodded her head in submission.

  Lowering herself over the edge, she pretended to be slow and weak, and when she landed in the dirt, she toppled over, flopping on her side and faking a sprained ankle.

  “Get up,” the Federale grunted, knocking her on the head with his boot.

  “Bet you wish you would have taken the shot, huh, putida?” Héctor said over the edge with too much humor in his voice.

  Eliana managed to get up off the ground. Looking into the boy’s eyes, she saw utter stillness. He was probably seeing his parents alive. And then dead. The eight or nine year old wasn’t crying yet, he was that overwhelmed. That in shock. She held his gaze. He was looking at her, but not seeing her.

  There was not an ounce of recognition.

  When they reached the small checkpoint building, the Federale ushered them inside. The building smelled old, like decades of cooked food and perspiration had worked itself into the walls, the floors, the ceiling. Even the air was warm and suffocating. The boy was pulled into the first room; she and another girl had the second room; the third room at the end of the hallway looked cleaner than the others, complete with three lawn chairs and the sounds of a TV running in the background.

  She didn’t see anyone else.

  Eliana was violently shoved into the second room and told at gunpoint to strip. She turned and fired a glare not only at her aggressor, but at his lanky companion—a hideous man with a sneer and overly inquisitive eyes.

  Seeing no way out, Eliana stripped to her bra and underwear.

  While fighting for the last of her dignity, the girl next to her was shoved down and told to strip as well. Picking herself up, the girl did not hesitate again.

  “Off!” Eliana’s captor barked at her. He pointed to her chest, and to her crotch. “Now!”

  Eliana reluctantly complied. Both girls stood there naked, their skinny bodies dirty, the bones in their knees, their hips and their ribs as clear as day. That was when Eliana realized how thin she’d become.

  The shorter, more robust man said to his lanky counterpart, “Which one do you want?”

  “The cleaner one,” he said, his eyes on the other girl.

  This fifteen or sixteen year old child with her new breasts and narrow hips was whimpering to herself. She then broke into tears knowing what was about to happen.

  “You want a baby in you?” the long-limbed creep said, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. “You could send my seed to America, get our child inside the walls of the white devils, teach him the ways of the next revolution.”

  The girl began sobbing, trying even harder to cover herself.

  “You get the dirty one,” Captain Potbelly finally said. He was the rotund one who took them from the trains, the same one who shot the boy’s parents.

  The string bean of a man turned to Eliana and groaned. “She’s got a better body, I guess, but she’s too old for me. And look at that nest! Her crotch probably smells like dried vomit.”

  “She probably has lice, too. Make sure you check.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Well get on with it or get out,” Captain Potbelly said. “I won’t be able to do it if you’re busy talking.”

  Captain Potbelly motioned for String Bean to shut the door while he loosened his belt. Eliana never thought this would happen. To someone else, yes. But not to her.

  Am I not a disgusting enough creature right now? Why would anyone want someone as dirty as me?

  String Bean was right: she did smell down there. She did that on purpose. She smelled horrible, her pubic hair burly and unkempt. Everything about her was meant to safeguard her beauty and her virtue so as to avoid exactly this.

  Captain Potbelly said to the blubbering girl, “You are not welcome in this country.” He began unbuttoning his shirt. Took it off to reveal a sweaty, stained undershirt. “You are dirty Guatemalans, with your ugly faces and your filthy teeth.”

  String Bean came at Eliana, pulled on her lower lip with unwashed fingers. He was looking at her teeth. She had not brushed them in months, but they were still straight and not so grimy that they looked like the girl’s raunchy chompers next to her.

  “Mine has good teeth,” String Bean said, confirming on deeper inspection that as filthy as Eliana was, she was also quite beautiful. It was the green eyes. She could not hide those witho
ut a hat. String Bean knelt before her, sniffed her nether region and gasped.

  “Mother of God!” he exclaimed.

  “Shut up,” Captain Potbelly barked. “Just use her face.” Then, to his girl, the Captain said, “Be a good girl and turn your bum this way.”

  Sniveling, the girl let him turn her around. He reached around her waist, pulled at her stomach, forced her butt his way. Inside, Eliana was a gathering storm. Captain Potbelly let his trousers drop around his ankles, revealing milky white legs with mismatched socks pulled halfway up his calves. He was wearing big tighty-whiteys that weren’t clean, which sickened Eliana to the point of snapping. She looked back at String Bean who was holding his nose as he took down his pants before her.

  “Move your arms, let me see those little goosebumps,” he finally said, standing up and tugging at the arms covering Eliana’s breasts.

  “It is a privilege, not a right for you to be here,” Captain Potbelly said to the girl as he pulled his underwear aside. The other girl worked her way into another crying jag, her entire body now quaking.

  Eliana began to feign weakness, and then fear. No, the fear was real. Even though she was sure String Bean was going to force her to her knees before him, she was terrified he’d want sex, too. If he did this, it would hurt. She was still a virgin. Even worse, what this creep said about wanting to send his seed to America haunted her.

  She looked at his eyes (soft), his nose (soft), and his throat (soft). All soft targets. All easy to damage beyond repair.

  All the rage she was feeling in that moment—a tunneling rage mixed with fear—she channeled into her right fist.

  Her father was shorter than String Bean. When sparring her father, she had to get low if she wanted to uppercut his chin, much less pinpoint his throat, a target she could pretend to hit, but never actually hit knowing that—when done right—it would bring only death.

  The man before her was half a head taller than her father and far easier to hit.

  Funneling all of her animosity—every last bit of her hate—into her right fist, seconds felt like minutes as she sought out the right moment. As Captain Potbelly began to grunt, and the guttural, screaming sounds of the girl next to her tore at her heart, Eliana’s fist became iron, so hard she thought of it as lethal.