Jennifer Clement - Prayers for the Stolen

He held a machine gun pointed straight at us.

What are we doing here? I said to Mike in a whisper as if the man could hear us out there.

Don’t move.

What are we doing here?

Quiet. Quiet.

Mike got out of the car and held out his hand to the man in a gesture that said stop.

She’s my sister, Mike said aloud. Hey, don’t worry, man. She’s blind.

The man looked at me and back at Mike.

She’s blind. Yes, yes. She was born blind.

The man lowered his machine gun.

Mike turned and pointed something at me and I heard the car lock. It was the car’s remote control that not only locked me in the convertible, but also locked the windows.

Mike and the man went inside the shack.

There were three black Escalades parked to the right of the shack in the shade of several palm trees. There were also two Rottweilers tied to the fender of one of these SUVs with leather straps. The dogs were panting hard in the heat and their dark red tongues hung out of their mouths.

On the fleshy elongated leaves of a maguey cactus two little-girl dresses dried in the sun. One dress was white and the other was blue.

As each minute passed it seemed to me that the world became more and more quiet. The hum of insects even disappeared as I began to bake inside the hot, locked car.

The dresses drying on the maguey cactus made me think of the narrow twig arms of a little girl coming out of the sleeves. The garments were almost dry and they lifted and blew in the heat.

On the ground beside the cactus there was a toy bucket and a toy broom.

The Trident Cool Bubble chewing gum had lost its pink, circus cotton-candy flavor.

My mind wandered in the hot-car-daydream.

With the motor and the air-conditioning off, and the windows closed shut, all the air was sucked up and used by my body. My thighs were wet through my jeans and I was moist all over. I felt thirsty and dizzy and almost drugged by the heat. I imagined a mirage of white seagulls flying above the shack, the Rottweilers, and the skinny man. In my stifling daydream I thought birds were clouds and I imagined a little girl in a white dress picking up seagull feathers from the ground.

At some point, I could not tell if I’d been locked in the car for ten minutes or two hours. I was pulled awake when the dogs began to bark as Mike came out of the shack.

Mike walked toward the car. He took out his car keys from his jeans, pointed the remote control, and I heard the locks flip open under the windows. He walked quickly with his face bent down against the sun. He opened the car door and slid inside.

What happened? I asked.

Did you fall asleep?

Who was that man?

Roll down the window.

Mike placed a small plastic bag on the seat between us. He turned on the engine, turned the car around, and we drove back down the dirt road toward the highway.

Mike beat his fingers on the steering wheel to some hip-hop music in his mind.

He was sweating and drops fell from his hair down the back of his neck. He held the car’s steering wheel between his knees and pulled off his shirt with a practiced swoop over his head.

The number 25 was tattooed on his upper arm beside a dark red rose. As I sat beside him, I could smell that flower. I could smell the rose on his arm as if I were leaning over a rose bush and smelling the soft petals.

So why did they call you Ladydi, anyway? Was it just because your mother liked that princess so much? Mike asked.

No, Mike.

I was not going to tell him that my mother named me Ladydi because she hated what Prince Charles had done to Diana.

Thanks to our television, my mother knew the whole story inside out. She loved any woman to whom a man had been unfaithful. It was a special sisterhood of pain and hatred. She used to say that, if there were a saint for betrayed women, that saint would be Lady Diana. One day, on the Biography Channel, my mother learned that Prince Charles claimed he had never loved her.

Why didn’t he just lie? my mother said. Why didn’t he just lie?

I was not named Ladydi after Diana’s beauty and fame. I was named Ladydi because of her shame. My mother said that Lady Diana had lived the true Cinderella story: closets full of broken glass slippers, betrayal, and death.

For one birthday I was given a plastic Princess Diana doll wearing a tiara. My father had brought it for me from the United States. In fact, over the years he bought me several Princess Diana dolls.

My name was my mother’s revenge. It was a kind of philosophy to her. She did not value forgiveness. In her revenge philosophy there were all kinds of scenarios. For example, the person you were avenging did not need to know about the acts of revenge as in the case of my father and my name.

When people who met me were surprised at my name, and said it aloud a few times over very sweetly, I could almost taste grains of sugar in my mouth. I knew that they were comparing my face to Diana’s face and feeling sorry for me. They were measuring my darkness against her fairness.

On the outskirts of Acapulco Mike had to drive down a long tunnel, which cut through the middle of the last mountain before the bay. I’d been inside this tunnel many times in buses and taxis.

As we drove out of the dark tunnel, the bright ocean sunlight filled the car.

Mike’s light blue jeans were splattered with blood.

Now I knew that blood could smell like roses.

My mother once saw a documentary on how the Zetas turn people into killers. She said that they tied a man’s hands behind his back and forced him to kneel and eat his own vomit, or eat someone else’s vomit.

Mike and I drove through the city streets toward the old section of Acapulco where rundown mansions from the 1940s and 1950s had been abandoned. In recent years, people had begun to buy up these properties and fix them. The houses were built into the mountainside, into the rock, above the Caleta and Caletilla beaches. From here there was a view of the bay on the left and Roqueta Island straight ahead. To the right one could see way out to the open ocean.

You know, Mike said, to this day your father sends my mother money.

What?

Yes, to this day your father sends my mother money.

I don’t believe you. He hasn’t sent us money for years.

Well, he sends my mother money. Every month.

Please say this isn’t true. It can’t be.

Okay. It isn’t true.

Where does he live? Where does the money come from?

New York City.

Mike pulled up to a large house painted in new white paint and dropped me off at the front door.

Go on, he said. This is the place. Get out.

He dropped me at the front door and didn’t even get out of the car. One forgets about manners when you’ve killed someone.

I obeyed. I knew to obey a killer. I obeyed when he gave me the plastic bag he’d carried out of the shack and placed between us in the Mustang. I obeyed when he told me to hold on to it until he needed it. I obeyed and placed it inside my black duffel bag with its broken zipper. I obeyed. I obeyed. I obeyed.

Mike rolled down his car window.

I’ll be back to pick that bag up in a few days, he said.

Okay.

Don’t steal anything.

I don’t steal.

You’re your mother’s daughter.

Shut up!

I rang the doorbell. Mike drove off. He did not wait to see if anyone opened the door for me.

After a minute or two, a servant dressed in a pale pink uniform with a crisp, clean white apron opened the door. Her straight gray hair was braided with green ribbons and pinned up so it rested like a headband or crown above her forehead. She was about seventy years old and had brown-red skin and small, light brown eyes. I thought she looked like a squirrel.

I was also standing in front of a ghost, or what my mother called “a Mexico ghost.” This is the term my mother used for anything that was ancient. Over the years, my mother and I only had to say “ghost” and we knew exactly what we meant. A ghost could be in a basket, a tree, the taste of a tortilla, and even a song.