James Siegel - Detour

There had been talk lately. Something in the wind. A possible prisoner exchange or straight cash ransom. The last time Maruja saw her husband on TV, he’d hinted at imminent release.

Joanna had caught Maruja praying with the rosary beads that had been given to her by one of the guerrillas—Tomás, sad-eyed and secretly religious, who’d fashioned them from cork and presented them to her after she’d asked him for a Bible.

The man they called el doctor, who periodically visited them like a dutiful concierge making the rounds, told Maruja and Beatriz that they might be taking a little trip soon and winked at them.

Joanna had felt like two people. One of these people was overjoyed for Maruja and Beatriz; they’d become like sisters and she felt their pain at being separated so long from children and family.

The other Joanna felt devastated, jealous, and abandoned.

Now Maruja and Beatriz were gone.

The room reeked of loneliness, of people who’ve packed up and left. It was freshly tidied—the mattress fluffed and turned, the floor swept. The meager clothing Maruja and Beatriz had accumulated over time—castoffs from the kids, as Beatriz called their guards, most of whom were kids—was conspicuously missing. Beatriz had fashioned a makeshift dresser from two milk crates—when Joanna looked inside, there was only the sweatshirt with the logo of the Colombian national soccer team that Maruja had graciously handed down to her.

Joanna sat in the corner and cried.

After an hour or so she knocked on the door and asked to see el doctor. It was opened by Tomás, looking even more melancholy than usual, who didn’t respond one way or another. But a few hours later the doctor knocked on the door and walked in.

“Yes?” he said, flashing that magnanimous smile that Joanna found incongruous from the person imprisoning her.

“Where are Maruja and Beatriz?” Joanna asked him.

“Ah. Good news,” he said. “Released.” As if he’d been pulling for them all along.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s wonderful.”

“Yes.” His smile grew even wider. “Next. You.”

Joanna allowed herself to believe him—for a moment she did.

“And my baby. ”

“Yes, of course. Babies belong with their mothers.”

“What about Rolando?” she asked.

The doctor ignored her. Instead, he gazed at the surrounding sparseness. “You have more room now, yes?”

Joanna nodded.

“Good.”

THE FIRST NIGHT A.B.—AFTER BEATRIZ—JOANNA HAD TROUBLE sleeping. The mattress, which had always felt crowded if snugly warm, now felt uncomfortably roomy and ice-cold. There was a strange, slightly nauseating smell in the air. She woke up thirsting for company. Somehow this translated into something more tangible.

She knocked on the door and asked for water.

The female guard with long black hair opened the door. She was watching the TV, where a somber news anchor was reading from a sheet of paper.

When she went to get Joanna water, she made a point of turning the TV off.

The water, which was tepid and acidic, did nothing to help Joanna sleep. She lay with eyes wide-open, staring up at the ceiling. Beatriz had drawn a multitude of stars on the plaster ceiling with a felt pen. A way to break down their prison walls and create a pathetic illusion of freedom.

Joanna dug her head into the mattress and selfishly wished Beatriz were back beside her.

That smell. What was it?

It seemed stronger now. She decided it had to be the mattress itself. They’d turned it over in a clumsy stab at neatness, but the side she was sleeping on—or attempting to—had been against the dirty floor forever. It was the absence of smell too, she thought—the familiar scent of departed friends.

She stood up, turned the mattress back over, then lay down again.

She didn’t notice it right away.

The room was too dark. It took her eyes getting used to the blackness and the fact that the smell, instead of improving, grew exponentially worse.

It took Joanna turning first left, then right, even reversing her position on the bed. It took her placing her head facedown into the foam and nearly gagging.

She lurched to a sitting position and stared at the place on the mattress where her head had been seconds before.

It was like a Rorschach blot. Staring at an amorphous mix of color and shadow and finally finding the haunting image within.

A large, uneven stain.

She thought she knew what it was. A stain the approximate size of a human head.

She closed her eyes and pressed a finger into the middle of rusty brown. It felt damp, like cellar earth. When she looked at the tip of her finger, it was stained brown. Blood.

She staggered to a standing position. She lurched around the room as if drunk, chased by a growing panic.

She banged furiously on the door.

Tomás again. She wanted to say their names out loud—to state them clearly and unmistakably. But she saw something dangling out of the crook of his pants pocket.

The rosary made of cork. The one he’d given Maruja, the one she’d sworn to always keep with her as an eternal symbol of faith, hope, and dogged survival.

Joanna waited till he shut the door, till she slumped onto the floor and buried her face in her hands.

Then she screamed bloody murder.

THEY KNEW SHE KNEW.

About Maruja and Beatriz.

She probably told them herself, every time she jumped when one of them entered the room or came within two feet of her. She couldn’t help wondering which one pulled the trigger, drew the knife. Was it Tomás, who seemed to mope about even more than usual these days? Or Puento, who’d pointed a rifle at Joelle when she was in the screaming throes of pneumonia? Or both?

She had to reassure herself each time that they hadn’t come for her .

She was absolutely certain they knew she knew when el doctor came in and apologized for having to chain her to the wall.

He seemed genuinely remorseful about it but explained that it was for her own good.

“If USDF patrols begin shooting,” he said, “you’ll be safer like this, no?”

No. Joanna asked just once for him to not do it. Please.

He shrugged and sighed. It was out of his hands, he explained. It was just for nighttime—that’s all.

They chained one end to a piece of a long-defunct radiator. The other went around her left leg.

It wasn’t physically uncomfortable—the pain was psychic. It put a punctuation mark on her existence. She was now literally under lock and key.

One of them would come in to unlock her in the morning. Joanna wouldn’t start breathing normally again until this ritual was actually accomplished. Then she’d know she was alive for at least one more morning. She could let herself look forward to feeding time. This living from hour to hour was taking its toll. She was generally jumpy, weepy, and exhausted. There were times she found herself unable to stop shaking.

When she told Galina that she was pretty positive Maruja and Beatriz had been murdered, Galina shook her head and said no, they were released.

“They weren’t released,” Joanna said. “Tomás has Maruja’s rosary beads. She never would’ve left them behind. The girl turned off the news that night when she saw me looking. There was blood in the bed. I know.”

Galina wouldn’t listen. She went deaf.

It was maddening. It was sickening.

It was clear that talking to Galina about certain things was like talking to a wall. Joanna knew what that was like, because she talked to her wall in lieu of talking to Maruja and Beatriz. She’d decided it was slightly more rational than talking to herself.