Jennifer Clement - Prayers for the Stolen

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.