Jennifer Clement - Prayers for the Stolen

We watched Ruth fix up our mothers as we spun around and around in the hair-salon chairs or watched the huge passenger buses pass by from the beauty parlor’s bullet-riddled window. We longed to have our hair done and our nails painted, but we were not allowed.

When Ruth took the towel off my mother’s wet hair, her black frizz had been transformed into yellow frizz. There was a sudden quiet in the beauty salon as we stared at her yellow cotton-candy hair.

On the second day of school everyone looked like they were dressed for Christmas. Our mothers’ brown faces were covered with makeup and lipstick. Estefani’s mother was even wearing false eyelashes, which looked like antennas coming out of her worn, sickly face.

When José Rosa arrived it was as if a large mirror had fallen into the jungle. When we looked at him, we looked at ourselves. Every imperfection, our skin, scars, things we had never even noticed, we saw in him.

My mother was the first one to invite him over for dinner. He’s not going to believe it when he sees I knew about grammar. I knew about onomatopeia and hyperbole, she said. I do. Right?

She spent the day sweeping our dirt floor and cleaning the dust off of everything. Ever since my father had left, she’d never done any housecleaning.

I could understand why my father left our home, the jungle, and my mother (even though she wasn’t yet the angry drunk she became), but I could never understand how he could have left me.

When José Rosa came to our clean house, we sat outside, under the papaya tree; my mother and José drank beer and I drank a Coke. When my mother handed José Rosa the bottle of beer, she did not hand him a glass. In Guerrero we all drink straight out of bottles.

José spent his visit with us complaining about our mountain. He didn’t understand why we never used drinking glasses or why we had houses, but almost always slept outside at night. We listened quietly as he complained that everyone had appliances like televisions, satellite antennas, and washing machines, but that we had no furniture and still lived on dirt floors.

José Rosa discussed the way we had our light wired in, which was actually illegal since we took it from the light posts down on the highway, and threaded the wires up along the paths and through the trees. He could not understand why we ate beef so often and so few fruits and vegetables. He went on and on. José Rosa even said that the large toads near the school were the ugliest things he’d ever seen. He could not stand the enormous black ants that had taken over his small house and, of course, the heat was unbearable.

My now blond mother listened to all this as she drank one beer after another. Her makeup seemed to slip off her face from the sweat and melt down onto her neck. By the time her lipstick had stained the opening of five beer bottles and José Rosa expressed that he had to wear socks even in this heat since, after all, he’d been raised to wear socks, she was upset.

And then he said it.

He said, How can you all live like this, in a world without any men? How?

My mother took in a breath. It seemed that even the ants on the ground stopped moving. José Rosa’s question stood in the hot wet air, as if spoken words could be suspended. I could reach out and touch the letters H and O and W.

Do you ever watch television, Mr. Rosa? my mother asked in that too-slow tone of hers that she’d get into when she was angry.

She placed her empty beer bottle on the ground beside her.

I counted six empty beer bottles on the ground beside her. Big black ants were already going in and out of some of the bottles.

You men don’t get it, yet, do you? she said. This is a land of women. Mexico belongs to women. If you’ve watched any television then you’ve seen that show about the Amazon.

The river? José Rosa asked.

She told him about the female warriors and how the word Amazon means without breast.

My mother had television-knowledge. That’s what she called it.

No, no, I don’t know this story, José Rosa said.

You have to watch the History Channel, Mr. Teacher. We always watch the History Channel, right, Ladydi?

José Rosa did not want to talk about the Greeks or to let it be known that he did not know anything about the Amazons.

Yes, that’s interesting, but where are the men? he asked. Do you know where they all are exactly?

Oh yes, we know. They’re not here.

My mother stood up and walked into our two-room house. She didn’t really walk but slithered with her feet slipping too far forward in her plastic flip-flops so that her toes curled over the front of the sandals like talons.

Wait here, don’t move, she said and disappeared into the black shade of our hot, raw cement home.

This was the first time that José Rosa and I were alone. He looked at me kindly and asked in his city-voice, which always sounded exotic to me. Does she always drink so much?

I knew my mother had gone inside and passed out from the beer and heat. I could tell from her walk that her blond frizzy mass of hair was now pressed down into the pillow on a small cot in a corner and that she would not wake up until late that night.

Come with me, I said. I want to show you something.

We both stood and my teacher followed me around the small house to the back.

There, I said, look. This is the beer-bottle cemetery.

José Rosa stood still and breathless at the sight of my mother’s mound of hundreds and hundreds of brown-glass bottles dumped in piles and lying under swarms of bees.

To the right of the beer cemetery was our laundry line that was tied between two papaya trees. My mother had cleaned the house but she’d forgotten to take the clothes off the line. José Rosa looked at our yellow and pink underwear hanging limp in the windless air. These panties were filled with holes and the crotch on some was brown and worn thin from my mother over-scrubbing her menstrual bloodstains.

How old are you exactly? José Rosa asked me as we turned and walked back around the house. He used words such as exactly and quite , and they seemed like well-mannered, proper city words.

I’d better go now, he said.

Everyone wanted to leave once my mother had had too much to drink. I was used to it.

Yes. She’s asleep now. I’ll walk you down to the highway.

He was relieved to have me walk with him. I knew that city people were frightened by the jungle and he seemed more frightened than most.

Why did you come here? I asked as we walked down our steep hill toward the highway. He lived in a small room above Ruth’s beauty parlor.

I watched him as he moved trying to avoid stepping on the big red ants in his black leather lace-up city shoes. He looked down at his feet and up to the trees, back and forth. As the day turned to dusk dozens of mosquitoes lit on his neck and arms. He tried to wave them away. The jungle knew this city man was among us.

At the highway I told him I was not allowed to cross and had to go back home.

You know not to go out at night, right? I said. Someone did tell you this?

The night belongs to the drug traffickers, the army, and the police just like it belongs to the scorpions, I said.

José Rosa nodded his head.

No matter what, you don’t leave your house, not even if you hear the sound of gunfire or someone screaming for help, okay?

Thank you, he said as he took my hand and leaned over and kissed my cheek.

No one in the jungle holds anyone’s hand or kisses anyone’s cheek. This is a city custom, or a custom that can only exist in a cool climate. In our hot land touching is just more heat.

When I returned to my house my mother was still passed out. It took me a few seconds to recognize her form in the bed. I’d forgotten that she’d bleached her hair. The blond mop covered her small pillow.