“You were a sex slave to a Mexican drug lord,” she begins, “for most of your teenage and young adult life. A sex slave, Izabel. Tell me…how many did you have?”
I look up, meeting her brown eyes. Again, there’s no mockery, just a serious, determined face looking back at me as if I were being punished, forced to tell the truth to lessen my sentence.
I swallow and choke a little, looking down at my hands on the table.
And then I confess my darkest secret.
Mexico – About seven years ago…
My head throbbed beneath my fingertips as I lay on my side against the wood floor. My mouth was filled with blood; I began to choke on the metallic taste. Tears streamed from my eyes, sobs rattled my body, sobs that would go unheard while Izel, Javier’s wicked sister, was the only one in the room with me.
“Get up you stupid fucking puta! Levántate!”
She came at me again, dressed in a short, tight black skirt that left nothing between her legs to the imagination when she crouched over me barefooted. Long, black hair draped her bare shoulders; her chest was covered by a spaghetti-strap red tank-top, her large breasts practically spilling out over the tight fabric.
She wrenched her hand in the top of my hair.
“Please, Izel! Please don’t hit me! I-I didn’t take it! I swear!” I tried to cover my face with my hands, but she slapped them away.
“Open your eyes!”
Trembling all over, I opened my eyes.
She spit in my face and slammed my head against the floor.
I felt the wind shift as she rose into a standing position above me. I was afraid to look up at her. I shook all over and stank of urine and sweat and filth. I wore a long blue dress, a hideous thing it was, something that had been made for an old lady. But the smooth, thin material was cool on my skin in the brutal summer heat and I cherished it very much.
“One of you little bitches,” she spat in Spanish, “took my fucking makeup bag! I want it back! And you’re going to tell me who has it!”
“I don’t know!” I screamed, curled on my side in the fetal position. And it was the truth—I had no idea who took it. But it wasn’t unusual for Izel to say that things had been stolen just so she had an excuse to beat on me. She hated me. Hated me more than she hated anything or anyone, I was a stupid, white, American whore…a puta. “Una estúpida, blanca puta Americana!” And she was jealous that Javier protected me the way he did.
“You lie!”
“I’m telling the truth!” I sobbed uncontrollably into my hands.
An agonizing pain seared through my body as her foot thrust into my rounded belly and I lost my breath in one sharp gasp.
“Ahhhiiieee!” I cried out in pain when my breath came back. My legs came up into the fetal position again, my hands gripped my stomach as I tried to cover myself, to shield my belly from anymore blows. Vomit came up in my mouth and I couldn’t hold it down. Lying on my side, I expelled as much as I could onto the floor, vomit pooling around my cheek. I gasped and cried and choked, my eyes shut tight as I lay there hoping it would all just go away.
The sound of the door slamming into the wall was loud and frightening. The rumble of heavy boots thundering across the wood beneath me shook me to my bitter core.
“No, no, no! Javier, yo no fui!” Izel pleaded, futilely trying to defend herself.
I opened my eyes to see Izel’s throat caught in Javier’s iron hand, her little caramel-colored feet lifted from the floor.
“YOU NEVER TOUCH HER!” Javier roared in Spanish, his face merely an inch from hers as she choked in his grasp. “I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU, IZEL!”
Javier slammed her writhing body so hard against the wall that the large mirror several feet away cracked in three places, fell from the plastic hooks and shattered across the floor in a thousand pieces. When the glint of reflective shards rose up in my vision I covered my eyes and head again with my hands to protect myself.
Izel screamed then as if someone were cutting off her hand. I watched in horror—and sickening relief—as Javier’s fist came down again and again on his sister’s face until he knocked her unconscious and blood covered everything that made her recognizable.
He let her limp body drop against the floor and he came over to me, scooping me up into his big arms.
“Deal with Izel!” he growled to the men standing out in the hall as he carried me out.
The men hurried inside the room.
I only ever felt safe in Javier’s arms. I hated it whenever he left me there, in the compound, surrounded by dozens of sexually hungry men who carried guns on their backs and evil in their hearts. And Izel, who every day wished I was dead.
Javier carried me out of the flat-roofed building where many of the girls were kept, and he took me to the house I stayed in with him all the time that he was there, the house I was supposed to be left alone to live in even when he was gone, and not put with the other girls where conditions would be considered deplorable. Because this house was my home. It was my home with Javier.
I didn’t choose it. I didn’t live with him willingly. But over time, I grew to accept it.
I didn’t speak when he carried me inside. I just cried, my face pressed into the fabric of his shirt, the little black buttons that held it closed over his massive chest making indentions on my cheekbone. I grasped the collar of his shirt with my fingers tighter when pain shot through my lower back.
“How long has she done this to you, Sarai?” he asked as he carried me into the bathroom.
Carefully, he stood me up, placing my bare feet gently against the wood floor, and he slipped the gown over my head.
“You stink of filth,” he said, not with reprimand, but with anger towards Izel for allowing me to get this way. “Look at you—how long?” His giant hands collapsed about my flimsy biceps and he looked down into my dirt and tear-streaked face with his dark brown eyes. “Tell me, Sarai. Don’t lie to me.”
