Jennifer Clement - Prayers for the Stolen

Mark my words, Ladydi, my mother said. One of these weekends when we’re in Acapulco we’re going to go and find that fortune-teller and I’m going to tell her to give my money back.

After the last pile of dirt had been thrown over the dead boy’s body my mother said, Let’s say a prayer.

You say it, I answered.

Get on our knees, my mother said. This is serious.

We both knelt on the white worms, the beetles, and pink stones.

On the happy day that Maria had her mouth fixed and the little baby had his extra thumb removed, this young boy appeared. We pray for rain. Amen.

Then we stood up and walked back to our house.

As we washed our hands in the kitchen sink, my mother said, Yes, Ladydi, I’m going to tell Paula’s mother. I have to. She needs to know.

My mother stood at the kitchen sink. She took out the note that had been pinned on the corpse from her pocket and lit a match to the paper. Paula’s name turned to ash.

Paula never knew her father. To think that there was a man out there someplace who did not know he’d sired the most beautiful girl in Mexico!

Paula’s mother, Concha, never told anyone who Paula’s father was but my mother had her own theory. Concha used to work as a bedroom maid at the house of a rich family in Acapulco.

On the day Concha was fired, she came back to the mountain with two things: a baby in her belly and a wad of pesos in her hand.

There’s nothing worse than a fatherless daughter, my mother said. The world just eats those girls alive.

After we’d washed, my mother and I went over to Paula’s house, which was a short walk down to the edge of the highway.

I sat with Paula while my mother spoke to Concha about the corpse. At eleven, Paula was still thin and stringy, but her beauty was there. Everyone turned and stared at her wherever she went. Everyone could see what was coming.

After this visit, my mother and I walked to the highway and the store that stayed open late beside the gas station. She bought a six-pack of beer. This was the day that she stopped eating and only drank beer.

What did Paula’s mother say? I asked.

Not much.

Was she scared?

To death. She’ll be dead in the morning.

What do you mean?

I don’t know. Those words just came out of me.

The next morning my mother was still asleep when I left for school. I looked at her face. There was no mirror there.

We never told anyone about the field of poppies.

We found the poppy crop a year before Maria’s harelip operation. I remember because Maria covered her mouth on that day when she said, I am afraid of flowers.

One day Estefani, Paula, Maria, and I decided to go for a walk. This was misbehavior, as we were never allowed to wander off and go for walks by ourselves. We left from Estefani’s house on a Saturday afternoon.

Estefani’s family had a real house. They had three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. Estefani lived with her mother, Augusta, and two little sisters, Manuela and Dolores. On our mountain only Estefani’s father came back to Mexico from the United States every year. He also sent them money every month. Thanks to him there was electricity on our mountain as he’d paid someone a lot of money to get that done. Estefani’s father worked as a gardener in Florida. We also knew that he’d once worked in Alaska on fishing boats. In Florida, Americans hired him most of the time, but he also worked for rich Mexicans who had fled from the violence. He said that many of these Mexicans were victims of kidnappings.

Estefani had many toys from the United States. She had a fairy watch that lit up in the dark and a plastic doll that spoke and the lips even moved.

In their kitchen there was a microwave oven, a toaster, and an electrical juicer. The entire house was fitted with ceiling lights. They all had electrical toothbrushes.

Estefani’s house was one of my mother’s favorite topics of conversation. After my mother had guzzled her third beer, I knew she would only talk about Estefani’s house or my father.

Their damn sheets match their bedspreads and their towels match the round rug on the floor. Have you seen how their dishes match their napkins? she said. In the United States everything has to match!

I had to admit she was right. Even the three sisters were always dressed in matching clothes.

Look at this dirt floor, she said. Look at it! Your father did not even love us enough to buy a bag of cement. He wanted us to walk with the spiders and walk with the ants. If a scorpion bites you and kills you, it will be your father’s fault.

Everything was his fault. If it rained, he’d built a roof that leaked. If it was hot, he’d built the house too far from the rubber trees. If my grades were poor at school, I was his daughter, as stupid as he was. If I broke something like a water glass, I was as clumsy as he was. If I talked too much, I was exactly like him, I never shut up. If I was quiet, I was just like him, I thought I was better than everyone else.

One day, when Estefani’s mother had a cold and had locked herself up in her room, Maria, Paula, Estefani, and I decided to go for a walk.

Let’s go exploring, Maria said. Her voice was muffled back then because her hand was always covering her mouth and the exposed red flesh from her harelip.

Let’s walk in the direction of Mexico City, Paula said. She was always thinking about going to Mexico City. It was the one place we could all find instantly when we looked at a map of Mexico. Our index fingers could point it out right in the middle of the country. If Mexico were a body, Mexico City would be its navel.

We walked in a straight line away from Estefani’s house, through the iguana paths that took us deeper into the jungle overgrowth. I was at the back. Maria walked at the front, holding one hand over her mouth. Paula looked beautiful even though her mother had blackened her teeth with a black marker which had bled everywhere so even her lips were black. Estefani walked in front of me in a matching set of a pink T-shirt and shorts. She was already so tall she looked years older than the rest of us. Looking at my friends, it made me wonder, What about me? What did I look like?

You look just like your father, my mother said. You have brown-red skin, brown hair, brown eyes, and white teeth. (A teacher had once told us that the people of Guerrero were Afro-Indian.)

As Maria, Paula, Estefani, and I walked in the direction of Mexico City, climbing higher than our homes and up from the highway, we slowly felt the jungle lose its density and the sun began to burn the tops of our heads. We walked and looked down at our feet as we moved. We did not want to step on a snake or some poisonous creature.

As soon as I can I am going to leave this horrible jungle, Paula said.

The rest of us knew that if there were anyone who could, it would be Paula with her TV commercial face.

As if we’d crossed a border, from one minute to the next, we’d left our hothouse jungle world and reached a clearing. The sun was strong. We stood before the brilliance of lavender and black as a huge field, a bonfire of poppies appeared before us.

The place seemed to be deserted except for a downed army helicopter, a mangled mess of metal skids and blades among the poppies.

The field of flowers smelled like gasoline.

Maria’s hand slipped into mine. I did not need to turn and look at her to know it was her small, cool hand like an apple peel. We would recognize each other in the dark and even in a dream.