I said nothing. I just continued to cry, lowering my head to look at the floor. Droplets of blood fell from my lips and dotted the floor around my feet. My whole head throbbed and my gums were sore and I feared my front teeth were loose.
The faucet squeaked noisily as he turned the water on in the bath. Water gushed from the opening as Javier bent his 6’2 height over the tub and plugged the bottom with a wash cloth.
He helped me into the tub; in addition to the pain inflicted by Izel, my large belly made it difficult to do on my own.
“Lay back, mi amor,” he said and positioned a hand at the back of my neck to help me.
Still, I said nothing. I let my head fall to one side and I stared off at the wall, covered by dingy green wallpaper peeling away in spots, while Javier washed me with the utmost care. He was always careful with me when I was sick or hurt or pregnant. Even refrained from rough sex with me in these times, settling for safer, more tender moments. But he was always in control of me. Always.
He shut the water off.
Another shot of pain raced through my back and around my front, digging into my lower belly. One of my hands came up out of the water and grasped the side of the tub. Javier let the wash cloth fall into the water between my legs and he held me by the arm. His dark eyes bore into mine with concern as he looked to and from me and my stomach, knowing something was wrong.
“I’m OK,” I told him and laid my head down on his arm, just below where he’d rolled up his black sleeve so he could bathe me.
Reluctantly, he took the wash cloth back up and began to clean away the weeks’ worth of dirt from my legs. He wasn’t supposed to be back for a few more days. Returning this early, and unexpectedly, didn’t give Izel enough time to get me cleaned up and back to the way he left me. She never would have beat me that close to when he would return. She’d always make sure the evidence had faded, or go over with me any one of a hundred lies we’d told him over the few years I had been in the compound. Izel knew I wouldn’t tell Javier what she did to me.
“Sarai?
” he said in a comforting, deep voice.
Water steadily trickled into the tub from the cloth.
I looked at him.
“You’re protecting them,” he said in Spanish and then continued in broken English—he always resorted to English when he felt guilty or sympathetic. “I know it’s so you protect Izel. But no nothing you can do for these girls. They will be sold. You never see them again. And they no care about you. They do what they have to to live. Too easily broken. Do you see what I say to you?” The warmth of the wet cloth went carefully over my mouth and cheek, and then he wiped my forehead, stopped and looked down into my eyes.
“Tell me,” he went on in English, “how long Izel do this to you?”
I shook my head in a nervous motion; tears began to fill my eyes again. I didn’t want to tell him. I couldn’t because if I ever ratted her out, the things that Javier would do to her would be worse than death, and then she would take it out on the other girls. Javier didn’t protect the other girls like he protected me. Most of them were fair game. But the most beautiful ones, those destined to be sold to the highest bidders, not even Izel would hurt or disfigure because she shared the profits they brought. But the other girls, the ones that no one had bought, those who had physical flaws or who wouldn’t succumb to their new roles as slaves, they were fair game. And Izel was a dirty player.
More pain racked my body, this time causing my neck to come off the back of the tub and my arms to collapse around my belly. My eyes clenched shut, my teeth bared, and I cried out in agony, still tasting blood in the back of my throat from the earlier beating.
Javier rose into a standing position immediately and went over to the door, swinging it open and calling out in Spanish to his men on guard, “Get the doctor! Apúrate!”
I doubled over, my upper-body lifting out of the water, my arms gripping my stomach. I screamed out in the small space. “Javier! It hurts bad! Javi—.”
Minutes later that felt like hours and I was being whisked out of the bathroom and into our bedroom. Javier laid me down upon our bed. Five women entered the room—the same ones who delivered my stillborn thirteen months previously—with clean towels and water and other sterilized supplies.
Javier moved away from the bed and went toward the door.
I reached out my hands to him. “Javier, please…don’t leave me here alone.” Tears streamed down my cheeks, tears not so much from the physical pain now as it was from the emotional pain of knowing he was going to leave. “Please…”
He looked across the room at me through brown, almost black pools; flashes of his dark brown hair and handsome, roughly chiseled face moving in and out of my vision as people moved about the room, preparing in a hurried fashion to deliver my baby. Javier’s baby.
And then he was gone.
I stared at that door—angry and sad and lonely—for as long as I could, until another contraction came and forced me to focus only on the pain killing me from the inside out.
A half hour later, I gave birth, but to a boy or a girl, I didn’t know.
I reached out my hands for it after they’d cleaned it up and wrapped it in a blanket. Its tiny cries filled the room and my ears and my heart. The nurse just looked at me with my baby in her arms, her brown, weathered face framed by black curly hair and black eyes, held absolutely no emotion.
“Por favor…let me have my baby.”
The woman turned her back to me and carried it away while the doctor went to stitching me up.
“Javier!” I cried out. I screamed his name so loudly, over and over until I was hoarse. “Javier! Por favor! Por favor!” Tears barreled from my eyes. “Mi bebé…,” I cried out softly just before I passed out from exhaustion.
Nora looks at me from across the table, her caramel-brown eyes seeming full of something I never quite expected—sadness and shock, maybe.
I feel so ashamed that I can’t even look at the hidden camera in the vent. My stomach twists with worry and guilt, only able to wonder what Victor must be thinking of me right now.
Nora says in a soft, intent voice, “That must’ve been very hard for you.”
I don’t grace her with an answer. I hate the bitch for forcing me to experience it all over again.
“How many?” Nora asks quietly.
Reluctantly, I answer.
“That was the only one that ever lived,” I say. “I miscarried one and, like I already told you, had a stillborn.”
“But you were with him for so long.”
“Yeah,” I snap. “I was. So what.”
Nora struggles to find the right words to form her questions.
“What did you do the rest of the time?” she asks.
I sneer at her coldly, just wishing she’d drop these fucking questions and let my turn be over.
“And why wouldn’t he let you keep the baby? His baby?” She appears mortified underneath that creamy skin, but is trying to maintain her dominant place between us by not showing too much emotion.
My only question is why does she seem to care at all?
“Javier didn’t want children running around the compound,” I say. “Many of the girls got pregnant while they were there. The babies were sold, just like the girls were, though to families with money who couldn’t have children of their own and didn’t want to go through the years of waiting for their chance to adopt.” I look off toward the wall, remembering that day I saw my baby being taken out of that room. “Javier said that in our way of life there was no room for children. Not even his own. I wanted to believe that he made sure our baby was sold to a loving family, the best family, but in my heart and because he was as much a cruel man as he was loving at times toward me, I could never convince myself of that. After that birth, I told him no more. I slapped him even. I screamed in his face and I didn’t care what he’d do to me as punishment. But I wasn’t having anymore.”
I stop, my gaze hard and focused, recalling that day.
“What did he do as punishment?”
I look back at Nora, moving only my eyes.
“Nothing,” I say. “At one time Javier loved me. He would never hurt me. This was during that time. Instead, he sent me to a good doctor and I got on birth control pills and he made certain that I was never without them. He never wore condoms, but he started pulling out of me. Not always, but sometimes. I was lucky never to get pregnant again. But the other girls, they continued to give birth. Baby factories.”
“Were they Javier’s babies?”
I shake my head. “No—at least I don’t think so. The girls were often raped by Javier’s guards; some had sex with them willingly. I started secretly giving some of the girls, a few who were closest to me, my birth control pills. I had so many of them that I could spare to help a few for a while. Until Izel figured out what I was doing and she started stealing my pills, leaving just enough for me to get through every month, and there was nothing I could do.”
“What happened to Izel?”
The images of my dark past disappear from my mind and I look back at Nora.
“I’ve told you want you wanted to hear,” I say with venom in my voice. “What are you now, my goddamn shrink?”
She shakes her head and leans away from the table, dropping her unbound hands in her lap.
The legs of my chair screech across the floor as I get up, pushing it back behind me angrily.
“I think we’re done here,” I say, snarling down at her. I press my palms flat against the table and lean toward her with a threatening glare. “Dina better be safe when this is all over, or you can bet your ass I’ll do the things to you that Javier did to Izel later that day after he found her beating me. And then you’ll want me to kill you.”
My hands slide away from the table as I raise upright and go to walk away. Nora remains seated. When I get closer to the door, only then do I will myself to look up at the nearby hidden camera, indicating that they can unlock it now from the surveillance room. I lower my eyes quickly once I hear the lock clicking inside
the steel.
“Izabel,” Nora calls out.
I stop and turn to look at her.
“If it means anything, I really am sorry for having to make you relive that.”
“It doesn’t,” I reject her apology.
Then I open the door, the smell of bleach and lemon cleaner from a recently mopped floor, rises up into my nose.
“The answer to your question,” Nora calls out before I step into the hallway, “is yes. My father cut off the tip of my finger.”
After a short pause, I leave her there without another word, and close the door behind me.
7
Victor
I go out to meet Izabel in the hallway as she makes her way back; listening to the sound of her boots tapping against the floor as she gets closer. She rounds the corner at the end of the hall, but she will not look up at me although I know she is aware of my presence. Her long auburn hair is disheveled from the fight, pushed away from her elegant shoulders and laying against her back. There’s a cut on her left leg, just above the top of her boot, and red streaks that might be leftover from Nora’s fingernails, running along her bare thighs. But no matter what Nora did to her physically, I know just by looking at her that what she did to her emotionally was far worse.
I have more than an urge to go into that room and kill that woman myself, but for Izabel’s sake, for the life of Dina Gregory, I cannot.
“Izabel,” I say when she steps up to me, but she looks into my eyes and steals the rest of my words away.
“I’m sorry, Victor.” She starts to walk past me, away from the door to the surveillance room.
I reach out carefully and hook my hand about her elbow.
“I turned off the audio,” I say. “No one heard what you confessed other than Nora.”
It takes her a moment, but finally she turns to look at me, something indecipherable at rest in her bright green eyes. It is not relief, as I would expect, but something else—regret, perhaps?
Moving around to stand in front of her, I reach my hand up and rest it against the side of her face. She closes her eyes momentarily as if she finds comfort in the gesture, her long dark lashes sweeping her face.